Night Breaks Through

Nicole Taylor

`*Our database contains limited intel on this mission. If you were assigned to this mission, please deliver your report to your supervisor, and report to room 101 for a friendly briefing on the importance of timely mission reports.*`

Antwerp Construct was in turmoil, as a few days prior the *Resilience* went missing in aerial operations high above Antwerp, under the command of Sofie Derde. Since then, the Enlightened personnel were franticly searching for the ship; Matrim and May doing temporal research, Bloemer and Levi doing field work, and Patricia, Franklin and Nicole on scanners.

For a while, no clear leads were found, until the MANAR-scanners turned up something interesting; throughout Antwerp, there were pockets of lower-than-normal Primal Energy signatures. And they were shaped in the form of arrows - pointing straight to a local gaming establishment - one known quite well to the team.

While this was theorized to be a likely trap, this was still their best lead, so they decided to go for it. Not without intel, though, so Jane tapped into the location's cameras to get a better look. The place looked normal enough - it was hosting two gaming tournaments - except for the corner, where two figures in white were sitting. One, in a wrinkled white suit, was known to the group as Wrinkle; the other in a pristine white suit was unknown to them. Moreover, the second one seemed to not really be there, but a projection from a seperate location.

Figuring they might as well take the bait, the team went to the pair, inviting them to a board game to lessen suspicious. The game - *Battlestar Galactica* - provided a lot of opportunities for the five to allude to what was going on. The unknown man turned out to be Henry Delore, an NWO Man in White. In the end, they alluded that the *Resilience* might be lost in an Everett Volume, after something went wrong with the FTL drive. At that revelation (and that Wrinkle was playing a Cylon in the game), Wrinkle vanished, and Jane got a call.

The call was from agent Bloemers, who just now detained agent Taylor in room 101 for "being a traiterous Euthanathos". This surprised everyone, most of all agent Taylor, who was at that moment with agent Jane listening to the phone call. It didn't take long for the team to figure out what likely happened - the second Taylor was likely a copy from an Everett Volume.

As the team hurried back to the construct to figure out what exactly happened, Salisbury noticed something strange on the way home - a big blue telephone box. Recognizing it as something out of place, he went to investigate - and was surprised when the box's DNA-lock opened the door when he touched it. Figuring this had to belong to a copy of Salisbury, he decided to take it along to construct to have it examined.

During the interrogation of alt-Taylor - something Jane in particular was looking forward to - much of the suspicions of the team were confirmed. This Taylor had come from an alternate universe - an Everett Volume - along with Salisbury and Jane, with the "Technocracy" hot on their heels. In that universe, Threat Null apparently invaded Earth a few years prior, devastating the world, with few pockets of resistance. The team, who in the alternative universe joined The Traditions early in their carreers, went through many of the big events they themselves handled, although ending up with different solutions. They came in their voidship - the blue box, designed by Salisbury and inspired by a popular TV show - and made an "emergency FTL jump" trying to escape from a Technocratic ship - which the logs showed happened just as the Resilience vanished.

Meanwhile, the team tracked down the remaining to alt-team members. Alt-Salisbury proved easy to find (arguing with a local physics professor); Jane was harder to track down, but after the intelligence network was redirected to local orphanages, she too was located. In all, the three alt-agents were happy enough to be safe from their universe not to complain too much about being taken by our world's Technocracy.

Getting to the Everett volume would be hard, if it weren't for the construct's Chrononaut. On hearing what happened, Matrim quickly set to produce a device to transport them there, using the opening that the original FTL accident created. Getting a ship would also be hard - Qi la Machinae weren't exactly lined up - so Taylor took the unorthodox step of requesting the confiscation and use of the Traditionalist void ship. She wasn't too happy when she found out the form wasn't actually ment to be used, but nontheless, in the end she convinced her leadership at the ETD that this was their best shot at getting both their ship and their pilot back, and she was sure she could re-jig the Traditionalist's ship fast enough to use proper means of interstellar propulsion. That arranged, Salisbury slapped some big guns on the thing, and the team was ready to go.

Just in time, as well - as they set off, they noticed something coming through the rift that they now found at the location. This was a Qi la Machina, but from the alt-universe - and thus likely in the hands of (alt-)Threat Null. Taylor quickly jammed all signals in the area, to prevent them from sending out harmful signals (as they breached the gauntlet). Meanwhile, she prepared to jump the ship away from earth. Before she could, however, the ship voluntarily left to go into moon orbit.

A brief discussion was held with the ship (their comms still jammed, but able to reach the nearby team). Captain of the ship was alt-Levi, with most of alt-Antwerp construct on board. They seemed friendly, prompting Salisbury to think they seemed okay (since they didn't act like "the Borg"). Taylor mentioned that Agents of Threat Null could be quite deceptive, which prompted Jane to check in with the guests from the alternate universe - who balked at the sight of Levi, which was apparently a high general of the "bad Technocracy". At that, Salisbury opened fire with his new cannon, quickly making work of the ship. Meanwhile, reinforcements from the Void Engineers and allies were called in to take care of surviving debris.

As it was apparent that ships from the alternate universe could come through, the team hurried in crossing the threshold, to get Sofie and their ship back, and to plug the hole. The responding ships were asked to keep this end safe, while the team went in.

When at the other side, they found themselves again in close Earth orbit - but this world was burning. No sign of the Resilience or Sofie could be found, as the ship was reconfigured into a stealth mode. While there was no sign to be found *now*, Patricia figured she could re-configure the sensors to reconstruct what happened after Sofie came through, and did so - and found traces of a blind jump performed by the ship.

Following the engine trail they found, they wound up in a familiar place - Victoria Station, in lunar orbit. Their reception was rather cold, but they were allowed to come in and discuss what was going on. In learning that the team came from an alternate universe (and after convincing them that they were the non-evil kind of Technocrats), the members of the station opened up somewhat. Sofie - along with alt-Sofie, which was near where the alt-team performed their emergency jump - indeed visited the station before, but already departed. Moreover, they learned what had happened on their world. At one point, the Void Engineers simply decended from space and started aerial bombardments. Many of its leaders were known by Nicole as present on the Cop when that station vanished, but many more appeared to be from the current Void Engineers. As it appeared, in their timeline, Victoria Station was protected by Catherine Nichols's devices, while in ours, they were used to strengthen the Earth's gauntlet.

Most worryingly, this timeline turned out to be a few years into the future. The invasion by the "Void Engineers" happened after our team's current date, which means it might happen yet.

While shocked by the news, they couldn't do anything with it until they got safely back home, so they set out once again. Jane once again managed to track down Sofie's trail - although with some more difficulty.

The next time they jumped, they got quite the scare - they were in the middle of Autochtonia. It didn't take long for them to be greeted by "Friend Computer", which *seemed* much more mellow and friendly in this version (in their timeline long lost to Threat Null).

As Friend Computer and her (robotic) minions didn't seem to mind their ship much, they once more scanned for the Resilience - and found her, along with 2 Sofies. Figuring they'd stand a better chance at... whatever would happen together, Taylor once more jumped the ship to the Resilience.

Once there, Sofie was called - to Nicole's chagrin, emerging with alt-Sofie from the Captain's quarters. They had been trapped in the ship for a while, with tractor beams holding them in place. Still, there had been no attempt to breach the Resilience, and the crew was staying put for now. Figuring it was unlikely to make things worse (which, arguably, turned out to be wrong), the team decided to ask why Friend Computer was keeping them. She claimed to be "protecting" them, since the world was too dangerous (and the Technocracy was "not nice anymore"). Convincing her that they had a place to go to, she agreed to let them leave.

Just as they did so, however, she had a request - she wanted to come along. She could load herself on a disk, she said, and loaded in any computer back home. This was a risky procedure - the powerful AI could be deceiving them - so the team took some time to weigh their options. Salisbury, however, did not - he quickly went outside of the ship and retrieved the disk, putting it into an automated vaccuum cleaner.

Angry at Salisbury's actions, but now unable to directly revert it, the team decided to take off, after putting the vaccuum in a protective chamber (to which it agreed). Tychoides AI was tasked (after some convincing) to examine and contain the AI in the event it tried to take over the ship, and determined there was a good chance that it *wasn't* out to take over our universe. That left the team with a couple of options:

* Blow up the ship along with Friend Computer
* Bring the ship back, and find somewhere to quarantine the vacuum
* Or hand the vacuum over to Iteration X

Figuring that they'd have enough time to decide while traveling back to their universe, Taylor ordered Tychoidus to plot a course back to where the rift to their own universe.

Only to hear that the rift was no longer there.