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General Aleksander Kerensky stood alone at the armourplas window looking out quite possibly the greatest armada ever gathered. Shuttles flitted too and fro as they hurried to carry out the final deliveries of personnel or supplies for the 6 million personnel of the Star League Defence Force that was following him into exile.
Like him they had all fought to free Terra from the tyranny of Stefan Amaris and the Outworlds Alliance and after a long and far too bloody struggle, they had succeeded all be it a t a terrible cost. And of course there was the House Lords, without a Director General of the Hegemony they had all fallen into arguing who should be the First Lord and therefore rule the Inner Sphere, the domain of human occupied space.
Each of the four great Houses felt they had a viable claim to the Throne of the Star League and none would permit another to lead in their stead, so they had started fighting. Of course they had called upon him to act, to support them or to lead the Star League until a suitable candidate was found but Kerensky was tired, exhausted from months of nonstop combat and he felt and knew in his heart and mind that the Lords would not stop even if he placed himself on the Throne.
"I will not become another tyrant.." he had told them quite plainly and began his own plans. Calling upon his loyal commanders and troops to follow him instead of tearing space apart in what was sure to be a catastrophic war he and a so called 'cabal' of his most trusted officers had planned Operation Exodus.
The departure of 80% of the SLDF and its military assets to find a new place to live without the politics of the House Lords.
Out beyond the McKenna's Pride was 1349 Jumpships and over 400 Warship escorts, they carried a staggering number of Dropships, over 5000 of them, as well as three of the huge and incalculably valuable Newgrange class Mobile shipyards that were packed to the gills with supplies and equipment.
The stars were obscured by huge solar sails that even now were retracting for the jump, charging the Kearny-Fuchida jump drives that would take the ships further and further away from the Inner Sphere into the unknown of unexplored space in roughly 12 light year 'hops'.
"Sir, the Fleet will be ready to jump in 20 minutes, all fighters are aboard and sails are being retracted."
"Thank you Admiral O'brien, I am just taking one last look before we begin our journey."
"Understood Sir, might I suggest you take your seat, we will be nul-grav in 2 minutes for the jump."
"Afraid i'll bump my head are you Errin?"
"Afraid you'll damage some equipment Sir."
The General smiled, some would call the Admiral's tone insubordinate but not those who knew him.
"Very well..I would like a countdown to the jump to be transmitted, all ships on the tannoy."
"Of course Sir."
As the counter wound down the General gathered his thoughts, clearing his throat.
"Men and women of the Star League Defence Force, let this date the 8th of July 2784 mark a new beginning for us all. The Star League lives on in us all, its memory, its heritage, its strength and nobility will never die as long as we hold onto its ideals in our hearts and minds."
"3, 2, 1 Jump!"
The Kearny-Fuchida drives on the thousands of ships fired simultaneously, folding space to have their ships re-appear the planned distance of a dozen light-years away. Each ship disappeared in a flare of white light and burst of EM interference. But they did not end out a dozen light-years away, they ended out somewhere else instead. Somewhere that none could imagine even in a flight of fantasy.
The massed fleet burst into reality with silent white flashes of energy as the ships of Operation Exodus emerged from their first jump. The first thing to do would be to investigate the surrounding region. The area to the 'north' of the Inner Sphere had been partially explored but due to the lack of habitable and viable worlds the exploration was seen as a waste of time and money and had died a death many decades ago but there might be small bandit hideouts or frontier colonies so investigation was required whilst the ships jump drives charged up, a process which would take a few hours.
A vast array of electronic and visual sensors began sweeping space, looking for recognisable star constellations and known stellar phenomenon to give the fleet an accurate location and assist with the calculating of the next jump. Immediately something came back as simply wrong. The star constellations were instantly identified but what was being read didn't match. The fleets electronic 'ears' also heard and detected EM signals, radio waves, high and low frequency transmissions that were as yet untranslatable. Acting automatically the alert claxons on every warship started blaring as one.
"Comms, radar find out what the devil is going on, I want a report immediately!" Admiral O'Brien barked, his voice clearly heard over the claxon before it was cut off. The bridge of the huge battleship was filled with dozens of conversations, officers and ratings talking as one as they tried to make sense of what was going on.
"Admiral, the fleet is all present and accounted for! All ships are at battle stations we have fighters launching now, weapons batteries are fully manned."
Holographic maps hovered in the air showing the fleet as it deployed with practised ease into a combat formation. The warships and Dropships that were now being launched from their mountings would screen the defenceless Jumpships whilst the icons representing fighters filled the screen like snow.
"Understood, all ships are to hold fire we don't know what's out there."
"Sir!" It was a young Major from the astronavigation department, the officer hurried up saluting smartly, gulping slightly as he stood before the most senior Admiral in the Star League AND General Kerensky who was now stood by O'Brien.
"Sir, I've double and triple checked the system and the readouts manually..." He held up a print-out. "This is Ursa-major and Sagittarius..."
"And?"
"Sir...this is what would be the view from the Sol system."
"Sol..what the..."
"We're checking the numbers again, the jump seems to have gone fine, we can't explain it, and..."
The young man had gone pale.
"Please make your report.." General Kerensky said, his tone soft, quiet, prompting the far younger man.
"We appear to be on the outskirts of a solar system with 9 major planets and one exo-planet, sir the locations and size of the worlds are a match for those in Sol orbit and we are not picking up any messages or signals on any recognised SLDF or Star League channels, what we're receiving is archaic Sir.."
"Very good how many know of this?"
"Just myself and those in my department but the fleets already scanning the area so soon everyone will know."
"Thank you Major that will be all."
General Kerensky watched the officer depart before turning to the window again, loping over to it in the low gravity of the warship's bridge. "I want a command staff meeting in the main briefing room in one hour. Admiral can you have a scout ship do a pass of the planets, I want them to not be detected. We need to find out just what in the name of the seven hells is going on."
"Understood General, I'll have a Bugeye carry out a sweep of the system, we can use long range scopes but a closer inspection would yield more useful data."
"See that it's done and done quickly my friend, before we have a panic on our hands."
"Yes General."
"This is the BBC Science report, we have with us tonight Dr Campbell, part of the European Space Agency, Dr Campbell you announced that your team had detected something, could you tell us what you found?"
"Why yes George, four days ago we detected an unusual energy burst not unlike that left in the aftermath of a nuclear test. At first we thought it was a gamma burst which is for lack of a better term the death scream of a star but then the numbers started coming in. This burst was close, real close in spacial terms anyhow, within the orbit of Pluto."
"Is there any reason for this 'burst' as you put it? And is there any risk to us here on Earth."
"We're really stumped, and its not often you'll hear me say that. It could be a collision between two undetected asteroids moving at high speed or some other natural phenomena and the distance is so great that there is no danger to Earth."
"And what about something not natural?"
"Hah yes quite, I read that in a news paper today too, no I don't think this is ET trying to contact us or an alien space ship exploding. We have asked the American's to turn the Hubble telescope on the region of the burst but the distance is so great that I doubt we'll see much, just some expanding gas no doubt."
Sol System within Mars orbit.
The SLS Endeavour had been through two major wars and the brutal conflict to bring down Stefan Amaris, the man responsible for the Star League's fall and her crew knew their stuff. The Bug-eye class Frigate was a dedicated spy ship, designed to visually look like any of the common merchant jump ships or even large dropships its sleek mat black hull hid its weapons and powerful sensors behind sliding panels and layers of sensor baffling compound armour.
At the moment Endeavour's sensors were drinking in all the data they could, relaying it to the massive and powerful computers onboard. Sensor antenna absorbed radio transmissions whilst powerful external telescopes trained their eyes on their distant target. The ship was coasting through space, its twin engines cold and quiet, relying on momentum and gravity after the initial 4g burn to get them close. Operating under 'running silent' the ship was a shadow against the background of space, not leaking out any tell tale electronic noise that might give her away.
"Report please."
"Well Captain we're baffled...radio transmissions intercepted cite the date as the 28th of May 2011 and we have verified this multiple times...."
The captain nodded before the sensor tech continue. "Also baffling is the disparity between what we know about this time period and what we're seeing. We know that by this time there was the George Armstrong Luna colony as well as Point Gagarin and they are not there. We also can't see or detect Colony One or Skylab *1, all we have been able to observe is a rather crude orbital platform in low orbit that barely deserves the name space station. No sign at all of Crippen Station or the Woden satellite ring"
"I see....any conclusions?"
"Without going into the realm of science fiction...none Sir. We're grasping at straws here. In truth...we don't know what happened. We've checked the jump data for the fleet when we began Operation Exodus and the only anomily that we found was a slight flare in the EM band as the fleet jumped. Perhaps it was because so many ships jumped at once or local conditions combined with that....I..somehow we're back 773 years to an earth that is like ours but...slightly different."
The sensor tech looked both confused and scared. "I've relayed the data to the McKenna's Pride as we took it in as per standing orders."
SLS McKenna's Pride - Flagship of the Exodus fleet - Commanding Officers quarters.

Buried deep in the hull of the 1400 meter long battleship the CO's quarters were well within the the internal rotating grav decks giving normal earth G for the Admiral and his guest.
"General...this is unprecedented, this is Earth, yes it's not our Earth but its Earth." Admiral Obrien said, taking a sip from his glass of whiskey as he read the data spooling over the screen.
"The cold war is long over, where as our one ended in 2012 with the Soviet Civil War and the nuking of Moscow..yes they are behind the times in space development but.."
"But what Admiral?"
"You're thinking it as well as I am General...we should establish contact. We could build the Star League anew, no need for the exodus, no need for the Amaris civil war or the wars against the Periphery nations..we can do it again, only better this time. And with our tech and knowledge of the Inner Sphere we can settle planets and begin construction to spread humanity under the control of the Star League."
"But is that what they want, and are they ready for it?" General Kerensky said, looking at a frozen image of Earth. "If we go down to Terra and accounce who we are, where we're from..it could cause panic and backlash against the governments and us."
"General...with all due respect thats bullshit. We left so we could reform the League as it should have been, without the petty squabbling of the House Lords, humanity united for the peace and prosperity of all. Yes we could go to another star system and set up home there, but this is Terra, its our cradle. We can't let it burn again and again..."
General Kerensky, Supreme Commander of the Star League Defence Force chuckled softly into his glass of Vodka. "You know my thoughts too well my friend and you are right. If we left this world this Earth we would be doing a disservice to humanity now and for the future.
We can not allow the old Leagues...errors to be repeated, by acting now we can save billions if not trillions of lives as well as save whole worlds from being rendered uninhabitable. But as I said to the House Lords, I will not be a tyrant. We have enough military force to conquer this planet ten times over but we shall not use force, diplomacy and a gentle approach is what is needed here.
With time and guidance and suitable incentives....I am sure that we will be able to help Humanity walk from the cradle as was intended, not as we did."
"So...how the hell are we going to do this?"
"We need to establish communications first, if we sent the entire fleet into local Earth space they would be alarmed, hell I know I would. We can use this..United Nations to establish peaceful communications and maybe arrange some dirt time for the civilians."
"Hmm...then can I suggest we communicate with either America or the United Kingdom? Both are stable nations and have a history of working together."
The General nodded. "We're still far out, we'll have to release the news to the fleet of course, we'll make an annoucement once we're within the orbit of Mars."
"Moving at our slowest speed that will still take three weeks. Some of the merchant ships are overloaded and should have had maintenance before we left beyond what we was able to give. This...jump put us well outside the zenith point of the Sol system hence the travel time."
"Very well General, order the fleet to begin the burn towards Mars and i'll start drafting our message to the American government and think of what I will have to tell the troops, crews and their families."
Earth - Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute - 4 days later.
Robert Nills and Sameena Rajh worked at their computers relaying the information they had been given from the EAS to change Hubble's 'aiming point' in space to swing it to look at the area of space the strange radiation burst had been detected. They had been expecting the request, or order if it came from the government the past few days and they both chuckled, loosing a bet to their colleagues that the graveyard shift, IE them, would be the ones who would have to move Hubble.
"Azimuth and pitch are correct, iris is opening and we'll be getting a visual in about ten minutes. Lets start off with a narrow field view first, make sure nothing was shaken loose up there. Are you seeing anything Sam?"
"Still resolving at the moment Rob, looks fine at the moment." She replied, watching the image on her screen resolve 'live' from Hubble. The computer detected something, altering the image slightly automatically and zooming in.
"Anything yet?"
Saameena Rajh looked at her screen and did a double take. There was clearly metallic objects in space, the sunlight was reflecting off them. Adjusting the gain and zoom she manipulated the Hubble telescope like the professional she was.
"Rob...you'd better come here..."
On the screen was a construct, clearly artificial, and it was not alone. There were dozens of them, some chunky and blocky, others narrow and long with sphereoid bulges on their backs and sides.
The two scientists looked at one another wide eyed before reaching for a nearby phone at the same time.