Categories > TV > Babylon 5
I’ve read several good B5/ST crossovers. Here is a bit that could fit in one of them:
Citizen G’Kar was enjoying a drink at the Sandbar, one of the many pubs that did business in Babylon 5. This one catered to the races that don’t like the Centauri, especially the Narns. There was another pub that was favored by the Centauri. And Narns were not welcome there. But most pubs were more mixed in their clientele. G’Kar had just started on his black Russian, and earth cocktail when he was joined by a stranger. It was one of those aliens from that Earth ship that came from another universe. This one was not human like most of the crew. Instead he was an alien of a type G’Kar had never encountered in this universe. He was blue with white hair. From the top of his head protruded a pair of strange projections that resembled antennae. He wore a uniform that was black and red.
“May I join you?” the alien asked.
“Of course!” replied G’Kar. “Feel free. You are most welcome. I am G’Kar, citizen of the former Narn Regime”
“And I am Lieutenant Gren,” he replied.
“You are one those aliens from the other universe? Amarian, I believe?” said G’Kar.
“Andorian,” corrected Lt. Gren.
“Of course, Andorian, please forgive me,” apologized G’Kar. “What brings you to my table?”
“I have heard about the recent troubles your people have suffered,” admitted Gren. “This made me curious. Why have you not joined with the humans? I would have thought you would have done so 50 years ago when you first won your freedom from the Centauri. But even more recently you lost your homeworld. Why have you not joined the Earth Alliance? Or when this station broken away, why did you not join with them more fully that just providing some security forces. You need to wed yourselves completely to the humans!”
“Is that what happened to you?” asked G’Kar. “Is that how you became servants of the humans of your universe?”
“We’re not servants! We’re equals in Federation with them” replied Gren.
“I noticed that most of the people on your ship are human,” observed G’Kar.
“Let me tell you how that happened,” began Gren. “The Vulcans were sailing the space ways a thousand years longer than any of us. In many ways they are to us like the Minbari are in your universe. When my people began exploring beyond our own system the Vulcans were the first ones we encountered. Actually we encountered them before that. They had been spying on us, like they do everyone else, for centuries before we developed warp drive, which is the method most use for interstellar travel in our universe. The Vulcans considered us beneath their notice until we had to power to travel to them. The humans, they had treated the same way. We slowly and carefully developed our technology as we began expanding beyond our own system. But we quickly fell into conflict with the Vulcans. What followed was a series of wars with the Vulcans. Fortunately they are a bit pacifistic. So it took them time to build up their military might. This gave us time to carefully do the same. The humans were known to us. But we figured they would destroy themselves in their many wars. After all, they were even stupid enough to use fission bombs as war weapons on their home planet. So when Earth had a nuclear war, we thought that was the end of their civilization. But then, in the ruins of their post apocalyptic hell-scape, a lone human scientist made a warp drive out of an un-launched missile and a pile of scraps!
The Vulcans will never admit it, but I am certain they were terrified when they saw a human ship make a warp flight. It is just pure luck that a Vulcan ship was in the system to spy on them when that first flight happened. For the next century, the Vulcans tried to hold the humans down and civilize them. But even with the Vulcans sitting on them, the earth sent an explosion of slow freighters that could barely reach the speed of light to trade with anyone they could find. But it couldn’t last forever. You would think after destroying their world they would put all their resources into rebuilding Earth, not doing basic science research. But they did both!
After a century, they had developed a Warp 5 capable ship that was fast enough to make space exploration, and space warfare practical. This happened during an upswing in the hostilities between us and the Vulcans, and the humans kept getting in both our way. It seemed like every time our two races came into conflict, the humans would appear to negotiate peace between us. If one of us wronged the other, the humans would make certain the other side found out about it. They never took sides between us and treated us both fairly when we were in the right. Eventually my people, the humans, the Vulcans and the Telarites formed the Federation, an equal partnership of four planets and their colonies. Too late we realized what we had done.
The Humans had gone from a destroyed civilization to being our equals in a century. As part of the treaty to form our Federation, the Humans had insisted that all scientific knowledge be shared freely amongst the scientists of the the member worlds. And the rate at which Federation technology advanced exponentially! This inspired more worlds to join our Federation, which made our technology advance even quicker. All these wondrous technologies that we have that you are so amazed with: This is what happens when you have the scientists of a hundred worlds all working together. As the humans would say, we had a predator by the tail and we didn’t dare let go for fear of being out paced by Federation technology if we quit!
We tried to distract them by making Earth’s Star Fleet the official exploration arm of the Federation. This is why Star Fleet is mostly human, because humans disproportionately volunteer for Star Fleet. Which is by design. We wanted to place to stick all those crazy explorers. Members of other races who join Star Fleet, like me, are considered crazy on our home worlds. When I go back to Andar, children stare and point at me, the crazy person who risks his life exploring the universe!
And the universe can be a dangerous place. So our ships of exploration needed phasers and shields and photo torpedoes to defend themselves. Before we knew it, Star Fleet, our place to stick those crazy human explorers, had also become our military! Because ships powerful enough to explore deep space were also powerful enough to defend the home worlds!
So my advice to you, Citizen G’Kar, is to join our people with theirs at your soonest opportunity. Make your own Federation where you are an equal member and the Narn Home world is part of the same government as the Earth and Minbar, and even Centauri Prime or better yet, Vorlon. We have First Ones in our own universe, you know. And some of them, like the Medusans are even members of our Federation!
So join with the Humans before the Centauri or the Shadows do!”
“I shall give your words consideration,” replied G’kar.
Citizen G’Kar was enjoying a drink at the Sandbar, one of the many pubs that did business in Babylon 5. This one catered to the races that don’t like the Centauri, especially the Narns. There was another pub that was favored by the Centauri. And Narns were not welcome there. But most pubs were more mixed in their clientele. G’Kar had just started on his black Russian, and earth cocktail when he was joined by a stranger. It was one of those aliens from that Earth ship that came from another universe. This one was not human like most of the crew. Instead he was an alien of a type G’Kar had never encountered in this universe. He was blue with white hair. From the top of his head protruded a pair of strange projections that resembled antennae. He wore a uniform that was black and red.
“May I join you?” the alien asked.
“Of course!” replied G’Kar. “Feel free. You are most welcome. I am G’Kar, citizen of the former Narn Regime”
“And I am Lieutenant Gren,” he replied.
“You are one those aliens from the other universe? Amarian, I believe?” said G’Kar.
“Andorian,” corrected Lt. Gren.
“Of course, Andorian, please forgive me,” apologized G’Kar. “What brings you to my table?”
“I have heard about the recent troubles your people have suffered,” admitted Gren. “This made me curious. Why have you not joined with the humans? I would have thought you would have done so 50 years ago when you first won your freedom from the Centauri. But even more recently you lost your homeworld. Why have you not joined the Earth Alliance? Or when this station broken away, why did you not join with them more fully that just providing some security forces. You need to wed yourselves completely to the humans!”
“Is that what happened to you?” asked G’Kar. “Is that how you became servants of the humans of your universe?”
“We’re not servants! We’re equals in Federation with them” replied Gren.
“I noticed that most of the people on your ship are human,” observed G’Kar.
“Let me tell you how that happened,” began Gren. “The Vulcans were sailing the space ways a thousand years longer than any of us. In many ways they are to us like the Minbari are in your universe. When my people began exploring beyond our own system the Vulcans were the first ones we encountered. Actually we encountered them before that. They had been spying on us, like they do everyone else, for centuries before we developed warp drive, which is the method most use for interstellar travel in our universe. The Vulcans considered us beneath their notice until we had to power to travel to them. The humans, they had treated the same way. We slowly and carefully developed our technology as we began expanding beyond our own system. But we quickly fell into conflict with the Vulcans. What followed was a series of wars with the Vulcans. Fortunately they are a bit pacifistic. So it took them time to build up their military might. This gave us time to carefully do the same. The humans were known to us. But we figured they would destroy themselves in their many wars. After all, they were even stupid enough to use fission bombs as war weapons on their home planet. So when Earth had a nuclear war, we thought that was the end of their civilization. But then, in the ruins of their post apocalyptic hell-scape, a lone human scientist made a warp drive out of an un-launched missile and a pile of scraps!
The Vulcans will never admit it, but I am certain they were terrified when they saw a human ship make a warp flight. It is just pure luck that a Vulcan ship was in the system to spy on them when that first flight happened. For the next century, the Vulcans tried to hold the humans down and civilize them. But even with the Vulcans sitting on them, the earth sent an explosion of slow freighters that could barely reach the speed of light to trade with anyone they could find. But it couldn’t last forever. You would think after destroying their world they would put all their resources into rebuilding Earth, not doing basic science research. But they did both!
After a century, they had developed a Warp 5 capable ship that was fast enough to make space exploration, and space warfare practical. This happened during an upswing in the hostilities between us and the Vulcans, and the humans kept getting in both our way. It seemed like every time our two races came into conflict, the humans would appear to negotiate peace between us. If one of us wronged the other, the humans would make certain the other side found out about it. They never took sides between us and treated us both fairly when we were in the right. Eventually my people, the humans, the Vulcans and the Telarites formed the Federation, an equal partnership of four planets and their colonies. Too late we realized what we had done.
The Humans had gone from a destroyed civilization to being our equals in a century. As part of the treaty to form our Federation, the Humans had insisted that all scientific knowledge be shared freely amongst the scientists of the the member worlds. And the rate at which Federation technology advanced exponentially! This inspired more worlds to join our Federation, which made our technology advance even quicker. All these wondrous technologies that we have that you are so amazed with: This is what happens when you have the scientists of a hundred worlds all working together. As the humans would say, we had a predator by the tail and we didn’t dare let go for fear of being out paced by Federation technology if we quit!
We tried to distract them by making Earth’s Star Fleet the official exploration arm of the Federation. This is why Star Fleet is mostly human, because humans disproportionately volunteer for Star Fleet. Which is by design. We wanted to place to stick all those crazy explorers. Members of other races who join Star Fleet, like me, are considered crazy on our home worlds. When I go back to Andar, children stare and point at me, the crazy person who risks his life exploring the universe!
And the universe can be a dangerous place. So our ships of exploration needed phasers and shields and photo torpedoes to defend themselves. Before we knew it, Star Fleet, our place to stick those crazy human explorers, had also become our military! Because ships powerful enough to explore deep space were also powerful enough to defend the home worlds!
So my advice to you, Citizen G’Kar, is to join our people with theirs at your soonest opportunity. Make your own Federation where you are an equal member and the Narn Home world is part of the same government as the Earth and Minbar, and even Centauri Prime or better yet, Vorlon. We have First Ones in our own universe, you know. And some of them, like the Medusans are even members of our Federation!
So join with the Humans before the Centauri or the Shadows do!”
“I shall give your words consideration,” replied G’kar.
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