Rewrite of Robotech: The Stargate Saga. As robotechnology changed humanities destiny so a chance discovery beneath the Giza Plateau reveals both an ancient legacy and a deadly ancient threat.
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Robotech: The Stargate Saga Version 2.1
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Chapter One
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Robotech: The Stargate Saga Version 2.1
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own demented author amusement – sadly all Robotech and Stargate characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold and MGM respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Notes: This is a redo of my story Robotech: The Stargate Saga that I have begun doing to correct a number of increasingly serious problems with the pace of the story as events were sort of crowding together and happening in too short a timeframe in story time. Also, a number of plot threads were forgotten about as the story went forward, threads that I had originally planned to lead to other revelations and so I will be picking them back up.
Finally, to continue redressing the pacing and crowding issues, the story will now be split up into a series of parts with some of the longer arcs taking place over multiple parts for example the arrival of the Guardian Zentraedi and the whole finding of the Aurelius on Calora. Okay now that that's over with let's crack on shall we with this new version.
---///---
Part One: Discovery
Chapter One
Zentraedi Reclamation Site L314
Giza Plateau, Egypt
3rd September 2013
Colonel James Fawcett, formerly of the US Army Corps of Engineers now UEDF Army Core of Engineers, smiled as he carefully read through the latest report from the teams working outside the dense alloy walls of the repurposed Zentraedi dropship that they had been using as a base/home away from home for the last few months. Finally, after several months of work they had almost finished the job that they had been sent out here – to the heavily damaged remains of the Giza Plateau – to do. The job in question was one that he, and many of his colleagues in the Corps, was becoming quite familiar with.
They had been sent here to remove a crashed Zentraedi warship. The warship in question – a Thuverl Salen-class heavy cruiser – had fallen to Earth in in the aftermath of the Rain of Death and the battle with Dolza. The cruiser in question like so many others having been caught up in the massive reflex weapon detonation that had not only obliterated the massive asteroid that had been converted into the Zentraedi's main fleet base but created a maelstrom of quantum energy, antimatter and exotic plasma that had annihilated the vast majority of the Zentraedi Main Fleet. The cruiser and the others that had crashed had been at the edge of the blast area and while they had escaped utter obliteration they had still been heavily damaged – the crew aboard this particular vessel killed when their life support systems failed – and far, far too many of them had fallen into the gravity well of the smouldering Earth.
This particular cruiser had come down over North Africa and as it came in the shockwaves of its fall had not only levelled half of the city of Giza, but it had clipped the pyramids that had enchanted people for millennia. The ancient tombs of the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom had been obliterated – the great structures which had endured the attentions of millennia of Saharan sandstorms and countless generations of tomb raiders proving no match for a few hundred million tons of falling ceramics and hypercarbon-based alloys – right before the cruiser had flipper over and then ploughed into the rest of the plateau making the ground ripple like water and not solid rock before finally coming to a halt. There it had lain slowly starting to leak radiation from ruptured sublight engine cores; radiation that, for a time had been contained within the compromised hull, before leaking out and beginning to spread as an invisible cloud towards the remains of Giza City, Cairo, and the farmlands of the Nile Delta.
A situation that everybody knew could not have been allowed to continue – especially as they needed all the fertile farmland they could get right now as so much had been scorched into uselessness by the quantum fires of the Rain of Death; regions like the vast farmlands of the American mid-west – where he had grown up – were now lifeless desert the one fertile top soils either vaporised or heavily irradiated. Hence Admiral Gloval and General Markwell had sent them here to clean up and dispose of the wreckage before the radiation could reach either the cities or the delta.
Using a number of adapted destroids – specifically Spartan destroids which were the easiest to customise and had fully functional hands much like on a battloid – they had gotten to work. The damaged sublight engine cores, for all that they had been upside down, had been fairly easy to remove and transport somewhere they could be safely disposed of through a combination of disassembly and decontamination. The bigger problem they had faced was disassembling the rest of the ship due to the heavy armour and structural bracing that all warships had not to mention some of the more complex internal components like the cruisers reflex furnace. Not to mention the headache that was extract of a few thousand inactive anti-ship plasma warheads, which had been more of a security headache than anything else as there were a lot of dissident groups in the world right now who would have loved to have gotten those weapons. Groups like EBSIS and the United Islamic Republics, what the latter would have done with them if they had gotten their extreme fundamentalist hands on them did not bare thinking about.
Thankfully, they had gotten the weapons out of here – they had been safely transported to storage magazines on the factory satellite – and had just needed to finish the removal of the rest of the ship.
Something that they were finally about finished doing. According to the report the last few segments of the hull were scheduled to be taken away to a foundry outside Lisbon later today where they would be melted down and recycled. After all there was nothing wrong with the metal once recycled it could be used for any number of purposes including the rebuilding of Earth's infrastructure which had naturally been very badly damaged during the Rain. He had already heard that some of the metal they'd recovered had already been recycled into a brand-new maglev track between Paris and London via a newly refurbished and upgraded – a project that had actually begun before the Rain, but which like so much else had had to briefly put on hold by the need to deal with the post-Rain global humanitarian catastrophe – Channel Tunnel.
A knock at the door brought him out of his perusal of the progress report. He looked up with a frown of confusion wondering who it was. "Come in," he called out. The door opened and Lieutenant Paulson, who looked a lot younger than his twenty-nine years, came in. "Yes lieutenant?"
"Sir we've finished loading the last of the Zentraedi ship fragments onto the trucks for transport to the airport," Paulson reported before pausing knowing that what he had to say next was not likely to go down that well, "however when we removed the last piece, we found something buried underneath."
Oh, please let it not be an artefact from Ancient Egypt James thought, knowing that if that were the case it would require him to fill in six ton of additional paperwork. He would also have to secure the site until the UEG to rustle up archaeologists or Egyptologists from somewhere to come and investigate. Which wouldn't, be at all easy to do as so many of the world's scientists had perished during the Rain of Death as many had been based in universities that had been incinerated by the quantum firestorm created by the planet-wide reflex cannon bombardment.
"What kind of something," he asked after a moment.
Paulson grimaced, having seen the expressions that had flashed across his CO's face. Thus, he knew what he had to say was really not going to be well received, hell he did not relish saying it himself given all the additional paperwork that was about to be dumped on both their desks. "Sir it's a series of sandstone cover stones engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics, the cover stones are approximately several meters in diameter and have to weigh a good few thousand tons," he reported, "to make matters worse there is a huge crack running across them from where one of the cruisers heavy particle cannon turrets pressing down on them. And that's not all."
James winced. "What else," he asked knowing that the Egyptologists were not going to be that happy with that report, not that they could blame him for it as a million tons of derelict robotech warship sitting on top of the cover stones was bound to cause damage. Frankly, they were lucky that the whole mass hadn't been reduced to broken shards or melted into a crude glass by the heat of the cruisers initial impact with, and the subsequent skid across, the desert floor.
"Sir there is something buried underneath the stones," Paulson replied, "the sensors on our Spartans are picking up a large metallic signature, two of them in fact. It does not match any material in our database, whatever it is it's definitely not from Earth."
"It's alien? How long has it been there?"
"From the depth beneath the modern desert surface I would say at least six thousand years if not longer. Sir, should we try to recover it?"
"No but secure the area we will call in some experts to help recover whatever it is," James answered, "however I want you to run a few scans through the cover stones if you can. Send me the results as soon as you have them."
"Understood sir."
"Dismissed lieutenant."
"Sir."
---///---
United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City
Three Days Later
Admiral Henry Gloval felt like he was beating his head against a brick wall as he attempted, once again, to deal with those members of the defence council and the United Earth Government who wanted to increase controls on all planet side Zentraedi – both those that were and weren't micronized. The reason that they were giving this time was the increased tensions and frustrations the aliens were exhibiting as they attempted to adapt to a life outside of constant warfare. Some of the councillors were concerned that it would lead to violence – the aliens falling back into old habits and programmed responses – others well they were simply being xenophobic assholes using any excuse to try and make trouble.
The former he could understand their concerns – especially as there were rumours of Zentraedi warlords out in the wastelands created by the Rain who were looking to create trouble, warlords like Khyron, Azonia and someone called Zeraal – and he even shared some to a degree. Hell, he knew that Commander Breetai also had some concerns about the warlords – especially Zeraal who had been one of Dolza's most loyal and capable fleet commanders, and Khyron who for all his instabilities could be very charismatic when he wanted to be – hence why they had quietly begun slipping some of Breetai's people – well ones that Khyron and Zeraal probably would not know to be loyal to Breetai and through him them – among their ranks. The latter members though, they were just arrogant small-minded people that he had little time for.
"Enough," he said looking firmly at Colonel Matthews who was the xenophobes main mouth on the council. "The council has already decided that imposing additional restrictions and controls on the Zentraedi at this time would be counterproductive – raising the issue at every opportunity is not going to get us to change our minds."
"But sir we need to…"
"The decision has been made," Secretary Anderson, the current UEG secretary of defence who was also acting as council chairman, added firmly. "Admiral Gloval is right in his words. The issue of additional restrictions is closed for now, should the situation change, we may consider the matter again but not until then. Is that understood?"
"Yes sir," Matthews replied, glowering slightly at being foiled once again. Damn it didn't they see that they had to put some additional controls on the Zentraedi? The giants had exterminated eighty percent of the human race in minutes for goodness sakes. Were they to just let them roam free so they could plot wiping out the rest of them? Still, he knew better than to push some more now, though he glared at Gloval infuriated by his cowardice in this matter only to be pointedly ignored.
"Right moving onto the last item on today's agenda," Anderson said, shooting a warning glare at Matthews having seen the way he looked at Gloval. Something that he did not in any way approve of especially as if it hadn't been for Admiral Gloval and the rest of the crew of the SDF-1 their entire race would be dead now. The other man obviously read the implicit warning as he winced. Then he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "General Markwell I believe you have something to report?"
"Yes, as you are all aware I have a number of combat engineering crews spread out around the planet cleaning up some of the more dangerous wrecked Zentraedi vessels," the general reported gaining nods of understanding from everyone around the meeting table. They were all fully aware of the fact that they were having to clean up numerous crashed warships, at least those that were dangerous. More than a few that weren't had actually gotten a new life as shelters from Earth's current harsh environment, "three days ago they finished cleaning up the crashed Thuverl Salan cruiser on the Giza Plateau – the one that was leaking radiation towards Giza, Cairo, and the Nile Delta. As they were clearing away the last of the wreckage, they found something underneath it, something that has been buried beneath the desert sands for thousands of years."
"What kind of something," Anderson asked his interest peaked even as he wondered what something that had to be from Ancient Egypt had to do with them.
"Beneath a series of carved sandstone cover stones covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs, they discovered a large ring shaped device six point seven meters in diameter and a smaller vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal device. Both are engraved with strange symbols and are made from a material not found on Earth," Markwell replied. "I passed a copy of our scan data to Minister Exedore to see if the Zentraedi could identify it from their own records."
"And we have," Exedore answered taking that as his cue to speak. "While the purpose of the ring itself is unknown to us the material that it and the pedestal device are made from are not. They are composed of a rare quasi-metallic element called naquada. A material with some very interesting and useful properties though its scarcity in our native galaxy, which you would know as Andromeda, has long prevented the Robotech Masters from exploiting them in anything other than a limited fashion."
"What kind of properties are we talking about, Exedore," Gloval asked curious.
"Naquada is a room temperature hyperconductor as well as an energy amplifier," Exedore replied, "whatever energy you put into it you get a hundred times as much energy out. In certain situations, and with certain materials it can also be used to generate considerable amounts of energy though notably less than what is produced by even a basic reflex furnace. It can also be used to enhance the yield of weapons, especially explosives as in theory adding naquada to a standard plasma warhead would result in a blast potential comparable to a reflex warhead."
"Sounds highly useful," Matthews commented, even as he inwardly grimaced at having to talk to the micronized Zentraedi official at all. He would have much rather shot the alien bastard dead where he sat than talk to him. Unfortunately, he couldn't act on that impulse, not without signing his own death warrant anyway as he knew full well that Gloval wouldn't hesitate to have him shot or worse turn him over to Breetai so the Zentraedi could slowly crush him for killing his former advisor and still close friend. Still, what he was saying about this naquada mineral was very, very interesting. If they could somehow find and acquire some of it, well the possibilities would be endless.
"It is colonel," Exedore replied "though as I said it is relatively scarce in our native galaxy as no more than trace amounts have ever been found. As a result, while they are fully aware of it and its versatility, the Robotech Masters have never exploited naquada in anything other than an experimental fashion. However, now that I think about it, I believe the material might be far more common in this galaxy."
"What do you mean?" Anderson asked curious.
"When we were searching for the SDF-1 our forces scanned numerous star systems before our finder beams locked onto this planet," Exedore explained, "in almost every case we detected signatures that indicate that naquada is likely present in system. However, since there was no protoculture signature we did not investigate any further."
"Do you know if there is any more in this system?" Gloval asked.
"I'm afraid not, once we located the SDF-1 our focus was naturally on recovering the ship and not scanning the rest of the system for resources," Exedore replied. "As you all know our mission was to recover the battlefortress and return it to the Robotech Masters not resource acquisition. Resource detection and acquisition was after all not what we were made for."
"What about the ring itself and the cover stones?" Anderson asked changing the topic slightly as they were all more than aware of what the Zentraedi's mission had been. And the horror and pain of the Robotech War that it had led to. "What are we doing about them?"
"The ring and the cover stones have been transported to the UEDF base on Crete. We didn't want too but intelligence indicated that one or more of the Islamist militias in the area, specifically one of the UIR ones, were heading in the direction of Giza, so we carefully moved them even as we sent veritech's and destroids to chase the Islamists away," Markwell replied. "We are currently attempting to find someone who can translate the hieroglyphics for us but it's slow going. Sadly, almost all the world's Egyptologists were killed during Dolza's attack or in the immediate aftermath. Finding one who is alive is proving difficult though we do have a promising lead on a former Egyptologist and anthropologist a Doctor Daniel Jackson. He is now working as a language teacher in a university in the Chilean capital Santiago."
"Doctor Jackson, I have heard that name before," Anderson mused aloud even as he wondered just where he had heard the name before.
"He was laughed out of the Egyptology community, and archaeology in general, for some controversial theories about the pyramids and the cross pollination of the cultures of the Ancient World that he published," Markwell explained. "Our intelligence indicates that he drifted for awhile before becoming a teacher in Santiago where he has been ever since. As for the rings some scientists from the Robotech Research Group facility in Austria, led by an astrophysicist named Samantha Carter, have arrived on the base, and are beginning to examine both it and the pedestal. They have already determined that they are some-kind of wirelessly linked mechanism."
"How so," Gloval asked, making a mental note to check up with Emil later if he knew anything about the ring. Though he was also familiar with the name Samantha Carter, the former US Air Force officer turned civilian researcher had, alongside the late Karl Riber, been instrumental in helping unlock the secrets of reflex furnace technology. He would also have to check his inbox for any reports on this ring device as being the admiral of the fleet he would naturally have a copy forwarded to him.
"When they were unpacking the pedestal one of the techs inadvertently touched one of the panels," Markwell answered, "it lit up and the ring itself made a grinding noise. When they looked at it, they could see that the symbols are mounted on an inner ring that was rotating. It stopped beneath one of the chevron shaped devices spaced around the ring which made a locking motion and locking in place."
Exedore frowned. "That's strange have you compared the symbols to anything?" he asked.
"We have. They appear to be stylized representations of various constellations and stellar bodies such as black holes and pulsars though why they're there we still do not know."
"Keep us appraised General," Anderson ordered.
"Of course, sir."
"Is there any other business," Anderson said glancing around to see if anyone else had something that they wished to bring before the council. There was nothing. "Then this meeting of the defence council is officially adjourned. Good evening gentlemen and ladies, I will see you all at next week's meeting."
With the official end of the meeting everyone picked up their tablet computers and stood before starting to make their way out of the room. General Markwell quickly moved to speak with Admiral Gloval before the Russian man could leave the room, thankfully Gloval seemed to realize that he wanted something, so he stood back to wait for him.
"General Markwell is there something I can help you with?" Gloval asked, "something to do with the ring?"
"Yes, sir there is," Markwell answered, "as I said in the meeting, we have located Doctor Jackson in Santiago. However, I need your help to contact him. I would send someone myself but…"
"…doing so would mean you would have to deal with General Leonard, and he would certainly want something in return and make you jump through far too many bureaucratic hoops while sending one of his own people to seek out Doctor Jackson," Gloval finished, knowing Anatole Leonard of old. Thus, he knew the power plays that he liked to get up to whenever he thought he could get away with it and being the senior UEDF officer in South America he tended to treat the region somewhat as his own personal fiefdom. Thus, he would argue and frustrate almost anyone who asked for something from him or his region – well unless that was someone like him. While Leonard would argue with Markwell, he wouldn't dare argue with him or do anything to get in his way – he knew where far too many of the other man's skeletons were buried for him to do that.
"Yes."
"Send me all the information you have on the ring and some of the images of the hieroglyphs. I'll send one of my old command crew down to Santiago to recruit Doctor Jackson," Gloval said already working out just who he would send to accomplish the mission of recruiting the disgraced former Egyptologist. While Anatole would still outrank whoever he sent he knew full well that the other man wouldn't dare do anything to interfere with them or their mission. To do so would risk a confrontation with him and that would be the last thing that Leonard would want.
"Thank you I'll make sure it's sent to you as soon as I get back to my office."
"You're welcome," Gloval replied prompting the other officer to smile, nod, and walk away to return to his office to make the appropriate arrangement. Gloval was about to leave himself when Exedore came up to him. "Yes Exedore?"
"Admiral based on the discussion that has just been had do you want me to speak with Lord Breetai," Exedore asked, "and request a more detailed scan of both the planet and the system in general?"
"To search for more of this naquada mineral?" Gloval asked, the micronized Zentraedi nodded in response. Gloval considered that for a moment, this naquada did sound like it was a highly useful material. If they could find more of it, not to mention figure out what the hell the ring and the pedestal actually did, then it could help them a lot. They wouldn't have to rely so much on the protoculture they were recovering from the wreckage of the Zentraedi main fleet to power their technology, especially the technology that was helping them with planetary regeneration like the atmospheric filtration towers and soil regenerators.
"Very well ask Breetai if he wouldn't mind doing it," he said at last. "And while we are here, has there been any word from our spies?"
"Very little at the moment otherwise I would have mentioned it during the meeting," Exedore replied. "I do know that Kazarn has successfully integrated himself with Zeraal's group and Arzen has done the same with Khyron's group. The fact that we arranged for both of them to have received training in maintenance and repair of battle mecha has helped considerably there. Beyond that we have nothing so far, beyond that there is considerable friction between Zeraal and Khyron – which does not surprise me in the least given Khyron has a less than stellar reputation among my people – though how far that goes at the moment we do not know."
"It would be advantageous if we could get them to fight one another."
"Indeed. I have forwarded what information our spies have gathered so far to your inbox."
"Thank you Exedore."
"You are most welcome. If there is nothing else Admiral, I will take my leave and contact Lord Breetai to arrange the scans."
"No there is nothing else. Good day Exedore."
"And you Admiral Gloval," Exedore replied with a polite half-bow – that among Zentraedi conveyed genuine respect for a superior – before turning and walking away. Gloval watched him go for a few moments, then sighed, and started walking back to his office he had a mission to arrange and a mountain of paperwork to get through…
…what fun.
~~//~~
Santiago
Chile
Eighteen Hours Later
Daniel Jackson felt a familiar mixture of exhaustion, frustration and humiliation pulling at him as he drove through the streets of downtown Santiago heading for the small, somewhat rundown, apartment that he had called home for over a decade now. The reason he was feeling like he wasn't due, well not entirely, to his job he actually quite enjoyed teaching young people how to speak English and a few other languages well when they wanted to learn anyway.
Which his current crop of students didn't seem to want to do. Hence why teaching them was such an exhausting, frustrating experience. Every single one of them would rather talk and gossip about the recent appearance of UEDF construction crews – which consisted of a mixture of humans, micronized and full-sized Zentraedi – that had shown up a few weeks ago and begun restoring and upgrading the cities infrastructure, which had been quite seriously damaged by the earthquakes that had followed the Rain of Death. He could understand it to a degree, learning modern international English or ancient Sumerian was nowhere near as cool as seeing giant humanoids – be they biological like the Zentraedi or technological like the engineering outfitted Spartan destroids – walking around their city.
Of course, understanding it didn't make it any less frustrating.
The humiliation though came from the fact that he was having to do this work at all. He had not spent nearly a decade becoming an archaeologist and anthropologist just to teach a bunch of teenagers with galloping acne, not to mention the usual amateur dramatics teenagers loved to indulge in, how to speak English and almost other language they had signed up to learn. No, he had done all that work to learn about the past, to pierce the veil of time and piece together the mysteries of the Ancient World. He had thought, had actually known, that he had stumbled onto something amazing, something that could rewrite everything they ever thought they knew about the civilizations of the Ancient World and Egypt in particular.
And what had he got for his trouble… being laughed out of academia by conservative peers who didn't like anything that interfered with their preconceived notions of the past. He sighed wondering why it was bothering him so much today, he had had over two decades now to get used to it. Then he remembered as it was on this day all the way back in 94 that he had presented his research and findings, only to be ruthlessly torn to pieces by the attack dogs of the academic world.
A world that no longer really existed as he knew that so many of his former colleagues had died in or just after the Rain. Their lives snuffed out either in the quantum fires of phenomenally powerful alien energy beams or in the geological and climatic chaos that had followed as the Mother Earth writhed in agony from the assault.
Mentally he shook himself before turning down the road that led to his apartment block. He noted idly that the UEDF and Zentraedi engineers had finished clearing up the collapsed remains of a large hotel complex – that had been a pile of rubble ever since just after the Rain – and had begun preparing the ground for new construction. A quick scan of the sign outside the site showed that it would soon be housing the second of the three atmospheric filtration towers that were to be built in Chile – and from there do their part in clearing up not just all the dust and debris that had been blasted into the stratosphere during the Rain but much of pollution from the industrialisation of the world – returning the atmosphere to a state of cleanliness that it had not been in for nearly two centuries.
He couldn't help but shake his head in amazement at that prospect. He was no climatologist – though he did have some passing familiarity with the science from where it had impacted global history – but even he could see how big of a job that was going to be. And if what he had heard on the talk shows was right, they would have it done within at most the next ten to fifteen years – the filters and cleaners made possible through robotechnology being just that good. Hmm maybe if the wi-fi is working in my building, for once, I'll download some papers on them from the internet, he thought as it would be a nice distraction from the inevitable marking he would soon have to be doing.
Reaching his apartment building he pulled into his normal parking bay, turned off the engine and got out. After retrieving his box of marking from the back he made his way inside.
~~//~~
Five minutes later, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee, he had just settled down in his favourite armchair when someone knocked on his door. He looked up in surprise. Now who could that be, he thought as he put the mug down on a side table and stood up. He made his way to the door and looked through the peep hole, to see a beautiful dark skinned woman in a green UEDF uniform standing in the corridor. Who was she? What, was she doing here? What, did she want with him? He guessed there was only one way to find out.
He undid the locks and opened the door to see the woman still standing there, holding a briefcase that he hadn't seen, standing behind her was a dark-haired young Caucasian man also dressed in UEDF uniform wearing the insignia of a veritech pilot. "May I help you," he asked politely.
"Doctor Daniel Jackson?" the woman asked seeking to confirm his identity as the man before her looked a little different to the picture she had seen of him, his hair was longer, and he was sporting a significant beard and all in all looked a bit more haggard.
"Yes," Daniel confirmed confused.
"My name is Major Claudia Grant from the Robotech Defence Force," she said introducing herself, "this is Captain Rick Hunter my escort and pilot. May we come in please?"
Daniel looked at them in surprise. He recognised the names now; he would have to have been living under a rock not to recognise two heroes from the war with the Zentraedi. "Sure," he said stepping aside to let the two of them enter his apartment. As soon as they were in, he closed and locked the door again. "This way."
He led them into the living room and gestured for them to sit on the couch, like most of his furniture it was somewhat moth-bitten but was still comfortable. Once they had done so he sat down in his air chair again.
"So, what does the RDF want with me?" he asked.
"We need your help," Claudia replied, "are you aware that you are one of the few people left in the world who can translate Egyptian hieroglyphs?"
"You want me to translate something for you?" Daniel asked both confused and wary, "why would I do that? I was laughed out of that world a long time ago."
"Maybe because doing so could help you prove that you were right all along," Claudia pointed out. Daniel blinked at that reply, he had been quietly searching for years for conclusive, undeniable proof of his theories so he could return to the academic world if only to say, 'I told you so' and to see the look on the face of that sanctimonious ass Jim Raynor when he realized he had been right. While Jim was dead now, like so many others, killed in the Smithsonian when Washington DC was incinerated by a reflex cannon having proof to show to any of the survivors, who still doubted him, would be nice.
"I'm listening," he said after a moment.
Claudia nodded and began explaining about how one of the Zentraedi cruisers that had crashed to Earth after the defeat of Dolza had come down over Egypt. Totally destroyed the great pyramids of Giza – causing a horrified look to appear on Daniel's face at the news of such a legacy, one of the last wonders of the Ancient World to survive to modern times, being gone forever – before crashing into the plateau where it finally stopped. How after a year or so it had begun leaking radiation from its damaged sublight engines and how that radiation had begun drifting steadily towards Giza, Cairo and the Nile valley and how they had sent combat engineers to clear up the wreck and deal with the radiation problem.
"Thank god you stopped it," Daniel commented knowing how just how many people lived in the two millennia old cities – he had been to both many times over the years after all especially when he had been undergoing his training in Egyptology – and how vital a farmland the Nile Delta was. "But what does this have to do with me and my theories?"
"I was just getting to that," Claudia replied. "As they finished clearing away the remains of the cruiser for recycling, they found something buried beneath it. Something that has been buried beneath the sandstone of the Giza Plateau for over six thousand years."
Daniel's eyes widened. "What!" he breathed, shocked and amazed. "What did they find?"
"They found a series of sandstone cover stone tablets circular approximately seven meters in diameter, they were covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Old Kingdom era. What was buried beneath them, well that is classified at the moment."
"The Old Kingdom," Daniel breathed amazed, recovering anything from Ancient Egypt was remarkable but from something so long ago, from when the great pyramids themselves were built, was even more astonishing. "I take it that it is those hieroglyphics that you wish for me to translate. Though how does that connect to my theories?"
"That's the classified part of things at the moment Doctor Jackson," Rick said calmly even as Claudia opened the briefcase she was carrying and extracted a file.
"This file contains a few images of some of the hieroglyphs," Claudia said offering it to him. Almost reverently Daniel accepted the file from her and, after a glance for permission, he opened the file and saw three of the highest quality photographs that he had ever seen. Each showed a single hieroglyph that he carefully read and translated, feeling his old passion for the subject come to the fore.
"Well, this first one says sealed, the second translates to all time and the third says Ra," he said at last, intrigued as all three were clearly part of a single statement. He gave the African-American woman an impressed look, they had given him just enough information in these images to whet his appetite to know more about what was written on the recovered cover stones. "Okay you've got me I'll come with you to translate the rest of the hieroglyphs for you," he said at last. "Though what about my job here? I have a responsibility to my students."
"You need not give it up," Claudia answered, "the United Earth Government and United Earth Defence Forces are quite prepared to negotiate with your employers for use of your services. I believe that the school is currently quite strapped for cash as well as having to use very antiquated technologies."
That's an understatement, Daniel thought knowing how rundown many of the buildings on the campus were becoming because the school just didn't have the financial resources to maintain them properly. Plus, the technology they had was getting increasingly antiquated with computers that barely ran even the most basic modern software because they were so old. Heck they were still using blackboards and chalk for writing in sometimes quite drafty classroom not interactive smart screens and definitely no holograms. The promise of a huge cash injection from the UEG, plus a possible massive building and tech upgrade, in exchange for a loan of him would definitely be snapped up by the school authorities.
"Alright if it can be arranged and if I know my students will be taken care of then I will not hesitate to accompany you to wherever you have the cover stones."
Claudia smiled.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Not many changes in this first chapter, mostly just clean up and some small rephrasing.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own demented author amusement – sadly all Robotech and Stargate characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold and MGM respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Notes: This is a redo of my story Robotech: The Stargate Saga that I have begun doing to correct a number of increasingly serious problems with the pace of the story as events were sort of crowding together and happening in too short a timeframe in story time. Also, a number of plot threads were forgotten about as the story went forward, threads that I had originally planned to lead to other revelations and so I will be picking them back up.
Finally, to continue redressing the pacing and crowding issues, the story will now be split up into a series of parts with some of the longer arcs taking place over multiple parts for example the arrival of the Guardian Zentraedi and the whole finding of the Aurelius on Calora. Okay now that that's over with let's crack on shall we with this new version.
---///---
Part One: Discovery
Chapter One
Zentraedi Reclamation Site L314
Giza Plateau, Egypt
3rd September 2013
Colonel James Fawcett, formerly of the US Army Corps of Engineers now UEDF Army Core of Engineers, smiled as he carefully read through the latest report from the teams working outside the dense alloy walls of the repurposed Zentraedi dropship that they had been using as a base/home away from home for the last few months. Finally, after several months of work they had almost finished the job that they had been sent out here – to the heavily damaged remains of the Giza Plateau – to do. The job in question was one that he, and many of his colleagues in the Corps, was becoming quite familiar with.
They had been sent here to remove a crashed Zentraedi warship. The warship in question – a Thuverl Salen-class heavy cruiser – had fallen to Earth in in the aftermath of the Rain of Death and the battle with Dolza. The cruiser in question like so many others having been caught up in the massive reflex weapon detonation that had not only obliterated the massive asteroid that had been converted into the Zentraedi's main fleet base but created a maelstrom of quantum energy, antimatter and exotic plasma that had annihilated the vast majority of the Zentraedi Main Fleet. The cruiser and the others that had crashed had been at the edge of the blast area and while they had escaped utter obliteration they had still been heavily damaged – the crew aboard this particular vessel killed when their life support systems failed – and far, far too many of them had fallen into the gravity well of the smouldering Earth.
This particular cruiser had come down over North Africa and as it came in the shockwaves of its fall had not only levelled half of the city of Giza, but it had clipped the pyramids that had enchanted people for millennia. The ancient tombs of the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom had been obliterated – the great structures which had endured the attentions of millennia of Saharan sandstorms and countless generations of tomb raiders proving no match for a few hundred million tons of falling ceramics and hypercarbon-based alloys – right before the cruiser had flipper over and then ploughed into the rest of the plateau making the ground ripple like water and not solid rock before finally coming to a halt. There it had lain slowly starting to leak radiation from ruptured sublight engine cores; radiation that, for a time had been contained within the compromised hull, before leaking out and beginning to spread as an invisible cloud towards the remains of Giza City, Cairo, and the farmlands of the Nile Delta.
A situation that everybody knew could not have been allowed to continue – especially as they needed all the fertile farmland they could get right now as so much had been scorched into uselessness by the quantum fires of the Rain of Death; regions like the vast farmlands of the American mid-west – where he had grown up – were now lifeless desert the one fertile top soils either vaporised or heavily irradiated. Hence Admiral Gloval and General Markwell had sent them here to clean up and dispose of the wreckage before the radiation could reach either the cities or the delta.
Using a number of adapted destroids – specifically Spartan destroids which were the easiest to customise and had fully functional hands much like on a battloid – they had gotten to work. The damaged sublight engine cores, for all that they had been upside down, had been fairly easy to remove and transport somewhere they could be safely disposed of through a combination of disassembly and decontamination. The bigger problem they had faced was disassembling the rest of the ship due to the heavy armour and structural bracing that all warships had not to mention some of the more complex internal components like the cruisers reflex furnace. Not to mention the headache that was extract of a few thousand inactive anti-ship plasma warheads, which had been more of a security headache than anything else as there were a lot of dissident groups in the world right now who would have loved to have gotten those weapons. Groups like EBSIS and the United Islamic Republics, what the latter would have done with them if they had gotten their extreme fundamentalist hands on them did not bare thinking about.
Thankfully, they had gotten the weapons out of here – they had been safely transported to storage magazines on the factory satellite – and had just needed to finish the removal of the rest of the ship.
Something that they were finally about finished doing. According to the report the last few segments of the hull were scheduled to be taken away to a foundry outside Lisbon later today where they would be melted down and recycled. After all there was nothing wrong with the metal once recycled it could be used for any number of purposes including the rebuilding of Earth's infrastructure which had naturally been very badly damaged during the Rain. He had already heard that some of the metal they'd recovered had already been recycled into a brand-new maglev track between Paris and London via a newly refurbished and upgraded – a project that had actually begun before the Rain, but which like so much else had had to briefly put on hold by the need to deal with the post-Rain global humanitarian catastrophe – Channel Tunnel.
A knock at the door brought him out of his perusal of the progress report. He looked up with a frown of confusion wondering who it was. "Come in," he called out. The door opened and Lieutenant Paulson, who looked a lot younger than his twenty-nine years, came in. "Yes lieutenant?"
"Sir we've finished loading the last of the Zentraedi ship fragments onto the trucks for transport to the airport," Paulson reported before pausing knowing that what he had to say next was not likely to go down that well, "however when we removed the last piece, we found something buried underneath."
Oh, please let it not be an artefact from Ancient Egypt James thought, knowing that if that were the case it would require him to fill in six ton of additional paperwork. He would also have to secure the site until the UEG to rustle up archaeologists or Egyptologists from somewhere to come and investigate. Which wouldn't, be at all easy to do as so many of the world's scientists had perished during the Rain of Death as many had been based in universities that had been incinerated by the quantum firestorm created by the planet-wide reflex cannon bombardment.
"What kind of something," he asked after a moment.
Paulson grimaced, having seen the expressions that had flashed across his CO's face. Thus, he knew what he had to say was really not going to be well received, hell he did not relish saying it himself given all the additional paperwork that was about to be dumped on both their desks. "Sir it's a series of sandstone cover stones engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics, the cover stones are approximately several meters in diameter and have to weigh a good few thousand tons," he reported, "to make matters worse there is a huge crack running across them from where one of the cruisers heavy particle cannon turrets pressing down on them. And that's not all."
James winced. "What else," he asked knowing that the Egyptologists were not going to be that happy with that report, not that they could blame him for it as a million tons of derelict robotech warship sitting on top of the cover stones was bound to cause damage. Frankly, they were lucky that the whole mass hadn't been reduced to broken shards or melted into a crude glass by the heat of the cruisers initial impact with, and the subsequent skid across, the desert floor.
"Sir there is something buried underneath the stones," Paulson replied, "the sensors on our Spartans are picking up a large metallic signature, two of them in fact. It does not match any material in our database, whatever it is it's definitely not from Earth."
"It's alien? How long has it been there?"
"From the depth beneath the modern desert surface I would say at least six thousand years if not longer. Sir, should we try to recover it?"
"No but secure the area we will call in some experts to help recover whatever it is," James answered, "however I want you to run a few scans through the cover stones if you can. Send me the results as soon as you have them."
"Understood sir."
"Dismissed lieutenant."
"Sir."
---///---
United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City
Three Days Later
Admiral Henry Gloval felt like he was beating his head against a brick wall as he attempted, once again, to deal with those members of the defence council and the United Earth Government who wanted to increase controls on all planet side Zentraedi – both those that were and weren't micronized. The reason that they were giving this time was the increased tensions and frustrations the aliens were exhibiting as they attempted to adapt to a life outside of constant warfare. Some of the councillors were concerned that it would lead to violence – the aliens falling back into old habits and programmed responses – others well they were simply being xenophobic assholes using any excuse to try and make trouble.
The former he could understand their concerns – especially as there were rumours of Zentraedi warlords out in the wastelands created by the Rain who were looking to create trouble, warlords like Khyron, Azonia and someone called Zeraal – and he even shared some to a degree. Hell, he knew that Commander Breetai also had some concerns about the warlords – especially Zeraal who had been one of Dolza's most loyal and capable fleet commanders, and Khyron who for all his instabilities could be very charismatic when he wanted to be – hence why they had quietly begun slipping some of Breetai's people – well ones that Khyron and Zeraal probably would not know to be loyal to Breetai and through him them – among their ranks. The latter members though, they were just arrogant small-minded people that he had little time for.
"Enough," he said looking firmly at Colonel Matthews who was the xenophobes main mouth on the council. "The council has already decided that imposing additional restrictions and controls on the Zentraedi at this time would be counterproductive – raising the issue at every opportunity is not going to get us to change our minds."
"But sir we need to…"
"The decision has been made," Secretary Anderson, the current UEG secretary of defence who was also acting as council chairman, added firmly. "Admiral Gloval is right in his words. The issue of additional restrictions is closed for now, should the situation change, we may consider the matter again but not until then. Is that understood?"
"Yes sir," Matthews replied, glowering slightly at being foiled once again. Damn it didn't they see that they had to put some additional controls on the Zentraedi? The giants had exterminated eighty percent of the human race in minutes for goodness sakes. Were they to just let them roam free so they could plot wiping out the rest of them? Still, he knew better than to push some more now, though he glared at Gloval infuriated by his cowardice in this matter only to be pointedly ignored.
"Right moving onto the last item on today's agenda," Anderson said, shooting a warning glare at Matthews having seen the way he looked at Gloval. Something that he did not in any way approve of especially as if it hadn't been for Admiral Gloval and the rest of the crew of the SDF-1 their entire race would be dead now. The other man obviously read the implicit warning as he winced. Then he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "General Markwell I believe you have something to report?"
"Yes, as you are all aware I have a number of combat engineering crews spread out around the planet cleaning up some of the more dangerous wrecked Zentraedi vessels," the general reported gaining nods of understanding from everyone around the meeting table. They were all fully aware of the fact that they were having to clean up numerous crashed warships, at least those that were dangerous. More than a few that weren't had actually gotten a new life as shelters from Earth's current harsh environment, "three days ago they finished cleaning up the crashed Thuverl Salan cruiser on the Giza Plateau – the one that was leaking radiation towards Giza, Cairo, and the Nile Delta. As they were clearing away the last of the wreckage, they found something underneath it, something that has been buried beneath the desert sands for thousands of years."
"What kind of something," Anderson asked his interest peaked even as he wondered what something that had to be from Ancient Egypt had to do with them.
"Beneath a series of carved sandstone cover stones covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs, they discovered a large ring shaped device six point seven meters in diameter and a smaller vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal device. Both are engraved with strange symbols and are made from a material not found on Earth," Markwell replied. "I passed a copy of our scan data to Minister Exedore to see if the Zentraedi could identify it from their own records."
"And we have," Exedore answered taking that as his cue to speak. "While the purpose of the ring itself is unknown to us the material that it and the pedestal device are made from are not. They are composed of a rare quasi-metallic element called naquada. A material with some very interesting and useful properties though its scarcity in our native galaxy, which you would know as Andromeda, has long prevented the Robotech Masters from exploiting them in anything other than a limited fashion."
"What kind of properties are we talking about, Exedore," Gloval asked curious.
"Naquada is a room temperature hyperconductor as well as an energy amplifier," Exedore replied, "whatever energy you put into it you get a hundred times as much energy out. In certain situations, and with certain materials it can also be used to generate considerable amounts of energy though notably less than what is produced by even a basic reflex furnace. It can also be used to enhance the yield of weapons, especially explosives as in theory adding naquada to a standard plasma warhead would result in a blast potential comparable to a reflex warhead."
"Sounds highly useful," Matthews commented, even as he inwardly grimaced at having to talk to the micronized Zentraedi official at all. He would have much rather shot the alien bastard dead where he sat than talk to him. Unfortunately, he couldn't act on that impulse, not without signing his own death warrant anyway as he knew full well that Gloval wouldn't hesitate to have him shot or worse turn him over to Breetai so the Zentraedi could slowly crush him for killing his former advisor and still close friend. Still, what he was saying about this naquada mineral was very, very interesting. If they could somehow find and acquire some of it, well the possibilities would be endless.
"It is colonel," Exedore replied "though as I said it is relatively scarce in our native galaxy as no more than trace amounts have ever been found. As a result, while they are fully aware of it and its versatility, the Robotech Masters have never exploited naquada in anything other than an experimental fashion. However, now that I think about it, I believe the material might be far more common in this galaxy."
"What do you mean?" Anderson asked curious.
"When we were searching for the SDF-1 our forces scanned numerous star systems before our finder beams locked onto this planet," Exedore explained, "in almost every case we detected signatures that indicate that naquada is likely present in system. However, since there was no protoculture signature we did not investigate any further."
"Do you know if there is any more in this system?" Gloval asked.
"I'm afraid not, once we located the SDF-1 our focus was naturally on recovering the ship and not scanning the rest of the system for resources," Exedore replied. "As you all know our mission was to recover the battlefortress and return it to the Robotech Masters not resource acquisition. Resource detection and acquisition was after all not what we were made for."
"What about the ring itself and the cover stones?" Anderson asked changing the topic slightly as they were all more than aware of what the Zentraedi's mission had been. And the horror and pain of the Robotech War that it had led to. "What are we doing about them?"
"The ring and the cover stones have been transported to the UEDF base on Crete. We didn't want too but intelligence indicated that one or more of the Islamist militias in the area, specifically one of the UIR ones, were heading in the direction of Giza, so we carefully moved them even as we sent veritech's and destroids to chase the Islamists away," Markwell replied. "We are currently attempting to find someone who can translate the hieroglyphics for us but it's slow going. Sadly, almost all the world's Egyptologists were killed during Dolza's attack or in the immediate aftermath. Finding one who is alive is proving difficult though we do have a promising lead on a former Egyptologist and anthropologist a Doctor Daniel Jackson. He is now working as a language teacher in a university in the Chilean capital Santiago."
"Doctor Jackson, I have heard that name before," Anderson mused aloud even as he wondered just where he had heard the name before.
"He was laughed out of the Egyptology community, and archaeology in general, for some controversial theories about the pyramids and the cross pollination of the cultures of the Ancient World that he published," Markwell explained. "Our intelligence indicates that he drifted for awhile before becoming a teacher in Santiago where he has been ever since. As for the rings some scientists from the Robotech Research Group facility in Austria, led by an astrophysicist named Samantha Carter, have arrived on the base, and are beginning to examine both it and the pedestal. They have already determined that they are some-kind of wirelessly linked mechanism."
"How so," Gloval asked, making a mental note to check up with Emil later if he knew anything about the ring. Though he was also familiar with the name Samantha Carter, the former US Air Force officer turned civilian researcher had, alongside the late Karl Riber, been instrumental in helping unlock the secrets of reflex furnace technology. He would also have to check his inbox for any reports on this ring device as being the admiral of the fleet he would naturally have a copy forwarded to him.
"When they were unpacking the pedestal one of the techs inadvertently touched one of the panels," Markwell answered, "it lit up and the ring itself made a grinding noise. When they looked at it, they could see that the symbols are mounted on an inner ring that was rotating. It stopped beneath one of the chevron shaped devices spaced around the ring which made a locking motion and locking in place."
Exedore frowned. "That's strange have you compared the symbols to anything?" he asked.
"We have. They appear to be stylized representations of various constellations and stellar bodies such as black holes and pulsars though why they're there we still do not know."
"Keep us appraised General," Anderson ordered.
"Of course, sir."
"Is there any other business," Anderson said glancing around to see if anyone else had something that they wished to bring before the council. There was nothing. "Then this meeting of the defence council is officially adjourned. Good evening gentlemen and ladies, I will see you all at next week's meeting."
With the official end of the meeting everyone picked up their tablet computers and stood before starting to make their way out of the room. General Markwell quickly moved to speak with Admiral Gloval before the Russian man could leave the room, thankfully Gloval seemed to realize that he wanted something, so he stood back to wait for him.
"General Markwell is there something I can help you with?" Gloval asked, "something to do with the ring?"
"Yes, sir there is," Markwell answered, "as I said in the meeting, we have located Doctor Jackson in Santiago. However, I need your help to contact him. I would send someone myself but…"
"…doing so would mean you would have to deal with General Leonard, and he would certainly want something in return and make you jump through far too many bureaucratic hoops while sending one of his own people to seek out Doctor Jackson," Gloval finished, knowing Anatole Leonard of old. Thus, he knew the power plays that he liked to get up to whenever he thought he could get away with it and being the senior UEDF officer in South America he tended to treat the region somewhat as his own personal fiefdom. Thus, he would argue and frustrate almost anyone who asked for something from him or his region – well unless that was someone like him. While Leonard would argue with Markwell, he wouldn't dare argue with him or do anything to get in his way – he knew where far too many of the other man's skeletons were buried for him to do that.
"Yes."
"Send me all the information you have on the ring and some of the images of the hieroglyphs. I'll send one of my old command crew down to Santiago to recruit Doctor Jackson," Gloval said already working out just who he would send to accomplish the mission of recruiting the disgraced former Egyptologist. While Anatole would still outrank whoever he sent he knew full well that the other man wouldn't dare do anything to interfere with them or their mission. To do so would risk a confrontation with him and that would be the last thing that Leonard would want.
"Thank you I'll make sure it's sent to you as soon as I get back to my office."
"You're welcome," Gloval replied prompting the other officer to smile, nod, and walk away to return to his office to make the appropriate arrangement. Gloval was about to leave himself when Exedore came up to him. "Yes Exedore?"
"Admiral based on the discussion that has just been had do you want me to speak with Lord Breetai," Exedore asked, "and request a more detailed scan of both the planet and the system in general?"
"To search for more of this naquada mineral?" Gloval asked, the micronized Zentraedi nodded in response. Gloval considered that for a moment, this naquada did sound like it was a highly useful material. If they could find more of it, not to mention figure out what the hell the ring and the pedestal actually did, then it could help them a lot. They wouldn't have to rely so much on the protoculture they were recovering from the wreckage of the Zentraedi main fleet to power their technology, especially the technology that was helping them with planetary regeneration like the atmospheric filtration towers and soil regenerators.
"Very well ask Breetai if he wouldn't mind doing it," he said at last. "And while we are here, has there been any word from our spies?"
"Very little at the moment otherwise I would have mentioned it during the meeting," Exedore replied. "I do know that Kazarn has successfully integrated himself with Zeraal's group and Arzen has done the same with Khyron's group. The fact that we arranged for both of them to have received training in maintenance and repair of battle mecha has helped considerably there. Beyond that we have nothing so far, beyond that there is considerable friction between Zeraal and Khyron – which does not surprise me in the least given Khyron has a less than stellar reputation among my people – though how far that goes at the moment we do not know."
"It would be advantageous if we could get them to fight one another."
"Indeed. I have forwarded what information our spies have gathered so far to your inbox."
"Thank you Exedore."
"You are most welcome. If there is nothing else Admiral, I will take my leave and contact Lord Breetai to arrange the scans."
"No there is nothing else. Good day Exedore."
"And you Admiral Gloval," Exedore replied with a polite half-bow – that among Zentraedi conveyed genuine respect for a superior – before turning and walking away. Gloval watched him go for a few moments, then sighed, and started walking back to his office he had a mission to arrange and a mountain of paperwork to get through…
…what fun.
~~//~~
Santiago
Chile
Eighteen Hours Later
Daniel Jackson felt a familiar mixture of exhaustion, frustration and humiliation pulling at him as he drove through the streets of downtown Santiago heading for the small, somewhat rundown, apartment that he had called home for over a decade now. The reason he was feeling like he wasn't due, well not entirely, to his job he actually quite enjoyed teaching young people how to speak English and a few other languages well when they wanted to learn anyway.
Which his current crop of students didn't seem to want to do. Hence why teaching them was such an exhausting, frustrating experience. Every single one of them would rather talk and gossip about the recent appearance of UEDF construction crews – which consisted of a mixture of humans, micronized and full-sized Zentraedi – that had shown up a few weeks ago and begun restoring and upgrading the cities infrastructure, which had been quite seriously damaged by the earthquakes that had followed the Rain of Death. He could understand it to a degree, learning modern international English or ancient Sumerian was nowhere near as cool as seeing giant humanoids – be they biological like the Zentraedi or technological like the engineering outfitted Spartan destroids – walking around their city.
Of course, understanding it didn't make it any less frustrating.
The humiliation though came from the fact that he was having to do this work at all. He had not spent nearly a decade becoming an archaeologist and anthropologist just to teach a bunch of teenagers with galloping acne, not to mention the usual amateur dramatics teenagers loved to indulge in, how to speak English and almost other language they had signed up to learn. No, he had done all that work to learn about the past, to pierce the veil of time and piece together the mysteries of the Ancient World. He had thought, had actually known, that he had stumbled onto something amazing, something that could rewrite everything they ever thought they knew about the civilizations of the Ancient World and Egypt in particular.
And what had he got for his trouble… being laughed out of academia by conservative peers who didn't like anything that interfered with their preconceived notions of the past. He sighed wondering why it was bothering him so much today, he had had over two decades now to get used to it. Then he remembered as it was on this day all the way back in 94 that he had presented his research and findings, only to be ruthlessly torn to pieces by the attack dogs of the academic world.
A world that no longer really existed as he knew that so many of his former colleagues had died in or just after the Rain. Their lives snuffed out either in the quantum fires of phenomenally powerful alien energy beams or in the geological and climatic chaos that had followed as the Mother Earth writhed in agony from the assault.
Mentally he shook himself before turning down the road that led to his apartment block. He noted idly that the UEDF and Zentraedi engineers had finished clearing up the collapsed remains of a large hotel complex – that had been a pile of rubble ever since just after the Rain – and had begun preparing the ground for new construction. A quick scan of the sign outside the site showed that it would soon be housing the second of the three atmospheric filtration towers that were to be built in Chile – and from there do their part in clearing up not just all the dust and debris that had been blasted into the stratosphere during the Rain but much of pollution from the industrialisation of the world – returning the atmosphere to a state of cleanliness that it had not been in for nearly two centuries.
He couldn't help but shake his head in amazement at that prospect. He was no climatologist – though he did have some passing familiarity with the science from where it had impacted global history – but even he could see how big of a job that was going to be. And if what he had heard on the talk shows was right, they would have it done within at most the next ten to fifteen years – the filters and cleaners made possible through robotechnology being just that good. Hmm maybe if the wi-fi is working in my building, for once, I'll download some papers on them from the internet, he thought as it would be a nice distraction from the inevitable marking he would soon have to be doing.
Reaching his apartment building he pulled into his normal parking bay, turned off the engine and got out. After retrieving his box of marking from the back he made his way inside.
~~//~~
Five minutes later, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee, he had just settled down in his favourite armchair when someone knocked on his door. He looked up in surprise. Now who could that be, he thought as he put the mug down on a side table and stood up. He made his way to the door and looked through the peep hole, to see a beautiful dark skinned woman in a green UEDF uniform standing in the corridor. Who was she? What, was she doing here? What, did she want with him? He guessed there was only one way to find out.
He undid the locks and opened the door to see the woman still standing there, holding a briefcase that he hadn't seen, standing behind her was a dark-haired young Caucasian man also dressed in UEDF uniform wearing the insignia of a veritech pilot. "May I help you," he asked politely.
"Doctor Daniel Jackson?" the woman asked seeking to confirm his identity as the man before her looked a little different to the picture she had seen of him, his hair was longer, and he was sporting a significant beard and all in all looked a bit more haggard.
"Yes," Daniel confirmed confused.
"My name is Major Claudia Grant from the Robotech Defence Force," she said introducing herself, "this is Captain Rick Hunter my escort and pilot. May we come in please?"
Daniel looked at them in surprise. He recognised the names now; he would have to have been living under a rock not to recognise two heroes from the war with the Zentraedi. "Sure," he said stepping aside to let the two of them enter his apartment. As soon as they were in, he closed and locked the door again. "This way."
He led them into the living room and gestured for them to sit on the couch, like most of his furniture it was somewhat moth-bitten but was still comfortable. Once they had done so he sat down in his air chair again.
"So, what does the RDF want with me?" he asked.
"We need your help," Claudia replied, "are you aware that you are one of the few people left in the world who can translate Egyptian hieroglyphs?"
"You want me to translate something for you?" Daniel asked both confused and wary, "why would I do that? I was laughed out of that world a long time ago."
"Maybe because doing so could help you prove that you were right all along," Claudia pointed out. Daniel blinked at that reply, he had been quietly searching for years for conclusive, undeniable proof of his theories so he could return to the academic world if only to say, 'I told you so' and to see the look on the face of that sanctimonious ass Jim Raynor when he realized he had been right. While Jim was dead now, like so many others, killed in the Smithsonian when Washington DC was incinerated by a reflex cannon having proof to show to any of the survivors, who still doubted him, would be nice.
"I'm listening," he said after a moment.
Claudia nodded and began explaining about how one of the Zentraedi cruisers that had crashed to Earth after the defeat of Dolza had come down over Egypt. Totally destroyed the great pyramids of Giza – causing a horrified look to appear on Daniel's face at the news of such a legacy, one of the last wonders of the Ancient World to survive to modern times, being gone forever – before crashing into the plateau where it finally stopped. How after a year or so it had begun leaking radiation from its damaged sublight engines and how that radiation had begun drifting steadily towards Giza, Cairo and the Nile valley and how they had sent combat engineers to clear up the wreck and deal with the radiation problem.
"Thank god you stopped it," Daniel commented knowing how just how many people lived in the two millennia old cities – he had been to both many times over the years after all especially when he had been undergoing his training in Egyptology – and how vital a farmland the Nile Delta was. "But what does this have to do with me and my theories?"
"I was just getting to that," Claudia replied. "As they finished clearing away the remains of the cruiser for recycling, they found something buried beneath it. Something that has been buried beneath the sandstone of the Giza Plateau for over six thousand years."
Daniel's eyes widened. "What!" he breathed, shocked and amazed. "What did they find?"
"They found a series of sandstone cover stone tablets circular approximately seven meters in diameter, they were covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Old Kingdom era. What was buried beneath them, well that is classified at the moment."
"The Old Kingdom," Daniel breathed amazed, recovering anything from Ancient Egypt was remarkable but from something so long ago, from when the great pyramids themselves were built, was even more astonishing. "I take it that it is those hieroglyphics that you wish for me to translate. Though how does that connect to my theories?"
"That's the classified part of things at the moment Doctor Jackson," Rick said calmly even as Claudia opened the briefcase she was carrying and extracted a file.
"This file contains a few images of some of the hieroglyphs," Claudia said offering it to him. Almost reverently Daniel accepted the file from her and, after a glance for permission, he opened the file and saw three of the highest quality photographs that he had ever seen. Each showed a single hieroglyph that he carefully read and translated, feeling his old passion for the subject come to the fore.
"Well, this first one says sealed, the second translates to all time and the third says Ra," he said at last, intrigued as all three were clearly part of a single statement. He gave the African-American woman an impressed look, they had given him just enough information in these images to whet his appetite to know more about what was written on the recovered cover stones. "Okay you've got me I'll come with you to translate the rest of the hieroglyphs for you," he said at last. "Though what about my job here? I have a responsibility to my students."
"You need not give it up," Claudia answered, "the United Earth Government and United Earth Defence Forces are quite prepared to negotiate with your employers for use of your services. I believe that the school is currently quite strapped for cash as well as having to use very antiquated technologies."
That's an understatement, Daniel thought knowing how rundown many of the buildings on the campus were becoming because the school just didn't have the financial resources to maintain them properly. Plus, the technology they had was getting increasingly antiquated with computers that barely ran even the most basic modern software because they were so old. Heck they were still using blackboards and chalk for writing in sometimes quite drafty classroom not interactive smart screens and definitely no holograms. The promise of a huge cash injection from the UEG, plus a possible massive building and tech upgrade, in exchange for a loan of him would definitely be snapped up by the school authorities.
"Alright if it can be arranged and if I know my students will be taken care of then I will not hesitate to accompany you to wherever you have the cover stones."
Claudia smiled.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Not many changes in this first chapter, mostly just clean up and some small rephrasing.
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Robotech and Stargate as I don't really do Macross.
Chapter Two
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Two
UEG Government Flight LT14
Two Days Later
Daniel Jackson's mind was still somewhat awhirl as he sat in an incredibly comfortable seat as an official government plane conveyed him towards his destination. Which was apparently Fort Minotaur a UEDF military base on Crete – a base that had originally been built as a research facility but, in the aftermath of the Rain, had been repurposed to serve as the centre of UEG political and UEDF military operations in the European sector of the Eurasian Quadrant – a few miles to the south-west of the capital city of Heraklion. He still couldn't quite wrap his head around how quickly events had moved from the moment he had agreed to assist with the translation of the cover stone hieroglyphics.
As soon as she had had his agreement Major Grant had set things in motion with a call, from a portable fold comm device a piece of technology that he hadn't even realized existed, straight to not just UEDF High Command but to Admiral Gloval himself. Within no more than two hours he had received a phone call from the dean of the university informing him that they had agreed to loan his services as a translator to the UEDF, though they hadn't said at the time what they had been given or offered in exchange. He had later found out from some of his friends among the staff that not only was the university getting a hell of a lot of money – enough to run it for nearly five years – from the United Earth Government but they were getting a whole lot of state-of-the-art equipment out of it along with a full refurbishment of the campus. Both the speed of their offer, and the immense generosity of it, had communicated to him quite clearly that whatever this was, whatever was hidden under the cover stones that the UEDF had found beneath the remains of the Giza Plateau it was big, possibly as big as the arrival of the SDF-1 had been nearly fourteen years ago.
Since then, everything had been something of a whirlwind, the vast majority of his time being taken up by travelling. First there had been a flight from Santiago to New Macross City where he had spent the night put up in one of the nicest hotels in the city. Then after a hearty breakfast they had boarded this plane – which was not only luxurious but of a make and model that he'd never seen before – and begun a long trek across first the Atlantic Ocean then the Mediterranean Sea towards Crete. At least I have good travelling companions, he thought glancing across at where Major Grant – or Claudia as she kept telling him to call her - and the Zentraedi Minister Exedore were sitting. They had both been very good conversationalists, he'd especially enjoyed talking with Exedore as the anthropologist in him had been fascinated to learn more about the Zentraedi as a people and how they were learning to, slowly but surely, embrace a way of life that didn't involve being at war all the time.
More than once since this whirlwind journey had begun, and especially since he had met Exedore, he had found himself thinking about the Zentraedi's previous existence. Travelling through the galaxies going from warzone to warzone, bringing death and leaving nothing but devastation in their wake. An existence that, until they started chasing the SDF-1 across the solar system and picking up entertainment transmissions from the city inside said ship, had not changed for five hundred years. It was a downright depressing way to live when he thought about it.
"May I have your attention please," the voice of Captain Hunter said from the public address system gaining all their attention. "We have entered the approach pattern for Fort Minotaur and will be landing within the next ten minutes. Please prepare for landing."
"Finally," Daniel muttered, it had been a very long time since he had taken a flight anywhere, let alone one like this that crossed hemispheres and multiple time zones. Thankfully the phenomenon known as jetlag was a thing of the past as drugs existed now – and had done since two thousand four, along with numerous other things they had been developed from technology and knowledge found on a fallen alien starship that had been both a Rosetta Stone and a Pandora's Box in equal measure – that compensated for physiological upsets that caused the condition. He had made sure to pick up and take some before they had taken off from New Macross City Airport.
"Not used to flying for long periods are you Doctor Jackson," Exedore asked with a smile of wry amusement.
"Not these days, Exedore," Daniel replied with a smile of his own as he fastened his seatbelt for landing. "Until I left Santiago, I hadn't been to an airport in over a decade let alone taken a flight anywhere. Taking a long flight like this after so long is therefore a bit taxing even with an anti-jetlag drug in my system."
"While your people use it for that that is not that particular drug's primary purpose," Exedore answered with a smile. At the surprised look Daniel shot him he explained. "The drug was originally created by the Tirolians to counter the occasionally very deleterious effects of the first generations of space fold drives. As space folding technology has improved over the last few millennia, and the flaws that caused said effects eliminated, the need for the drug diminished though its formula has remained in most databases."
"Which is where we found it," Claudia said recalling how they had found the formula for that and a number of other drugs that had radically improved life for so many on Earth before the Zentraedi arrived and the Robotech War began. Though those drugs had also helped save a lot of lives after the Rain, especially the ones that boosted cell regeneration and helped counter the worst effects of radiation poisoning. Even the exotic subspace radiation left behind by reflex weaponry could be countered with either high doses of the drugs or immersion in a regeneration tank.
"Indeed," Exedore agreed.
"Who are the Tirolians," Daniel asked not recognising the name, though something told him that it was an important name.
"They are the ones who created the Zentraedi initially as tools of labour on the planet Fantoma but later they repurposed us into weapons of war," Exedore explained. "For the last five hundred years they have been known more as the Robotech Masters."
Daniel frowned. "They don't sound that friendly," he commented inwardly feeling disgusted at the thought of engineering an entire species first to be a labour force somewhere and then later transforming them into weapons of war, tools of destruction and conquest. It was a disgusting practice as he could think of much better things to do with the knowledge of bioengineering and genetics that these Tirolians/Robotech Masters had to have to create the Zentraedi in the first place.
"The Robotech Masters are a very advanced, very powerful race yes, far more so than my people have ever been, but they have not been to war in many generations," Exedore said reassuringly, unsaid was the fact that warfare was what the Zentraedi were for, "plus Tirolian space is a very, very long way from here being literally galaxies away. There is nothing to fear from them."
For now, at least, he thought knowing that the Robotech Masters certainly knew of the death of Dolza and the destruction of the vast majority of the entire Zentraedi armada by now. He didn't think though that they would be in a position to do much about it for quite some time given that their own forces were limited and mostly tied down keeping the subject worlds of the Tirolian Empire under heel. The only possible force they could send would be some of the Guardians and even that would be a bit of a gamble for them especially as the Guardian Zentraedi were constantly preoccupied protecting the borders of the Empire from hostile races like the Invid or races who were advanced enough to be a threat if they turned their full attention to dealing with the Empire. Races like the Asgard, though in their case even the Guardians had to be careful given that the Asgard were one of the oldest known spacefaring races and had the power and technology that backed up said age.
"I see."
The sound of the fasten seat belts sign lighting up and a change in the pitch of the engines, as they were beginning their landing approach, brought an end to the discussion before it could go any further. Daniel braced himself for the bump of landing while wondering just what it was, he was going to find when they entered the base and he got to translate the hieroglyphs on the cover stones.
He also had to wonder if they would show him whatever it was that the cover stones had been concealing. For them to have given all they had to the university in Santiago in order to secure his loan it had to be something massive.
"What are you thinking of Daniel," Claudia asked using his name as he had asked her to do, in exchange for him calling her by her name.
"Just thinking about the cover stones Claudia," Daniel admitted, "I have to admit that I am very intrigued to know what it was that was underneath them. For the UEG to go to all the trouble and be as generous as they have been it has to be something incredible."
Claudia smiled. "You will see soon enough," she replied knowing that the UEG and UEDF High Command first wanted him to translate the hieroglyphs before they showed him the ring. It was believed after all that the hieroglyphs would reveal something about what the ring was meant to do. Despite an exhaustive search by Exedore and his fellow advisors the Zentraedi records had not been that helpful in that regard, having no idea what the ring was though they had revealed a bit more about the capabilities and potential uses of the material that it was made from.
"I look forward to it," Daniel answered as a jolt ran through the plane as the wheels touched the ground for the first time in hours, followed by the sound of the engines going into full reverse thrust slowing them down.
"It shouldn't be long now," Claudia replied as the feeling of deceleration died away as they came to an almost complete halt. The only feeling of motion now was Rick taxiing them to their assigned stand on Fort Minotaur's aircraft parking grid.
After a couple of moments even that stopped as they reached their assigned parking spot, the sound of the engines dying away completely a moment later. A few moments later someone beating on the door to the outside world indicated that a set of steps had been brought up to the hatch. Meaning that there welcoming committee was certainly waiting outside for them to disembark.
"That's our cue," Claudia said undoing her belt and standing up. Knowing that it was time to disembark both Daniel and Exedore undid their own seatbelts and stood up, falling in behind Claudia as she approached the hatch to the outside world. A hatch that was already being opened for them by Rick, who unlocked it, pulled it back and slipped the door to one side letting the warm, moist air of a Mediterranean autumn spill into the interior of their jet.
Throttling down his nervousness Daniel followed behind Claudia, with Exedore following along behind, as they stepped out into the golden sunlight of evening. The sun was beginning to set casting long shadows across the surface hangars and structures of the base – the vast majority of the base including the living quarters would be buried deep underground safe from all but the most powerful of attacks. Daniel briefly looked around noting that the base was primarily constructed from a material that resembled reinforced concrete though it was probably a robotechnology material and thus much stronger than it appeared. Then he noted the small welcoming committee that was awaiting them.
Knowing that he couldn't linger here he followed Claudia down the steps to the ground, Exedore and Captain Hunter following a few paces behind him. Once they had all disembarked, they approached the small group of officers, led by an athletic-looking middle aged man with salt-and-pepper hair.
"Major Grant, Doctor Jackson, Minister Exedore, Captain Hunter," the man said nodding politely to each of them in turn, "I am Colonel Charles Kowalski, I am the second in command here. Welcome to Fort Minotaur. General Richards sends his apologies that he cannot be here to greet you himself but his eldest went into labour an hour ago, so he's had to leave the base to be with her."
"That's quite alright Colonel," Claudia answered fully understanding why Micah Richards – who was well known to be a very committed family man – would want to leave the base to be with his eldest daughter as she birthed his first grandchild.
"If you'll follow me some guest quarters have been prepared for you," Kowalski said, "I'm sure you would all like to freshen up a bit from your long flight."
"That would be nice," Daniel admitted. "Though I would like to take a look at the cover stones as soon as possible."
"Understandable as we are quite anxious to know what the damned things say," Kowalski admitted, "but you should take a little time to rest and maybe have a bite to eat first as you have had a long flight. The cover stones have sat in the ground for thousands of years they can wait another couple of hours for translation to begin."
"True," Daniel admitted, eager as he was to get started, he was quite hungry, and he did desperately need a shower and maybe a change of clothes.
"Please lead on Colonel," Claudia said.
"Of course, Major this way please."
~~//~~
Two Hours Later
Daniel felt like he had rattlesnakes performing a mating dance in his stomach as he followed a UEDF marine through the brightly lit corridors towards the lab where they were keeping the cover stones. It had been nice to freshen up and have something to eat in the quite comfortable quarters, which were certainly a lot more comfortable than his apartment back in Santiago, that he had been assigned in the VIP section of the underground complex.
Now though he was quite eager to get started and it would definitely be interesting to see just how much of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that he actually remembered as it had been so long. It had been pure luck that he had recognised the meaning of the glyphs that he'd been shown back in his apartment that had convinced him to come here and help.
"Here we are Doctor Jackson," the marine said as they arrived outside one of the numerous labs that dotted this particular level. The marine swiped a security card – identical to the one Daniel himself had just been issued with – through a reader beside the door making it open with a whir of electromagnets. Daniel smiled and followed the marine inside…
…only to stop at what he beheld.
The lab was a large rectangular box eight meters wide by ten meters long. It was largely empty though there were several work benches dotted around that in the labs normal life would have no doubt been filled with all sorts of equipment. It was certainly an impressive workspace but what instantly grabbed Daniel's attention was what was floating suspended on a complex rigging apparatus at the far end of the lab.
The cover stones.
Moving almost on automatic pilot Daniel approached them gazing at the huge circular stones in awe. For all that they had spent literally millennia underground they were remarkably intact. Though as he got closer noticed evidence of damage to the stones, especially the central one as it had a very nasty crack running right through it, damaging some of the glyphs which was going to make translating them somewhat difficult. But then he liked a challenge.
"What happened here," he asked gesturing to the crack, noting with some surprise that the marine had been joined by Major Grant – he hadn't heard her come in or hadn't heard her following him.
"We believe the damage to the cover stones is from where the derelict Zentraedi cruiser was sitting on top of them," Claudia told him, "There was only a centimetre or so of pulverized sandstone between the cover stones and one of the upside down cruisers dorsal heavy particle cannon turrets. These stones had a few million tons of derelict robotech alloys sitting on top of them for a year and a half. Between that and the shock of the cruisers initial impact with the plateau it is not surprising that they took some damage."
"No, I suppose not," Daniel admitted with a sigh as he turned his gaze back to the cover stones noting the worst of the damage was to the circular centre stone though some of the others were also damaged being chipped and cracked either from the ravages of time or from the immense weight of the cruiser, "I suppose we're lucky that they weren't shattered into a million fragments by all that weight pressing down on them. Still, I can tell you now that some of these hieroglyphs are going to be quite difficult to translate as they are quite badly damaged."
"Can you still translate them," Claudia asked.
"I believe so yes," Daniel replied with a reassuring smile, "it's just going to take me awhile as I will have to somehow reconstruct the damaged glyphs to figure out what there likely meaning is. Due to the damage, I do have to warn you that the translations aren't going to be quite as accurate as I would like."
"We have a high-resolution laser scanner due here tomorrow," Claudia told him making his eyes widen in surprise. "Will that be of any help reading the damaged hieroglyph sections?"
"It should yes," Daniel replied after taking a moment to recover from his surprise. "Though I will need quite a bit of help deciphering the data as I've never used a laser scanner before thus, I have no idea how to interpret what it tells me."
"That can definitely be arranged," a new voice said from the direction of the doorway, drawing everyone's attention. Daniel turned with the others to see a relatively tall blond-haired woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties – much like Daniel himself – and wearing a lab coat had come into the room. "Sorry I'm late I was unfortunately delayed dealing with a slight spat between some of the other scientists. It's been resolved now."
"That's quite alright doctor," Claudia replied knowing from experience how tetchy scientists could sometimes be, having worked with a fair few of them over the years since the SDF-1 first fell to Earth. To say that it could be like herding cats at times would have been a colossal understatement. Thankfully she hadn't had to do it that often, usually Doctors Lang or Cochrane would see to any bruised scientific egos. The few times she'd had to do it she always ended up wanting to throttle someone. "Doctor Jackson, please allow me to introduce Doctor Samantha Carter, she is the head of research here at Fort Minotaur and is the leader of this project. Doctor Carter this is Doctor Daniel Jackson."
"Pleased to meet you," Samantha said holding out her hand for the other scientist to shake. She had been reading up on Doctor Jackson and had found his theories about the pyramids being constructed by aliens as well as crosspollination of the ancient cultures of Earth quite interesting. The arguments were logical and made sense, unfortunately they had been a bit too radical for the scientific authorities in the pre-Robotech world and the poor man had been made a laughingstock by those who felt threatened by what was clearly a very intelligent and intuitive mind.
"Likewise," Daniel replied with a smile taking the other scientist's hand and they shook. "Though what project is that? There is obviously quite a bit more going on here than just these cover stones."
Sam blinked in surprise. "You haven't told him yet?" she asked looking at Claudia, a hint of annoyance in her voice.
"Not yet," Claudia replied, "UEDF High Command wanted Daniel to begin working on the translations first before we showed him the rest."
Daniel blinked. "Show me what," he asked.
"Why what was under these things Daniel," Claudia replied with a smile. "I know you have been curious ever since we first met you in Santiago and you have been patient enough, as much as command may disagree, I am not going to make you start translating until we can do the laser scan."
"You mean," Daniel started to say.
"Indeed, we are," Sam replied taking the lead. "This way please, doctor."
"Please call me Daniel."
"Alright then Daniel. You can call me Sam only my father ever really called me Samantha and usually when I'd done something wrong," Sam replied, even as she felt a familiar stab of pain at the thought of her father General Jacob Carter, who'd died of a very aggressive form of leukaemia a year or so after the arrival of the SDF-1, before the modern anti-cancer drugs – created from information found in the computers of the alien battlefortress – and treatments became available. Treatments and drugs that had cut the mortality rate of all forms of cancers down to virtually zero – something that had saved a lot of lives both before and after the Rain.
"Alright Sam it is."
"This way," Sam said with a smile before turning and leading the way out, back into the near featureless corridors of this particular subterranean fortress. Only the fact that she was well used to UEDF underground bases, all of which tended to follow the same basic floor plans with only small, mostly cosmetic, differences between them due to scale and the bases intended function, enabling her to navigate the corridors towards the main lab. The sound of footsteps behind her letting her know everyone was following.
In no time at all they reached the main lab and she gently ushered Doctor Jackson inside, Claudia also following while their marine escort remained outside. Daniel immediately noticed that this lab had a lot more people in it than the one assigned to him, all the tables had people working on them but what really grabbed his attention were two objects in the centre of the room, which unlike his lab was circular with everything facing inwards.
One was an enormous ring-shaped structure made of a brownish-grey material that didn't look like anything he had ever seen before. It could almost have been mistaken for stone but there was something about it, something about how it gleamed under the lights told him that it wasn't made from stone. As he looked closer, he could see that it was actually two rings in one with the inner ring consisting of thirty-seven panels each engraved with different symbols whose meaning escaped him. Spaced equally around the edges of the outer ring were nine chevron-shaped objects that appeared to be centred around a reddish-orange crystal of some type. The other thing that grabbed his attention was a vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal with a slanted circular board on the top clustered around an orange crystalline dome. Again, he could see that it was split up into a series of panels each with a symbol on them – a symbol that to his trained archaeologist's eyes were identical to those on the ring-shaped device.
"Incredible," he breathed, "these are what were buried under the cover stones?"
"Yes," Claudia confirmed, gazing at them in wonder herself. It was one thing to see these things on computer screens or projected as holograms, quite another to see them in person. She couldn't help but feel that whatever these things were, they held an incredibly powerful secret one that could bring great scientific and technological riches or utter annihilation in equal measure.
"What are they," Daniel asked.
"That's just it we don't know," Sam answered, looking back at the two devices with a look like a child in a candy store in her eyes. These two things were presenting her and her teams with an extremely interesting puzzle. A puzzle that she hadn't tackled in quite some time not since she'd worked with Karl Riber and others on reverse engineering the quantum reflex power plants of the SDF-1. "We know that they are some sort of linked mechanism, our sensors confirm that there is a subspace link between the pedestal and the ring, but what they are and what they're actually meant to do we have absolutely no idea at this time. We're hoping that your translation of the hieroglyphs on the cover stones will provide us with some answers."
Daniel blinked and then looked at the devices again, eyes practically glowing in glee at the puzzle these things and the cover stones were presenting him with. A puzzle that was eons in the making and one he would do his utmost to solve. "Then I guess I better get started at least with some of the least damaged glyphs," he said feeling some of his old enthusiasm for solving the riddles of the Ancient World return; a moment before a whooping alarm began to sound throughout the base. It resonated odd off the walls and made him look around in alarm. "What's that? We're not having a fire drill, are we?"
Claudia looked up in surprise and concern at the sound of the alarms, then she turned and spoke to Daniel. "No, we're not. That alarm… it's a battle alert," she said her next word sending a shiver of fear through the currently, but hopefully not for much longer, disgraced archaeologist, "Fort Minotaur is under attack."
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: In a major difference to the original version of the story the attack on Fort Minotaur by the forces of Vosegus has not taken place in this chapter. Instead it will now be taking place in the next chapter as I have redone the battle since upon rereading I wasn't entirely happy with it or with its position at the end of the second chapter.
UEG Government Flight LT14
Two Days Later
Daniel Jackson's mind was still somewhat awhirl as he sat in an incredibly comfortable seat as an official government plane conveyed him towards his destination. Which was apparently Fort Minotaur a UEDF military base on Crete – a base that had originally been built as a research facility but, in the aftermath of the Rain, had been repurposed to serve as the centre of UEG political and UEDF military operations in the European sector of the Eurasian Quadrant – a few miles to the south-west of the capital city of Heraklion. He still couldn't quite wrap his head around how quickly events had moved from the moment he had agreed to assist with the translation of the cover stone hieroglyphics.
As soon as she had had his agreement Major Grant had set things in motion with a call, from a portable fold comm device a piece of technology that he hadn't even realized existed, straight to not just UEDF High Command but to Admiral Gloval himself. Within no more than two hours he had received a phone call from the dean of the university informing him that they had agreed to loan his services as a translator to the UEDF, though they hadn't said at the time what they had been given or offered in exchange. He had later found out from some of his friends among the staff that not only was the university getting a hell of a lot of money – enough to run it for nearly five years – from the United Earth Government but they were getting a whole lot of state-of-the-art equipment out of it along with a full refurbishment of the campus. Both the speed of their offer, and the immense generosity of it, had communicated to him quite clearly that whatever this was, whatever was hidden under the cover stones that the UEDF had found beneath the remains of the Giza Plateau it was big, possibly as big as the arrival of the SDF-1 had been nearly fourteen years ago.
Since then, everything had been something of a whirlwind, the vast majority of his time being taken up by travelling. First there had been a flight from Santiago to New Macross City where he had spent the night put up in one of the nicest hotels in the city. Then after a hearty breakfast they had boarded this plane – which was not only luxurious but of a make and model that he'd never seen before – and begun a long trek across first the Atlantic Ocean then the Mediterranean Sea towards Crete. At least I have good travelling companions, he thought glancing across at where Major Grant – or Claudia as she kept telling him to call her - and the Zentraedi Minister Exedore were sitting. They had both been very good conversationalists, he'd especially enjoyed talking with Exedore as the anthropologist in him had been fascinated to learn more about the Zentraedi as a people and how they were learning to, slowly but surely, embrace a way of life that didn't involve being at war all the time.
More than once since this whirlwind journey had begun, and especially since he had met Exedore, he had found himself thinking about the Zentraedi's previous existence. Travelling through the galaxies going from warzone to warzone, bringing death and leaving nothing but devastation in their wake. An existence that, until they started chasing the SDF-1 across the solar system and picking up entertainment transmissions from the city inside said ship, had not changed for five hundred years. It was a downright depressing way to live when he thought about it.
"May I have your attention please," the voice of Captain Hunter said from the public address system gaining all their attention. "We have entered the approach pattern for Fort Minotaur and will be landing within the next ten minutes. Please prepare for landing."
"Finally," Daniel muttered, it had been a very long time since he had taken a flight anywhere, let alone one like this that crossed hemispheres and multiple time zones. Thankfully the phenomenon known as jetlag was a thing of the past as drugs existed now – and had done since two thousand four, along with numerous other things they had been developed from technology and knowledge found on a fallen alien starship that had been both a Rosetta Stone and a Pandora's Box in equal measure – that compensated for physiological upsets that caused the condition. He had made sure to pick up and take some before they had taken off from New Macross City Airport.
"Not used to flying for long periods are you Doctor Jackson," Exedore asked with a smile of wry amusement.
"Not these days, Exedore," Daniel replied with a smile of his own as he fastened his seatbelt for landing. "Until I left Santiago, I hadn't been to an airport in over a decade let alone taken a flight anywhere. Taking a long flight like this after so long is therefore a bit taxing even with an anti-jetlag drug in my system."
"While your people use it for that that is not that particular drug's primary purpose," Exedore answered with a smile. At the surprised look Daniel shot him he explained. "The drug was originally created by the Tirolians to counter the occasionally very deleterious effects of the first generations of space fold drives. As space folding technology has improved over the last few millennia, and the flaws that caused said effects eliminated, the need for the drug diminished though its formula has remained in most databases."
"Which is where we found it," Claudia said recalling how they had found the formula for that and a number of other drugs that had radically improved life for so many on Earth before the Zentraedi arrived and the Robotech War began. Though those drugs had also helped save a lot of lives after the Rain, especially the ones that boosted cell regeneration and helped counter the worst effects of radiation poisoning. Even the exotic subspace radiation left behind by reflex weaponry could be countered with either high doses of the drugs or immersion in a regeneration tank.
"Indeed," Exedore agreed.
"Who are the Tirolians," Daniel asked not recognising the name, though something told him that it was an important name.
"They are the ones who created the Zentraedi initially as tools of labour on the planet Fantoma but later they repurposed us into weapons of war," Exedore explained. "For the last five hundred years they have been known more as the Robotech Masters."
Daniel frowned. "They don't sound that friendly," he commented inwardly feeling disgusted at the thought of engineering an entire species first to be a labour force somewhere and then later transforming them into weapons of war, tools of destruction and conquest. It was a disgusting practice as he could think of much better things to do with the knowledge of bioengineering and genetics that these Tirolians/Robotech Masters had to have to create the Zentraedi in the first place.
"The Robotech Masters are a very advanced, very powerful race yes, far more so than my people have ever been, but they have not been to war in many generations," Exedore said reassuringly, unsaid was the fact that warfare was what the Zentraedi were for, "plus Tirolian space is a very, very long way from here being literally galaxies away. There is nothing to fear from them."
For now, at least, he thought knowing that the Robotech Masters certainly knew of the death of Dolza and the destruction of the vast majority of the entire Zentraedi armada by now. He didn't think though that they would be in a position to do much about it for quite some time given that their own forces were limited and mostly tied down keeping the subject worlds of the Tirolian Empire under heel. The only possible force they could send would be some of the Guardians and even that would be a bit of a gamble for them especially as the Guardian Zentraedi were constantly preoccupied protecting the borders of the Empire from hostile races like the Invid or races who were advanced enough to be a threat if they turned their full attention to dealing with the Empire. Races like the Asgard, though in their case even the Guardians had to be careful given that the Asgard were one of the oldest known spacefaring races and had the power and technology that backed up said age.
"I see."
The sound of the fasten seat belts sign lighting up and a change in the pitch of the engines, as they were beginning their landing approach, brought an end to the discussion before it could go any further. Daniel braced himself for the bump of landing while wondering just what it was, he was going to find when they entered the base and he got to translate the hieroglyphs on the cover stones.
He also had to wonder if they would show him whatever it was that the cover stones had been concealing. For them to have given all they had to the university in Santiago in order to secure his loan it had to be something massive.
"What are you thinking of Daniel," Claudia asked using his name as he had asked her to do, in exchange for him calling her by her name.
"Just thinking about the cover stones Claudia," Daniel admitted, "I have to admit that I am very intrigued to know what it was that was underneath them. For the UEG to go to all the trouble and be as generous as they have been it has to be something incredible."
Claudia smiled. "You will see soon enough," she replied knowing that the UEG and UEDF High Command first wanted him to translate the hieroglyphs before they showed him the ring. It was believed after all that the hieroglyphs would reveal something about what the ring was meant to do. Despite an exhaustive search by Exedore and his fellow advisors the Zentraedi records had not been that helpful in that regard, having no idea what the ring was though they had revealed a bit more about the capabilities and potential uses of the material that it was made from.
"I look forward to it," Daniel answered as a jolt ran through the plane as the wheels touched the ground for the first time in hours, followed by the sound of the engines going into full reverse thrust slowing them down.
"It shouldn't be long now," Claudia replied as the feeling of deceleration died away as they came to an almost complete halt. The only feeling of motion now was Rick taxiing them to their assigned stand on Fort Minotaur's aircraft parking grid.
After a couple of moments even that stopped as they reached their assigned parking spot, the sound of the engines dying away completely a moment later. A few moments later someone beating on the door to the outside world indicated that a set of steps had been brought up to the hatch. Meaning that there welcoming committee was certainly waiting outside for them to disembark.
"That's our cue," Claudia said undoing her belt and standing up. Knowing that it was time to disembark both Daniel and Exedore undid their own seatbelts and stood up, falling in behind Claudia as she approached the hatch to the outside world. A hatch that was already being opened for them by Rick, who unlocked it, pulled it back and slipped the door to one side letting the warm, moist air of a Mediterranean autumn spill into the interior of their jet.
Throttling down his nervousness Daniel followed behind Claudia, with Exedore following along behind, as they stepped out into the golden sunlight of evening. The sun was beginning to set casting long shadows across the surface hangars and structures of the base – the vast majority of the base including the living quarters would be buried deep underground safe from all but the most powerful of attacks. Daniel briefly looked around noting that the base was primarily constructed from a material that resembled reinforced concrete though it was probably a robotechnology material and thus much stronger than it appeared. Then he noted the small welcoming committee that was awaiting them.
Knowing that he couldn't linger here he followed Claudia down the steps to the ground, Exedore and Captain Hunter following a few paces behind him. Once they had all disembarked, they approached the small group of officers, led by an athletic-looking middle aged man with salt-and-pepper hair.
"Major Grant, Doctor Jackson, Minister Exedore, Captain Hunter," the man said nodding politely to each of them in turn, "I am Colonel Charles Kowalski, I am the second in command here. Welcome to Fort Minotaur. General Richards sends his apologies that he cannot be here to greet you himself but his eldest went into labour an hour ago, so he's had to leave the base to be with her."
"That's quite alright Colonel," Claudia answered fully understanding why Micah Richards – who was well known to be a very committed family man – would want to leave the base to be with his eldest daughter as she birthed his first grandchild.
"If you'll follow me some guest quarters have been prepared for you," Kowalski said, "I'm sure you would all like to freshen up a bit from your long flight."
"That would be nice," Daniel admitted. "Though I would like to take a look at the cover stones as soon as possible."
"Understandable as we are quite anxious to know what the damned things say," Kowalski admitted, "but you should take a little time to rest and maybe have a bite to eat first as you have had a long flight. The cover stones have sat in the ground for thousands of years they can wait another couple of hours for translation to begin."
"True," Daniel admitted, eager as he was to get started, he was quite hungry, and he did desperately need a shower and maybe a change of clothes.
"Please lead on Colonel," Claudia said.
"Of course, Major this way please."
~~//~~
Two Hours Later
Daniel felt like he had rattlesnakes performing a mating dance in his stomach as he followed a UEDF marine through the brightly lit corridors towards the lab where they were keeping the cover stones. It had been nice to freshen up and have something to eat in the quite comfortable quarters, which were certainly a lot more comfortable than his apartment back in Santiago, that he had been assigned in the VIP section of the underground complex.
Now though he was quite eager to get started and it would definitely be interesting to see just how much of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that he actually remembered as it had been so long. It had been pure luck that he had recognised the meaning of the glyphs that he'd been shown back in his apartment that had convinced him to come here and help.
"Here we are Doctor Jackson," the marine said as they arrived outside one of the numerous labs that dotted this particular level. The marine swiped a security card – identical to the one Daniel himself had just been issued with – through a reader beside the door making it open with a whir of electromagnets. Daniel smiled and followed the marine inside…
…only to stop at what he beheld.
The lab was a large rectangular box eight meters wide by ten meters long. It was largely empty though there were several work benches dotted around that in the labs normal life would have no doubt been filled with all sorts of equipment. It was certainly an impressive workspace but what instantly grabbed Daniel's attention was what was floating suspended on a complex rigging apparatus at the far end of the lab.
The cover stones.
Moving almost on automatic pilot Daniel approached them gazing at the huge circular stones in awe. For all that they had spent literally millennia underground they were remarkably intact. Though as he got closer noticed evidence of damage to the stones, especially the central one as it had a very nasty crack running right through it, damaging some of the glyphs which was going to make translating them somewhat difficult. But then he liked a challenge.
"What happened here," he asked gesturing to the crack, noting with some surprise that the marine had been joined by Major Grant – he hadn't heard her come in or hadn't heard her following him.
"We believe the damage to the cover stones is from where the derelict Zentraedi cruiser was sitting on top of them," Claudia told him, "There was only a centimetre or so of pulverized sandstone between the cover stones and one of the upside down cruisers dorsal heavy particle cannon turrets. These stones had a few million tons of derelict robotech alloys sitting on top of them for a year and a half. Between that and the shock of the cruisers initial impact with the plateau it is not surprising that they took some damage."
"No, I suppose not," Daniel admitted with a sigh as he turned his gaze back to the cover stones noting the worst of the damage was to the circular centre stone though some of the others were also damaged being chipped and cracked either from the ravages of time or from the immense weight of the cruiser, "I suppose we're lucky that they weren't shattered into a million fragments by all that weight pressing down on them. Still, I can tell you now that some of these hieroglyphs are going to be quite difficult to translate as they are quite badly damaged."
"Can you still translate them," Claudia asked.
"I believe so yes," Daniel replied with a reassuring smile, "it's just going to take me awhile as I will have to somehow reconstruct the damaged glyphs to figure out what there likely meaning is. Due to the damage, I do have to warn you that the translations aren't going to be quite as accurate as I would like."
"We have a high-resolution laser scanner due here tomorrow," Claudia told him making his eyes widen in surprise. "Will that be of any help reading the damaged hieroglyph sections?"
"It should yes," Daniel replied after taking a moment to recover from his surprise. "Though I will need quite a bit of help deciphering the data as I've never used a laser scanner before thus, I have no idea how to interpret what it tells me."
"That can definitely be arranged," a new voice said from the direction of the doorway, drawing everyone's attention. Daniel turned with the others to see a relatively tall blond-haired woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties – much like Daniel himself – and wearing a lab coat had come into the room. "Sorry I'm late I was unfortunately delayed dealing with a slight spat between some of the other scientists. It's been resolved now."
"That's quite alright doctor," Claudia replied knowing from experience how tetchy scientists could sometimes be, having worked with a fair few of them over the years since the SDF-1 first fell to Earth. To say that it could be like herding cats at times would have been a colossal understatement. Thankfully she hadn't had to do it that often, usually Doctors Lang or Cochrane would see to any bruised scientific egos. The few times she'd had to do it she always ended up wanting to throttle someone. "Doctor Jackson, please allow me to introduce Doctor Samantha Carter, she is the head of research here at Fort Minotaur and is the leader of this project. Doctor Carter this is Doctor Daniel Jackson."
"Pleased to meet you," Samantha said holding out her hand for the other scientist to shake. She had been reading up on Doctor Jackson and had found his theories about the pyramids being constructed by aliens as well as crosspollination of the ancient cultures of Earth quite interesting. The arguments were logical and made sense, unfortunately they had been a bit too radical for the scientific authorities in the pre-Robotech world and the poor man had been made a laughingstock by those who felt threatened by what was clearly a very intelligent and intuitive mind.
"Likewise," Daniel replied with a smile taking the other scientist's hand and they shook. "Though what project is that? There is obviously quite a bit more going on here than just these cover stones."
Sam blinked in surprise. "You haven't told him yet?" she asked looking at Claudia, a hint of annoyance in her voice.
"Not yet," Claudia replied, "UEDF High Command wanted Daniel to begin working on the translations first before we showed him the rest."
Daniel blinked. "Show me what," he asked.
"Why what was under these things Daniel," Claudia replied with a smile. "I know you have been curious ever since we first met you in Santiago and you have been patient enough, as much as command may disagree, I am not going to make you start translating until we can do the laser scan."
"You mean," Daniel started to say.
"Indeed, we are," Sam replied taking the lead. "This way please, doctor."
"Please call me Daniel."
"Alright then Daniel. You can call me Sam only my father ever really called me Samantha and usually when I'd done something wrong," Sam replied, even as she felt a familiar stab of pain at the thought of her father General Jacob Carter, who'd died of a very aggressive form of leukaemia a year or so after the arrival of the SDF-1, before the modern anti-cancer drugs – created from information found in the computers of the alien battlefortress – and treatments became available. Treatments and drugs that had cut the mortality rate of all forms of cancers down to virtually zero – something that had saved a lot of lives both before and after the Rain.
"Alright Sam it is."
"This way," Sam said with a smile before turning and leading the way out, back into the near featureless corridors of this particular subterranean fortress. Only the fact that she was well used to UEDF underground bases, all of which tended to follow the same basic floor plans with only small, mostly cosmetic, differences between them due to scale and the bases intended function, enabling her to navigate the corridors towards the main lab. The sound of footsteps behind her letting her know everyone was following.
In no time at all they reached the main lab and she gently ushered Doctor Jackson inside, Claudia also following while their marine escort remained outside. Daniel immediately noticed that this lab had a lot more people in it than the one assigned to him, all the tables had people working on them but what really grabbed his attention were two objects in the centre of the room, which unlike his lab was circular with everything facing inwards.
One was an enormous ring-shaped structure made of a brownish-grey material that didn't look like anything he had ever seen before. It could almost have been mistaken for stone but there was something about it, something about how it gleamed under the lights told him that it wasn't made from stone. As he looked closer, he could see that it was actually two rings in one with the inner ring consisting of thirty-seven panels each engraved with different symbols whose meaning escaped him. Spaced equally around the edges of the outer ring were nine chevron-shaped objects that appeared to be centred around a reddish-orange crystal of some type. The other thing that grabbed his attention was a vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal with a slanted circular board on the top clustered around an orange crystalline dome. Again, he could see that it was split up into a series of panels each with a symbol on them – a symbol that to his trained archaeologist's eyes were identical to those on the ring-shaped device.
"Incredible," he breathed, "these are what were buried under the cover stones?"
"Yes," Claudia confirmed, gazing at them in wonder herself. It was one thing to see these things on computer screens or projected as holograms, quite another to see them in person. She couldn't help but feel that whatever these things were, they held an incredibly powerful secret one that could bring great scientific and technological riches or utter annihilation in equal measure.
"What are they," Daniel asked.
"That's just it we don't know," Sam answered, looking back at the two devices with a look like a child in a candy store in her eyes. These two things were presenting her and her teams with an extremely interesting puzzle. A puzzle that she hadn't tackled in quite some time not since she'd worked with Karl Riber and others on reverse engineering the quantum reflex power plants of the SDF-1. "We know that they are some sort of linked mechanism, our sensors confirm that there is a subspace link between the pedestal and the ring, but what they are and what they're actually meant to do we have absolutely no idea at this time. We're hoping that your translation of the hieroglyphs on the cover stones will provide us with some answers."
Daniel blinked and then looked at the devices again, eyes practically glowing in glee at the puzzle these things and the cover stones were presenting him with. A puzzle that was eons in the making and one he would do his utmost to solve. "Then I guess I better get started at least with some of the least damaged glyphs," he said feeling some of his old enthusiasm for solving the riddles of the Ancient World return; a moment before a whooping alarm began to sound throughout the base. It resonated odd off the walls and made him look around in alarm. "What's that? We're not having a fire drill, are we?"
Claudia looked up in surprise and concern at the sound of the alarms, then she turned and spoke to Daniel. "No, we're not. That alarm… it's a battle alert," she said her next word sending a shiver of fear through the currently, but hopefully not for much longer, disgraced archaeologist, "Fort Minotaur is under attack."
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: In a major difference to the original version of the story the attack on Fort Minotaur by the forces of Vosegus has not taken place in this chapter. Instead it will now be taking place in the next chapter as I have redone the battle since upon rereading I wasn't entirely happy with it or with its position at the end of the second chapter.
Chapter Three
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Three
Front Gatehouse
Fort Minotaur, Crete
A Few Minutes Earlier
Private Adrian Campbell was bored.
As he had been every day for this last duty rotation, he was sitting here in the guard house watching the feeds from the sensors and cameras that monitored the perimeter of Fort Minotaur searching constantly for any threat to the base. It was a job that to his twenty-year-old mind was the textbook definition of boring. He had joined the military to add some spice, some excitement to his life, not to just sit around watching a bunch of monitors. If he had wanted to do that, do something so boring, he would have become an accountant like his elder brother was.
He glanced at the chronometer on the wall, noting that it was approaching 1400 hours. Another two hours of this tedium then I can clock off and I'm off on leave for a week then, he thought with a slight smile as he imagined the fun he was going to have over the next few days. While a week wasn't enough time to make his way back home to the small town in rural Pennsylvania where he'd grown up – global air travel had a long way to go before it recovered from the Rain as so many jetliners had been incinerated in transit during the Rain as the sky suddenly filled with lethal energy beams – there was time for him to really let his hair down. There were some nice pubs and nightclubs in downtown Heraklion, perfect places for a guy to unwind.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now as he picked up his mug of coffee. Only to find to his displeasure that the blasted thing was empty. Grumbling, he stood up and went over to the coffee machine and poured himself a fresh cup. He was just returning to his station with a fresh, well freshish, mug of the liquid that everyone in the military practically ran on – he was really going to have to change the filter soon as it was starting to taste a bit stale – when one of the perimeter sensors emitted a warning bleep.
"If it's a bloody rabbit again," he muttered as he sat down and pulled up the feed from the sensor. It was one of the camera feeds that was monitoring the approach road to the base. The blasted thing was hypersensitive and thus was forever getting tripped by rabbits or other small animals bounding across the road.
The camera feed appeared…
…and the mug of coffee slipped from this hand to shatter on the floor. He didn't notice as he was too busy staring at the camera feed in shock and horror. Walking up the road was what looked like an entire platoon of battle mecha, specifically a mixture of Spartan and Tomahawk destroids with what looked like two Monster destroids following slowly behind.
Quickly he sent an interrogative command to the computer, prompting it to both send an IFF request to the approaching mecha as well as checking if any of the bases mecha platoons were out today. As far as he knew nobody was out but that didn't necessarily mean anything. If Jeremy failed to tell me that someone was out when I took over from him, I'm so going to kick his ass, he thought as the results came back. There was nobody out today, certainly not in platoon strength, plus the destroids were not giving off UEDF IFF signals, or any IFF signals at all in point of fact. Which meant only one thing…
…they were hostile.
Instantly his training kicked in. Reaching out he pressed the alert button, setting alarms ringing throughout the base and bringing the automated perimeter defences fully online while also within the base causing personnel to begin scrambling to stations to defend themselves and the base. Simultaneously with sounding the alarm the control triggered blast shutters on the small kiosk-like room that was his station.
The shutters were just closing when he heard a whistling sound. A moment later he felt some tremendous force lift him up as if he weighed nothing, instead of a hundred and eighty pounds, and slam him into the far wall with enough force that he was instantly robbed of consciousness.
~~~///~~~
Pilots Ready Room
Rick Hunter laughed as the pilot sitting across from him finished telling him a little story about how he had humiliated a squadron of EBSIS Karyovins that had tried to intrude on European airspace. The rulers of the much reduced Soviet Union – whose partial collapse in the mid-nineties had been one of the major catalysts for the Global Civil War – had been getting bolder recently, pushing to reclaim those Eastern European countries that they had had to give independence to in the nineties as their nation teetered on the brink of complete collapse and anarchy. The problem was many of those countries were now part of the United Earth Government and had little interest in returning to communism.
Of course, that didn't stop EBSIS from trying to bully and intimidate them. The UEG was well aware of that and was making it a point to have their forces patrol the borderlands both in the air and on the ground. So far aside from the occasional staring match nothing violent had happened. EBSIS leaders weren't idiots they knew that the UEG had far superior firepower to them, that their vast nuclear arsenal meant nothing compared to the weapons they had, plus they also controlled the ultimate high ground of space and thus could easily rain particle beams or lasers down upon any hostile forces. It was one such encounter that the other pilot, Lieutenant Matheson, had just finished telling him about.
"Man, I would have loved to see the looks on those pilots faces when you switched to battloid in front of them," he commented.
"It would have been funny as it was they practically wet themselves," Matheson agreed chuckling even as he shook his head. Those EBSIS pilots had thought themselves so hot, thought that because they outnumbered him three to one that they could push his Valkyrie around. Until that was, he switched to battloid mode and grabbed the nose cone of the leaders fighter with one hand while pointing the GU-11 gunpod right at the head of the pilot. While he naturally hadn't been able to see his face because of the black visor the Russian had been scared almost out of his mind.
Rick chuckled again at that before taking a sip of fresh orange juice, which was one of the perks of being stationed here since there were a fair few citrus plantation on the island and taking a moment to look around the pilots ready room. There weren't many people here right now, most of the squadrons based here were either out on patrol right now – EBSIS wasn't the only state in this region that was pushing its luck recently so were those Islamic fundamentalists in charge of the United Islamic Republics – or were on leave. As a result there were only a handful of veritech pilots on the base. Pilots who had been quick to open their arms to him after he'd freshened up – being one of the top aces of the Robotech War and Skull Leader kind of helped there – and they'd spent the time since doing what military pilots inevitably did when they got together. Which was clown around and swap stories of their exploits. He had had the whole lot of them laughing when he told them what he did when he first came to Macross Island and in a dinky little fanjet racer outperformed four Valkyries in a simple booster climb aerial stunt.
It was at that moment that the emergency scramble alarm went off, accompanied by a base wide alert warning of approaching hostiles. Immediately the room turned into a beehive of activity as pilots hurriedly downed drinks and got to their feet. Rick hesitated as he finished his own drink, while his instincts as a combat pilot were telling him to go get on a flight suit and join whatever fight was about to start he wasn't sure if he should since he wasn't assigned here.
"Captain Hunter, would you care to join us," Lieutenant Young, the leader of the only squadron currently on the base said, approaching. "We have a few free Valkyrie's right now – I know it won't be Skull One but."
Rick smiled. "I'd love to," he replied, having missed being in the cockpit of a veritech. After all his last few flights had been sitting in the cockpit of a boring government jet. He stood up. "I'll just go get into a flight suit."
"I'll make sure a plane is ready for you."
"Thanks."
~~///~~
A Few Minutes Earlier
Sitting in the cockpit of his upgraded destroid a man who now only knew of, and thought of himself, as Prime due to both his rank in the service of Vosegus and the fact that he had been the first of his kind. A new kind of enhanced warrior that when his lord finally returned to the stars – after countless millennia of being forced to live on Earth, denied what should have rightfully been his – would sweep them clean of those who had condemned Vosegus to this existence and let their living god reign supreme as he always should have. It would be a righteous campaign and when Vosegus rose it would truly be a glorious day.
A day that had come unexpectedly much closer than anyone could have foreseen.
As he guided his Spartan destroid around a bend in the road, bringing the gates of Fort Minotaur into view though they were still someway off, Prime thought about the events that had precipitated this current, admittedly quite risky, deployment. A few days ago one of their sleeper agents had reported that after millennia of being lost this worlds chappa'ai – and with it easy access to the stars – had been found, found and brought to Fort Minotaur for analysis. Lord Vosegus had been searching for it for centuries, and indeed had quietly sponsored a number of expeditions to find it, and now it was almost within his grasp.
They just had to get it away from the infidels who currently had it. Which was why this platoon of destroids, that Lord Vosegus had acquired from other sleepers and upgraded with his divine knowledge, had been dispatched. They weren't alone more of his fellow followers – both Jafftari like himself or just humans – were coming in three transport planes to complete a takeover of the base. Planes that would also transport the chappa'ai away from here once they acquired it.
While he was fully confident that they would succeed in their mission – they had the power and blessing of a living god behind them after all – Prime had to admit, to himself at least, that this was not going to be an easy mission. The infidels after all had robotechnology based weapons such as laser and particle cannons, weapons that would make them a formidable opponent even for them. He also admitted that they wouldn't have the forces to hold the base for long, as the UEG was certain to quickly counterattack with forces no doubt being sent from Camelot Base located on the Salisbury Plane in the United Kingdon and if they were really unlucky the Zentraedi would send forces from their warships in orbit, but then they didn't need to.
A warning bleep from the computer brought him out of his thoughts. He looked at his screens and scowled when he noticed that a perimeter sensor around the base had been tripped and that the base was now sending an interrogative IFF signal to them. Damnation I was hoping we would get a bit closer before we were detected, he thought knowing that they had no way to give a 'friendly' answer since they lacked up to date information on UEDF IFF transponder codes, they were well protected and none of their lords operatives had been able to get close enough to acquire them without arousing suspicion.
As a result while he was irritated he wasn't particularly surprised when the energy emissions from the base suddenly began increasing as its defence systems began powering up. He resisted, just, the impulse to groan in annoyance. This was a complication that they could have well done without, but such was life.
"Monsters take out the main gates before they seal," he ordered, even as he observed large metal shutters made from a dense robotechnology alloy beginning to emerge from slots in the wall to seal the gates. If those shutters – made as they were from warship grade armour plating – successfully closed, then what was already going to be a difficult task would become near impossible.
He need not have worried as the two Monsters roared again. Eight 381mm heavy railgun slugs – each packing a plasma warhead – slammed into the shutters, four to each, and detonated. The yellow-white flash of plasma detonations momentarily blinded his external cameras but when he could see again the could see that they had done their job. The gatehouse next to the doors had broken and both shutters had been pulverized as had the gates beyond them…
…the way was open.
"All forces move in," he ordered calmly. "Head straight for the runways and surface to air batteries. We need to take them so our troop carriers can land." He did not need to say that they needed those troop carriers to be sure to take the base long enough to recover the Stargate. A chorus of affirmative's came from his fellows, and he began guiding his Spartan towards the entrance.
It was then however that things began to go wrong as the base defenders were clearly reacting far faster than they had expected they would. The first indication of this being when one of the perimeter turrets opened up on them, spewing rapid fire bolts of a blue-white particle energy towards them. One of the Tomahawk's was hit almost immediately and immediately staggered, an energy field flaring into existence around it as their lord's protection activated as the blasts tore at it. A second volley of charged particle bolts from the turret hit the staggering mecha and the field collapsed allowing the following volley to blow the destroid apart.
Growling in annoyance he aimed the modified gunpod he was holding in the Spartans hands at the turret and fired. Bolts of golden glowing, divine wrath blasted forth from the gunpod the plasma salvo crossing the distance to the turret almost immediately. Only to slam into a shimmering green wall that appeared in front of the turret and break apart in a blaze of sparks as a force field of some type stopped it cold. Pinpoint barrier how did we not know the base has those things, he thought in annoyance as he fired again a second Spartan joining in. The defence barrier flared, sparked, and crackled before finally giving way allowing the two streams of plasma fire to begin digging into the turret.
For a moment it looked like the turrets armour would hold, that somehow Vosegus had underestimated just how strong robotech armour was, then it gave way allowing the plasma to enter the vulnerable insides of the turret. With the predictable result that the turret exploded in a blaze of smoke and flames but not before firing on him, its charged particle bolt slamming into his shield like an energetic sledgehammer dropping the barrier strength by nearly a half from just one blast. The fusion reactor immediately began regenerating the defence even as he got his Spartan moving again, charging onto the base with the others.
They were immediately met with a wall of weapons fire ranging from small arms like laser pistols and rifles, to fixed turrets and even some of defensive garrison of destroids that were beginning to appear from their storage areas to confront the intruders. Shields glowed with orange-gold light but held so far as most of the weapons fire was too light to overwhelm them. Though that would change fast when heavier destroids and likely veritech fighters armed with plasma missiles got involved.
"Push forward," he ordered his fellows, "crush everyone in our way. For Vosegus."
"For Vosegus," his brothers in arms cried back. Prime smiled as they charged forward firing with everything they had, unleashing a relentless barrage of plasma, autocannon, railgun and missile fire upon these infidels, these enemies of their god. The wall of firepower pushed the still organising defenders back allowing the intruding warriors of Vosegus to expand their perimeter and push towards the first of their objectives – the surface to air missile batteries.
Then the bottom fell out on them.
The first sign of the fight turning against them was when four objects – Stiletto missiles – slammed into the first of the two Monsters just as it was lining up to fire on the SAM batteries. The first two plasma detonations cracked the shield, making it shatter in a blaze of prismatic light letting the next two slam into and punch through the layered titanium-hypercarbon armour to detonate within the mecha instantly turning it into a fireball. The speed of the Monsters destruction caught Prime by surprise and he looked around to see where the missiles had come from even as the second of their two Monsters suffered the same fate, erupting into a fireball.
A second later he saw them.
A squadron of veritechs in the hybrid fighter/battloid mode known as guardian mode streaking across the ground towards them. Missiles, nose lasers and GU-11 hypervelocity autocannon gunpods blazing as they closed in. They weren't alone following along behind them was a whole divisions worth of destroids – all of them looking as pissed off as machines could – and a squad of Centaur hover tanks. An overwhelming force if ever their was one.
For a moment Prime stared at them in stupefied, horrified astonishment. Then he cursed realizing that while their agent had provided them with the location of the Stargate and the general details of the base layout, they hadn't given them complete information on the bases defenders. Almost certainly because either they hadn't known or since then the defences had been upgraded to deter the likes of EBSIS or the UIR from trying anything stupid. There would now be no chance of taking this place even temporarily. Despair that he had failed in his mission, failed his god, threatened to overwhelm him at that revelation it almost made him want to just stand still and let the defenders kill him. Then his eyes narrowed, and he vowed that if he was going out then he would go out fighting – at least then he would earn a place of honour in the afterlife.
Thus, he started to bring the Spartan's gunpod to bear on one of the veritechs a moment before a missile slammed into him. The force of the impact knocked him back hard against his restraints and alarms went off warning that the warheads plasma blast had depleted his shield. Frantically he operated the controls managing just to keep the Spartan stable. However, in the process he dropped the gunpod.
Cursing softly to himself he flipped the switches to arm the chest gun cluster. Until that was, he saw the veritech had switched to battloid and was aiming its gunpod right at him. If the battloid fired now the autocannon rounds would shred him like tinfoil. Knowing that he only had once chance left to earn any honour in the afterlife, by taking an enemy with him into the great beyond, he charged forward intent on knocking the battloid over and lying on top of it. At which point he would fire everything in the chest gun cluster which would certainly destroy them both.
Unfortunately, the pilot seemed to read his intent. At the last possible moment, and with an agility that both showed the incredible organic-like movement abilities of robotech battle mecha and the fact that the pilot was extremely skilled in using his craft, dodging to the side allowing him to charge past unable to stop in time. The pilot then fired into the back of the Spartan at virtually point blank range, the hypervelocity rounds from the gunpod tearing first through the slowly regenerating shield, then the armour before seriously damaging the Spartans main power conduit.
Immediately the Spartans simple AI began powering the mecha down but it could only react so quickly. As a result for a moment a massive charge of electricity ran from the Spartans fusion power plant to the entire mecha including the cockpit module. Prime screamed in agony as the sudden surge of electrons rushed through his system bringing with it a tsunami of pain…
…followed by darkness as he lost consciousness.
~~~///~~~
Rick smiled as he watched the destroid that had attempted to suicide tackle him – really who did that? Not even the likes of Khyron would do such a thing as they knew such moves never worked – went inert after his shots destroyed the primary conduit that ran like a spinal cord up and down the back of the mecha. While the mecha had lost power, the simple AI it like all mecha would have having scrammed the fusion power plant that most destroids ran off, sensors confirmed that the pilot was alive just unconscious either from the impact with the ground, getting a massive shock as the damage to the conduit would have sent a massive overcharge through the machine or a combination of the two.
Calmly he looked around and assessed the rest of the battle to see that it was over. The destroids and veritechs that had reacted to defend Fort Minotaur from the sudden attack moving calmly through the wreckage of the attackers, much of which was smouldering and burning from the intense heat of particle beams, lasers, and plasma warheads. Ground troops in battle armour were also approaching, searching for survivors so they could learn who the hell these people had been, where they had come from and how there destroids came to be upgraded with energy shields and for the Spartans to be armed with some type of plasma rifle instead of the normal GU-11 gunpod.
A check of his sensors showed that there were no other survivors in the remains of the mecha. But then there rarely were survivors when battles were fought with the immense destructive power of modern weaponry. Robotech weapons just didn't tend to leave survivors. Whoever the pilot of the Spartan was, he or she was the only one who might be able to give them some answers as to the identity of the attackers and what the hell they had been hoping to accomplish.
Which was why he slung up the GU-11 like it was a giant rifle, before squatting down and flipping the Spartan over onto its back exposing the access to the pilots compartment. Extending the veritechs manipulation tools he accessed the external emergency controls causing the hatch to open and the chair holding the pilot to slide out. Carefully he picked up the unconscious pilot and gestured for some of the armour wearing marines to come over – which they promptly did.
"This one is still alive," he said, the external speakers relaying his voice clearly. "Though from the looks of him he's gotten one hell of an electric shock. Take him to the infirmary but keep him under heavy guard."
"Sir yes sir," one of the marines acknowledged as he set their prisoner down. He stepped back to watch as a combat medical team approached even as the marines searched their prisoner, extracting a strange, coiled serpent shaped device from a hip holster – its positioning indicating it was some kind of sidearm – along with a wicked looking knife – a kukri he noted – from a holster on the other hip. Then satisfied that their prisoner was disarmed turned him over to the combat medics.
He was about to turn away, to check over the rest of the battlefield, when the external cameras caught the marined removing the helmet, the guy was wearing – and from his extremely muscular build he was definitely a guy, an exceptionally fit one at that – and he saw his face…
…and gasped in shock and recognition.
"Sir are you alright," one of the marines, from the IFF his powered combat suit was giving off he was a lieutenant, asked having heard him gasp loud enough for the battloids internal microphones to pick it up. "Sir, do you recognise this guy?"
"I do indeed lieutenant," Rick replied at last, mind still reeling wondering what the hell he was doing here. Last he'd heard he and his mother had been on a post high school graduation tour of Europe. Until that was he had abruptly run away to join a cult led by some guy called Vosegus – which was a downright weird name now that he thought about it – much to Aunt Maria's horror and despair. It was clear that something had happened to Nathan while he was in that cult, something major that had changed him in more ways than just giving him muscles that wouldn't look out of place on a professional bodybuilder.
"I don't know what he's doing here or how he became so buff as he was a six-foot beanpole last time I saw him," he continued mind awhirl with the revelation of who had led this sudden, and ultimately futile, attack on Fort Minotaur, "but his name is name is Nathan, Nathan Hunter – he's, my cousin."
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, I hope you all enjoyed the new version of the attack on Fort Minotaur and how some of the characters – especially Rick – were more involved. I also wanted to show more of what Nathan was like while under the control of the Prime persona created by Vosegus.
Front Gatehouse
Fort Minotaur, Crete
A Few Minutes Earlier
Private Adrian Campbell was bored.
As he had been every day for this last duty rotation, he was sitting here in the guard house watching the feeds from the sensors and cameras that monitored the perimeter of Fort Minotaur searching constantly for any threat to the base. It was a job that to his twenty-year-old mind was the textbook definition of boring. He had joined the military to add some spice, some excitement to his life, not to just sit around watching a bunch of monitors. If he had wanted to do that, do something so boring, he would have become an accountant like his elder brother was.
He glanced at the chronometer on the wall, noting that it was approaching 1400 hours. Another two hours of this tedium then I can clock off and I'm off on leave for a week then, he thought with a slight smile as he imagined the fun he was going to have over the next few days. While a week wasn't enough time to make his way back home to the small town in rural Pennsylvania where he'd grown up – global air travel had a long way to go before it recovered from the Rain as so many jetliners had been incinerated in transit during the Rain as the sky suddenly filled with lethal energy beams – there was time for him to really let his hair down. There were some nice pubs and nightclubs in downtown Heraklion, perfect places for a guy to unwind.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now as he picked up his mug of coffee. Only to find to his displeasure that the blasted thing was empty. Grumbling, he stood up and went over to the coffee machine and poured himself a fresh cup. He was just returning to his station with a fresh, well freshish, mug of the liquid that everyone in the military practically ran on – he was really going to have to change the filter soon as it was starting to taste a bit stale – when one of the perimeter sensors emitted a warning bleep.
"If it's a bloody rabbit again," he muttered as he sat down and pulled up the feed from the sensor. It was one of the camera feeds that was monitoring the approach road to the base. The blasted thing was hypersensitive and thus was forever getting tripped by rabbits or other small animals bounding across the road.
The camera feed appeared…
…and the mug of coffee slipped from this hand to shatter on the floor. He didn't notice as he was too busy staring at the camera feed in shock and horror. Walking up the road was what looked like an entire platoon of battle mecha, specifically a mixture of Spartan and Tomahawk destroids with what looked like two Monster destroids following slowly behind.
Quickly he sent an interrogative command to the computer, prompting it to both send an IFF request to the approaching mecha as well as checking if any of the bases mecha platoons were out today. As far as he knew nobody was out but that didn't necessarily mean anything. If Jeremy failed to tell me that someone was out when I took over from him, I'm so going to kick his ass, he thought as the results came back. There was nobody out today, certainly not in platoon strength, plus the destroids were not giving off UEDF IFF signals, or any IFF signals at all in point of fact. Which meant only one thing…
…they were hostile.
Instantly his training kicked in. Reaching out he pressed the alert button, setting alarms ringing throughout the base and bringing the automated perimeter defences fully online while also within the base causing personnel to begin scrambling to stations to defend themselves and the base. Simultaneously with sounding the alarm the control triggered blast shutters on the small kiosk-like room that was his station.
The shutters were just closing when he heard a whistling sound. A moment later he felt some tremendous force lift him up as if he weighed nothing, instead of a hundred and eighty pounds, and slam him into the far wall with enough force that he was instantly robbed of consciousness.
~~~///~~~
Pilots Ready Room
Rick Hunter laughed as the pilot sitting across from him finished telling him a little story about how he had humiliated a squadron of EBSIS Karyovins that had tried to intrude on European airspace. The rulers of the much reduced Soviet Union – whose partial collapse in the mid-nineties had been one of the major catalysts for the Global Civil War – had been getting bolder recently, pushing to reclaim those Eastern European countries that they had had to give independence to in the nineties as their nation teetered on the brink of complete collapse and anarchy. The problem was many of those countries were now part of the United Earth Government and had little interest in returning to communism.
Of course, that didn't stop EBSIS from trying to bully and intimidate them. The UEG was well aware of that and was making it a point to have their forces patrol the borderlands both in the air and on the ground. So far aside from the occasional staring match nothing violent had happened. EBSIS leaders weren't idiots they knew that the UEG had far superior firepower to them, that their vast nuclear arsenal meant nothing compared to the weapons they had, plus they also controlled the ultimate high ground of space and thus could easily rain particle beams or lasers down upon any hostile forces. It was one such encounter that the other pilot, Lieutenant Matheson, had just finished telling him about.
"Man, I would have loved to see the looks on those pilots faces when you switched to battloid in front of them," he commented.
"It would have been funny as it was they practically wet themselves," Matheson agreed chuckling even as he shook his head. Those EBSIS pilots had thought themselves so hot, thought that because they outnumbered him three to one that they could push his Valkyrie around. Until that was, he switched to battloid mode and grabbed the nose cone of the leaders fighter with one hand while pointing the GU-11 gunpod right at the head of the pilot. While he naturally hadn't been able to see his face because of the black visor the Russian had been scared almost out of his mind.
Rick chuckled again at that before taking a sip of fresh orange juice, which was one of the perks of being stationed here since there were a fair few citrus plantation on the island and taking a moment to look around the pilots ready room. There weren't many people here right now, most of the squadrons based here were either out on patrol right now – EBSIS wasn't the only state in this region that was pushing its luck recently so were those Islamic fundamentalists in charge of the United Islamic Republics – or were on leave. As a result there were only a handful of veritech pilots on the base. Pilots who had been quick to open their arms to him after he'd freshened up – being one of the top aces of the Robotech War and Skull Leader kind of helped there – and they'd spent the time since doing what military pilots inevitably did when they got together. Which was clown around and swap stories of their exploits. He had had the whole lot of them laughing when he told them what he did when he first came to Macross Island and in a dinky little fanjet racer outperformed four Valkyries in a simple booster climb aerial stunt.
It was at that moment that the emergency scramble alarm went off, accompanied by a base wide alert warning of approaching hostiles. Immediately the room turned into a beehive of activity as pilots hurriedly downed drinks and got to their feet. Rick hesitated as he finished his own drink, while his instincts as a combat pilot were telling him to go get on a flight suit and join whatever fight was about to start he wasn't sure if he should since he wasn't assigned here.
"Captain Hunter, would you care to join us," Lieutenant Young, the leader of the only squadron currently on the base said, approaching. "We have a few free Valkyrie's right now – I know it won't be Skull One but."
Rick smiled. "I'd love to," he replied, having missed being in the cockpit of a veritech. After all his last few flights had been sitting in the cockpit of a boring government jet. He stood up. "I'll just go get into a flight suit."
"I'll make sure a plane is ready for you."
"Thanks."
~~///~~
A Few Minutes Earlier
Sitting in the cockpit of his upgraded destroid a man who now only knew of, and thought of himself, as Prime due to both his rank in the service of Vosegus and the fact that he had been the first of his kind. A new kind of enhanced warrior that when his lord finally returned to the stars – after countless millennia of being forced to live on Earth, denied what should have rightfully been his – would sweep them clean of those who had condemned Vosegus to this existence and let their living god reign supreme as he always should have. It would be a righteous campaign and when Vosegus rose it would truly be a glorious day.
A day that had come unexpectedly much closer than anyone could have foreseen.
As he guided his Spartan destroid around a bend in the road, bringing the gates of Fort Minotaur into view though they were still someway off, Prime thought about the events that had precipitated this current, admittedly quite risky, deployment. A few days ago one of their sleeper agents had reported that after millennia of being lost this worlds chappa'ai – and with it easy access to the stars – had been found, found and brought to Fort Minotaur for analysis. Lord Vosegus had been searching for it for centuries, and indeed had quietly sponsored a number of expeditions to find it, and now it was almost within his grasp.
They just had to get it away from the infidels who currently had it. Which was why this platoon of destroids, that Lord Vosegus had acquired from other sleepers and upgraded with his divine knowledge, had been dispatched. They weren't alone more of his fellow followers – both Jafftari like himself or just humans – were coming in three transport planes to complete a takeover of the base. Planes that would also transport the chappa'ai away from here once they acquired it.
While he was fully confident that they would succeed in their mission – they had the power and blessing of a living god behind them after all – Prime had to admit, to himself at least, that this was not going to be an easy mission. The infidels after all had robotechnology based weapons such as laser and particle cannons, weapons that would make them a formidable opponent even for them. He also admitted that they wouldn't have the forces to hold the base for long, as the UEG was certain to quickly counterattack with forces no doubt being sent from Camelot Base located on the Salisbury Plane in the United Kingdon and if they were really unlucky the Zentraedi would send forces from their warships in orbit, but then they didn't need to.
A warning bleep from the computer brought him out of his thoughts. He looked at his screens and scowled when he noticed that a perimeter sensor around the base had been tripped and that the base was now sending an interrogative IFF signal to them. Damnation I was hoping we would get a bit closer before we were detected, he thought knowing that they had no way to give a 'friendly' answer since they lacked up to date information on UEDF IFF transponder codes, they were well protected and none of their lords operatives had been able to get close enough to acquire them without arousing suspicion.
As a result while he was irritated he wasn't particularly surprised when the energy emissions from the base suddenly began increasing as its defence systems began powering up. He resisted, just, the impulse to groan in annoyance. This was a complication that they could have well done without, but such was life.
"Monsters take out the main gates before they seal," he ordered, even as he observed large metal shutters made from a dense robotechnology alloy beginning to emerge from slots in the wall to seal the gates. If those shutters – made as they were from warship grade armour plating – successfully closed, then what was already going to be a difficult task would become near impossible.
He need not have worried as the two Monsters roared again. Eight 381mm heavy railgun slugs – each packing a plasma warhead – slammed into the shutters, four to each, and detonated. The yellow-white flash of plasma detonations momentarily blinded his external cameras but when he could see again the could see that they had done their job. The gatehouse next to the doors had broken and both shutters had been pulverized as had the gates beyond them…
…the way was open.
"All forces move in," he ordered calmly. "Head straight for the runways and surface to air batteries. We need to take them so our troop carriers can land." He did not need to say that they needed those troop carriers to be sure to take the base long enough to recover the Stargate. A chorus of affirmative's came from his fellows, and he began guiding his Spartan towards the entrance.
It was then however that things began to go wrong as the base defenders were clearly reacting far faster than they had expected they would. The first indication of this being when one of the perimeter turrets opened up on them, spewing rapid fire bolts of a blue-white particle energy towards them. One of the Tomahawk's was hit almost immediately and immediately staggered, an energy field flaring into existence around it as their lord's protection activated as the blasts tore at it. A second volley of charged particle bolts from the turret hit the staggering mecha and the field collapsed allowing the following volley to blow the destroid apart.
Growling in annoyance he aimed the modified gunpod he was holding in the Spartans hands at the turret and fired. Bolts of golden glowing, divine wrath blasted forth from the gunpod the plasma salvo crossing the distance to the turret almost immediately. Only to slam into a shimmering green wall that appeared in front of the turret and break apart in a blaze of sparks as a force field of some type stopped it cold. Pinpoint barrier how did we not know the base has those things, he thought in annoyance as he fired again a second Spartan joining in. The defence barrier flared, sparked, and crackled before finally giving way allowing the two streams of plasma fire to begin digging into the turret.
For a moment it looked like the turrets armour would hold, that somehow Vosegus had underestimated just how strong robotech armour was, then it gave way allowing the plasma to enter the vulnerable insides of the turret. With the predictable result that the turret exploded in a blaze of smoke and flames but not before firing on him, its charged particle bolt slamming into his shield like an energetic sledgehammer dropping the barrier strength by nearly a half from just one blast. The fusion reactor immediately began regenerating the defence even as he got his Spartan moving again, charging onto the base with the others.
They were immediately met with a wall of weapons fire ranging from small arms like laser pistols and rifles, to fixed turrets and even some of defensive garrison of destroids that were beginning to appear from their storage areas to confront the intruders. Shields glowed with orange-gold light but held so far as most of the weapons fire was too light to overwhelm them. Though that would change fast when heavier destroids and likely veritech fighters armed with plasma missiles got involved.
"Push forward," he ordered his fellows, "crush everyone in our way. For Vosegus."
"For Vosegus," his brothers in arms cried back. Prime smiled as they charged forward firing with everything they had, unleashing a relentless barrage of plasma, autocannon, railgun and missile fire upon these infidels, these enemies of their god. The wall of firepower pushed the still organising defenders back allowing the intruding warriors of Vosegus to expand their perimeter and push towards the first of their objectives – the surface to air missile batteries.
Then the bottom fell out on them.
The first sign of the fight turning against them was when four objects – Stiletto missiles – slammed into the first of the two Monsters just as it was lining up to fire on the SAM batteries. The first two plasma detonations cracked the shield, making it shatter in a blaze of prismatic light letting the next two slam into and punch through the layered titanium-hypercarbon armour to detonate within the mecha instantly turning it into a fireball. The speed of the Monsters destruction caught Prime by surprise and he looked around to see where the missiles had come from even as the second of their two Monsters suffered the same fate, erupting into a fireball.
A second later he saw them.
A squadron of veritechs in the hybrid fighter/battloid mode known as guardian mode streaking across the ground towards them. Missiles, nose lasers and GU-11 hypervelocity autocannon gunpods blazing as they closed in. They weren't alone following along behind them was a whole divisions worth of destroids – all of them looking as pissed off as machines could – and a squad of Centaur hover tanks. An overwhelming force if ever their was one.
For a moment Prime stared at them in stupefied, horrified astonishment. Then he cursed realizing that while their agent had provided them with the location of the Stargate and the general details of the base layout, they hadn't given them complete information on the bases defenders. Almost certainly because either they hadn't known or since then the defences had been upgraded to deter the likes of EBSIS or the UIR from trying anything stupid. There would now be no chance of taking this place even temporarily. Despair that he had failed in his mission, failed his god, threatened to overwhelm him at that revelation it almost made him want to just stand still and let the defenders kill him. Then his eyes narrowed, and he vowed that if he was going out then he would go out fighting – at least then he would earn a place of honour in the afterlife.
Thus, he started to bring the Spartan's gunpod to bear on one of the veritechs a moment before a missile slammed into him. The force of the impact knocked him back hard against his restraints and alarms went off warning that the warheads plasma blast had depleted his shield. Frantically he operated the controls managing just to keep the Spartan stable. However, in the process he dropped the gunpod.
Cursing softly to himself he flipped the switches to arm the chest gun cluster. Until that was, he saw the veritech had switched to battloid and was aiming its gunpod right at him. If the battloid fired now the autocannon rounds would shred him like tinfoil. Knowing that he only had once chance left to earn any honour in the afterlife, by taking an enemy with him into the great beyond, he charged forward intent on knocking the battloid over and lying on top of it. At which point he would fire everything in the chest gun cluster which would certainly destroy them both.
Unfortunately, the pilot seemed to read his intent. At the last possible moment, and with an agility that both showed the incredible organic-like movement abilities of robotech battle mecha and the fact that the pilot was extremely skilled in using his craft, dodging to the side allowing him to charge past unable to stop in time. The pilot then fired into the back of the Spartan at virtually point blank range, the hypervelocity rounds from the gunpod tearing first through the slowly regenerating shield, then the armour before seriously damaging the Spartans main power conduit.
Immediately the Spartans simple AI began powering the mecha down but it could only react so quickly. As a result for a moment a massive charge of electricity ran from the Spartans fusion power plant to the entire mecha including the cockpit module. Prime screamed in agony as the sudden surge of electrons rushed through his system bringing with it a tsunami of pain…
…followed by darkness as he lost consciousness.
~~~///~~~
Rick smiled as he watched the destroid that had attempted to suicide tackle him – really who did that? Not even the likes of Khyron would do such a thing as they knew such moves never worked – went inert after his shots destroyed the primary conduit that ran like a spinal cord up and down the back of the mecha. While the mecha had lost power, the simple AI it like all mecha would have having scrammed the fusion power plant that most destroids ran off, sensors confirmed that the pilot was alive just unconscious either from the impact with the ground, getting a massive shock as the damage to the conduit would have sent a massive overcharge through the machine or a combination of the two.
Calmly he looked around and assessed the rest of the battle to see that it was over. The destroids and veritechs that had reacted to defend Fort Minotaur from the sudden attack moving calmly through the wreckage of the attackers, much of which was smouldering and burning from the intense heat of particle beams, lasers, and plasma warheads. Ground troops in battle armour were also approaching, searching for survivors so they could learn who the hell these people had been, where they had come from and how there destroids came to be upgraded with energy shields and for the Spartans to be armed with some type of plasma rifle instead of the normal GU-11 gunpod.
A check of his sensors showed that there were no other survivors in the remains of the mecha. But then there rarely were survivors when battles were fought with the immense destructive power of modern weaponry. Robotech weapons just didn't tend to leave survivors. Whoever the pilot of the Spartan was, he or she was the only one who might be able to give them some answers as to the identity of the attackers and what the hell they had been hoping to accomplish.
Which was why he slung up the GU-11 like it was a giant rifle, before squatting down and flipping the Spartan over onto its back exposing the access to the pilots compartment. Extending the veritechs manipulation tools he accessed the external emergency controls causing the hatch to open and the chair holding the pilot to slide out. Carefully he picked up the unconscious pilot and gestured for some of the armour wearing marines to come over – which they promptly did.
"This one is still alive," he said, the external speakers relaying his voice clearly. "Though from the looks of him he's gotten one hell of an electric shock. Take him to the infirmary but keep him under heavy guard."
"Sir yes sir," one of the marines acknowledged as he set their prisoner down. He stepped back to watch as a combat medical team approached even as the marines searched their prisoner, extracting a strange, coiled serpent shaped device from a hip holster – its positioning indicating it was some kind of sidearm – along with a wicked looking knife – a kukri he noted – from a holster on the other hip. Then satisfied that their prisoner was disarmed turned him over to the combat medics.
He was about to turn away, to check over the rest of the battlefield, when the external cameras caught the marined removing the helmet, the guy was wearing – and from his extremely muscular build he was definitely a guy, an exceptionally fit one at that – and he saw his face…
…and gasped in shock and recognition.
"Sir are you alright," one of the marines, from the IFF his powered combat suit was giving off he was a lieutenant, asked having heard him gasp loud enough for the battloids internal microphones to pick it up. "Sir, do you recognise this guy?"
"I do indeed lieutenant," Rick replied at last, mind still reeling wondering what the hell he was doing here. Last he'd heard he and his mother had been on a post high school graduation tour of Europe. Until that was he had abruptly run away to join a cult led by some guy called Vosegus – which was a downright weird name now that he thought about it – much to Aunt Maria's horror and despair. It was clear that something had happened to Nathan while he was in that cult, something major that had changed him in more ways than just giving him muscles that wouldn't look out of place on a professional bodybuilder.
"I don't know what he's doing here or how he became so buff as he was a six-foot beanpole last time I saw him," he continued mind awhirl with the revelation of who had led this sudden, and ultimately futile, attack on Fort Minotaur, "but his name is name is Nathan, Nathan Hunter – he's, my cousin."
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, I hope you all enjoyed the new version of the attack on Fort Minotaur and how some of the characters – especially Rick – were more involved. I also wanted to show more of what Nathan was like while under the control of the Prime persona created by Vosegus.
Chapter Four
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Four
Secure Medical Section
Infirmary, Fort Minotaur
A Short Time Later
Rick Hunter stood quiet and alone before a sheet of one-way transparent glass – well not glass per say but permaglass, which despite its name was a form of superstrong transparent metal created through robotechnology and had nothing whatsoever to do with glass - watching as in the secure medical room beyond medical personnel both ran scans over Nathan as well as treated the burns on his hands which had been in contact with the Spartan's controls when his shots breached the main power bus causing Nathan to get a massive electric shock. What the hell has happened to you Nathan, he thought gazing at his cousin's unmoving form.
The medical personnel had stripped off the uniform that Nathan had been wearing – a uniform that looked almost like something you would see in a drama set in medieval Europe, or in some medieval fantasy story as it had included chainmail of all things, though the chainmail was made from a metal that they didn't immediately recognise – and removed a metallic wristband inset with several blue crystals from around his left wrist leaving him almost naked. Well aside from a pair of white, standard military issue boxer shorts that they'd put on him to protect his modesty. Seeing him near naked showed just how much Nathan had changed in the four and a half years since the day that he ran away while on holiday.
Back then Nathan had been a six-foot-tall hundred and fifty-six pound beanpole, which had made him the star of his old High Schools basketball team, preparing to go to college on a basketball scholarship. Now he was still six foot tall but was in no way a beanpole as to say he was muscular would have been one hell of an understatement. Frankly it looked like he had had a body transplant from Arnold Schwarzenegger. While he wasn't into bodybuilding himself – he only lifted weights for general fitness reasons, though he knew Ben Dixon had been somewhat into the sport as was Claudia's younger brother Vince – Rick knew that it should not have been possible, even with the aid of anabolic steroids, for Nathan to have gained this much muscle mass in just three and a half years. Especially as Nathan had a very fast metabolism that made it impossible for him to put any major amount of weight on, no matter how much he ate.
Beyond his massively, impossibly changed physique he had to wonder what else had happened to Nathan. His cousin had always been a pacifist, far more than he had ever been himself though he had considered himself a pacifist until that fateful space fold dumped the SDF-1 out near Pluto, with even the thought of hurting others being enough to make him feel physically ill. Heck, he knew from Aunt Maria that on more than one occasion Nathan had gotten upset when he'd inadvertently hurt members of either his own or the opposing basketball team during a match. There was certainly no way he would have ever voluntarily climbed into a destroid and piloted it during combat, let alone carried as wicked looking a knife as a kukri or wear a sidearm – even one so bizarrely shaped as like his aunt Nathan had hated guns. For much the same reason as Nathan's father had been shot dead in a drive by shooting a few months before he'd been due to marry Aunt Maria. Uncle Thomas hadn't even been doing anything, just been walking between a car park and a shop to pick up some milk when some crooks – running from the police – had fired into the crowded sidewalk to distract the cops and let them slip away in the ensuing panic.
Whatever had happened to him he knew it was related to the events four and a half years ago when, during a post-graduation climbing tour of Europe, Nathan had abruptly run away from where he had been staying in Northern Italy with Aunt Maria. Leaving only a note to say he had been called to join a group ending it with saying something that if he remembered right sounded downright freaky and cult-like something about a guy calling himself Vosegus being almighty and the source of all light. Whatever that had meant as it hadn't sounded like Nathan at all though the note had definitely been in his handwriting.
The sound of the door opening brought him out of his thoughts. He glanced over to see Claudia coming in, she was alone presumably having left Doctor Jackson to begin his work on deciphering the cover stone hieroglyphs. Which would hopefully tell them what the hell that naquada ring was, what its function was and why had their ancestors buried it beneath the Giza plateau all those millennia ago.
"Hey Claudia," he said in greeting as she closed the door. "I thought you were with Doctor Jackson?"
"I was but he's gotten to work on the hieroglyph translations, so I've left him to it," Claudia replied as she walked up and looked through the window herself. Despite herself she was shocked by the changes the person on the bed had to have gone through. "My God is that really Nathan? What the fuck has happened to him?"
"It is and I have no idea," Rick answered looking back through the glass. He wasn't surprised that Claudia knew all about Nathan as he knew Roy had told her as Roy had been as shocked and horrified as the rest of them when he'd been told that Nathan had run off to join some kind of cult, leaving his mother – who he had previously been completely devoted to - alone and frantic in a small town in the foothills of Italy's Dolomite Mountains. As he recalled Pops, despite his failing health, had had to fly to Italy to get his younger sister and bring the distraught woman home.
"All I do know is that whatever has happened to him that cult he ran off to join has had to have something to do with it," he added.
"I still can't believe that Nathan did that," Claudia admitted with a shake of her head, "from what Roy told me he was always so committed to his mother."
"He was which is why running off like he did and becoming whatever, he is now? It's completely out of character for him."
"Do you think he was drugged or something," Claudia asked knowing there were any number of drugs in the world that could be used, or rather misused, to make someone vulnerable to suggestions. That number had only grown in the years since the SDF-1 first fell to Earth, bringing with her knowledge of biology that far surpassed anything they'd known before. Though as the existence of the Zentraedi showed they still had a long way to go before they understood even a fraction of the secrets that had been contained within the now half destroyed battlefortress.
Rick shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted before noticing that the doctor who had been leading the medical team was leaving the secure room and that the rest of the medical team seemed to have finished, but not before restraining Nathan on the bed so he wouldn't be able to escape should he happen to wake up. "But looks like we might be about to get some answers."
Claudia nodded she had seen the same thing as Rick had. Thus, they both turned to look at the door to the observation room, a moment before it opened, and the doctor came in. She was a relatively short woman with reddish brown hair that was now streaked through with greys, though despite her small stature – or perhaps because of it – she had an extremely commanding, but at the same time matronly, demeanour that would probably make even the toughest soldier bow to her wishes. The door slid closed behind her, and the doctor blinked in surprise clearly having expected only one person to be in the room.
"Captain Hunter?" she asked.
"Yes," Rick replied.
"I'm Doctor Janet Fraiser, CMO of Fort Minotaur," the doctor replied, "may I speak with you a moment it's about your cousin?"
"It's alright doc you can speak with Claudia here," Rick answered guessing that the doctor was, understandably, reluctant to discuss a family matter with a stranger present. Hence why he hastened to reassure her. "If my brother Roy hadn't been killed in the war Claudia here would have been my sister-in-law by now."
"Oh, I see," Doctor Fraiser replied looking a little relieved before beginning to deliver her report. "We have finished treating his electrical burns with regen packs. They should be fully healed by this time tomorrow with no scarring. In the process we did a thorough physiological and neurological scan. What they revealed is surprising and very concerning."
"What do you mean," Rick asked, even as Claudia moved up to flank him before gently slipping a supportive hand into one of his own. Somehow, through woman's intuition perhaps, she knew that Rick was probably not going to like what he was about to hear and would need all the comfort he could get less he suddenly do a very good impression of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii. Especially as Nathan was one of the few family members that he had left given Mitchell 'Pops' Hunter had died due to a sudden, massive heart attack a year before the planned launch date of the SDF-1 and Roy had perished during the Robotech War.
"Nathan has been biologically altered to an incredible degree," Fraiser explained, "his bones, muscles and connective tissues are considerably denser than that of a normal human being, we have found traces of a synthetic protein complex herculextin in his muscles presumably that was the agent used to either induce rapid hypertrophy or is partially responsible for the increased density or maybe a combination of the two. I cannot be sure as the herculextin drug was not meant to be used in this fashion, it was after all created to offset the wasting effects of such diseases as muscular dystrophy."
"Isn't herculextin highly regulated," Claudia asked, she had some passing familiarity with the drug which had been developed fairly recently having only been licensed for use – under very strict conditions – about six months before the fateful launch of the SDF-1. As she recalled Vince's wife Jean had enthused about it and its potential to help sufferers of muscular dystrophy and other muscle wasting diseases that they could not yet cure.
"It is," Doctor Fraiser confirmed with a nod. "How whoever used it on Nathan for this purpose, and how they got the drug to produce these kinds of extreme results I don't know as it should not be possible. But that is not all we found."
"Go on," Rick said with a nod.
"There are large amounts of unknown biological organism present in every single tissue in his body but with special focus on the neurological system. Whatever it is the organism is dead now, presumably killed by the electric shock, and is both breaking down and being removed by normal metabolic processes."
"What do you think its purpose was," Rick asked though even as he did, so he had a very, very good idea what it had been meant to do. What it had done to Nathan as it would explain why he ran off like he did and the very uncharacteristic way in which his normally atheist cousin had spoken in his note.
"I am not sure but given that the organism is especially present in the neurological system I suspect that it was some kind of mind altering or mind controlling organism. Almost certainly bioengineered for just that purpose. However, that is not the only thing we found when we scanned the neurological system."
"What did you find," Rick asked knowing somehow that he wasn't going to like this. Hell, he didn't like what he had been told so far.
"Our tests have shown signs that someone, who I do not know as I would like to throttle them for doing it, has used a neuro-somatic imprinter on him."
Rick frowned. "What's one of those when it's about?" he asked even as Claudia gasped in horror, drawing a worried look from Rick as it was immediately obvious that Claudia knew what a neuro-somatic imprinter was. Knew and was horrified by it.
"They were found aboard the SDF-1 Rick during the ships reconstruction," Claudia explained, "as far as we understand it, they're devices designed to impart information and possibly even programming into a person's mind. Now that I think about it it's probably what the Robotech Masters used on the Zentraedi to make them into warriors. When it was realized what the things we found were, what they could be used for the Defence Council ordered that they immediately be locked away never to see the light of day again given the potential for misuse that came with them."
As she spoke Rick felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach. He almost didn't want to know what this could mean but knew he had to. It would be better for him to do it than Aunt Maria who they would have to call. "So, what does it mean for Nathan?"
"It means captain that he has been essentially reprogrammed," Fraiser said softly, sadly. "Our scans indicate that there is essentially another personality overwritten on top of what his original personality was. It's not erased it, we can still detect the original pattern as the artificial one sticks out like a sore thumb, but it has completely suppressed it."
"So, Nathan…" Rick started to say before stopping voice choking as he couldn't bring himself to say the words.
"Isn't Nathan right now," Fraiser finished for him.
"Is there anything that can be done for him," Rick asked after a moment, glancing back into the examination room where Nathan lay out cold on the bed. "Can the imprint be removed?"
"It can be erased yes which would in theory allow Nathan's original neural patterns to re-establish themselves," Fraiser told him, "Though I will need an imprinter device to reverse the effect and we do not have one here right now."
"Leave getting one of those to me doctor," Claudia replied knowing that once she explained this to Admiral Gloval one of those imprinters would be on its way here within hours at most. "But something tells me it won't be that simple."
"No, it won't," Fraiser admitted. "We can remove the imprint and whatever artificial personality its constructed, but Nathan will still remember everything that he did while under its influence. Possibly not all at once but he will remember and that is going to be extremely traumatic."
"But he'll be himself again," Rick asked.
"As well as anyone can be in this situation. The personality will be gone, but an echo of it is sure to remain in his subconscious if nothing else."
"So, what's our next move?".
"I am going to keep Nathan sedated until the imprinter arrives. It will prevent whoever he is right now from causing us any trouble or make any escape attempts," Fraiser answered before pausing. "I would advise however that we attempt to locate any other family just in case we can't remove the imprint or whoever has done this has put in place some kind of booby trap to kill him in the event of the imprint being removed that we cannot detect."
"Aside from me the only family Nathan has is his mother my Aunt Maria," Rick replied. "She lives in a small town in the Rockies about an hour or so's drive outside of Denver. It's still there as I have checked in on her a few times since the Rain."
"We'll have to arrange for someone to go and get her," Claudia commented, she already knew who Admiral Gloval would send to get Maria Hunter when he was told about this. "I'll see to that after I am done speaking with the admiral and arranging for the imprinter to be sent here."
"Thanks Claudia."
"You're welcome, Rick," Claudia responded before looking back at Doctor Fraiser. "Is there anything else we need to know right now Doctor?"
"No that's it," the doctor answered, "so if you would excuse me, I need to file my report on this both with Colonel Kowalski and with the Defence Council."
"Of course, doctor."
Doctor Fraiser nodded, then turned and left leaving them alone.
"We should go ourselves Rick," Claudia said softly. "The Council is sure to want your report on the battle a few hours ago."
"Can you give me a few minutes on my own first Claudia?"
"Sure, just don't be too long," Claudia replied with a nod. "And Rick if you want to talk about this after…"
"Thanks Claudia, I'll probably take you up on that."
Claudia nodded then left the room herself leaving Rick alone. Rick for his part walked up to the window and looked back into the secure examination room, especially focusing on where Nathan lay asleep on the examination bed. To say that he was angry by what had been done to Nathan, one of the gentlest, kindest souls he'd ever known would have been an understatement. For a moment he gave in to the rage and banged hard once on the glass making it momentarily vibrate and producing a loud bang. Closing his eyes he took a few deep breaths, pushing down the fierce Hunter temper as it would do him or Nathan any good to give into it, before opening his eyes again facial features showing no sign of the rage that burned like molten lava in his veins. Silently he vowed that he would find who did this to Nathan…
…find and kill them.
~~~///~~~
United Earth Defence Council
United Earth Defence Command, New Macross City
North American Quadrant, A Short Time Later
"Are you sure a neuro-somatic imprinter has been used on your prisoner?"
Sitting in the chairman's position UEG Defence Secretary Ian Anderson stared in shocked surprise at the image on the screens of Major Grant, Captain Hunter, and Doctor Fraiser. He was of course familiar with what neuro-somatic imprinters were, he had been informed of their existence when he had taken up his current position, and like everyone else who had heard about them he'd recoiled in horror at the thought of what they could actually be used, or rather misused, for.
"I am sure mister secretary," Doctor Fraiser replied. "The neural scan is clear there is a different personality in charge of the body than there should be. A personality that has been artificially created and imposed, suppressing the original neural pattern and with it the personality of Nathan Hunter. An in-depth analysis of the neural pattern shows that the original pattern is still there but completely suppressed."
"So, you are thinking that if the imprint is removed then the original personality will resurface," Anderson asked.
"She is not wrong," Exedore said softly, quietly horrified by what this imprinter had been used for, "there is a setting on an imprinter that can remove any artificially implanted knowledge or memory and certainly an artificial personality matrix as well. Though to the best of my knowledge the Robotech Masters never actually used it to create an entire artificial personality, it was one of the few moral boundaries that they refuse to cross and impose it on someone. Modify a personality to be more pliant to whatever they wanted yes but not completely suppress one."
"Do we have any imprinters in storage," Anderson asked inwardly shivering at the knowledge that even the Robotech Masters considered what had been done to Nathan Hunter to be utterly immoral. Everything they knew about them – which truth be told was not that much – indicated that they were ruthless and imperialistic. For someone like that to consider something morally abhorrent meant that it had to truly be a terrible thing to do.
"Over a hundred units were recovered from the SDF-1," Gloval explained, "they are stored in several different high-security locations around the globe. The closest stored units to Fort Minotaur are to the best of my knowledge in an old slate quarry in North Wales. There was another storage facility outside Naples, but it was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the aftermath of the Rain."
Grimaces flew around the meeting table at the Russian man's words. Numerous volcanoes around the world had erupted in the immediate aftermath of the Rain, due to quantum energy from the reflex blasts penetrating to their magma chambers and destroyed cities that hadn't been hit by the beams. Cities like Naples. Though they were fortunate that none of the worlds supervolcanoes had gone up though Yellowstone had given everyone a few scares before the caldera settled back down.
"Arrange for one to be sent to Fort Minotaur," Anderson ordered.
"Yes sir."
"What interests me is how did Captain Hunter's cousin got exposed to one not to mention how he came to be so dramatically altered," Colonel Matthews said.
"I suspect sir that it was the cult that he ran off to join four and a half years ago who did it to him," Rick replied, his voice calm but anyone who knew him could see the rage hidden behind his eyes. It was understandable and it definitely promised pain for someone.
"A cult?" Anderson asked.
"Yeah, four and a half years ago Nathan and my Aunt Maria were on a post-graduation combined climbing and hiking tour of Europe," Rick explained, "they had been about to go hiking along some of the World War One trails cut into the Dolomites when something happened."
"What was it," Gloval asked gently, sensing that this was a delicate issue for the younger man, drawing up memories that were bound to be painful.
"Nathan went out one evening to a party. When he returned from what Aunt Maria said he was behaving strangely, almost spaced sir," Rick replied, a look of concentration on his face as he tried to remember the events in question. "Aunt Maria thought he'd been slipped ecstasy or some other recreational drug, so she left him in his hotel room to sleep it off. However, when the next morning came Nathan was gone. He had left a note saying he had been called to join the service of someone called Vosegus who he claimed was almighty and the source of all light."
"Well that certainly sounds cult-like," Matthews commented with a frown of confusion and concern. "Did the Italian authorities search for him?"
"They did," Rick confirmed. "They didn't find him. They also let slip that it wasn't the first time this had happened in the months before and after Nathan vanished more than a dozen young men and women had vanished in similar circumstances. All of them leaving something behind that referred to this Vosegus character."
"We did discover a previously unknown biological organism in all of Nathan's bodily tissues but especially focused on the neurological system. I believe it was some kind of mind control agent," Fraiser replied, "or some other type of conditioning agent. It was likely introduced in tablet form at the party he went to. Whatever it was it is dead now, certainly killed by the massive electric shock he suffered, and is leaving the body through normal biological processes."
"We really need to look into this Vosegus business," Matthews commented.
"Agreed. Colonel, have our intelligence people get to work on finding out anything they can about this Vosegus character," Anderson ordered.
"I will begin at once sir. I already have people working to find out where the destroids that attacked Fort Minotaur came from, which from what Captain Hunter said is likely related to this Vosegus business."
"That is concerning," Anderson admitted. "Now onto another related matter. Do we have a damage and casualty assessment for Fort Minotaur?"
"We do sir," an exhausted, but very unhappy looking, General Micah Richards said from his own screen. He hadn't been happy to get back from the birth of his first grandchild to find that his base had been attacked by unknown hostiles.
"Please detail it for us general," Anderson ordered.
Richards nodded and began explaining the extent of the thankfully, relatively light damage and casualties that Fort Minotaur had sustained in the attack. As he spoke and detailed everything every member of the defence council looked at each other silently deciding that whoever was behind the attack on the base – be it this Vosegus or someone else – they had revealed themselves to be a potentially very dangerous enemy.
One that they would need to quickly find and eliminate.
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Vosegus allowed himself a small smile as he gazed upon the contents of the tank sitting in the main laboratory of the base that he had painstakingly built over the last few decades. Slowly, carefully expanding an ancient, long forgotten mine into a series of chambers and levels that now housed many followers – far more than the small Alpine-style villa he had on the surface could have ever comfortably managed – and everything they and he needed. Everything from barracks to armouries, training rooms to hydroponic and aquaponic facilities allowing them to be completely self-sufficient food production wise. There was also a motor bay housing various vehicles including some of the admittedly quite impressive destroids that the humans of this world had created to battle the Zentraedi – he'd just had to modify a few things and install shielding as unlike his starfaring brethren, Anubis curse them, he didn't have a limitless army to throw at his opponents – as well as laboratories like this one and.
Calmly he glanced at the readings on the clone floating in its tank. It was almost ready; another few days and the clone would be ready to be decanted from his tank and be ready for him to transfer into. He honestly couldn't wait as this body was really beginning to show and feel its age, even Goa'uld healing abilities had their limits when it came to sustaining a host – especially if like him you didn't have a sarcophagus to help you, when the Goa'uld had ruled here he had not been high-ranked enough to have one – and he had been inhabiting this body for a few centuries now having acquired this host during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars. Excellent, he thought with a smile of pure pleasure, especially as he had been able to tailor make the new body to suit his specifications.
Something that until a few short years ago would have been impossible. Now though, with the alien cloning technology that he had covertly acquired through both highly placed agents and your average useful idiot, from the SDF-1, it was fully possible. And he had taken full advantage of it to create a host that would be ideally suited to house him for the next couple of centuries at the very least. He looked over at where one of his more scientifically inclined minions was waiting patiently to be noticed.
"How long until the clone is ready," he asked.
"The clone will be ready to be decanted within the next two days my lord," the scientist answered, keeping their eyes aimed at the floor. "Once decanted we will need to run some minor but necessary functionality tests but if all those go as they should it will be ready for your august presence within three days."
"Very good keep me appraised of your progress."
"Yes, my lord."
Vosegus took one last look at his soon-to-be host before turning and left the laboratory. Calmly he walked through the corridors of the subterranean base. It took him only a few moments to make his way to his throne room where he made himself comfortable on the throne where he planned to wait for news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. He had sent his best warriors in two waves, with the first wave being personally commanded by the first of their kind – the Jaftari - he had made, to attack the base, seize the Stargate before the UEDF could figure out what it was that had landed in their lap and bring it back here to his current base. While he fully expected them to be victorious he was aware that the attack on the base was a risk, a very big risk as he harboured no illusions about just how powerful the UEDF were and thus how formidable a for they would be. However it was a risk that he felt that he had to take as getting the gate under his control would mean he could finally begin to plan a long delayed, long thought impossible revenge upon Ra and the other System Lords for abandoning him here to die all those millennia ago.
While he waited for news, be it of success or defeat, he decided to indulge in one of his guilty pleasures. "Elena," he called out.
Immediately his current lotaur appeared before him. "Yes, my lord?" she asked.
"Bring me a latte you know how I like it."
"As you wish my lord."
Vosegus watched with a pleased smile as the very plain looking slave, whose bland looks were completely opposite to her competence, left the throne room to fix him the drink he had requested. He had to admit that he had become quite fond of coffee especially in the last hundred years or so. When he had the chappa'ai in his possession, and was at last able to escape this planet, it was honestly one of the things about Earth that he would miss the most.
While he waited for Elena to return with his drink, he entertained himself with thoughts of what he would do to the System Lords when he was ready to make his move. It would take a while to get ready, even though his troops had much better weapons than your average Jaffa – assuming something hadn't changed in that area over his long exile – and would make use of armoured vehicles not to mention battle mecha like the destroids – the one upside of having spent six millennia on this wretched planet was he had learned a great deal about how to properly wage a war – he knew that Ra and all the other System Lords would not be defeated and made to bow to him easily. It would therefore be all the sweeter when he finally deposed them and took all their power – and with it control of the Goa'uld Empire – for himself.
Maybe he would even let them live to serve him as new under lords, much as he had been to Camulus before the great uprising. It would be a fitting punishment for those who had left him here to die.
The sound of approaching footsteps caught his attention and he looked up. To see that Elena was returning with a tray on top of which sat a glass mug filled with the mixture of espresso coffee and steamed milk that was a latte. It had been thoroughly mixed, indicating that the slave had put in the amount of sugar he preferred and had mixed it for him.
"Your latte my lord," Elena said.
"Thank you, Elena," he replied taking the glass from her, feeling the familiar warmth of the liquid through the glass. Elena nodded back and moved to stand off to one side, to await his next command or to take the mug away when he was finished. Leaning back against the padding of his throne – making a mental note to get the back cushion replaced as he was starting to feel the springs – Vosegus enjoyed the simple pleasure of drinking his latte.
He had just finished and handed the mug back to Elena when someone knocked on his throne room door. "Enter," he called, hoping that this was at last news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. The large doors to the throne room opened and the head of his praetorian guard came in.
"My lord I have news of the attack on Fort Minotaur."
"Have we been victorious? Is the chappa'ai on its way here as we speak?"
The guard grimaced, which immediately set alarm bells ringing in Vosegus' head. "I am afraid not my lord," the guard replied at last. "The first attack wave was defeated within minutes; they managed to breach the perimeter and make it onto the base before being overwhelmed and defeated."
Vosegus shot to his feet. "WHAT!" he thundered making both the guard and Elena shake as they could feel their god's anger. "How did this happen?"
"My lord I am afraid that the perimeter defences were stronger and quicker to react than anticipated. The mobile forces available on the base were also quick to respond with both destroids and veritech fighters."
Well, that would explain it, Vosegus thought with a mental grimace. While the upgrades he'd made to the destroids he'd acquired – the chaos that had immediately followed the orbital bombardment that the people of this world had poetically started calling the Rain of Death had been quite beneficial for his goals – were formidable they were far from invulnerable. He had already come to understand that when robotech weaponry was involved there was nothing that was truly invincible, robotechnology weapons especially the energy weapons were just too powerful. "I see. And the second wave?"
"My lord they were forced to turn back and will reach their staging area soon," the guard answered, "no doubt as a response to the initial attack the base had gone to full alert. There was an aggressive combat air patrol of Valkyrie's in place in the airspace around the base, in addition long range scans showed that all the bases surface to air missile and energy batteries had been fully charged. If our transports had attempted to approach the base they would have been shot out of the sky in moments."
"I see. Make sure those pilots are punished I do not tolerate cowardice in the face of the enemy."
"But my lord…" the guard started to say only for Vosegus to raise his kara'kesh and fire a low level repulsor blast at the guard, prompting him to scream as he was picked up by the rippling wave of distorted gravity and slammed hard into the wall next to the door.
"Do not argue with me again or I will not be so merciful with you next time," Vosegus warned as the guard groaned and picked himself up, wincing indicating that he had gathered a number of bruises.
"Forgive me my lord."
"I will this time but if you argue with me again."
"I understand my lord."
"Is there anything else?"
The guard hesitated; he really didn't want to be on the receiving end of his god's wrath again. "I'm afraid so my lord," he said at last. "Our contact in the support staff of the Defence Council has reported that Prime wasn't killed during the attack. Instead, his destroid was disabled, resulting in him both sustaining a massive electric shock due to the main power bus being damaged and being taken unconscious to the base medical facilities. A subsequent examination has revealed the presence of the personality you created for him my lord, there are plans being put into place to remove it."
"I see," Vosegus replied, inwardly frowning at this news. It was not good news; the electric shock would have certainly killed the unique variant of the nish'ta organism he used to gather his followers and ensure their initial loyalty. The fact that they had also detected the neural imprint, and were planning to remove it, was also not good and he didn't doubt that they would be able to do so as he knew that there were more neuro-somatic imprinters out there than the two he had acquired via mafia contacts from the storage facility in Naples – well before it was destroyed by the massive eruption of the volcano Vesuvius that had occurred only a few weeks after the Rain of Death. No this was not good news…
…in fact, it was downright disastrous given what Prime, as the first of the Jafftari, knew about his operations and his plans.
"Is our contact on the base still uncompromised?" he asked.
"I believe so my lord."
"Get in contact with him. He is to infiltrate the medical section of the base once there he is to go to Prime and kill him."
"As you wish my lord."
"Now leave me both of you."
The guard bowed and left, moving quickly sensing the great wrath that was building up inside his lord. Elena did the same leaving Vosegus alone in the throne room. For a few moments the Goa'uld stood there, feeling his rage at this defeat grow stronger and stronger, especially given how it potentially could undo everything that he had worked so hard to build. Oh there was hope that his agent on the base would be able to kill Prime before they removed the personality imprint – allowing the original personality to resurface, a personality that would no longer have any loyalty to him due to the death of the nish'ta and would certainly want revenge for what he had been for the last few years – but he also had to prepare for the possibility that the agent would fail and be either captured or killed, especially as the base was now certainly on a full security alert.
Just thinking about it made his rage reach a climax and with a roar of pure fury Vosegus raised his kara'kesh and fired a full strength repulsor blast at the far wall. The blast impacted with an explosive crack and triggered an explosion of dust and small stones as part of the wall was pulverized. He fired twice more, carving out a deep crater in the wall before his rage – and a sizeable chunk of his energy as using a kara'kesh so rapidly at such a high setting was extremely draining – was finally spent. On slightly staggering legs he walked back to his throne, sat down, and began to both brood and plan…
…plan how to deal with this setback and possibly eventually turn it to his advantage.
~~~///~~~
Ascended Planes
That Same Time
Staring at what would, to a human if they'd seen it, appear to be a pool of water in a stone font the ascended being watched the Goa'uld as, his temper tantrum over, he/it sat down on its throne and began to brood. The being was almost amused by what he could sense – even from this place that had been his home for a few years now ever since Oma had helped him ascend – compared to some of the those he had dealt with in his mortal life the Goa'uld was an amateur at creating plans for domination and turning setbacks to his advantage.
Running a hand through the pool he dismissed the image of the Goa'uld and brought up a new image. One of a familiar – but now badly beat up – ship floating in the middle of a lake. He had honestly been surprised to find that the ship had survived, he had thought it would have been lost forever in the endless void of intergalactic space. But it seemed fate had had other ideas and a race had paid a terrible price in blood for its survival, as had the Zentraedi in point of fact.
It now fell to him to decide what he should do about it. On one hand he could destroy it, especially what was still hidden deep within it hermetically sealed off from normal space-time by a phase displacement field powered by the very device it was concealing, but on the other hand he could show the people of Earth how to access it and the secrets concealed within that section. Though he had been so far impressed by what he had seen of them, they appeared to be a generally level-headed people and far more forgiving of the Zentraedi for Dolza's attack than any other race he'd ever encountered in his long life would have been, he knew that nobody was truly above temptation. Did he really want to unleash protoculture on this galaxy as he had on the one, he had once called home?
Given that they would soon certainly unlock the secrets of the Stargate he also had to factor in the fact that the Goa'uld might learn of protoculture, learn of it, and try to take it for themselves. And he shuddered to think what they would do with it if they got their parasitic, eternally power-hungry hands on it. What they could do would make the evil perpetuated from his discovery by Nimuul and the other self-proclaimed Robotech Masters pale into insignificance. Thus, revealing it to the people of Earth would be a terrible risk, but on the other hand the matrix, the flowers, and the other secrets he had hidden in that part of his former flagship would give the Terran race the means to defend themselves properly against any who threatened them be they the Goa'uld, the Robotech Masters or even the Invid who he knew were still endlessly searching for the flowers.
"Why do I do this to myself," Zor Derelda asked himself with a sigh.
"Maybe because you are a glutton for punishment," a familiar amused male voice said from behind him.
"Or it is just the universes way of testing you," an equally familiar female voice added.
Rolling his eyes slightly Zor turned to see two other ascended beings standing there. Two very familiar ascended beings. "What are you two doing here," he asked gazing at both Oma and Janus.
"Can't someone just drop in on a friend," Janus asked only to get slapped on the arm by Oma. It naturally didn't hurt him as while they saw each other as physical beings none of them were.
"Yeah, right pull the other one Janus," Zor replied sarcastically causing the other male ascended being to laugh.
"Alright, alright I'm just trying to inject a little levity here," Janus complained. "But really we're here for you."
"You have decision to make Zor," Oma added. "We both thought it would be helpful if you talked it over with us first. Maybe we'll help you find a path that otherwise you would not be able to see."
"I'd like that. But first let's take this somewhere a bit more comfortable," Zor replied before he waved a hand and suddenly everything around them changed from an ornamental stone font in a garden into a recreation of the living room of the house in Tiresia that he had lived in with his late father Zol, before he'd travelled to Optera, discovered protoculture and inadvertently started something that had set his native galaxy on fire. Silently the three ascended beings found seats and made themselves comfortable…
…then they began to talk.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well that's the redo of this chapter completed. I am sure you have noticed that the original central section of the chapter has gone – this is because it really wasn't adding anything to the story like it was originally meant to and I couldn't think of any means of continuing to include it so I removed it – and that the first interlude has now been integrated into the chapter. This is because I have a new longer arc planned for everyone's favourite ascended Tirolian. What that is you will have to wait and see.
Secure Medical Section
Infirmary, Fort Minotaur
A Short Time Later
Rick Hunter stood quiet and alone before a sheet of one-way transparent glass – well not glass per say but permaglass, which despite its name was a form of superstrong transparent metal created through robotechnology and had nothing whatsoever to do with glass - watching as in the secure medical room beyond medical personnel both ran scans over Nathan as well as treated the burns on his hands which had been in contact with the Spartan's controls when his shots breached the main power bus causing Nathan to get a massive electric shock. What the hell has happened to you Nathan, he thought gazing at his cousin's unmoving form.
The medical personnel had stripped off the uniform that Nathan had been wearing – a uniform that looked almost like something you would see in a drama set in medieval Europe, or in some medieval fantasy story as it had included chainmail of all things, though the chainmail was made from a metal that they didn't immediately recognise – and removed a metallic wristband inset with several blue crystals from around his left wrist leaving him almost naked. Well aside from a pair of white, standard military issue boxer shorts that they'd put on him to protect his modesty. Seeing him near naked showed just how much Nathan had changed in the four and a half years since the day that he ran away while on holiday.
Back then Nathan had been a six-foot-tall hundred and fifty-six pound beanpole, which had made him the star of his old High Schools basketball team, preparing to go to college on a basketball scholarship. Now he was still six foot tall but was in no way a beanpole as to say he was muscular would have been one hell of an understatement. Frankly it looked like he had had a body transplant from Arnold Schwarzenegger. While he wasn't into bodybuilding himself – he only lifted weights for general fitness reasons, though he knew Ben Dixon had been somewhat into the sport as was Claudia's younger brother Vince – Rick knew that it should not have been possible, even with the aid of anabolic steroids, for Nathan to have gained this much muscle mass in just three and a half years. Especially as Nathan had a very fast metabolism that made it impossible for him to put any major amount of weight on, no matter how much he ate.
Beyond his massively, impossibly changed physique he had to wonder what else had happened to Nathan. His cousin had always been a pacifist, far more than he had ever been himself though he had considered himself a pacifist until that fateful space fold dumped the SDF-1 out near Pluto, with even the thought of hurting others being enough to make him feel physically ill. Heck, he knew from Aunt Maria that on more than one occasion Nathan had gotten upset when he'd inadvertently hurt members of either his own or the opposing basketball team during a match. There was certainly no way he would have ever voluntarily climbed into a destroid and piloted it during combat, let alone carried as wicked looking a knife as a kukri or wear a sidearm – even one so bizarrely shaped as like his aunt Nathan had hated guns. For much the same reason as Nathan's father had been shot dead in a drive by shooting a few months before he'd been due to marry Aunt Maria. Uncle Thomas hadn't even been doing anything, just been walking between a car park and a shop to pick up some milk when some crooks – running from the police – had fired into the crowded sidewalk to distract the cops and let them slip away in the ensuing panic.
Whatever had happened to him he knew it was related to the events four and a half years ago when, during a post-graduation climbing tour of Europe, Nathan had abruptly run away from where he had been staying in Northern Italy with Aunt Maria. Leaving only a note to say he had been called to join a group ending it with saying something that if he remembered right sounded downright freaky and cult-like something about a guy calling himself Vosegus being almighty and the source of all light. Whatever that had meant as it hadn't sounded like Nathan at all though the note had definitely been in his handwriting.
The sound of the door opening brought him out of his thoughts. He glanced over to see Claudia coming in, she was alone presumably having left Doctor Jackson to begin his work on deciphering the cover stone hieroglyphs. Which would hopefully tell them what the hell that naquada ring was, what its function was and why had their ancestors buried it beneath the Giza plateau all those millennia ago.
"Hey Claudia," he said in greeting as she closed the door. "I thought you were with Doctor Jackson?"
"I was but he's gotten to work on the hieroglyph translations, so I've left him to it," Claudia replied as she walked up and looked through the window herself. Despite herself she was shocked by the changes the person on the bed had to have gone through. "My God is that really Nathan? What the fuck has happened to him?"
"It is and I have no idea," Rick answered looking back through the glass. He wasn't surprised that Claudia knew all about Nathan as he knew Roy had told her as Roy had been as shocked and horrified as the rest of them when he'd been told that Nathan had run off to join some kind of cult, leaving his mother – who he had previously been completely devoted to - alone and frantic in a small town in the foothills of Italy's Dolomite Mountains. As he recalled Pops, despite his failing health, had had to fly to Italy to get his younger sister and bring the distraught woman home.
"All I do know is that whatever has happened to him that cult he ran off to join has had to have something to do with it," he added.
"I still can't believe that Nathan did that," Claudia admitted with a shake of her head, "from what Roy told me he was always so committed to his mother."
"He was which is why running off like he did and becoming whatever, he is now? It's completely out of character for him."
"Do you think he was drugged or something," Claudia asked knowing there were any number of drugs in the world that could be used, or rather misused, to make someone vulnerable to suggestions. That number had only grown in the years since the SDF-1 first fell to Earth, bringing with her knowledge of biology that far surpassed anything they'd known before. Though as the existence of the Zentraedi showed they still had a long way to go before they understood even a fraction of the secrets that had been contained within the now half destroyed battlefortress.
Rick shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted before noticing that the doctor who had been leading the medical team was leaving the secure room and that the rest of the medical team seemed to have finished, but not before restraining Nathan on the bed so he wouldn't be able to escape should he happen to wake up. "But looks like we might be about to get some answers."
Claudia nodded she had seen the same thing as Rick had. Thus, they both turned to look at the door to the observation room, a moment before it opened, and the doctor came in. She was a relatively short woman with reddish brown hair that was now streaked through with greys, though despite her small stature – or perhaps because of it – she had an extremely commanding, but at the same time matronly, demeanour that would probably make even the toughest soldier bow to her wishes. The door slid closed behind her, and the doctor blinked in surprise clearly having expected only one person to be in the room.
"Captain Hunter?" she asked.
"Yes," Rick replied.
"I'm Doctor Janet Fraiser, CMO of Fort Minotaur," the doctor replied, "may I speak with you a moment it's about your cousin?"
"It's alright doc you can speak with Claudia here," Rick answered guessing that the doctor was, understandably, reluctant to discuss a family matter with a stranger present. Hence why he hastened to reassure her. "If my brother Roy hadn't been killed in the war Claudia here would have been my sister-in-law by now."
"Oh, I see," Doctor Fraiser replied looking a little relieved before beginning to deliver her report. "We have finished treating his electrical burns with regen packs. They should be fully healed by this time tomorrow with no scarring. In the process we did a thorough physiological and neurological scan. What they revealed is surprising and very concerning."
"What do you mean," Rick asked, even as Claudia moved up to flank him before gently slipping a supportive hand into one of his own. Somehow, through woman's intuition perhaps, she knew that Rick was probably not going to like what he was about to hear and would need all the comfort he could get less he suddenly do a very good impression of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii. Especially as Nathan was one of the few family members that he had left given Mitchell 'Pops' Hunter had died due to a sudden, massive heart attack a year before the planned launch date of the SDF-1 and Roy had perished during the Robotech War.
"Nathan has been biologically altered to an incredible degree," Fraiser explained, "his bones, muscles and connective tissues are considerably denser than that of a normal human being, we have found traces of a synthetic protein complex herculextin in his muscles presumably that was the agent used to either induce rapid hypertrophy or is partially responsible for the increased density or maybe a combination of the two. I cannot be sure as the herculextin drug was not meant to be used in this fashion, it was after all created to offset the wasting effects of such diseases as muscular dystrophy."
"Isn't herculextin highly regulated," Claudia asked, she had some passing familiarity with the drug which had been developed fairly recently having only been licensed for use – under very strict conditions – about six months before the fateful launch of the SDF-1. As she recalled Vince's wife Jean had enthused about it and its potential to help sufferers of muscular dystrophy and other muscle wasting diseases that they could not yet cure.
"It is," Doctor Fraiser confirmed with a nod. "How whoever used it on Nathan for this purpose, and how they got the drug to produce these kinds of extreme results I don't know as it should not be possible. But that is not all we found."
"Go on," Rick said with a nod.
"There are large amounts of unknown biological organism present in every single tissue in his body but with special focus on the neurological system. Whatever it is the organism is dead now, presumably killed by the electric shock, and is both breaking down and being removed by normal metabolic processes."
"What do you think its purpose was," Rick asked though even as he did, so he had a very, very good idea what it had been meant to do. What it had done to Nathan as it would explain why he ran off like he did and the very uncharacteristic way in which his normally atheist cousin had spoken in his note.
"I am not sure but given that the organism is especially present in the neurological system I suspect that it was some kind of mind altering or mind controlling organism. Almost certainly bioengineered for just that purpose. However, that is not the only thing we found when we scanned the neurological system."
"What did you find," Rick asked knowing somehow that he wasn't going to like this. Hell, he didn't like what he had been told so far.
"Our tests have shown signs that someone, who I do not know as I would like to throttle them for doing it, has used a neuro-somatic imprinter on him."
Rick frowned. "What's one of those when it's about?" he asked even as Claudia gasped in horror, drawing a worried look from Rick as it was immediately obvious that Claudia knew what a neuro-somatic imprinter was. Knew and was horrified by it.
"They were found aboard the SDF-1 Rick during the ships reconstruction," Claudia explained, "as far as we understand it, they're devices designed to impart information and possibly even programming into a person's mind. Now that I think about it it's probably what the Robotech Masters used on the Zentraedi to make them into warriors. When it was realized what the things we found were, what they could be used for the Defence Council ordered that they immediately be locked away never to see the light of day again given the potential for misuse that came with them."
As she spoke Rick felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach. He almost didn't want to know what this could mean but knew he had to. It would be better for him to do it than Aunt Maria who they would have to call. "So, what does it mean for Nathan?"
"It means captain that he has been essentially reprogrammed," Fraiser said softly, sadly. "Our scans indicate that there is essentially another personality overwritten on top of what his original personality was. It's not erased it, we can still detect the original pattern as the artificial one sticks out like a sore thumb, but it has completely suppressed it."
"So, Nathan…" Rick started to say before stopping voice choking as he couldn't bring himself to say the words.
"Isn't Nathan right now," Fraiser finished for him.
"Is there anything that can be done for him," Rick asked after a moment, glancing back into the examination room where Nathan lay out cold on the bed. "Can the imprint be removed?"
"It can be erased yes which would in theory allow Nathan's original neural patterns to re-establish themselves," Fraiser told him, "Though I will need an imprinter device to reverse the effect and we do not have one here right now."
"Leave getting one of those to me doctor," Claudia replied knowing that once she explained this to Admiral Gloval one of those imprinters would be on its way here within hours at most. "But something tells me it won't be that simple."
"No, it won't," Fraiser admitted. "We can remove the imprint and whatever artificial personality its constructed, but Nathan will still remember everything that he did while under its influence. Possibly not all at once but he will remember and that is going to be extremely traumatic."
"But he'll be himself again," Rick asked.
"As well as anyone can be in this situation. The personality will be gone, but an echo of it is sure to remain in his subconscious if nothing else."
"So, what's our next move?".
"I am going to keep Nathan sedated until the imprinter arrives. It will prevent whoever he is right now from causing us any trouble or make any escape attempts," Fraiser answered before pausing. "I would advise however that we attempt to locate any other family just in case we can't remove the imprint or whoever has done this has put in place some kind of booby trap to kill him in the event of the imprint being removed that we cannot detect."
"Aside from me the only family Nathan has is his mother my Aunt Maria," Rick replied. "She lives in a small town in the Rockies about an hour or so's drive outside of Denver. It's still there as I have checked in on her a few times since the Rain."
"We'll have to arrange for someone to go and get her," Claudia commented, she already knew who Admiral Gloval would send to get Maria Hunter when he was told about this. "I'll see to that after I am done speaking with the admiral and arranging for the imprinter to be sent here."
"Thanks Claudia."
"You're welcome, Rick," Claudia responded before looking back at Doctor Fraiser. "Is there anything else we need to know right now Doctor?"
"No that's it," the doctor answered, "so if you would excuse me, I need to file my report on this both with Colonel Kowalski and with the Defence Council."
"Of course, doctor."
Doctor Fraiser nodded, then turned and left leaving them alone.
"We should go ourselves Rick," Claudia said softly. "The Council is sure to want your report on the battle a few hours ago."
"Can you give me a few minutes on my own first Claudia?"
"Sure, just don't be too long," Claudia replied with a nod. "And Rick if you want to talk about this after…"
"Thanks Claudia, I'll probably take you up on that."
Claudia nodded then left the room herself leaving Rick alone. Rick for his part walked up to the window and looked back into the secure examination room, especially focusing on where Nathan lay asleep on the examination bed. To say that he was angry by what had been done to Nathan, one of the gentlest, kindest souls he'd ever known would have been an understatement. For a moment he gave in to the rage and banged hard once on the glass making it momentarily vibrate and producing a loud bang. Closing his eyes he took a few deep breaths, pushing down the fierce Hunter temper as it would do him or Nathan any good to give into it, before opening his eyes again facial features showing no sign of the rage that burned like molten lava in his veins. Silently he vowed that he would find who did this to Nathan…
…find and kill them.
~~~///~~~
United Earth Defence Council
United Earth Defence Command, New Macross City
North American Quadrant, A Short Time Later
"Are you sure a neuro-somatic imprinter has been used on your prisoner?"
Sitting in the chairman's position UEG Defence Secretary Ian Anderson stared in shocked surprise at the image on the screens of Major Grant, Captain Hunter, and Doctor Fraiser. He was of course familiar with what neuro-somatic imprinters were, he had been informed of their existence when he had taken up his current position, and like everyone else who had heard about them he'd recoiled in horror at the thought of what they could actually be used, or rather misused, for.
"I am sure mister secretary," Doctor Fraiser replied. "The neural scan is clear there is a different personality in charge of the body than there should be. A personality that has been artificially created and imposed, suppressing the original neural pattern and with it the personality of Nathan Hunter. An in-depth analysis of the neural pattern shows that the original pattern is still there but completely suppressed."
"So, you are thinking that if the imprint is removed then the original personality will resurface," Anderson asked.
"She is not wrong," Exedore said softly, quietly horrified by what this imprinter had been used for, "there is a setting on an imprinter that can remove any artificially implanted knowledge or memory and certainly an artificial personality matrix as well. Though to the best of my knowledge the Robotech Masters never actually used it to create an entire artificial personality, it was one of the few moral boundaries that they refuse to cross and impose it on someone. Modify a personality to be more pliant to whatever they wanted yes but not completely suppress one."
"Do we have any imprinters in storage," Anderson asked inwardly shivering at the knowledge that even the Robotech Masters considered what had been done to Nathan Hunter to be utterly immoral. Everything they knew about them – which truth be told was not that much – indicated that they were ruthless and imperialistic. For someone like that to consider something morally abhorrent meant that it had to truly be a terrible thing to do.
"Over a hundred units were recovered from the SDF-1," Gloval explained, "they are stored in several different high-security locations around the globe. The closest stored units to Fort Minotaur are to the best of my knowledge in an old slate quarry in North Wales. There was another storage facility outside Naples, but it was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the aftermath of the Rain."
Grimaces flew around the meeting table at the Russian man's words. Numerous volcanoes around the world had erupted in the immediate aftermath of the Rain, due to quantum energy from the reflex blasts penetrating to their magma chambers and destroyed cities that hadn't been hit by the beams. Cities like Naples. Though they were fortunate that none of the worlds supervolcanoes had gone up though Yellowstone had given everyone a few scares before the caldera settled back down.
"Arrange for one to be sent to Fort Minotaur," Anderson ordered.
"Yes sir."
"What interests me is how did Captain Hunter's cousin got exposed to one not to mention how he came to be so dramatically altered," Colonel Matthews said.
"I suspect sir that it was the cult that he ran off to join four and a half years ago who did it to him," Rick replied, his voice calm but anyone who knew him could see the rage hidden behind his eyes. It was understandable and it definitely promised pain for someone.
"A cult?" Anderson asked.
"Yeah, four and a half years ago Nathan and my Aunt Maria were on a post-graduation combined climbing and hiking tour of Europe," Rick explained, "they had been about to go hiking along some of the World War One trails cut into the Dolomites when something happened."
"What was it," Gloval asked gently, sensing that this was a delicate issue for the younger man, drawing up memories that were bound to be painful.
"Nathan went out one evening to a party. When he returned from what Aunt Maria said he was behaving strangely, almost spaced sir," Rick replied, a look of concentration on his face as he tried to remember the events in question. "Aunt Maria thought he'd been slipped ecstasy or some other recreational drug, so she left him in his hotel room to sleep it off. However, when the next morning came Nathan was gone. He had left a note saying he had been called to join the service of someone called Vosegus who he claimed was almighty and the source of all light."
"Well that certainly sounds cult-like," Matthews commented with a frown of confusion and concern. "Did the Italian authorities search for him?"
"They did," Rick confirmed. "They didn't find him. They also let slip that it wasn't the first time this had happened in the months before and after Nathan vanished more than a dozen young men and women had vanished in similar circumstances. All of them leaving something behind that referred to this Vosegus character."
"We did discover a previously unknown biological organism in all of Nathan's bodily tissues but especially focused on the neurological system. I believe it was some kind of mind control agent," Fraiser replied, "or some other type of conditioning agent. It was likely introduced in tablet form at the party he went to. Whatever it was it is dead now, certainly killed by the massive electric shock he suffered, and is leaving the body through normal biological processes."
"We really need to look into this Vosegus business," Matthews commented.
"Agreed. Colonel, have our intelligence people get to work on finding out anything they can about this Vosegus character," Anderson ordered.
"I will begin at once sir. I already have people working to find out where the destroids that attacked Fort Minotaur came from, which from what Captain Hunter said is likely related to this Vosegus business."
"That is concerning," Anderson admitted. "Now onto another related matter. Do we have a damage and casualty assessment for Fort Minotaur?"
"We do sir," an exhausted, but very unhappy looking, General Micah Richards said from his own screen. He hadn't been happy to get back from the birth of his first grandchild to find that his base had been attacked by unknown hostiles.
"Please detail it for us general," Anderson ordered.
Richards nodded and began explaining the extent of the thankfully, relatively light damage and casualties that Fort Minotaur had sustained in the attack. As he spoke and detailed everything every member of the defence council looked at each other silently deciding that whoever was behind the attack on the base – be it this Vosegus or someone else – they had revealed themselves to be a potentially very dangerous enemy.
One that they would need to quickly find and eliminate.
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Vosegus allowed himself a small smile as he gazed upon the contents of the tank sitting in the main laboratory of the base that he had painstakingly built over the last few decades. Slowly, carefully expanding an ancient, long forgotten mine into a series of chambers and levels that now housed many followers – far more than the small Alpine-style villa he had on the surface could have ever comfortably managed – and everything they and he needed. Everything from barracks to armouries, training rooms to hydroponic and aquaponic facilities allowing them to be completely self-sufficient food production wise. There was also a motor bay housing various vehicles including some of the admittedly quite impressive destroids that the humans of this world had created to battle the Zentraedi – he'd just had to modify a few things and install shielding as unlike his starfaring brethren, Anubis curse them, he didn't have a limitless army to throw at his opponents – as well as laboratories like this one and.
Calmly he glanced at the readings on the clone floating in its tank. It was almost ready; another few days and the clone would be ready to be decanted from his tank and be ready for him to transfer into. He honestly couldn't wait as this body was really beginning to show and feel its age, even Goa'uld healing abilities had their limits when it came to sustaining a host – especially if like him you didn't have a sarcophagus to help you, when the Goa'uld had ruled here he had not been high-ranked enough to have one – and he had been inhabiting this body for a few centuries now having acquired this host during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars. Excellent, he thought with a smile of pure pleasure, especially as he had been able to tailor make the new body to suit his specifications.
Something that until a few short years ago would have been impossible. Now though, with the alien cloning technology that he had covertly acquired through both highly placed agents and your average useful idiot, from the SDF-1, it was fully possible. And he had taken full advantage of it to create a host that would be ideally suited to house him for the next couple of centuries at the very least. He looked over at where one of his more scientifically inclined minions was waiting patiently to be noticed.
"How long until the clone is ready," he asked.
"The clone will be ready to be decanted within the next two days my lord," the scientist answered, keeping their eyes aimed at the floor. "Once decanted we will need to run some minor but necessary functionality tests but if all those go as they should it will be ready for your august presence within three days."
"Very good keep me appraised of your progress."
"Yes, my lord."
Vosegus took one last look at his soon-to-be host before turning and left the laboratory. Calmly he walked through the corridors of the subterranean base. It took him only a few moments to make his way to his throne room where he made himself comfortable on the throne where he planned to wait for news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. He had sent his best warriors in two waves, with the first wave being personally commanded by the first of their kind – the Jaftari - he had made, to attack the base, seize the Stargate before the UEDF could figure out what it was that had landed in their lap and bring it back here to his current base. While he fully expected them to be victorious he was aware that the attack on the base was a risk, a very big risk as he harboured no illusions about just how powerful the UEDF were and thus how formidable a for they would be. However it was a risk that he felt that he had to take as getting the gate under his control would mean he could finally begin to plan a long delayed, long thought impossible revenge upon Ra and the other System Lords for abandoning him here to die all those millennia ago.
While he waited for news, be it of success or defeat, he decided to indulge in one of his guilty pleasures. "Elena," he called out.
Immediately his current lotaur appeared before him. "Yes, my lord?" she asked.
"Bring me a latte you know how I like it."
"As you wish my lord."
Vosegus watched with a pleased smile as the very plain looking slave, whose bland looks were completely opposite to her competence, left the throne room to fix him the drink he had requested. He had to admit that he had become quite fond of coffee especially in the last hundred years or so. When he had the chappa'ai in his possession, and was at last able to escape this planet, it was honestly one of the things about Earth that he would miss the most.
While he waited for Elena to return with his drink, he entertained himself with thoughts of what he would do to the System Lords when he was ready to make his move. It would take a while to get ready, even though his troops had much better weapons than your average Jaffa – assuming something hadn't changed in that area over his long exile – and would make use of armoured vehicles not to mention battle mecha like the destroids – the one upside of having spent six millennia on this wretched planet was he had learned a great deal about how to properly wage a war – he knew that Ra and all the other System Lords would not be defeated and made to bow to him easily. It would therefore be all the sweeter when he finally deposed them and took all their power – and with it control of the Goa'uld Empire – for himself.
Maybe he would even let them live to serve him as new under lords, much as he had been to Camulus before the great uprising. It would be a fitting punishment for those who had left him here to die.
The sound of approaching footsteps caught his attention and he looked up. To see that Elena was returning with a tray on top of which sat a glass mug filled with the mixture of espresso coffee and steamed milk that was a latte. It had been thoroughly mixed, indicating that the slave had put in the amount of sugar he preferred and had mixed it for him.
"Your latte my lord," Elena said.
"Thank you, Elena," he replied taking the glass from her, feeling the familiar warmth of the liquid through the glass. Elena nodded back and moved to stand off to one side, to await his next command or to take the mug away when he was finished. Leaning back against the padding of his throne – making a mental note to get the back cushion replaced as he was starting to feel the springs – Vosegus enjoyed the simple pleasure of drinking his latte.
He had just finished and handed the mug back to Elena when someone knocked on his throne room door. "Enter," he called, hoping that this was at last news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. The large doors to the throne room opened and the head of his praetorian guard came in.
"My lord I have news of the attack on Fort Minotaur."
"Have we been victorious? Is the chappa'ai on its way here as we speak?"
The guard grimaced, which immediately set alarm bells ringing in Vosegus' head. "I am afraid not my lord," the guard replied at last. "The first attack wave was defeated within minutes; they managed to breach the perimeter and make it onto the base before being overwhelmed and defeated."
Vosegus shot to his feet. "WHAT!" he thundered making both the guard and Elena shake as they could feel their god's anger. "How did this happen?"
"My lord I am afraid that the perimeter defences were stronger and quicker to react than anticipated. The mobile forces available on the base were also quick to respond with both destroids and veritech fighters."
Well, that would explain it, Vosegus thought with a mental grimace. While the upgrades he'd made to the destroids he'd acquired – the chaos that had immediately followed the orbital bombardment that the people of this world had poetically started calling the Rain of Death had been quite beneficial for his goals – were formidable they were far from invulnerable. He had already come to understand that when robotech weaponry was involved there was nothing that was truly invincible, robotechnology weapons especially the energy weapons were just too powerful. "I see. And the second wave?"
"My lord they were forced to turn back and will reach their staging area soon," the guard answered, "no doubt as a response to the initial attack the base had gone to full alert. There was an aggressive combat air patrol of Valkyrie's in place in the airspace around the base, in addition long range scans showed that all the bases surface to air missile and energy batteries had been fully charged. If our transports had attempted to approach the base they would have been shot out of the sky in moments."
"I see. Make sure those pilots are punished I do not tolerate cowardice in the face of the enemy."
"But my lord…" the guard started to say only for Vosegus to raise his kara'kesh and fire a low level repulsor blast at the guard, prompting him to scream as he was picked up by the rippling wave of distorted gravity and slammed hard into the wall next to the door.
"Do not argue with me again or I will not be so merciful with you next time," Vosegus warned as the guard groaned and picked himself up, wincing indicating that he had gathered a number of bruises.
"Forgive me my lord."
"I will this time but if you argue with me again."
"I understand my lord."
"Is there anything else?"
The guard hesitated; he really didn't want to be on the receiving end of his god's wrath again. "I'm afraid so my lord," he said at last. "Our contact in the support staff of the Defence Council has reported that Prime wasn't killed during the attack. Instead, his destroid was disabled, resulting in him both sustaining a massive electric shock due to the main power bus being damaged and being taken unconscious to the base medical facilities. A subsequent examination has revealed the presence of the personality you created for him my lord, there are plans being put into place to remove it."
"I see," Vosegus replied, inwardly frowning at this news. It was not good news; the electric shock would have certainly killed the unique variant of the nish'ta organism he used to gather his followers and ensure their initial loyalty. The fact that they had also detected the neural imprint, and were planning to remove it, was also not good and he didn't doubt that they would be able to do so as he knew that there were more neuro-somatic imprinters out there than the two he had acquired via mafia contacts from the storage facility in Naples – well before it was destroyed by the massive eruption of the volcano Vesuvius that had occurred only a few weeks after the Rain of Death. No this was not good news…
…in fact, it was downright disastrous given what Prime, as the first of the Jafftari, knew about his operations and his plans.
"Is our contact on the base still uncompromised?" he asked.
"I believe so my lord."
"Get in contact with him. He is to infiltrate the medical section of the base once there he is to go to Prime and kill him."
"As you wish my lord."
"Now leave me both of you."
The guard bowed and left, moving quickly sensing the great wrath that was building up inside his lord. Elena did the same leaving Vosegus alone in the throne room. For a few moments the Goa'uld stood there, feeling his rage at this defeat grow stronger and stronger, especially given how it potentially could undo everything that he had worked so hard to build. Oh there was hope that his agent on the base would be able to kill Prime before they removed the personality imprint – allowing the original personality to resurface, a personality that would no longer have any loyalty to him due to the death of the nish'ta and would certainly want revenge for what he had been for the last few years – but he also had to prepare for the possibility that the agent would fail and be either captured or killed, especially as the base was now certainly on a full security alert.
Just thinking about it made his rage reach a climax and with a roar of pure fury Vosegus raised his kara'kesh and fired a full strength repulsor blast at the far wall. The blast impacted with an explosive crack and triggered an explosion of dust and small stones as part of the wall was pulverized. He fired twice more, carving out a deep crater in the wall before his rage – and a sizeable chunk of his energy as using a kara'kesh so rapidly at such a high setting was extremely draining – was finally spent. On slightly staggering legs he walked back to his throne, sat down, and began to both brood and plan…
…plan how to deal with this setback and possibly eventually turn it to his advantage.
~~~///~~~
Ascended Planes
That Same Time
Staring at what would, to a human if they'd seen it, appear to be a pool of water in a stone font the ascended being watched the Goa'uld as, his temper tantrum over, he/it sat down on its throne and began to brood. The being was almost amused by what he could sense – even from this place that had been his home for a few years now ever since Oma had helped him ascend – compared to some of the those he had dealt with in his mortal life the Goa'uld was an amateur at creating plans for domination and turning setbacks to his advantage.
Running a hand through the pool he dismissed the image of the Goa'uld and brought up a new image. One of a familiar – but now badly beat up – ship floating in the middle of a lake. He had honestly been surprised to find that the ship had survived, he had thought it would have been lost forever in the endless void of intergalactic space. But it seemed fate had had other ideas and a race had paid a terrible price in blood for its survival, as had the Zentraedi in point of fact.
It now fell to him to decide what he should do about it. On one hand he could destroy it, especially what was still hidden deep within it hermetically sealed off from normal space-time by a phase displacement field powered by the very device it was concealing, but on the other hand he could show the people of Earth how to access it and the secrets concealed within that section. Though he had been so far impressed by what he had seen of them, they appeared to be a generally level-headed people and far more forgiving of the Zentraedi for Dolza's attack than any other race he'd ever encountered in his long life would have been, he knew that nobody was truly above temptation. Did he really want to unleash protoculture on this galaxy as he had on the one, he had once called home?
Given that they would soon certainly unlock the secrets of the Stargate he also had to factor in the fact that the Goa'uld might learn of protoculture, learn of it, and try to take it for themselves. And he shuddered to think what they would do with it if they got their parasitic, eternally power-hungry hands on it. What they could do would make the evil perpetuated from his discovery by Nimuul and the other self-proclaimed Robotech Masters pale into insignificance. Thus, revealing it to the people of Earth would be a terrible risk, but on the other hand the matrix, the flowers, and the other secrets he had hidden in that part of his former flagship would give the Terran race the means to defend themselves properly against any who threatened them be they the Goa'uld, the Robotech Masters or even the Invid who he knew were still endlessly searching for the flowers.
"Why do I do this to myself," Zor Derelda asked himself with a sigh.
"Maybe because you are a glutton for punishment," a familiar amused male voice said from behind him.
"Or it is just the universes way of testing you," an equally familiar female voice added.
Rolling his eyes slightly Zor turned to see two other ascended beings standing there. Two very familiar ascended beings. "What are you two doing here," he asked gazing at both Oma and Janus.
"Can't someone just drop in on a friend," Janus asked only to get slapped on the arm by Oma. It naturally didn't hurt him as while they saw each other as physical beings none of them were.
"Yeah, right pull the other one Janus," Zor replied sarcastically causing the other male ascended being to laugh.
"Alright, alright I'm just trying to inject a little levity here," Janus complained. "But really we're here for you."
"You have decision to make Zor," Oma added. "We both thought it would be helpful if you talked it over with us first. Maybe we'll help you find a path that otherwise you would not be able to see."
"I'd like that. But first let's take this somewhere a bit more comfortable," Zor replied before he waved a hand and suddenly everything around them changed from an ornamental stone font in a garden into a recreation of the living room of the house in Tiresia that he had lived in with his late father Zol, before he'd travelled to Optera, discovered protoculture and inadvertently started something that had set his native galaxy on fire. Silently the three ascended beings found seats and made themselves comfortable…
…then they began to talk.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well that's the redo of this chapter completed. I am sure you have noticed that the original central section of the chapter has gone – this is because it really wasn't adding anything to the story like it was originally meant to and I couldn't think of any means of continuing to include it so I removed it – and that the first interlude has now been integrated into the chapter. This is because I have a new longer arc planned for everyone's favourite ascended Tirolian. What that is you will have to wait and see.
Chapter Five
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Five
Landing Grid
Fort Minotaur, Crete
Two Days Later
Sheltering from a light drizzle – something that was not uncommon at this time of the year as despite what pre-Rain holiday commercials had shown the Mediterranean region was not constantly sunny – under an umbrella embossed with the kite symbol of the UEDF Rick Hunter watched as the VC33 transport plane – known informally to everyone in the military as a "mom's kitchen" due to its use as a front-line supply plane during the unification war - came into land on the base's main runway. While he knew that the planes had VTOL capabilities – with both of its two powerful mid-wing mounted Rolls Royce BR720 turbofan jet engines able to pivot – which was what had made them so useful as a supply plane/evac transport for front line soldiers it wasn't really the preferred method for landing. He had been waiting for this plane to arrive, or rather he was waiting for someone it was carrying as a passenger along with fresh supplies and equipment for Fort Minotaur including parts to replace the particle turret and parts of a new gatehouse both of whom had been blown up during the attack two days ago.
Has it really only been two days, he thought with a mental blink of almost incomprehension that it was so short a time since the base had been attacked; it certainly felt like it had been longer since they'd been attacked by the upgraded destroids, presumably sent by whoever this Vosegus person was. It felt longer since a lucky shot from him blew the main power bus on the last and leader of the attackers letting them take the pilot prisoner. It most definitely felt much longer than the two days it had been since to his shock and horror the pilot had turned out to be his own wayward cousin Nathan. Nathan who had been altered to a seemingly impossible degree by someone with a greater knowledge of bioengineering – more in depth checks of him had shown that his very DNA had been somehow restructured - than anyone Rick knew of while also having his own mind and personality overwritten by an artificial one.
The device needed to remove said artificial personality had arrived yesterday – transported under heavy guard due to both the fact that it was potentially a very dangerous, easily abused piece of kit as Nathan's current situation made clear and the fact the European airspace was not exactly the safest place to be right now, EBSIS was really pushing their luck right now as they attempted to intimidate more European nations into joining them instead of staying loyal to the UEG – along with a specialist neuro-scientist, a Doctor Ieuan Johnson, trained to operate the imprinter.
Doctor Johnson, and his micronized Zentraedi assist Korilan, had thoroughly reviewed Doctor Fraisers findings and – after doing some tests of their own with diagnostic equipment they'd brought with them - confirmed that they could indeed remove the implanted personality. And not only that but they could stimulate Nathan's original neural patterns – and with it his real personality - to re-establish themselves, but that Nathan – or whoever he was at the moment – would have to be fully conscious when they began the procedure. The procedure was tricky enough to do without having to also counter powerful drugs designed to keep you in the land of nod.
Thus, the medical personnel had taken him off the sedatives that they'd been pumping into him ever since the attack. Though to prevent escape or interference with the device he would remain tied to the bed in numerous locations. The last of the drugs would have finished leaving Nathan's system so they would be able to begin the erasure procedure as soon as he was awake. Doctor Johnson having already set up the imprinter ready to use with two of the UEDF STORM commandos standing guard – in their distinctive Tristan powered combat armour and carrying Colt PB2 beam rifles – in the room at all times to protect the imprinter. Though Johnson had said he would wait until Rick, and the guest he was waiting for, were present to begin the removal procedure.
The guest in question was of course his Aunt Maria.
Rick was honestly looking forward to seeing his father's younger sister again. While they had spoken quite a few times over the phone during the last eighteen months they hadn't really seen each other face to face in years not really since Pops funeral on the family ranch. A place which no longer existed as the quantum firestorms created by the Rain of Death over vast areas of the planet had burned it, like so many other places, to ashes. Though he still owned the land it had stood on and, when they cleaned up the area fully intended to rebuild his home. Rick put the thoughts of the ranch – that until its destruction had been the home of the Hunter family for over a hundred years – out of his mind and instead continued to watch and wait.
He didn't have to wait much longer as he could see people walking down the cargo ramp from the now parked aircraft. Most of the people disembarking from the VC33 were military personnel – reinforcements for the base as well as the loading crew who would liaise with base personnel to unload their cargo – but one person stood out amongst them. It was a tall now well into middle-aged, but still relatively fit woman whose once brown-black hair – the same shade as Rick's own hair – was now laced through with grey and white streaks. It was tied back into a neat bun in the same hairstyle that she'd worn her hair in for as long as he could remember.
Standing next to her was someone that Rick was not at particularly surprised to see here, considering just how close they had been getting over the last two years. With a slight smile on his lips, happy to see them both despite the less-than-ideal circumstances that had brought them here, he started walking over to greet them.
"Lisa, Aunt Maria welcome to Fort Minotaur," he called in greeting, mentally bracing himself for what he knew would follow from Aunt Maria.
He wasn't disappointed. "Ricky," Aunt Maria replied loudly in greeting before marching up and pulling him into one of her bone-crushing hugs. Still standing near the VC33 Rick could see Lisa mouth 'Ricky' even as her shoulders shook in sudden laughter at the amusing nickname. It was a nickname that she could see Rick gaining from friends and family members – and possibly even friends at school – as it was more irrelevant than Rick which she knew was short for Richard, though she was also aware that Rick absolutely hated being called Richard.
"Oh, it's so good to see you," Aunt Maria said pulling back and examining her only surviving nephew, he looked so like a shorter – Rick having inherited his mother's shorter stature alongside her blue eyes – and younger version of her brother dressed in a uniform that just looked right on him, just like Mitchell had always looked nice in his Navy aviator uniform. It was definitely an improvement over the hideous orange thing he'd worn when flying in the Air Circus. "Oh, you look so handsome in that uniform. I wish Mitch could have seen you."
Rick allowed a small, sad, smile to grace his lips at the mention of his father. Even after all this time he still greatly missed his father not just for his unconditional love and support but his kindness and wisdom. Though he didn't doubt that Mitchell Hunter would have been just as incensed by what had been done to Nathan by Vosegus as he was. "It's good to see you again Aunt Maria, I just wish it was under better circumstances," he replied. "I wish he was still here as well… he'd be as pissed as I am about what's we've discovered."
"Watch your mouth young man. You're not too old that I won't wash your mouth out with soap," Maria scolded for the language, making Rick wince and cringe – remembering the one time when he'd been eight years old that she had done just that, Roy had thought it hilarious until she did it to him as well - while nearby the listening Lisa chuckled at seeing how well the older woman had her nephew whipped. She'd enjoyed getting to know Maria Hunter during first their flight from Denver to New Macross then the flight here. She'd certainly given her a few more ideas for how to keep a certain, stubborn, loud mouthed and frequently extremely opinionated flyboy in line both when on and off duty. She'd certainly got the feeling that for all that she was unassuming – despite being taller than average – Maria could be a force of nature when she wanted to be. And she definitely had the same fierce temper – which any Zentraedi who'd faced him in battle and managed to survive had learned to fear given that an angry Rick Hunter was not loud as you would expect but instead, he was cold, and utterly ruthless – that her nephew did.
"Sorry Aunt Maria."
"That's better," Maria answered before her expression turned pained. "Did Nathan really lead an attack on this place?"
"Well yes and no," Rick replied, understanding fully the pained disbelief in his aunt's voice as before he ran away Nathan had always been so gentle. "Have you been told what we discovered when we examined him?"
"She has Rick," Lisa confirmed before looking up at the sky, the clouds were darkening more and the drizzle falling on the base seemed to be threatening to turn into heavier rain. The wind was also picking up a bit, indicating the presence of an approaching storm. Something that meteorology had apparently predicted to happen at some point today though they could not be sure precisely when as there simply weren't enough intact weather satellites to properly track the storm that had begun its life over North Africa. "Though before we continue might I suggest we go inside before this drizzle turns into a torrential downpour?"
"Good idea," Rick agreed offering his umbrella to his aunt who accepted it with a grateful smile. "Come on the entrance is this way."
With that he turned and began to lead the way inside just as the first larger drops of rain began to fall.
~~~///~~~
Elsewhere
That Same Time
The operative moved with a confident that he honestly didn't feel towards the secure medical wing. It had taken him quite a while, certainly longer than he would have liked, to forge a reason to be in this section of Fort Minotaur. Access to the secure medical wing being strictly controlled due to the sensitivity of some of the work carried out there, but he had finally managed to do it. Of course, that was just the first of the hurdles he would have to overcome to carry out his god's command to eliminate the captured Prime and get away without compromising his position here. There were numerous other things that had to go just right for this vital mission to be successfully completed.
Arriving at the first of the two security checkpoints that he would have to pass through the operative presented his ID card and the data card carrying his forged orders to the guard on duty. The guard accepted them without comment, put both in a reader and began carefully scrutinising them and their contents.
"Is there a problem?" the operative asked, nerves fluttering in his stomach like a swarm of disturbed butterflies. Mentally he prayed to Vosegus for luck and that he would pass through the checkpoint without difficulty. A handful of anxious moments passed while the marine guard, a guard that he didn't recognize but then he didn't exactly know everyone on the base in fact he preferred to keep to himself, only interacting with these infidels when he didn't have a choice. Not that the people here knew that they assumed that he was just a loner – a belief that he had somewhat encouraged – and gave him plenty of space.
"No problem. Just after the attack we're being extra careful," the marine answered before ejecting the card and ID from the reader. "Here you go." As he spoke the marine tapped a control causing the barrier blocking the corridor to open allowing him access.
"Thank you," the operative replied as he accepted them back, before passing through the opened barrier and resuming his journey towards the secure medical section hoping that he would get through the second check point as easily as this one. The marine guard watched him go until he was sure that the other man was out of earshot…
…then he reached for his radio.
"Corporal Roberts to security," he said into the radio.
"Security go," came the immediate response.
"We've got a problem."
~~//~~
Unaware of the conversation beginning behind him the operative continued on his way towards the second and final security checkpoint beyond which were the secure rooms and his quarry. Absently he fingered the ring on the middle finger of his right hand, it was completely unremarkable to look at being in appearance a slightly ornate ring of reddish-brown metal. It certainly didn't look like what it really was, the weapon that he would soon use to kill the captured Prime before hopefully slipping away again.
Realising what he was doing he stopped fingering the ring just before he came to a bend in the corridor. He rounded the bend, and the second checkpoint came into view. A faint shiver of unease ran down his spine as he saw that this checkpoint was not being manned by a normal marine but that it was being manned by a pair of STORM commandoes – he hadn't realized or heard that any of them were on the base. Both were dressed in full Tristan armour and had their helmets on meaning that instead of seeing two human faces all he saw was a silvered visor. Even to someone who was a soldier of Vosegus, like he was in his own way, they were a very intimidating sight.
Something that wasn't helped by the fact that both also had their beam rifles aimed right at him.
"Freeze. Hands up," one of the commandoes said, the vocaliser in his helmet given his voice a slightly metallic quality making it hard to place his accent. Something that it was deliberately designed to do.
"Is there a problem," the operative asked raising his hands as instructed before crossing them behind his head, using that as cover to tap the hidden button that caused his ring to expand into its true form memory metal components unfolding, from their previously molecularly compressed form in the ring, and locking into place with only the faintest of whirs. In moments he had a fully functional weapon on his hand where a harmless ring had been. And these infidels didn't even know it. Still, he decided to play dumb for a moment, as if he didn't know why they were stopping him. "Why are you stopping me? I have authorization to be here."
"Actually, you don't. You see while your little forgery is very good you made one tiny mistake," the commando who had spoken to him replied and though he couldn't see it he knew the commando was smirking behind his visor, "two of the code blocks were out of the correct sequence for this part of the base for this week. You used last week's coding ratio."
"Oh well I will have to watch that in future," the operative answered before exploding into motion, knowing what his duty to his god now was. Faster than either commando could react he brought his arm down, pointing the weapon at the commando who'd spoken to him and fired sending a pencil thin red energy beam at the armoured man. The beam hit the marine dead on, producing a brilliant flash and making him stagger back but otherwise not hurting him as his armour deflected as much of the blasts energy as possible while dispersing the rest through a complex armoured mesh to dissipate harmlessly leaving the person underneath unharmed.
It was the only shot he got off.
Even as the first commando staggered back, knocked momentarily off balance, the second fired his AR2 rifle in his direction. A searing whitish-blue beam took him high in the shoulder of his gun arm, dropping him to the floor with a scream of pain as fiery agony from the wounded shoulder exploded through his mind. Simultaneously he lost all feeling in his arm and realized instantly that the beam had certainly severed critical nerve endings rendering his arm, and the weapon sitting on top of his middle finger, useless.
He immediately heard approaching footsteps and knew the two marines were coming to take him prisoner. You're not taking me, he thought as he ignored the pain as much as he could to start to reach over with his good arm, heading for the button on the weapon that would trigger its self-destruct. His hand never got there as an armoured boot, its force enhanced by nano-muscle servos, kicked the arm hard. Knocking it back and producing an audible crack, along with a new stab of searing agony as his forearm was broken by the imparted force.
"Oh no you don't. No activating any self-destruct," the marine said sounding irritated before, assisted by the massive strength granted by the nano-muscle servos in the armour – the other marine picked him up and made him stand. He didn't dignify them with an answer instead he glared at them, inwardly cursing up a storm that they'd dared to stand in the way of his holy orders from Vosegus.
"What is going on here," a female voice abruptly asked from behind him. He tried, futilely to resist as the marines turned to find none other than Captain Lisa Hayes standing there looking a little peeved. Standing with her was Captain Hunter and a tall, middle-aged civilian woman.
"This man tried to reach the secure wards with a forged security pass ma'am," the same marine who'd spoken earlier replied glaring slightly at the now revealed traitor. He wouldn't be at all surprised to find that this was the guy who had called in those who attacked them two days ago, while none of their people had been killed a fair few had been injured and Private Campbell had had to be transported to Heraklion's main hospital where he was currently in a coma from hitting the wall so hard when the Monsters first fired upon them.
"When we stopped him, he attacked us with this," he continued and held out the weapon that the operative realized, with a jolt, had been taken from his finger though he naturally hadn't felt it due to the nerve endings to that arm having been severed by laser blast, "it fired some kind of laser though nothing compared to the beams from our rifles. Didn't even scorch my armour. After we stopped him, he attempted to touch a button on it presumably to trigger a self-destruct."
"I see," Lisa said stepping closer and looking at the operative closely. She could see that he was wearing a UEDF uniform, the kind worn by one of the technicians that were everywhere on any base or ship making sure that everything kept working as it should. "Who are you? What did you hope to accomplish here today?"
The operative didn't answer he simply glared at her as to his mind she was just another infidel who was daring to stand in the way of the will of Vosegus. Thus, she was not worthy of him acknowledging her in any way.
"Not feeling talkative," Lisa asked.
"He seems like a fanatic ma'am," the marine answered, "we do however have a good idea what he was here for. There is only one patient in the secure medical rooms at the moment."
"You were going to kill my baby," the civilian woman said stepping forward, anger on her face. That at last prompted an angry outburst from the operative.
"He's not your baby," he snapped the fervent fire of a fanatical believer in his eyes, "he's the Prime of the Jaftari in service of the Great God Vosegus. Who will punish you all for eternity for daring to thwart his will."
"A cultist then," Lisa commented with a shake of her head. She hated when they had to deal with people like this and there had been a fair few of them appearing out of the woodwork ever since the Rain. In some ways she could understand it, in times of great adversity people often sought comfort in religion and other things – which was ripe for unscrupulous people to exploit, but on the other hand she was annoyed that they had thought it perfectly okay to attack them. "Take him to the stockade and get the doctors to look at that arm. He'll be questioned later."
"When his wound is treated make sure that they run some blood tests. Tell Doctor Fraiser to look over them and compare them to those taken from Nathan," Rick added looking thoughtfully at the person who had been on a mission to kill his cousin. While part of him wanted to hate him for that he couldn't help but remember what Dr Fraiser had found in Nathan's first round of bloodwork.
"Will do ma'am, sir," one of the two marines replied before taking their prisoner away. The other returned to the security checkpoint to let the three of them through.
"Strange order their Rick," Lisa commented looking over at Rick. She knew that look on his face, he was suspicious of something as unless it was related to one Lynn Minmei Rick could be very observant. Plus there were times when he just had a knack for just knowing things. "What are you thinking?"
"When we first examined Nathan Doctor Fraiser found a previously unknown biological compound saturating all his bodily tissues but especially the neurological system," Rick explained as they made their way through the checkpoint. "It was dead, presumably killed by the electric shock Nathan received when I disabled the Spartan, he was piloting. However, given it was focused on the neurological system Doctor Fraiser thinks it could be some kind of mind control compound, certainly bioengineered specifically for such a purpose."
Lisa blinked. "You think mister would be assassin is another victim of this compound," she asked.
"Given his mention of Vosegus, whoever he really is as I don't for a second believe that he is a god he wouldn't need robotech weapons if he was, I would not be surprised if he was," Rick replied.
"Rick, are you saying that Nathan was brainwashed somehow?" Maria asked her nephew as she listened to what he was saying. She was suddenly desperately hopeful that that is what had happened to her son. For so long she had wondered why Nathan had so suddenly run away – only leaving a note in his hotel room for her to find that terrible morning when she went to wake him for breakfast – that summer.
"I'm certain of it, Aunt Maria. He certainly has been beyond brainwashed now with the imposition of an artificial personality," Rick answered as they arrived at the entrance to the observation room where they could watch the use of the neuro-somatic imprinter on Nathan to remove this 'Prime' personality.
The moment she saw the one-way glass Maria glanced at her nephew, who nodded to confirm that Nathan was in the room on the other side. Feeling rattlesnakes suddenly in her stomach, she slowly approached the window and looked through. Despite having been warned by Lisa during their flight here that Nathan had been extensively biogenetically altered sometime in the last four and a half years the sight that met her eyes still stunned her. The person on the bed looked like someone had taken Nathan's head and stuck it on the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger during the height of his bodybuilding career. He was tied to the bed with strong bands across his chest, wrists, waist and both his upper and lower legs. Bands that he obviously wasn't happy about wearing as she could see from the way his muscles kept standing out, and the sheen of sweat he was covered with, that he was trying to break them – trying and failing.
"Oh, my baby what's happened to you," she breathed putting her hand on the glass, even though she knew that he would not see her and probably wouldn't respond to her anyway given what she had been told had happened, had been done to him. A hand touching her shoulder caught her attention and she looked over to see that Rick had come up without her hearing him, a look of complete understanding on his face. She gave a slight smile back knowing instantly that he understood exactly how she was feeling.
After a moment she noticed the odd apparatus set up around Nathan's head. It looked almost like some technological head and neck brace – though a visor was present over his eyes – and was connected by a series of cables to another nearby device. A device that just by looking at it she could tell had not been made on Earth. There was something about both parts of the device, some shimmer in whatever metal it was made from, that said beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was alien.
"What's that around his head," she asked curious.
"It's the neuro-somatic imprinter," Rick replied, "it's what Doctor Johnson will use to remove the artificial personality before stimulating Nathan's original neural patterns to reassert themselves."
"So, he'll be himself again?"
"Yes, well as well as anyone can be after what he'd been through," Lisa replied, "he's probably going to need quite a considerable amount of therapy and emotional support after the artificial personality is removed. Especially as he will remember everything that he did while under its control, that is bound to take a terrible toll on his psyche. As is the fact that, from what we can tell, he was basically rebuilt from the genetic level up to be some kind of super soldier."
Maria's eyes burned with tears of both anger and sadness. "Oh, my poor boy," she said looking back through the window to see two new individuals had arrived in the room. One was a short, but very stocky, man with short brown hair. He looked completely unremarkable unlike his companion who was very tall pushing six foot six with mauve coloured skin and purple hair.
"Who are they," Maria asked nodding at the two new arrivals.
"The short stocky one is Doctor Ieuan Johnson he'll be the one operating the imprinter," Rick replied, "the tall one is his assistant Korilan – he's a micronized Zentraedi."
"Is that safe?" Maria asked looking nervously at the alien. She had never actually met a Zentraedi before today only ever seen them at a distance and then only in their giant natural form. They were downright terrifying to look at and made you literally feel small. Something that she wasn't used to as she had always been taller than average, like Mitch she'd inherited their father's height.
"Perfectly."
"They're beginning the procedure now," Lisa commented as the two men moved to their positions and got to work.
It wasn't much to look at as the parts of the imprinter that were around Nathan's head lit up and abruptly, he seemed to freeze as though he had been instantly transfixed by the light. For a few minutes nothing more seemed to happen then a laser-like fan of energy began steadily sweeping back and forth across Nathan's forehead, the beam penetrating into the skull beneath the layers of skin and muscle.
"What's that doing," Maria wondered.
"As I understand it the beam you see is the imprinter isolating the foundations of the artificial Prime personality and beginning to remove them," Lisa replied, recalling what she had been told about the imprinter technology. "Depending on exactly how long the artificial personality has been there and how dominant it has been the process could take anywhere from twenty minutes to three hours to complete."
"Once that's done the last aspects of this 'Prime' persona will be gone and then they'll be able to stimulate Nathan's original neural patterns to re-emerge," Rick added having also been thoroughly briefed on what the imprinter was going to do to his cousin. "After the procedure's done he'll sleep for a while as his neural pathways recover and are regenerated by a healing energy imparted by the imprinter at the end of the cycle."
"And there is nothing we can do in the meantime," Maria asked.
"Nothing but wait."
Maria nodded and stood there watching and waiting. Nearly two hours passed with the imprinter still running that scan beam back and forth. Until abruptly the scan went static before firing a series of pulses into her son's head. The reaction was immediate as Nathan stiffened – every one of his muscles suddenly looking almost like they were going to pop out of his skin – and his mouth opened and while she couldn't hear it, she didn't need to, she knew that Nathan was screaming. She started to move, to go in there and stop them hurting him, only for Rick's hand to shoot out.
"Don't," he said, "I was warned this might happen."
"But they're hurting him," Maria started to argue with her nephew, despite the situation she was surprised by the amount of strength she could feel in Rick's arm. It seemed out of proportion for the compact martial artist/gymnast build that Rick had. She wondered if it was true what some people in the media said about the UEDF giving all its military personnel some form of genetic enhancement as a sign-up bonus.
"They're not the one who is hurting is the artificial personality as its destroyed," Rick replied he glanced back into the room to see Nathan had stilled. "See."
Maria followed her nephew's gaze and saw that Nathan was indeed calm again and had stopped screaming. The imprinter was still active though the colour of the beam had changed from a pale red to a soft green. A pulse of brighter light shot along the beam and disappeared into his head. A second pulse followed then a third and a fourth before finally the beam moved again. Running back and forth across his head three times before shutting down the imprinter going dark moments later.
Through the window they could see Doctor Johnson and Korilan talking for a few moments. Then Doctor Johnson left the room while the Zentraedi began carefully removing the imprinter apparatus from around Nathan's head. A moment later the door to the observation room opened and Doctor Johnson came in.
"The artificial personality has been removed," he said calmly in an accent that Maria couldn't place but she would bet it was Welsh. It would fit as if she was right Ieuan was a Welsh variant of Ian. "We have successfully restored the patients' original neural patterns. They are functioning normally though based on my calculations he will sleep for eight or nine hours while his mind gets used to itself again."
"But he'll be alright," Maria asked, looking desperately hopeful that she was about to get her beloved son back.
"Physically yes. I will have to do a series of cognisance tests when he wakes up to make sure everything is alright but that shouldn't take long. I will get some medical techs to move him to a proper recovery room."
"Thank you doctor. Can I see him?"
"As soon as we've moved him to a recovery room, you'll be able to see him."
"Thank you doctor."
"If you'll excuse me, I will start the ball rolling to move him."
"Of course," Maria replied. Doctor Johnson smiled back, then turned and left to begin arranging for the transfer of Nathan Hunter to a room where he could begin to recover from his ordeal. Rick, Maria and Lisa watched him leave before the two Hunter's turned and gave one another a hug of relief at the knowledge that the removal of the artificial personality had been a success and that while he would no doubt have a long road to go down to recover from his ordeal, they had Nathan back.
And that was all that mattered.
~~~///~~~
Hieroglyphics Lab
A Short Time Later
Doctor Daniel Jackson smiled as he carefully checked his translation of the hieroglyphics that had been present on the cover stones. It had been a challenging job translating them – not only were the glyphs damaged from the weight of the derelict Zentraedi cruiser that had sat on top of them, but the dialect they were written in was a very old one even by Ancient Egyptian standards. Something that honestly wasn't surprising when you considered that these things had been buried beneath the Giza Plateau over six millennia ago – but it had been a challenge he had enjoyed especially as he had learned to use a laser scanner in the process.
Reaching out he tapped the comm unit on his main workstation. "Doctor Jackson to Doctor Carter."
"This is Doctor Carter what is it Daniel," Samantha Carter answered immediately from the main lab.
"Sam you better get in here," he said unable to keep the elation at succeeding in his task from his voice, "and bring everyone who you think will be interested."
"You've done it?" Sam asked sounding surprised that he had managed to translate such an archaic Egyptian dialect so fast.
"I have."
"We'll be right there."
~~//~~
Five Minutes Later
Claudia Grant had a slight spring in her step as she arrived at the lab that had been specifically set aside for Doctor Jackson to work on his translation of the cover stone hieroglyphs. She was surprised that the translation had come so relatively quickly, especially given how damaged some of the glyphs were requiring the use of a laser scanner to read them and attempt to reconstruct them in the form of a holographic projection. Though at the same time she was eager to learn just what it was the glyphs meant and if they gave any indication of the nature and purpose of the mysterious naquada ring.
Entering the lab, she wasn't surprised to find that a number of other people had arrived before her including many of the scientists who had been attempting – somewhat unsuccessfully – to probe the secrets of the ring. General Richards and Colonel Kowalski were present as well but one person who was present did surprise her somewhat.
"Lisa this is a surprise," she said in greeting to her friend and former SDF-1 shipmate. "I would have thought you would be with Rick and his aunt. Did the procedure work on Nathan?"
"It did take over two hours, but the artificial personality is gone," Lisa replied embracing her best friend from their days on the SDF-1. "Nathan has been moved to a recovery room and is sleeping now. According to Doctor Johnson he could sleep for eight hours or more as his mind recovers from the removal of the imprinted personality and the restoration of his original brainwave patterns. Rick and his aunt are currently sitting with Nathan for a while. If I know Rick, he'll be there until Nathan wakes up and from what I have seen of her Maria will be as well."
"Well, they are Hunters stubbornness run's deep in that family," Claudia pointed out.
"True," Lisa agreed as they approached the crowd waiting for Doctor Jackson to speak. After a few moments the archaeologist, anthropologist, and linguist – seeing everyone was here, with some people in the form of Admiral Gloval, Minister Exedore, Secretary Anderson, and Commander Breetai attending on holographic screens – stepped forward to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen thank you all for assembling here on such short notice," Daniel said. "As you all know I was asked to come here to translate the hieroglyphs written upon the cover stones of the alien naquada ring. While it was a challenging assignment due to both the fact that the glyphs were damaged and had to be digitally reconstructed and the fact that the dialect, they're written in is old even by Ancient Egyptian standards, I am pleased to inform you all that this translation has now been completed."
"What do they say doctor?" Admiral Gloval asked.
"The translation says the following "A million years into the skies, sealed and buried for all time the Stargate of the false god Ra. May it never see the light of day again less the false ones return to rule the world again". The final set of glyphs on the central cover stone after reconstruction are not hieroglyphs at all but a series of seven symbols identical to those on both the pedestal and inner ring of the naquada ring which I believe to be this Stargate."
"Stargate," Breetai muttered before a thoughtful expression appeared on his face as the name triggered something in his memory something from long, long ago, "do you mean star portal?"
"It reads Stargate commander, but it could easily mean star portal in another dialect," Daniel replied with a frown wondering what Breetai was thinking about. While the giant humanoid was difficult to read – due in no small part to the metal face plate covering one side of his face – it was obvious that his memory had been jogged.
"Why do you ask if Daniel meant portal commander," Gloval asked.
"There is an old, and quite obscure legend among the Zentraedi admiral," Exedore replied frowning slightly as he recalled the details, "one we inherited from our creators the Tirolians or as they are now known the Robotech Masters. This legend states that there was once a technology in the galaxies that translates from ancient Tirolian into star portal. While little information on this legend remains says that these star portals were supposedly devices created by a long gone extremely advanced spacefaring race that we know as the Old Ones.
"The portals themselves were supposedly planet-based structures that when activated by imputing a series of symbols into a control device would create a stable subspace wormhole between two portals no matter how far apart, they were in space. Any non-full size Zentraedi would then be able to enter the portal and emerge nearly instantly at the portal it had connected to even if it was thousands of light years away," Exedore continued. "Unfortunately, due to the passage of time there are no descriptions anywhere in our records of what these star portal devices looked like or what their control device looked like."
"Could it be that the Stargate as Daniel calls it and the legendary star portals are one and the same," Samantha Carter asked after a moment of thoughtful silence.
"I would say that it is a very real possibility," Exedore agreed with a nod, "if it is indeed the case that we have discovered one of the star portals, or Stargates, then it is indeed an incredible find. Especially if others still exist and are fully operational either in this galaxy or beyond."
"We need to find out," Gloval pointed out after another few moments of silence. "The question is how."
"The most obvious way would be to enter these seven symbols into the pedestal device and see how the ring responds," Sam pointed out. "We already know that the ring responds to buttons pressed on the control pedestal."
"Logical but also dangerous Doctor Carter," Secretary Anderson pointed out, "there are these false gods to consider whoever, or whatever, they really are. Do they still exist after all this time? How, much of a threat do they present to us? Are they really a threat that we need to confront right now?"
"It is possible that we might be dealing with one of these false gods already," Gloval said grimly, "this cult leader who sent those upgraded destroids – which I have to remind you had non-standard defensive technology such as energy shields – to attack Fort Minotaur and clear the way for transport planes loaded with troops to land. All to take this Stargate."
"You suspect that this Vosegus is one of these false gods spoken about in the hieroglyphs," Anderson asked.
"It would fit," Gloval replied, "the fact that he sent forces to attempt to capture the ring means he knows exactly what it is."
"Plus, Vosegus is the name of an ancient Celtic god of hunting and forestry if I remember correctly," Daniel added recalling the Celtic and other European mythologies he'd studied back when he'd been training to be both an archaeologist and anthropologist. "It is possible that this Vosegus could be an alien of some kind, after all to our distant ancestors a technologically far more advanced alien would be seen to be able to wield magic and could even be perceived to be a god."
"Interesting," Anderson commented. "Doctor Jackson, I hate to impose any more on your time, but would you mind writing up anything you know about this Vosegus. If he is who we are facing, then it means he has been here for a very long time."
"It has been a while since I studied Celtic mythology, but I will do what I can sir," Daniel replied with a smile, mentally rubbing his hands in glee at another challenge.
"Thank you doctor," Anderson answered with a pleased smile.
"In the meantime, what do we do about the Stargate sir," Sam asked.
Anderson looked thoughtful. "It's clear we need to know more," he said at last, "however using the gate is something that the entire defence council and the UEG executive need to discuss and decide on. To that end I am going to order only a minimal amount of additional research to be carried out on the gate for now. Try to get it to work but do no more than that until further orders are received."
"Understood sir," Sam acknowledged. She knew some of her fellow researchers wouldn't like having to wait but she would keep them in line, she had gotten quite experienced at doing that in the years since she'd left the US Air Force after the arrival of the SDF-1 and joined the Robotech Research Group.
"Does anyone have any questions," Anderson asked looking at the assembled soldiers and scientists. There were none, for now at least. "Then you all know what to do. Once the council and the executive have their decision, I will let you know. In the meantime, you know what to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few meetings to organise."
"Understood sir," General Richards answered for everyone.
"Good luck everyone," Anderson replied before closing the communication down from his end. A moment later Gloval and Exedore also disappeared to begin preparing for their part on the discussions ahead, Breetai following them a moment later.
"Alright everyone you all know what you need to be doing let's get to it," Richards said prompting everyone to begin dispersing back to their assigned workstations with a new enthusiasm – but also a healthy amount of concern – in all their steps. All of them knew, as many had known when the SDF-1 first crashed to Earth thirteen and a half years ago, that the work they were doing here was going to put humanity on the cusp of a new age and bring about the potential for great change. If that change was for the good or the ill was not, could not, be known yet…
…as always only time would tell.
~~~///~~~
Author Note: Well another chapter is done. Only a few minor changes here mostly clarification and tidy up. We are rapidly closing in on the end of this part of the story and moving into part two which will be about their first forays through the gate and that's where there are going to be major changes.
Landing Grid
Fort Minotaur, Crete
Two Days Later
Sheltering from a light drizzle – something that was not uncommon at this time of the year as despite what pre-Rain holiday commercials had shown the Mediterranean region was not constantly sunny – under an umbrella embossed with the kite symbol of the UEDF Rick Hunter watched as the VC33 transport plane – known informally to everyone in the military as a "mom's kitchen" due to its use as a front-line supply plane during the unification war - came into land on the base's main runway. While he knew that the planes had VTOL capabilities – with both of its two powerful mid-wing mounted Rolls Royce BR720 turbofan jet engines able to pivot – which was what had made them so useful as a supply plane/evac transport for front line soldiers it wasn't really the preferred method for landing. He had been waiting for this plane to arrive, or rather he was waiting for someone it was carrying as a passenger along with fresh supplies and equipment for Fort Minotaur including parts to replace the particle turret and parts of a new gatehouse both of whom had been blown up during the attack two days ago.
Has it really only been two days, he thought with a mental blink of almost incomprehension that it was so short a time since the base had been attacked; it certainly felt like it had been longer since they'd been attacked by the upgraded destroids, presumably sent by whoever this Vosegus person was. It felt longer since a lucky shot from him blew the main power bus on the last and leader of the attackers letting them take the pilot prisoner. It most definitely felt much longer than the two days it had been since to his shock and horror the pilot had turned out to be his own wayward cousin Nathan. Nathan who had been altered to a seemingly impossible degree by someone with a greater knowledge of bioengineering – more in depth checks of him had shown that his very DNA had been somehow restructured - than anyone Rick knew of while also having his own mind and personality overwritten by an artificial one.
The device needed to remove said artificial personality had arrived yesterday – transported under heavy guard due to both the fact that it was potentially a very dangerous, easily abused piece of kit as Nathan's current situation made clear and the fact the European airspace was not exactly the safest place to be right now, EBSIS was really pushing their luck right now as they attempted to intimidate more European nations into joining them instead of staying loyal to the UEG – along with a specialist neuro-scientist, a Doctor Ieuan Johnson, trained to operate the imprinter.
Doctor Johnson, and his micronized Zentraedi assist Korilan, had thoroughly reviewed Doctor Fraisers findings and – after doing some tests of their own with diagnostic equipment they'd brought with them - confirmed that they could indeed remove the implanted personality. And not only that but they could stimulate Nathan's original neural patterns – and with it his real personality - to re-establish themselves, but that Nathan – or whoever he was at the moment – would have to be fully conscious when they began the procedure. The procedure was tricky enough to do without having to also counter powerful drugs designed to keep you in the land of nod.
Thus, the medical personnel had taken him off the sedatives that they'd been pumping into him ever since the attack. Though to prevent escape or interference with the device he would remain tied to the bed in numerous locations. The last of the drugs would have finished leaving Nathan's system so they would be able to begin the erasure procedure as soon as he was awake. Doctor Johnson having already set up the imprinter ready to use with two of the UEDF STORM commandos standing guard – in their distinctive Tristan powered combat armour and carrying Colt PB2 beam rifles – in the room at all times to protect the imprinter. Though Johnson had said he would wait until Rick, and the guest he was waiting for, were present to begin the removal procedure.
The guest in question was of course his Aunt Maria.
Rick was honestly looking forward to seeing his father's younger sister again. While they had spoken quite a few times over the phone during the last eighteen months they hadn't really seen each other face to face in years not really since Pops funeral on the family ranch. A place which no longer existed as the quantum firestorms created by the Rain of Death over vast areas of the planet had burned it, like so many other places, to ashes. Though he still owned the land it had stood on and, when they cleaned up the area fully intended to rebuild his home. Rick put the thoughts of the ranch – that until its destruction had been the home of the Hunter family for over a hundred years – out of his mind and instead continued to watch and wait.
He didn't have to wait much longer as he could see people walking down the cargo ramp from the now parked aircraft. Most of the people disembarking from the VC33 were military personnel – reinforcements for the base as well as the loading crew who would liaise with base personnel to unload their cargo – but one person stood out amongst them. It was a tall now well into middle-aged, but still relatively fit woman whose once brown-black hair – the same shade as Rick's own hair – was now laced through with grey and white streaks. It was tied back into a neat bun in the same hairstyle that she'd worn her hair in for as long as he could remember.
Standing next to her was someone that Rick was not at particularly surprised to see here, considering just how close they had been getting over the last two years. With a slight smile on his lips, happy to see them both despite the less-than-ideal circumstances that had brought them here, he started walking over to greet them.
"Lisa, Aunt Maria welcome to Fort Minotaur," he called in greeting, mentally bracing himself for what he knew would follow from Aunt Maria.
He wasn't disappointed. "Ricky," Aunt Maria replied loudly in greeting before marching up and pulling him into one of her bone-crushing hugs. Still standing near the VC33 Rick could see Lisa mouth 'Ricky' even as her shoulders shook in sudden laughter at the amusing nickname. It was a nickname that she could see Rick gaining from friends and family members – and possibly even friends at school – as it was more irrelevant than Rick which she knew was short for Richard, though she was also aware that Rick absolutely hated being called Richard.
"Oh, it's so good to see you," Aunt Maria said pulling back and examining her only surviving nephew, he looked so like a shorter – Rick having inherited his mother's shorter stature alongside her blue eyes – and younger version of her brother dressed in a uniform that just looked right on him, just like Mitchell had always looked nice in his Navy aviator uniform. It was definitely an improvement over the hideous orange thing he'd worn when flying in the Air Circus. "Oh, you look so handsome in that uniform. I wish Mitch could have seen you."
Rick allowed a small, sad, smile to grace his lips at the mention of his father. Even after all this time he still greatly missed his father not just for his unconditional love and support but his kindness and wisdom. Though he didn't doubt that Mitchell Hunter would have been just as incensed by what had been done to Nathan by Vosegus as he was. "It's good to see you again Aunt Maria, I just wish it was under better circumstances," he replied. "I wish he was still here as well… he'd be as pissed as I am about what's we've discovered."
"Watch your mouth young man. You're not too old that I won't wash your mouth out with soap," Maria scolded for the language, making Rick wince and cringe – remembering the one time when he'd been eight years old that she had done just that, Roy had thought it hilarious until she did it to him as well - while nearby the listening Lisa chuckled at seeing how well the older woman had her nephew whipped. She'd enjoyed getting to know Maria Hunter during first their flight from Denver to New Macross then the flight here. She'd certainly given her a few more ideas for how to keep a certain, stubborn, loud mouthed and frequently extremely opinionated flyboy in line both when on and off duty. She'd certainly got the feeling that for all that she was unassuming – despite being taller than average – Maria could be a force of nature when she wanted to be. And she definitely had the same fierce temper – which any Zentraedi who'd faced him in battle and managed to survive had learned to fear given that an angry Rick Hunter was not loud as you would expect but instead, he was cold, and utterly ruthless – that her nephew did.
"Sorry Aunt Maria."
"That's better," Maria answered before her expression turned pained. "Did Nathan really lead an attack on this place?"
"Well yes and no," Rick replied, understanding fully the pained disbelief in his aunt's voice as before he ran away Nathan had always been so gentle. "Have you been told what we discovered when we examined him?"
"She has Rick," Lisa confirmed before looking up at the sky, the clouds were darkening more and the drizzle falling on the base seemed to be threatening to turn into heavier rain. The wind was also picking up a bit, indicating the presence of an approaching storm. Something that meteorology had apparently predicted to happen at some point today though they could not be sure precisely when as there simply weren't enough intact weather satellites to properly track the storm that had begun its life over North Africa. "Though before we continue might I suggest we go inside before this drizzle turns into a torrential downpour?"
"Good idea," Rick agreed offering his umbrella to his aunt who accepted it with a grateful smile. "Come on the entrance is this way."
With that he turned and began to lead the way inside just as the first larger drops of rain began to fall.
~~~///~~~
Elsewhere
That Same Time
The operative moved with a confident that he honestly didn't feel towards the secure medical wing. It had taken him quite a while, certainly longer than he would have liked, to forge a reason to be in this section of Fort Minotaur. Access to the secure medical wing being strictly controlled due to the sensitivity of some of the work carried out there, but he had finally managed to do it. Of course, that was just the first of the hurdles he would have to overcome to carry out his god's command to eliminate the captured Prime and get away without compromising his position here. There were numerous other things that had to go just right for this vital mission to be successfully completed.
Arriving at the first of the two security checkpoints that he would have to pass through the operative presented his ID card and the data card carrying his forged orders to the guard on duty. The guard accepted them without comment, put both in a reader and began carefully scrutinising them and their contents.
"Is there a problem?" the operative asked, nerves fluttering in his stomach like a swarm of disturbed butterflies. Mentally he prayed to Vosegus for luck and that he would pass through the checkpoint without difficulty. A handful of anxious moments passed while the marine guard, a guard that he didn't recognize but then he didn't exactly know everyone on the base in fact he preferred to keep to himself, only interacting with these infidels when he didn't have a choice. Not that the people here knew that they assumed that he was just a loner – a belief that he had somewhat encouraged – and gave him plenty of space.
"No problem. Just after the attack we're being extra careful," the marine answered before ejecting the card and ID from the reader. "Here you go." As he spoke the marine tapped a control causing the barrier blocking the corridor to open allowing him access.
"Thank you," the operative replied as he accepted them back, before passing through the opened barrier and resuming his journey towards the secure medical section hoping that he would get through the second check point as easily as this one. The marine guard watched him go until he was sure that the other man was out of earshot…
…then he reached for his radio.
"Corporal Roberts to security," he said into the radio.
"Security go," came the immediate response.
"We've got a problem."
~~//~~
Unaware of the conversation beginning behind him the operative continued on his way towards the second and final security checkpoint beyond which were the secure rooms and his quarry. Absently he fingered the ring on the middle finger of his right hand, it was completely unremarkable to look at being in appearance a slightly ornate ring of reddish-brown metal. It certainly didn't look like what it really was, the weapon that he would soon use to kill the captured Prime before hopefully slipping away again.
Realising what he was doing he stopped fingering the ring just before he came to a bend in the corridor. He rounded the bend, and the second checkpoint came into view. A faint shiver of unease ran down his spine as he saw that this checkpoint was not being manned by a normal marine but that it was being manned by a pair of STORM commandoes – he hadn't realized or heard that any of them were on the base. Both were dressed in full Tristan armour and had their helmets on meaning that instead of seeing two human faces all he saw was a silvered visor. Even to someone who was a soldier of Vosegus, like he was in his own way, they were a very intimidating sight.
Something that wasn't helped by the fact that both also had their beam rifles aimed right at him.
"Freeze. Hands up," one of the commandoes said, the vocaliser in his helmet given his voice a slightly metallic quality making it hard to place his accent. Something that it was deliberately designed to do.
"Is there a problem," the operative asked raising his hands as instructed before crossing them behind his head, using that as cover to tap the hidden button that caused his ring to expand into its true form memory metal components unfolding, from their previously molecularly compressed form in the ring, and locking into place with only the faintest of whirs. In moments he had a fully functional weapon on his hand where a harmless ring had been. And these infidels didn't even know it. Still, he decided to play dumb for a moment, as if he didn't know why they were stopping him. "Why are you stopping me? I have authorization to be here."
"Actually, you don't. You see while your little forgery is very good you made one tiny mistake," the commando who had spoken to him replied and though he couldn't see it he knew the commando was smirking behind his visor, "two of the code blocks were out of the correct sequence for this part of the base for this week. You used last week's coding ratio."
"Oh well I will have to watch that in future," the operative answered before exploding into motion, knowing what his duty to his god now was. Faster than either commando could react he brought his arm down, pointing the weapon at the commando who'd spoken to him and fired sending a pencil thin red energy beam at the armoured man. The beam hit the marine dead on, producing a brilliant flash and making him stagger back but otherwise not hurting him as his armour deflected as much of the blasts energy as possible while dispersing the rest through a complex armoured mesh to dissipate harmlessly leaving the person underneath unharmed.
It was the only shot he got off.
Even as the first commando staggered back, knocked momentarily off balance, the second fired his AR2 rifle in his direction. A searing whitish-blue beam took him high in the shoulder of his gun arm, dropping him to the floor with a scream of pain as fiery agony from the wounded shoulder exploded through his mind. Simultaneously he lost all feeling in his arm and realized instantly that the beam had certainly severed critical nerve endings rendering his arm, and the weapon sitting on top of his middle finger, useless.
He immediately heard approaching footsteps and knew the two marines were coming to take him prisoner. You're not taking me, he thought as he ignored the pain as much as he could to start to reach over with his good arm, heading for the button on the weapon that would trigger its self-destruct. His hand never got there as an armoured boot, its force enhanced by nano-muscle servos, kicked the arm hard. Knocking it back and producing an audible crack, along with a new stab of searing agony as his forearm was broken by the imparted force.
"Oh no you don't. No activating any self-destruct," the marine said sounding irritated before, assisted by the massive strength granted by the nano-muscle servos in the armour – the other marine picked him up and made him stand. He didn't dignify them with an answer instead he glared at them, inwardly cursing up a storm that they'd dared to stand in the way of his holy orders from Vosegus.
"What is going on here," a female voice abruptly asked from behind him. He tried, futilely to resist as the marines turned to find none other than Captain Lisa Hayes standing there looking a little peeved. Standing with her was Captain Hunter and a tall, middle-aged civilian woman.
"This man tried to reach the secure wards with a forged security pass ma'am," the same marine who'd spoken earlier replied glaring slightly at the now revealed traitor. He wouldn't be at all surprised to find that this was the guy who had called in those who attacked them two days ago, while none of their people had been killed a fair few had been injured and Private Campbell had had to be transported to Heraklion's main hospital where he was currently in a coma from hitting the wall so hard when the Monsters first fired upon them.
"When we stopped him, he attacked us with this," he continued and held out the weapon that the operative realized, with a jolt, had been taken from his finger though he naturally hadn't felt it due to the nerve endings to that arm having been severed by laser blast, "it fired some kind of laser though nothing compared to the beams from our rifles. Didn't even scorch my armour. After we stopped him, he attempted to touch a button on it presumably to trigger a self-destruct."
"I see," Lisa said stepping closer and looking at the operative closely. She could see that he was wearing a UEDF uniform, the kind worn by one of the technicians that were everywhere on any base or ship making sure that everything kept working as it should. "Who are you? What did you hope to accomplish here today?"
The operative didn't answer he simply glared at her as to his mind she was just another infidel who was daring to stand in the way of the will of Vosegus. Thus, she was not worthy of him acknowledging her in any way.
"Not feeling talkative," Lisa asked.
"He seems like a fanatic ma'am," the marine answered, "we do however have a good idea what he was here for. There is only one patient in the secure medical rooms at the moment."
"You were going to kill my baby," the civilian woman said stepping forward, anger on her face. That at last prompted an angry outburst from the operative.
"He's not your baby," he snapped the fervent fire of a fanatical believer in his eyes, "he's the Prime of the Jaftari in service of the Great God Vosegus. Who will punish you all for eternity for daring to thwart his will."
"A cultist then," Lisa commented with a shake of her head. She hated when they had to deal with people like this and there had been a fair few of them appearing out of the woodwork ever since the Rain. In some ways she could understand it, in times of great adversity people often sought comfort in religion and other things – which was ripe for unscrupulous people to exploit, but on the other hand she was annoyed that they had thought it perfectly okay to attack them. "Take him to the stockade and get the doctors to look at that arm. He'll be questioned later."
"When his wound is treated make sure that they run some blood tests. Tell Doctor Fraiser to look over them and compare them to those taken from Nathan," Rick added looking thoughtfully at the person who had been on a mission to kill his cousin. While part of him wanted to hate him for that he couldn't help but remember what Dr Fraiser had found in Nathan's first round of bloodwork.
"Will do ma'am, sir," one of the two marines replied before taking their prisoner away. The other returned to the security checkpoint to let the three of them through.
"Strange order their Rick," Lisa commented looking over at Rick. She knew that look on his face, he was suspicious of something as unless it was related to one Lynn Minmei Rick could be very observant. Plus there were times when he just had a knack for just knowing things. "What are you thinking?"
"When we first examined Nathan Doctor Fraiser found a previously unknown biological compound saturating all his bodily tissues but especially the neurological system," Rick explained as they made their way through the checkpoint. "It was dead, presumably killed by the electric shock Nathan received when I disabled the Spartan, he was piloting. However, given it was focused on the neurological system Doctor Fraiser thinks it could be some kind of mind control compound, certainly bioengineered specifically for such a purpose."
Lisa blinked. "You think mister would be assassin is another victim of this compound," she asked.
"Given his mention of Vosegus, whoever he really is as I don't for a second believe that he is a god he wouldn't need robotech weapons if he was, I would not be surprised if he was," Rick replied.
"Rick, are you saying that Nathan was brainwashed somehow?" Maria asked her nephew as she listened to what he was saying. She was suddenly desperately hopeful that that is what had happened to her son. For so long she had wondered why Nathan had so suddenly run away – only leaving a note in his hotel room for her to find that terrible morning when she went to wake him for breakfast – that summer.
"I'm certain of it, Aunt Maria. He certainly has been beyond brainwashed now with the imposition of an artificial personality," Rick answered as they arrived at the entrance to the observation room where they could watch the use of the neuro-somatic imprinter on Nathan to remove this 'Prime' personality.
The moment she saw the one-way glass Maria glanced at her nephew, who nodded to confirm that Nathan was in the room on the other side. Feeling rattlesnakes suddenly in her stomach, she slowly approached the window and looked through. Despite having been warned by Lisa during their flight here that Nathan had been extensively biogenetically altered sometime in the last four and a half years the sight that met her eyes still stunned her. The person on the bed looked like someone had taken Nathan's head and stuck it on the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger during the height of his bodybuilding career. He was tied to the bed with strong bands across his chest, wrists, waist and both his upper and lower legs. Bands that he obviously wasn't happy about wearing as she could see from the way his muscles kept standing out, and the sheen of sweat he was covered with, that he was trying to break them – trying and failing.
"Oh, my baby what's happened to you," she breathed putting her hand on the glass, even though she knew that he would not see her and probably wouldn't respond to her anyway given what she had been told had happened, had been done to him. A hand touching her shoulder caught her attention and she looked over to see that Rick had come up without her hearing him, a look of complete understanding on his face. She gave a slight smile back knowing instantly that he understood exactly how she was feeling.
After a moment she noticed the odd apparatus set up around Nathan's head. It looked almost like some technological head and neck brace – though a visor was present over his eyes – and was connected by a series of cables to another nearby device. A device that just by looking at it she could tell had not been made on Earth. There was something about both parts of the device, some shimmer in whatever metal it was made from, that said beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was alien.
"What's that around his head," she asked curious.
"It's the neuro-somatic imprinter," Rick replied, "it's what Doctor Johnson will use to remove the artificial personality before stimulating Nathan's original neural patterns to reassert themselves."
"So, he'll be himself again?"
"Yes, well as well as anyone can be after what he'd been through," Lisa replied, "he's probably going to need quite a considerable amount of therapy and emotional support after the artificial personality is removed. Especially as he will remember everything that he did while under its control, that is bound to take a terrible toll on his psyche. As is the fact that, from what we can tell, he was basically rebuilt from the genetic level up to be some kind of super soldier."
Maria's eyes burned with tears of both anger and sadness. "Oh, my poor boy," she said looking back through the window to see two new individuals had arrived in the room. One was a short, but very stocky, man with short brown hair. He looked completely unremarkable unlike his companion who was very tall pushing six foot six with mauve coloured skin and purple hair.
"Who are they," Maria asked nodding at the two new arrivals.
"The short stocky one is Doctor Ieuan Johnson he'll be the one operating the imprinter," Rick replied, "the tall one is his assistant Korilan – he's a micronized Zentraedi."
"Is that safe?" Maria asked looking nervously at the alien. She had never actually met a Zentraedi before today only ever seen them at a distance and then only in their giant natural form. They were downright terrifying to look at and made you literally feel small. Something that she wasn't used to as she had always been taller than average, like Mitch she'd inherited their father's height.
"Perfectly."
"They're beginning the procedure now," Lisa commented as the two men moved to their positions and got to work.
It wasn't much to look at as the parts of the imprinter that were around Nathan's head lit up and abruptly, he seemed to freeze as though he had been instantly transfixed by the light. For a few minutes nothing more seemed to happen then a laser-like fan of energy began steadily sweeping back and forth across Nathan's forehead, the beam penetrating into the skull beneath the layers of skin and muscle.
"What's that doing," Maria wondered.
"As I understand it the beam you see is the imprinter isolating the foundations of the artificial Prime personality and beginning to remove them," Lisa replied, recalling what she had been told about the imprinter technology. "Depending on exactly how long the artificial personality has been there and how dominant it has been the process could take anywhere from twenty minutes to three hours to complete."
"Once that's done the last aspects of this 'Prime' persona will be gone and then they'll be able to stimulate Nathan's original neural patterns to re-emerge," Rick added having also been thoroughly briefed on what the imprinter was going to do to his cousin. "After the procedure's done he'll sleep for a while as his neural pathways recover and are regenerated by a healing energy imparted by the imprinter at the end of the cycle."
"And there is nothing we can do in the meantime," Maria asked.
"Nothing but wait."
Maria nodded and stood there watching and waiting. Nearly two hours passed with the imprinter still running that scan beam back and forth. Until abruptly the scan went static before firing a series of pulses into her son's head. The reaction was immediate as Nathan stiffened – every one of his muscles suddenly looking almost like they were going to pop out of his skin – and his mouth opened and while she couldn't hear it, she didn't need to, she knew that Nathan was screaming. She started to move, to go in there and stop them hurting him, only for Rick's hand to shoot out.
"Don't," he said, "I was warned this might happen."
"But they're hurting him," Maria started to argue with her nephew, despite the situation she was surprised by the amount of strength she could feel in Rick's arm. It seemed out of proportion for the compact martial artist/gymnast build that Rick had. She wondered if it was true what some people in the media said about the UEDF giving all its military personnel some form of genetic enhancement as a sign-up bonus.
"They're not the one who is hurting is the artificial personality as its destroyed," Rick replied he glanced back into the room to see Nathan had stilled. "See."
Maria followed her nephew's gaze and saw that Nathan was indeed calm again and had stopped screaming. The imprinter was still active though the colour of the beam had changed from a pale red to a soft green. A pulse of brighter light shot along the beam and disappeared into his head. A second pulse followed then a third and a fourth before finally the beam moved again. Running back and forth across his head three times before shutting down the imprinter going dark moments later.
Through the window they could see Doctor Johnson and Korilan talking for a few moments. Then Doctor Johnson left the room while the Zentraedi began carefully removing the imprinter apparatus from around Nathan's head. A moment later the door to the observation room opened and Doctor Johnson came in.
"The artificial personality has been removed," he said calmly in an accent that Maria couldn't place but she would bet it was Welsh. It would fit as if she was right Ieuan was a Welsh variant of Ian. "We have successfully restored the patients' original neural patterns. They are functioning normally though based on my calculations he will sleep for eight or nine hours while his mind gets used to itself again."
"But he'll be alright," Maria asked, looking desperately hopeful that she was about to get her beloved son back.
"Physically yes. I will have to do a series of cognisance tests when he wakes up to make sure everything is alright but that shouldn't take long. I will get some medical techs to move him to a proper recovery room."
"Thank you doctor. Can I see him?"
"As soon as we've moved him to a recovery room, you'll be able to see him."
"Thank you doctor."
"If you'll excuse me, I will start the ball rolling to move him."
"Of course," Maria replied. Doctor Johnson smiled back, then turned and left to begin arranging for the transfer of Nathan Hunter to a room where he could begin to recover from his ordeal. Rick, Maria and Lisa watched him leave before the two Hunter's turned and gave one another a hug of relief at the knowledge that the removal of the artificial personality had been a success and that while he would no doubt have a long road to go down to recover from his ordeal, they had Nathan back.
And that was all that mattered.
~~~///~~~
Hieroglyphics Lab
A Short Time Later
Doctor Daniel Jackson smiled as he carefully checked his translation of the hieroglyphics that had been present on the cover stones. It had been a challenging job translating them – not only were the glyphs damaged from the weight of the derelict Zentraedi cruiser that had sat on top of them, but the dialect they were written in was a very old one even by Ancient Egyptian standards. Something that honestly wasn't surprising when you considered that these things had been buried beneath the Giza Plateau over six millennia ago – but it had been a challenge he had enjoyed especially as he had learned to use a laser scanner in the process.
Reaching out he tapped the comm unit on his main workstation. "Doctor Jackson to Doctor Carter."
"This is Doctor Carter what is it Daniel," Samantha Carter answered immediately from the main lab.
"Sam you better get in here," he said unable to keep the elation at succeeding in his task from his voice, "and bring everyone who you think will be interested."
"You've done it?" Sam asked sounding surprised that he had managed to translate such an archaic Egyptian dialect so fast.
"I have."
"We'll be right there."
~~//~~
Five Minutes Later
Claudia Grant had a slight spring in her step as she arrived at the lab that had been specifically set aside for Doctor Jackson to work on his translation of the cover stone hieroglyphs. She was surprised that the translation had come so relatively quickly, especially given how damaged some of the glyphs were requiring the use of a laser scanner to read them and attempt to reconstruct them in the form of a holographic projection. Though at the same time she was eager to learn just what it was the glyphs meant and if they gave any indication of the nature and purpose of the mysterious naquada ring.
Entering the lab, she wasn't surprised to find that a number of other people had arrived before her including many of the scientists who had been attempting – somewhat unsuccessfully – to probe the secrets of the ring. General Richards and Colonel Kowalski were present as well but one person who was present did surprise her somewhat.
"Lisa this is a surprise," she said in greeting to her friend and former SDF-1 shipmate. "I would have thought you would be with Rick and his aunt. Did the procedure work on Nathan?"
"It did take over two hours, but the artificial personality is gone," Lisa replied embracing her best friend from their days on the SDF-1. "Nathan has been moved to a recovery room and is sleeping now. According to Doctor Johnson he could sleep for eight hours or more as his mind recovers from the removal of the imprinted personality and the restoration of his original brainwave patterns. Rick and his aunt are currently sitting with Nathan for a while. If I know Rick, he'll be there until Nathan wakes up and from what I have seen of her Maria will be as well."
"Well, they are Hunters stubbornness run's deep in that family," Claudia pointed out.
"True," Lisa agreed as they approached the crowd waiting for Doctor Jackson to speak. After a few moments the archaeologist, anthropologist, and linguist – seeing everyone was here, with some people in the form of Admiral Gloval, Minister Exedore, Secretary Anderson, and Commander Breetai attending on holographic screens – stepped forward to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen thank you all for assembling here on such short notice," Daniel said. "As you all know I was asked to come here to translate the hieroglyphs written upon the cover stones of the alien naquada ring. While it was a challenging assignment due to both the fact that the glyphs were damaged and had to be digitally reconstructed and the fact that the dialect, they're written in is old even by Ancient Egyptian standards, I am pleased to inform you all that this translation has now been completed."
"What do they say doctor?" Admiral Gloval asked.
"The translation says the following "A million years into the skies, sealed and buried for all time the Stargate of the false god Ra. May it never see the light of day again less the false ones return to rule the world again". The final set of glyphs on the central cover stone after reconstruction are not hieroglyphs at all but a series of seven symbols identical to those on both the pedestal and inner ring of the naquada ring which I believe to be this Stargate."
"Stargate," Breetai muttered before a thoughtful expression appeared on his face as the name triggered something in his memory something from long, long ago, "do you mean star portal?"
"It reads Stargate commander, but it could easily mean star portal in another dialect," Daniel replied with a frown wondering what Breetai was thinking about. While the giant humanoid was difficult to read – due in no small part to the metal face plate covering one side of his face – it was obvious that his memory had been jogged.
"Why do you ask if Daniel meant portal commander," Gloval asked.
"There is an old, and quite obscure legend among the Zentraedi admiral," Exedore replied frowning slightly as he recalled the details, "one we inherited from our creators the Tirolians or as they are now known the Robotech Masters. This legend states that there was once a technology in the galaxies that translates from ancient Tirolian into star portal. While little information on this legend remains says that these star portals were supposedly devices created by a long gone extremely advanced spacefaring race that we know as the Old Ones.
"The portals themselves were supposedly planet-based structures that when activated by imputing a series of symbols into a control device would create a stable subspace wormhole between two portals no matter how far apart, they were in space. Any non-full size Zentraedi would then be able to enter the portal and emerge nearly instantly at the portal it had connected to even if it was thousands of light years away," Exedore continued. "Unfortunately, due to the passage of time there are no descriptions anywhere in our records of what these star portal devices looked like or what their control device looked like."
"Could it be that the Stargate as Daniel calls it and the legendary star portals are one and the same," Samantha Carter asked after a moment of thoughtful silence.
"I would say that it is a very real possibility," Exedore agreed with a nod, "if it is indeed the case that we have discovered one of the star portals, or Stargates, then it is indeed an incredible find. Especially if others still exist and are fully operational either in this galaxy or beyond."
"We need to find out," Gloval pointed out after another few moments of silence. "The question is how."
"The most obvious way would be to enter these seven symbols into the pedestal device and see how the ring responds," Sam pointed out. "We already know that the ring responds to buttons pressed on the control pedestal."
"Logical but also dangerous Doctor Carter," Secretary Anderson pointed out, "there are these false gods to consider whoever, or whatever, they really are. Do they still exist after all this time? How, much of a threat do they present to us? Are they really a threat that we need to confront right now?"
"It is possible that we might be dealing with one of these false gods already," Gloval said grimly, "this cult leader who sent those upgraded destroids – which I have to remind you had non-standard defensive technology such as energy shields – to attack Fort Minotaur and clear the way for transport planes loaded with troops to land. All to take this Stargate."
"You suspect that this Vosegus is one of these false gods spoken about in the hieroglyphs," Anderson asked.
"It would fit," Gloval replied, "the fact that he sent forces to attempt to capture the ring means he knows exactly what it is."
"Plus, Vosegus is the name of an ancient Celtic god of hunting and forestry if I remember correctly," Daniel added recalling the Celtic and other European mythologies he'd studied back when he'd been training to be both an archaeologist and anthropologist. "It is possible that this Vosegus could be an alien of some kind, after all to our distant ancestors a technologically far more advanced alien would be seen to be able to wield magic and could even be perceived to be a god."
"Interesting," Anderson commented. "Doctor Jackson, I hate to impose any more on your time, but would you mind writing up anything you know about this Vosegus. If he is who we are facing, then it means he has been here for a very long time."
"It has been a while since I studied Celtic mythology, but I will do what I can sir," Daniel replied with a smile, mentally rubbing his hands in glee at another challenge.
"Thank you doctor," Anderson answered with a pleased smile.
"In the meantime, what do we do about the Stargate sir," Sam asked.
Anderson looked thoughtful. "It's clear we need to know more," he said at last, "however using the gate is something that the entire defence council and the UEG executive need to discuss and decide on. To that end I am going to order only a minimal amount of additional research to be carried out on the gate for now. Try to get it to work but do no more than that until further orders are received."
"Understood sir," Sam acknowledged. She knew some of her fellow researchers wouldn't like having to wait but she would keep them in line, she had gotten quite experienced at doing that in the years since she'd left the US Air Force after the arrival of the SDF-1 and joined the Robotech Research Group.
"Does anyone have any questions," Anderson asked looking at the assembled soldiers and scientists. There were none, for now at least. "Then you all know what to do. Once the council and the executive have their decision, I will let you know. In the meantime, you know what to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few meetings to organise."
"Understood sir," General Richards answered for everyone.
"Good luck everyone," Anderson replied before closing the communication down from his end. A moment later Gloval and Exedore also disappeared to begin preparing for their part on the discussions ahead, Breetai following them a moment later.
"Alright everyone you all know what you need to be doing let's get to it," Richards said prompting everyone to begin dispersing back to their assigned workstations with a new enthusiasm – but also a healthy amount of concern – in all their steps. All of them knew, as many had known when the SDF-1 first crashed to Earth thirteen and a half years ago, that the work they were doing here was going to put humanity on the cusp of a new age and bring about the potential for great change. If that change was for the good or the ill was not, could not, be known yet…
…as always only time would tell.
~~~///~~~
Author Note: Well another chapter is done. Only a few minor changes here mostly clarification and tidy up. We are rapidly closing in on the end of this part of the story and moving into part two which will be about their first forays through the gate and that's where there are going to be major changes.
Chapter Six
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Six
Robotech Factory Satellite
L3 Lagranian Point
A Short Time Later
As invisible and as intangible as a ghost – to the few thousand mixed Zentraedi and Terran personnel stationed here – in his ascended form Zor glided through the halls and passageways – many of which were big enough to house an eight lane motorway with ease – of the factory satellite with a very specific destination in mind. A destination that was deep within the very core of this great station – one of dozens like it, and a few hundred smaller versions that his former people had built and deployed throughout their vast empire though only this one, designated as it was as the primary shipyard for the Zentraedi Armada, had ever left Tirolian space – where no Zentraedi had ever been allowed to go. Where nobody on board had been yet as the security systems had the section sealed off and hadn't yet been able to be overridden by the Terran technicians, though they were making impressive progress on overriding the lockouts.
Despite himself he couldn't help but be both shocked and appalled by how run down the station had become. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of damage a fair percentage of which was from combat – being the Zentraedi shipyard the station had been attacked numerous times by enemies of the empire with the Invid being the most common culprits – but the bulk of it was purely from neglect. The Zentraedi who had been stationed here – and who had been defeated by a combined Terran/Free Zentraedi task force just over a month ago – just hadn't known how to maintain and repair the station properly. They could operate the production, cloning and defensive systems but that had been all they'd known how to do.
Something that he knew was by design as the last thing Nimuul and the others like him wanted was for the Zentraedi to get tech savvy enough to potentially turn against them and the wider Tirolian Empire. To compensate for this the station had an entire legion of automatic systems that were there to maintain and repair all systems and all sections of the two hundred and fifty-six kilometre long, sixty-eight-kilometre-tall station. Unfortunately, with the passage of time - and crucially the station's ever decreasing protoculture reserves - many of those systems had either malfunctioned or gone offline completely. With the inevitable result that systems when damaged had simply not been repaired.
While the power issue was already mostly resolved – in the month or so since it's capture several shipments of protoculture had been sent up from the SDF-1 restoring the station almost to full power, only another three shipments would be needed for full power restoration – the Terrans, while they had repeatedly displayed an impressive grasp of the fundamental principles of robotechnology and had indeed applied it in ways that had surprised even him, lacked the knowledge to fully restore the station to life. Thankfully for them he could, and would, help them there and the best part was since it involved him doing nothing that he could not have done as a normal mortal Tirolian those who ruled the ascended – and set and enforced the rules that they all had to live by – couldn't do a thing to stop him. All the frightful old bores could do was scowl in disapproval if they noticed at all – which they probably wouldn't unless he used his powers as an ascended being too much. Plus, I can always count on Janus, Oma, and a few others to run interference with them for me, if necessary, he thought with the ascended equivalent of a smug smirk.
It was at that moment that he arrived at his destination.
With a thought he materialized in the appearance that he had back when he was mortal. He took a moment to gain his balance, he wasn't used to needing to these days since as an ascended being he was usually just energy, before moving over to the large, curved console that dominated the centre of the room. A few taps of the console brought it to life, causing holographic screens to blink to life over the console all of them showing the same request for an access code.
Calmly he entered his personal security override code and immediately all the security lock outs and limits disappeared giving him full access to all systems on the station – including those advanced functions that were normally set aside for Robotech Masters only. Not that those restrictions really applied to him since he, alongside his mentor and long-time friend Cabell, was the principal creator of many of the sciences and technologies that were known by the umbrella term of robotechnology – something that was a never ending source of discussion between himself and those ascended who, like Janus, had been scientists in their mortal lives as the technology he'd created fascinated them as did the Flowers of Life and protoculture as both were one of the few things in the universe that the Ancients had had no knowledge of and thus were completely fascinated by – thus he had master override codes for all of it. Codes that were known only to him and Cabell. It was something that had come in useful when he'd needed to fake orders from the Masters to leave the core territories of the empire on Flower of Life seeding missions. Missions that had ultimately seen him ascend when the automated supply base he'd been at – taking on supplies – had come under attack from a group of Invid hiveships.
With full access granted the first thing that he did was make sure that there would be no security records of his presence here as that would only raise questions that he couldn't answer especially as Breetai and Exedore had no doubt told their allies that he was supposed to be dead. Once that particular issue was dealt with, he began accessing the systems that he had specifically come here to access, specifically the advanced station maintenance and repair functions. All of which were currently offline though it was a relatively simple matter for him to access the operating system for them and thoroughly check for damage to the coding before – finding that the coding was fine and that the systems had only gone offline due to power depletion – resetting the systems and setting them to work.
Immediately the screens came to life showing that the stations army of maintenance drones – which had been sitting idle in their docking stations for a decade or more at this point – coming back to life and immediately beginning to move out to deal repairs in order of priority. Simultaneously swarms of nanobots came to life and began working to repair the hull of the station as it had been compromised in a number of areas by the many battles that this place had been through over the years. Zor watched the screens calmly as the order of maintenance and repair tasks appeared with the highest priority repairs indicated in purple while lower priority tasks were orange, blue and yellow respectively. It was a very extensive list, and the computer was estimating that, based on currently available power and raw material stores, it would take several weeks to complete all station wide repairs.
I suppose that will have to do, he thought before beginning the second of the two self-appointed tasks that he had come to the station to perform. This one would, if the Robotech Masters ever found out about it, give Nimuul and the others a collective heart attack and no doubt prompt some stupefied, horrified staring from them. Not that he cared about what his former people would have thought about it, especially those who had taken his discoveries and perverted them into something terrible. Something that had allowed them to transform the once peaceful, egalitarian Tirolian Republic into the current ruthlessly imperialistic Tirolian Empire. Something that he would never, not even in a billion years, ever forgive them for.
The issue in question was he began systematically removing all the security lockouts and overrides that would have otherwise prevented full access to the stations vast technological and scientific database instead of the limited access that the Zentraedi had been permitted. With full access – including access to several technologies that he'd kept from the other Masters – the people of this planet and their Zentraedi allies would have a much better chance against the Goa'uld who would certainly move to crush them the moment they became aware of their potential as a threat to their millenniums old rule over this galaxy. To say nothing of the Masters when they inevitably came to reclaim the protoculture matrix themselves, though knowing them they would send the Guardians to try and do it first only coming themselves if they failed.
He grimaced slightly at the thought of the Guardian Zentraedi coming to this galaxy. It was almost inevitable that they would, the Robotech Masters would certainly send them to investigate Dolza's death if nothing else, and he had to prepare the people here for that eventuality. Thus, he entered a few more commands into the system, giving it a few new directives to begin implementing – well provided the Terrans didn't override it as he wasn't going to take that control away from them as it would be kind of against what he had come to do – when the Zentraedi fleet eventually began docking with the station for resupply and repair.
In no time at all he was finished with his work. He allowed himself a small smile before powering down the console – knowing that further input from him was not necessary – and returned to his natural energy state. Whereupon he teleported himself down to the surface of the planet materialising in the hallway of a small home on the outskirts of New Macross City. The house was quiet and dark, since it was the middle of the night in this particular hemisphere with dawn still hours away and all he could hear was the soft tick-tock of a clock and the muffled roaring of the rain falling outside.
Which suited him and his purpose just fine.
Calmly he made his way towards where he knew the bedroom to be, passing through walls be they solid load bearing walls or flimsy stud partition walls with equal ease and leaving not even the slightest trace to mark his passage. In no time at all he reached his destination where a well-built Terran male lay asleep on the bed. Without waiting – knowing he wouldn't have long now before some of the other ascended started noticing his absence from there higher plane of existence – he extended a softly glowing hand and reached into the forehead of the man in much the same way the Asurans would if they were going to interrogate whatever poor organic being had stumbled across their planet. His purpose was similar though he wasn't about to probe the humans mind – he didn't need to he had already thoroughly researched him and been very impressed with his accomplishments, especially how quickly he had assimilated and applied the basics of robotechnology – instead he carefully placed an information packet in the unconscious Terran's subconscious mind then he withdrew. The information packet would take some time to unfurl and make its way up into the conscious mind but when it did it would lead one Doctor Emil Lang to the hidden protoculture matrix, help him understand the basics of how it worked – he wouldn't give him everything just enough to get him started on understanding, and eventually replicating, the technology – as well as give him a few other potentially useful ideas.
His tasks completed he teleported himself back to the higher planes appearing in his personal section of the realm of ascended beings, which naturally looked much like the estate in Tiresia where he had lived all his life with his father Zol in the years before the rise of the Masters. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to see Oma and Janus waiting for him.
"Did you do everything you needed to do," Janus asked.
"For now," Zor replied, he had been tempted to do more but knew that he couldn't not without risking the others catching onto what he was up to and stopping him. Though he already had a contingency plan in place in the event The Others decided to move against him for the 'crime' of interfering with the lower planes. "All that is left to do now is watch and hope that I haven't gone and made things worse – again."
"You have always acted with the best of intentions of Zor," Oma reminded him softly, "as I told you when I helped you ascend what your people did with your discoveries, the crimes that they have committed against the universe, are not yours to bare. They will answer for their crimes in due time."
Zor sighed at the old argument between them. "My head knows that" he admitted. "Nimuul and his siblings bare most of the blame for the perversion of protoculture into a tool of conquest and war. But in my heart, I cannot help but feel responsible. If I'd never found Optera, never met and mind melded with the Regis I would never have learned the secret of the Flower of Life. I would never have created protoculture then they would never have been able to do the things that they've done."
"You did what you could, with the information that you had at the time," Janus reminded him, "that's all anyone can do, even ascended beings such as us."
"I know that but why does that never make me feel any better?"
"Because you have a good heart," Oma answered.
"Now all three of us should put in a few appearances in the usual ascended hangouts," Janus said bringing an end to the discussion as he knew if he let it continue Zor would beat himself relentlessly over the crimes of his former people and the role he had played in – however inadvertently – helping them perpetuate such evils. It was a common occurrence as Zor still had tremendous guilt for that past, guilt that himself and Oma were slowly but surely helping him overcome. They'd get him over it fully eventually even if it took them a century or two to do it, but then for them – as ascended beings – time had no meaning and couldn't affect them unless they allowed it to.
"The diner or that recreation of a Roman bathhouse?" Oma questioned.
"The diner I don't fancy the bathhouse today," Zor replied with a slight smile. While the bathhouse was a fun – and actually reminded him somewhat of some of the places he'd visited on Praxis – place to hang out it was also the most popular of ascended hang out spots. If he went there he would inevitably be drawn into a discussion about protoculture, the Flowers of Life and robotechnology with other ascended, especially those who had been scientists and engineers when they were mortal.
Which was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
"You just want to see me in my waitress get-up," Oma quipped with a smile, though she knew the real reason why Zor wanted to go to the diner. It was quieter and he was less likely to be mobbed by curious former scientists.
"Well, you have to admit you look good in it Oma," Janus pointed out causing Zor to laugh and Oma to blush, well as far as a being who was made entirely of energy could blush. Without waiting for the inevitable comeback from Oma, he teleported himself away to the recreation of a 1930's North American diner that had become quite a popular hang-out place for many of the ascended. At least those who wanted a quiet place to hang out that wasn't a recreation of one of the Great Libraries. Zor and Oma exchanged an amused look at his quick retreat before teleporting after him.
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Vosegus slowly opened the eyes of his new host body. He was aware that his scientists had wanted to run a few more tests on the clone – especially as this was the first time, they'd ever created a being from scratch –before he transferred himself into it, but fate had had other ideas. It had been obvious for a while that his previous host – who he had inhabited since he'd been forced to take the Prussian cavalry officer as a host at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, after the French officer he'd been inhabiting at the time was wounded beyond his ability to heal – was coming to the end of his usefulness as even a Goa'uld could only keep a host body alive for so long without the aid of a sarcophagus device – which he had never owned as back when he'd been an underlord of Camulus they'd been reserved for System Lords only – after all. The host had abruptly taken a turn for the worst earlier this morning. He'd known instantly that the host would not last out the day, meaning that they hadn't had time to do the final series of checks that they had been hoping to do on the clone after it had been decanted for a day or so.
"My lord, are you alright," his lead scientist asked seeing his eyes open.
"I am fine," Vosegus replied as he sat up, finding controlling the clones motor functions as effortless as it would be controlling any other host body. Yet there was something different, something that he couldn't immediately put his fingers on. Then he realized what the problem was, well not so much a problem as something he had not anticipated but now that he really thought about it should have that was unusual. He couldn't hear the thoughts of his host, couldn't hear them cursing him from their prison at the back of his mind. It was strange and different, as this body had had no mind before he'd entered it, but something that he was sure he would get used to eventually.
"No problems controlling the clone my lord?"
"None whatsoever," Vosegus answered as he swung his new legs off the edge of the bed and stood up, pleased to find that there was indeed no problem controlling the body of this bioengineered clone. He, took a few moments to look around, noticing the covered gurney that held the lifeless form of what had been his body for the last two hundred and seven years. While it hadn't been his first choice of a new body to inhabit – he had originally planned to take Napoleon himself as a host when the time came as the man's military genius would have been highly useful, but it had sadly been not to be fate could on occasion be a right pain in the backside as it was one of the few forces that even a Goa'uld couldn't defy – but it had served him well enough. "Ensure that my previous host's body is disposed of with dignity."
"As you wish my lord. My lord I should inform you that Elena is waiting with some appropriate clothing in the next room."
"Excellent. Have we received any word from our operative at Fort Minotaur? Is Prime dead yet?"
The scientist blanched at the question and alarm bells began going off in Vosegus head. He did not like that look as it meant that once again something had gone wrong, big time. "What has happened," he demanded as he picked up his kara'kesh from a side table and slipped it on. "Speak."
The scientist gulped and took the plunge hoping that he would soon not find himself on the wrong end of his liege's infamous temper. "I am afraid not my lord," the scientist answered praying silently that the bound to be enraged living god didn't decide to send him flying across the room or decide to fry his brain, "our operatives in the defence council support staff report his attempt was foiled."
"Foiled! How?"
"While our information is currently limited it appears that he was stopped by a pair of UEDF STORM Commandoes."
"STORM Commandoes! What were they doing there?" Vosegus demanded knowing that the Special Tactical Operations and Reconnaissance Marine Commandoes were one of the elite special forces of the United Earth Defence Forces drawing their training and members from the top-flight of the pre-Unification Worlds special forces organisations. Which when combined with the fact that the UEDF had given them the best technology and biogenetic augmentations available made them once of the most formidable and deadly special forces units to ever exist. They were one of the few he would admit to be a match for his Jafftari forces in a straight up physical confrontation.
"I am not sure my lord but if I had to guess I would say that they were there to protect the imprinter that has since been used on Prime to remove the persona you created for him."
Oh fuck. Of all the Anubis-cursed luck, Vosegus thought with a scowl feeling his rage begin to build, though strangely it was not as instant and fiery as it normally was. A part of him wondered if the fact that his body had had no mind of its own had something to do with it. He would have to ponder that later as he was well aware that his temper was one of the few areas where he was vulnerable – it was not an unknown problem among Goa'uld. Right now, though he had other things to worry about, if they had successfully removed the constructed persona from Prime – which on top of the death of the nish'ta in his system would let the body's originally personality matrix reassert itself – then the location of this base was compromised.
Prime after all knew exactly where this place was and thus the original personality – Nathan something if he remembered right – would know as well. Know and certainly tell the people on Fort Minotaur when they inevitably debriefed him. Who would then tell the Defence Council who would quicky mobilize forces against this base and he was under no illusions of their chances of repelling a major attack by forces equipped with state of the art robotech weaponry. That would be an attack that would be beyond their ability to repel at this time.
"I see," he said at last ignoring the way the scientist's shoulders dropped in relief as the human realised that he wasn't about to lose it and sending him flying across the room with a repulsor blast. "Have all senior department leaders meet me in the throne room in ten minutes. In the meantime, I want you to begin preparations to evacuate all critical supplies and equipment to our secondary base in the Urals."
"As you wish my lord."
Vosegus smiled pleased, before turning and beginning to make his way out of the room to the nearby chamber where Elena would be waiting with a choice of clothing sized for this new body. A body that was taller and more muscular than anybody he had inhabited to date. Normally he would spend awhile with his lotaur choosing which set of clothes to wear and which to mix together for that particular day – he was often spoilt for choice as the people of this planet had so many different styles of clothing, and materials to choose from – but today he would not have time. He would just dress in something comfortable and make his way to the throne room where he would have to organise the abandonment and destruction of this base and their transport to their nearest secondary base in the Ural Mountains of Western Russia. Something that with the current tensions between the UEG and EBSIS = and the fact that both heavily patrolled the border – would not be easy to arrange but he would manage it. He had done such things many times before over the centuries and was far more successful at quietly moving bases than that fool Setesh – who he frankly didn't have to worry about anymore as the fool had been killed when his new base in San Francisco was like the city around it destroyed during the Zentraedi bombardment of the planet – had been.
Once those decisions were made, and his minions/worshippers set to work making the appropriate preparations and beginning to carry them out, he would hopefully have time to sit and start thinking. Thinking about how he was going to both salvage something from this disaster, how he was going to keep his brainwashed operatives from being discovered by his enemies – as it certainly wouldn't take the UEDF and UEG long to come up with a blood test capable of detecting the presence of nish'ta in a body – and how he was ultimately going to make those responsible for this latest setback pay.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well. another chapter bites the dust I hope you all enjoyed it. This chapter brings us to the end of part one of this story in the next part they will begin going through the Stargate and here is where events will really begin changing more from the first version of the story.
Robotech Factory Satellite
L3 Lagranian Point
A Short Time Later
As invisible and as intangible as a ghost – to the few thousand mixed Zentraedi and Terran personnel stationed here – in his ascended form Zor glided through the halls and passageways – many of which were big enough to house an eight lane motorway with ease – of the factory satellite with a very specific destination in mind. A destination that was deep within the very core of this great station – one of dozens like it, and a few hundred smaller versions that his former people had built and deployed throughout their vast empire though only this one, designated as it was as the primary shipyard for the Zentraedi Armada, had ever left Tirolian space – where no Zentraedi had ever been allowed to go. Where nobody on board had been yet as the security systems had the section sealed off and hadn't yet been able to be overridden by the Terran technicians, though they were making impressive progress on overriding the lockouts.
Despite himself he couldn't help but be both shocked and appalled by how run down the station had become. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of damage a fair percentage of which was from combat – being the Zentraedi shipyard the station had been attacked numerous times by enemies of the empire with the Invid being the most common culprits – but the bulk of it was purely from neglect. The Zentraedi who had been stationed here – and who had been defeated by a combined Terran/Free Zentraedi task force just over a month ago – just hadn't known how to maintain and repair the station properly. They could operate the production, cloning and defensive systems but that had been all they'd known how to do.
Something that he knew was by design as the last thing Nimuul and the others like him wanted was for the Zentraedi to get tech savvy enough to potentially turn against them and the wider Tirolian Empire. To compensate for this the station had an entire legion of automatic systems that were there to maintain and repair all systems and all sections of the two hundred and fifty-six kilometre long, sixty-eight-kilometre-tall station. Unfortunately, with the passage of time - and crucially the station's ever decreasing protoculture reserves - many of those systems had either malfunctioned or gone offline completely. With the inevitable result that systems when damaged had simply not been repaired.
While the power issue was already mostly resolved – in the month or so since it's capture several shipments of protoculture had been sent up from the SDF-1 restoring the station almost to full power, only another three shipments would be needed for full power restoration – the Terrans, while they had repeatedly displayed an impressive grasp of the fundamental principles of robotechnology and had indeed applied it in ways that had surprised even him, lacked the knowledge to fully restore the station to life. Thankfully for them he could, and would, help them there and the best part was since it involved him doing nothing that he could not have done as a normal mortal Tirolian those who ruled the ascended – and set and enforced the rules that they all had to live by – couldn't do a thing to stop him. All the frightful old bores could do was scowl in disapproval if they noticed at all – which they probably wouldn't unless he used his powers as an ascended being too much. Plus, I can always count on Janus, Oma, and a few others to run interference with them for me, if necessary, he thought with the ascended equivalent of a smug smirk.
It was at that moment that he arrived at his destination.
With a thought he materialized in the appearance that he had back when he was mortal. He took a moment to gain his balance, he wasn't used to needing to these days since as an ascended being he was usually just energy, before moving over to the large, curved console that dominated the centre of the room. A few taps of the console brought it to life, causing holographic screens to blink to life over the console all of them showing the same request for an access code.
Calmly he entered his personal security override code and immediately all the security lock outs and limits disappeared giving him full access to all systems on the station – including those advanced functions that were normally set aside for Robotech Masters only. Not that those restrictions really applied to him since he, alongside his mentor and long-time friend Cabell, was the principal creator of many of the sciences and technologies that were known by the umbrella term of robotechnology – something that was a never ending source of discussion between himself and those ascended who, like Janus, had been scientists in their mortal lives as the technology he'd created fascinated them as did the Flowers of Life and protoculture as both were one of the few things in the universe that the Ancients had had no knowledge of and thus were completely fascinated by – thus he had master override codes for all of it. Codes that were known only to him and Cabell. It was something that had come in useful when he'd needed to fake orders from the Masters to leave the core territories of the empire on Flower of Life seeding missions. Missions that had ultimately seen him ascend when the automated supply base he'd been at – taking on supplies – had come under attack from a group of Invid hiveships.
With full access granted the first thing that he did was make sure that there would be no security records of his presence here as that would only raise questions that he couldn't answer especially as Breetai and Exedore had no doubt told their allies that he was supposed to be dead. Once that particular issue was dealt with, he began accessing the systems that he had specifically come here to access, specifically the advanced station maintenance and repair functions. All of which were currently offline though it was a relatively simple matter for him to access the operating system for them and thoroughly check for damage to the coding before – finding that the coding was fine and that the systems had only gone offline due to power depletion – resetting the systems and setting them to work.
Immediately the screens came to life showing that the stations army of maintenance drones – which had been sitting idle in their docking stations for a decade or more at this point – coming back to life and immediately beginning to move out to deal repairs in order of priority. Simultaneously swarms of nanobots came to life and began working to repair the hull of the station as it had been compromised in a number of areas by the many battles that this place had been through over the years. Zor watched the screens calmly as the order of maintenance and repair tasks appeared with the highest priority repairs indicated in purple while lower priority tasks were orange, blue and yellow respectively. It was a very extensive list, and the computer was estimating that, based on currently available power and raw material stores, it would take several weeks to complete all station wide repairs.
I suppose that will have to do, he thought before beginning the second of the two self-appointed tasks that he had come to the station to perform. This one would, if the Robotech Masters ever found out about it, give Nimuul and the others a collective heart attack and no doubt prompt some stupefied, horrified staring from them. Not that he cared about what his former people would have thought about it, especially those who had taken his discoveries and perverted them into something terrible. Something that had allowed them to transform the once peaceful, egalitarian Tirolian Republic into the current ruthlessly imperialistic Tirolian Empire. Something that he would never, not even in a billion years, ever forgive them for.
The issue in question was he began systematically removing all the security lockouts and overrides that would have otherwise prevented full access to the stations vast technological and scientific database instead of the limited access that the Zentraedi had been permitted. With full access – including access to several technologies that he'd kept from the other Masters – the people of this planet and their Zentraedi allies would have a much better chance against the Goa'uld who would certainly move to crush them the moment they became aware of their potential as a threat to their millenniums old rule over this galaxy. To say nothing of the Masters when they inevitably came to reclaim the protoculture matrix themselves, though knowing them they would send the Guardians to try and do it first only coming themselves if they failed.
He grimaced slightly at the thought of the Guardian Zentraedi coming to this galaxy. It was almost inevitable that they would, the Robotech Masters would certainly send them to investigate Dolza's death if nothing else, and he had to prepare the people here for that eventuality. Thus, he entered a few more commands into the system, giving it a few new directives to begin implementing – well provided the Terrans didn't override it as he wasn't going to take that control away from them as it would be kind of against what he had come to do – when the Zentraedi fleet eventually began docking with the station for resupply and repair.
In no time at all he was finished with his work. He allowed himself a small smile before powering down the console – knowing that further input from him was not necessary – and returned to his natural energy state. Whereupon he teleported himself down to the surface of the planet materialising in the hallway of a small home on the outskirts of New Macross City. The house was quiet and dark, since it was the middle of the night in this particular hemisphere with dawn still hours away and all he could hear was the soft tick-tock of a clock and the muffled roaring of the rain falling outside.
Which suited him and his purpose just fine.
Calmly he made his way towards where he knew the bedroom to be, passing through walls be they solid load bearing walls or flimsy stud partition walls with equal ease and leaving not even the slightest trace to mark his passage. In no time at all he reached his destination where a well-built Terran male lay asleep on the bed. Without waiting – knowing he wouldn't have long now before some of the other ascended started noticing his absence from there higher plane of existence – he extended a softly glowing hand and reached into the forehead of the man in much the same way the Asurans would if they were going to interrogate whatever poor organic being had stumbled across their planet. His purpose was similar though he wasn't about to probe the humans mind – he didn't need to he had already thoroughly researched him and been very impressed with his accomplishments, especially how quickly he had assimilated and applied the basics of robotechnology – instead he carefully placed an information packet in the unconscious Terran's subconscious mind then he withdrew. The information packet would take some time to unfurl and make its way up into the conscious mind but when it did it would lead one Doctor Emil Lang to the hidden protoculture matrix, help him understand the basics of how it worked – he wouldn't give him everything just enough to get him started on understanding, and eventually replicating, the technology – as well as give him a few other potentially useful ideas.
His tasks completed he teleported himself back to the higher planes appearing in his personal section of the realm of ascended beings, which naturally looked much like the estate in Tiresia where he had lived all his life with his father Zol in the years before the rise of the Masters. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to see Oma and Janus waiting for him.
"Did you do everything you needed to do," Janus asked.
"For now," Zor replied, he had been tempted to do more but knew that he couldn't not without risking the others catching onto what he was up to and stopping him. Though he already had a contingency plan in place in the event The Others decided to move against him for the 'crime' of interfering with the lower planes. "All that is left to do now is watch and hope that I haven't gone and made things worse – again."
"You have always acted with the best of intentions of Zor," Oma reminded him softly, "as I told you when I helped you ascend what your people did with your discoveries, the crimes that they have committed against the universe, are not yours to bare. They will answer for their crimes in due time."
Zor sighed at the old argument between them. "My head knows that" he admitted. "Nimuul and his siblings bare most of the blame for the perversion of protoculture into a tool of conquest and war. But in my heart, I cannot help but feel responsible. If I'd never found Optera, never met and mind melded with the Regis I would never have learned the secret of the Flower of Life. I would never have created protoculture then they would never have been able to do the things that they've done."
"You did what you could, with the information that you had at the time," Janus reminded him, "that's all anyone can do, even ascended beings such as us."
"I know that but why does that never make me feel any better?"
"Because you have a good heart," Oma answered.
"Now all three of us should put in a few appearances in the usual ascended hangouts," Janus said bringing an end to the discussion as he knew if he let it continue Zor would beat himself relentlessly over the crimes of his former people and the role he had played in – however inadvertently – helping them perpetuate such evils. It was a common occurrence as Zor still had tremendous guilt for that past, guilt that himself and Oma were slowly but surely helping him overcome. They'd get him over it fully eventually even if it took them a century or two to do it, but then for them – as ascended beings – time had no meaning and couldn't affect them unless they allowed it to.
"The diner or that recreation of a Roman bathhouse?" Oma questioned.
"The diner I don't fancy the bathhouse today," Zor replied with a slight smile. While the bathhouse was a fun – and actually reminded him somewhat of some of the places he'd visited on Praxis – place to hang out it was also the most popular of ascended hang out spots. If he went there he would inevitably be drawn into a discussion about protoculture, the Flowers of Life and robotechnology with other ascended, especially those who had been scientists and engineers when they were mortal.
Which was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
"You just want to see me in my waitress get-up," Oma quipped with a smile, though she knew the real reason why Zor wanted to go to the diner. It was quieter and he was less likely to be mobbed by curious former scientists.
"Well, you have to admit you look good in it Oma," Janus pointed out causing Zor to laugh and Oma to blush, well as far as a being who was made entirely of energy could blush. Without waiting for the inevitable comeback from Oma, he teleported himself away to the recreation of a 1930's North American diner that had become quite a popular hang-out place for many of the ascended. At least those who wanted a quiet place to hang out that wasn't a recreation of one of the Great Libraries. Zor and Oma exchanged an amused look at his quick retreat before teleporting after him.
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Vosegus slowly opened the eyes of his new host body. He was aware that his scientists had wanted to run a few more tests on the clone – especially as this was the first time, they'd ever created a being from scratch –before he transferred himself into it, but fate had had other ideas. It had been obvious for a while that his previous host – who he had inhabited since he'd been forced to take the Prussian cavalry officer as a host at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, after the French officer he'd been inhabiting at the time was wounded beyond his ability to heal – was coming to the end of his usefulness as even a Goa'uld could only keep a host body alive for so long without the aid of a sarcophagus device – which he had never owned as back when he'd been an underlord of Camulus they'd been reserved for System Lords only – after all. The host had abruptly taken a turn for the worst earlier this morning. He'd known instantly that the host would not last out the day, meaning that they hadn't had time to do the final series of checks that they had been hoping to do on the clone after it had been decanted for a day or so.
"My lord, are you alright," his lead scientist asked seeing his eyes open.
"I am fine," Vosegus replied as he sat up, finding controlling the clones motor functions as effortless as it would be controlling any other host body. Yet there was something different, something that he couldn't immediately put his fingers on. Then he realized what the problem was, well not so much a problem as something he had not anticipated but now that he really thought about it should have that was unusual. He couldn't hear the thoughts of his host, couldn't hear them cursing him from their prison at the back of his mind. It was strange and different, as this body had had no mind before he'd entered it, but something that he was sure he would get used to eventually.
"No problems controlling the clone my lord?"
"None whatsoever," Vosegus answered as he swung his new legs off the edge of the bed and stood up, pleased to find that there was indeed no problem controlling the body of this bioengineered clone. He, took a few moments to look around, noticing the covered gurney that held the lifeless form of what had been his body for the last two hundred and seven years. While it hadn't been his first choice of a new body to inhabit – he had originally planned to take Napoleon himself as a host when the time came as the man's military genius would have been highly useful, but it had sadly been not to be fate could on occasion be a right pain in the backside as it was one of the few forces that even a Goa'uld couldn't defy – but it had served him well enough. "Ensure that my previous host's body is disposed of with dignity."
"As you wish my lord. My lord I should inform you that Elena is waiting with some appropriate clothing in the next room."
"Excellent. Have we received any word from our operative at Fort Minotaur? Is Prime dead yet?"
The scientist blanched at the question and alarm bells began going off in Vosegus head. He did not like that look as it meant that once again something had gone wrong, big time. "What has happened," he demanded as he picked up his kara'kesh from a side table and slipped it on. "Speak."
The scientist gulped and took the plunge hoping that he would soon not find himself on the wrong end of his liege's infamous temper. "I am afraid not my lord," the scientist answered praying silently that the bound to be enraged living god didn't decide to send him flying across the room or decide to fry his brain, "our operatives in the defence council support staff report his attempt was foiled."
"Foiled! How?"
"While our information is currently limited it appears that he was stopped by a pair of UEDF STORM Commandoes."
"STORM Commandoes! What were they doing there?" Vosegus demanded knowing that the Special Tactical Operations and Reconnaissance Marine Commandoes were one of the elite special forces of the United Earth Defence Forces drawing their training and members from the top-flight of the pre-Unification Worlds special forces organisations. Which when combined with the fact that the UEDF had given them the best technology and biogenetic augmentations available made them once of the most formidable and deadly special forces units to ever exist. They were one of the few he would admit to be a match for his Jafftari forces in a straight up physical confrontation.
"I am not sure my lord but if I had to guess I would say that they were there to protect the imprinter that has since been used on Prime to remove the persona you created for him."
Oh fuck. Of all the Anubis-cursed luck, Vosegus thought with a scowl feeling his rage begin to build, though strangely it was not as instant and fiery as it normally was. A part of him wondered if the fact that his body had had no mind of its own had something to do with it. He would have to ponder that later as he was well aware that his temper was one of the few areas where he was vulnerable – it was not an unknown problem among Goa'uld. Right now, though he had other things to worry about, if they had successfully removed the constructed persona from Prime – which on top of the death of the nish'ta in his system would let the body's originally personality matrix reassert itself – then the location of this base was compromised.
Prime after all knew exactly where this place was and thus the original personality – Nathan something if he remembered right – would know as well. Know and certainly tell the people on Fort Minotaur when they inevitably debriefed him. Who would then tell the Defence Council who would quicky mobilize forces against this base and he was under no illusions of their chances of repelling a major attack by forces equipped with state of the art robotech weaponry. That would be an attack that would be beyond their ability to repel at this time.
"I see," he said at last ignoring the way the scientist's shoulders dropped in relief as the human realised that he wasn't about to lose it and sending him flying across the room with a repulsor blast. "Have all senior department leaders meet me in the throne room in ten minutes. In the meantime, I want you to begin preparations to evacuate all critical supplies and equipment to our secondary base in the Urals."
"As you wish my lord."
Vosegus smiled pleased, before turning and beginning to make his way out of the room to the nearby chamber where Elena would be waiting with a choice of clothing sized for this new body. A body that was taller and more muscular than anybody he had inhabited to date. Normally he would spend awhile with his lotaur choosing which set of clothes to wear and which to mix together for that particular day – he was often spoilt for choice as the people of this planet had so many different styles of clothing, and materials to choose from – but today he would not have time. He would just dress in something comfortable and make his way to the throne room where he would have to organise the abandonment and destruction of this base and their transport to their nearest secondary base in the Ural Mountains of Western Russia. Something that with the current tensions between the UEG and EBSIS = and the fact that both heavily patrolled the border – would not be easy to arrange but he would manage it. He had done such things many times before over the centuries and was far more successful at quietly moving bases than that fool Setesh – who he frankly didn't have to worry about anymore as the fool had been killed when his new base in San Francisco was like the city around it destroyed during the Zentraedi bombardment of the planet – had been.
Once those decisions were made, and his minions/worshippers set to work making the appropriate preparations and beginning to carry them out, he would hopefully have time to sit and start thinking. Thinking about how he was going to both salvage something from this disaster, how he was going to keep his brainwashed operatives from being discovered by his enemies – as it certainly wouldn't take the UEDF and UEG long to come up with a blood test capable of detecting the presence of nish'ta in a body – and how he was ultimately going to make those responsible for this latest setback pay.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well. another chapter bites the dust I hope you all enjoyed it. This chapter brings us to the end of part one of this story in the next part they will begin going through the Stargate and here is where events will really begin changing more from the first version of the story.
Chapter Seven
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Part Two: First Steps
Chapter Seven
Secure Laboratory Section
Fort Minotaur, Crete
Next Morning
Major Claudia Grant would, if asked, admit that she was nervous as she gazed through a permaglass wall at the Stargate sitting at the far end of the long room that, when Fort Minotaur was originally built, had originally been intended to be a wind tunnel. The tunnel had never been completed before the Rain and now never would as the factory that would have made the massive fans to provide the wind no longer existed. Like so many other factories and industrial facilities around the world it had been incinerated during Dolza's devastating attack on the planet nearly two years ago. It had left the base with a large open space that they couldn't do anything with.
Until now that was.
The long, tall room was a perfect place to house the Stargate as they prepared to activate the ancient, alien device for the first time in who knew how long. Especially as they didn't know exactly what would happen when the gate powered up, if it actually even would, as the Zentraedi records were not very helpful there. She had heard that Exedore had done a search of what records he still had access to – as many had been destroyed with Dolza's command base – to see if he could find more information on the Stargates or star portals as the Zentraedi/Tirolian legend called them. Unfortunately, he had not been able to find anything more about them or about what happened when they were used. Meaning that they were venturing into unknown, potentially very dangerous territory with this planned activation.
The possibility of something going wrong was the main reason why they had moved the Stargate from the main lab where it had previously been analysed to the wind tunnel. A process that despite the weight of the device and its control pedestal had been fairly easy as – being originally intended to be a research base – Fort Minotaur had been built with the ability to quickly move large experimental objects around the lab levels of the base. For additional safety only one person – in the form of Doctor Carter – would be in the tunnel, operating the control pedestal, when the activation took place.
The sound of footsteps caught Claudia's attention and she glanced around. To see that numerous staff and observers were filing into the room. Many of the scientists going to various consoles that had been set up to monitor the feed from the batteries of sensors that had been set up to monitor the gate. Others were simply here as observers – much as she herself was -among them Daniel Jackson and to her surprise Rick Hunter. She could see that he was talking to Lisa and curious eased over to hear what they were talking about as she had noted that the two of them had started getting closer recently. Especially as she knew Rick had not seen nor even spoken to Minmei in nearly two years, not really since Kyle had taken over as her manager.
"…he's still sleeping," Rick was saying as Claudia got close enough to hear them. "Doctor Johnson said that's to be expected as his mind is still getting used to itself again. I managed to get Aunt Maria to agree to go to bed and promised I'd do the same but…"
"…you want to see the gate opened," Lisa finished with a smile.
"Given that its important enough for someone to attack us for you bet I do."
Claudia smiled slightly at the interaction between them – it was a good sign that they might be starting to get together, she hoped they were as the sexual tension that had been building between them ever since Mars had been driving her, Admiral Gloval, and the former Bridge Bunnies absolutely crazy – before moving over to speak to Dr Jackson before Rick or Lisa could catch her eavesdropping. Daniel was standing a bit closer to the window looking out on the interior of the wind tunnel and the Stargate standing proud and mysterious at the other end of it.
"Excited Daniel," she asked.
"I haven't been this excited in a long time," Daniel replied with a smile. He had really enjoyed his time here, translating the hieroglyphs on the cover stones – it had reminded him how much he used to like Egyptology, in the days before rigidly orthodox colleagues had laughed him out of the field for theories that they considered so farfetched they bordered on blasphemy – and now he hoped there would be a big final pay off with this Stargate thing. If it worked then finally, after twenty years of ridicule and derision by the archaeological community – well what little of it was left after the Rain as it had never been a massive community and its numbers had been decimated during Dolza's assault – he might at last get vindicated and proven right all along.
Claudia smiled knowingly before her attention was grabbed by General Richards clearing his throat to get everyone's attention.
"Is everything ready," Richards asked.
"Yes, general they are," one of the scientists, a Czech by the name of Radek Zelenka, answered. "All sensors and recording equipment are online and functioning normally. Power flow to the gate is nominal."
"Good," Richards replied before stepping forward and pushing a control opening a radio link with Doctor Carter in the wind tunnel. The former Air Force officer was cocooned within a UEDF hostile environment suit, little different to a modern space suit, for protection in case the gate activation produced something nasty. "Doctor Carter, are you ready?"
"Yes, sir I am," Carter replied immediately, glancing across the length of the wind tunnel at the ring-shaped device. She was really hoping that this would work and that nothing would go wrong as if it did then she didn't doubt that they would be on the verge of discovering something that was truly momentous. Possibly as momentous for humanity as the arrival of the SDF-1 had been nearly fourteen years ago.
"Very well then proceed with entering the first address."
"Yes sir."
With the go ahead given Sam looked down at the computer tablet she was holding in one gloved hand. While they had been able to recover the symbols from the central disc of the cover stones and reconstruct the heavily damaged – either by the ravages of time or the weight of the derelict Zentraedi cruiser that had been literally on top of them – ones using a combination of a laser scan and a computer comparison to the thirty-nine individual symbols on the inner ring of the Stargate. A comparison that had revealed that the third and fifth glyphs could be anyone of three separate glyphs. As a result, the computer had compiled a list of likely candidates starting from the most to the least likely.
She took a deep breath and mentally crossed her fingers before looking at the first probably address. Then she reached out and pressed the corresponding symbol on the pedestal control device which immediately lit up. The response from the Stargate itself was immediate as it began making a rumbling, grinding sound and she glanced over to see that the inner glyph covered ring was rotating. After a second, one that seemed to stretch out into eternity, the ring stopped rotating and one of the nine chevron shaped structures spread equally around the outer ring made a locking motion and the crystal above it lit up orange.
Encouraged she entered the next symbol in the sequence and watched the process repeat. Somewhat to her relief every single symbol caused the inner ring to rotate before the chevrons locked. Once all seven symbols were entered – she had no idea what the eighth and nineth chevrons were for – the crystal dome in the centre of the pedestal lit up. Guessing that it was something like a commit button she reached out and pressed down on it, the whole thing moving down with an unbelievable smoothness. One that seemed impossible for something that had spend a minimum of six thousand years buried beneath the sand and stone of the Giza Plateau.
The response from the Stargate was both immediate and spectacular.
A rumbling vibration, almost like a miniature earthquake filled the whole of the wind tunnel and there was a sudden feeling of some ethereal power being gathered. The innermost surface of the gate glowed for a second then abruptly the gate filled with silver-blue light that exploded towards her in a manner reminiscent of a volcanic pyroclastic flow. It travelled three meters from the gate before stopping and as abruptly as it appeared snapped back into the gate and stabilized leaving the inner part of the gate filled with a rippling wall of silver-blue energy that looked almost like water.
"Unbelievable," Sam breathed awed by the sight, both the person and the astrophysicist in her beyond amazed by the beauty of what she was seeing even though everything she knew, everything she had learned, said it shouldn't be able to exist on a planetary surface. That graviton particle interference from the planet should immediately collapse it. She was gazing upon the event horizon of a wormhole, albeit one that looked very different to the whirlpool like appearance of wormholes in popular pre-Rain science fiction. A faint smile tugged at her lips as she realized something then and there…
… for good or ill their world had just changed again.
~~~///~~~
Gasps of shock and awe from scientists and observers alike filled the air of the repurposed wind tunnel control room as for the first time in thousands of years Earth's Stargate came to life. For a few moments everyone stood or sat there staring transfixed by the shimmering silver-blue wall of energy, energy that rippled almost like ocean waves, that now filled the interior of the gate. It was certainly beautiful to look at and the way its shimmering light reflected off the hypercrete walls of the stillborn wind tunnel was downright mesmerising.
For a few moments General Richards was as amazed as everyone else, then he shook himself.
"Okay people I know it's beautiful to look at, but we've got a job to do here," he said prompting a few sheepish grins to appear on various faces before the scientists got back to work, scanning their screens and the reams of data that they were getting from their sensors. "Doctor Zelenka what exactly are we looking at here?"
"One moment I am attempting to determine just that," Zelenka answered his hands dancing across the console feeding in commands and reading the base computers analysis of their readings. "Unbelievable."
"Doctor?" Richards asked.
"I don't know how this can be as it shouldn't be able to exist in a planetary gravity well but it's a wormhole," Zelenka answered, "somehow the Stargate is bending space-time and creating a wormhole between itself and the Stargate on the other end."
"So, it works similar to a space fold drive," Claudia asked him curious knowing that fold drives worked by moving two points of space-time closer together in a specific subspace realm – which they referred to as foldspace – and creating a wormhole between the two of them. A wormhole that depending on the make and model of the drive, how much power was available, and the mass of the object being transported took anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to traverse.
"Maybe on a very basic level yes though the readings we are getting are very different to those produced by a corridor through foldspace. The Stargate must exploit a very different subspace domain."
"Is it safe to traverse," Richards asked.
"I believe so I cannot see any sign of the types of subspace energy particles that are normally encountered during a space fold," Radek answered even as he double checked his readings and confirmed that none of the particles normally encountered during a space fold, some of which could be dangerous to unshielded tissue, were present. There was therefore no reason to assume that this wormhole was not fully traversable on foot – which was something he would never have thought possible until now that was. This ancient alien device, this Stargate, was going to make them revise their knowledge of the laws of physics – again. It was something that they had become quiet used to doing ever since the alien warship that became the SDF=1 fell out of the sky back in ninety-nine.
"Alright then let's see if we can find out what's on the other end of this thing," Richards said looking over at one of the other control room technicians. "Send an Eagle drone through the gate."
"Yes sir," the technician answered giving the command to the console in front of him. In the tunnel beyond the permaglass wall a small drone on a table came to life. It rose on four small tilt-fan engines before moving past Carter and cruising down the length of the tunnel to the shimmering maw of the active Stargate. For a moment it hovered in front of the water-like event horizon before the operator directed it through the small drop making an odd slurping sound as it passed through the energy field and dematerialised and being sent shooting through subspace to the exiting gate where it rematerialised.
A projector field powered up and a holographic screen pixeled into existence showing a feed from the drone for everyone to see. It was immediately obvious that the drone was in a cave, a cave that was illuminated by the shimmering silver-blue light of the event horizon. It was providing enough light to see that the cavern the gate was located in was vast and very flat with only the occasional stalagmite breaking up the surface, a control pedestal that was identical to the one they had was sitting not far away from the drone.
"General the drone is picking up an airflow coming into the cavern," the operator reported. "It's coming from the far side of the cavern, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere just like our own though a little chilly."
"Direct the drone over there," Richards ordered, "and turn on its lights."
"Yes sir," the technician replied doing as instructed. Immediately the drones small but powerful LED searchlight came on, immediately revealing far more of the cavern. To say it was huge would have been an understatement as -while it was hard to get a sense of scale from the drone images – the cavern certainly looked to be comparable in size to the interior of the largest of cathedrals. The drone moved slowly across the space heading towards where the breeze coming into the cave seemed to be coming from.
Slowly the cavern narrowed and the speed of the airflow hitting the drone began to increase though it was nothing that the Eagle drone – being a military reconnaissance model – couldn't handle. The cavern narrowed still further and to the right there was a very sharp drop off at the bottom of which – a distance that was a good fifty-feet down – the drone, when it moved over it could see a fast flowing river.
"Looks like we know what made the cavern," Daniel commented knowing that rivers can and did create vast cave structures and systems here on Earth, so there was no reason they wouldn't be able to do the same on another planet.
"Indeed," Richards agreed.
"General we're starting to experience some interference with the drone control signal," the Eagle operator reported, "it's the rock. There's something in it, likely metallic ores, which are causing an interference in the signal."
"Is there any way you can compensate?"
"We could send a signal booster drone through the gate," the technician suggested, "it would let us boost the signal substantially."
"How long would it take to prepare one and send it through?"
"Approximately fifteen minutes, twenty at the most."
"Alright have one prepared and sent through. In the meantime, bring the drone back to the cavern with the Stargate. We'll have it explore a bit more around there while we wait."
"Yes sir."
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Dressed in comfortable travel clothes Vosegus paced anxiously back and forth in the barren room that had, until an hour or so ago, been his throne room. Over the last few hours his worshippers/slaves as well as the Jaftari had been systematically disassembling everything that could be moved to their fallback base beneath the Ural Mountains. As part of that process all the finery in the throne room had been removed and stowed aboard one of a fleet of lorries that would, using various routes, take it all to his new base. Most of his worshippers would travel in a fleet of busses all of them taking different routes until they all met up again.
Then he could begin putting his plan for revenge into action, it would take a while but one thing he had learned over his long exile here on the first world was the value of patience.
The sound of the door opening made him pause his pacing and he turned. To see Elena, dressed like he was for travel, and the new head of the Jaftari – dressed like a chauffeur – came into the room.
"My lord," Elena said with a bow.
"Yes, Elena?" Vosegus asked.
"My lord all equipment that can be moved has now left the base," Elena reported, "all personnel beyond the three of us are also all gone."
"Very well. Is the self-destruct device ready to be armed?"
"It is my lord," him new Prime answered.
"Excellent. Escort me there so I may arm it, then we will leave."
"Yes, my lord."
His answer of a Jaffa – well as close as he could get to making one without access to juvenile symbiotes to create the prim'tah – turned and began walking out of the room. Vosegus followed behind him with Elena bringing up the rear. For a few minutes they walked through the deserted, eerily quiet, base to a small, secure room. A room that only Vosegus himself could open.
Without hesitation he raised and activated his kara'kesh and held it over a small oval crystal set into the wall next to the thick door. Immediately he felt the elaborate locking mechanism in his mind as the kara'kesh formed a mental link between his mind and the door locks. He thought and pushed the proper code into the lock causing the door to make a clicking sound and slide aside with a whirr of powerful hydraulics.
"Wait here," he ordered.
"Yes, my lord."
Leaving the lotaur and Jaftari behind Vosegus walked into the room. It was fairly barren, just a two by two meter cube in the centre of which on a stone plinth was a small ornate box in a vague coffin shape. He walked over and carefully turned each of the four scarab-shaped locking mechanisms in the corners into the proper position causing the lid of the ark bomb to open with a soft whirr. Smiling he entered the proper sequence to arm the bomb and set the timer. Immediately the central crystal dome of the bombs control station lit up with a green light and red crystals around the perimeter began slowly pulsing as the countdown began.
In less than three hours the five pound block of naquada within the chest would explode and completely destroy the base.
Pleased he closed and locked the lid. Then he turned and walked out of the room, the door sliding closed behind him with a soft hiss. "It is done let us leave," he said.
"Yes, my lord this way."
~~~///~~~
It took only a few minutes for the three of them to reach the now abandoned, stripped villa on the surface. Vosegus followed them through the complex, idly bidding goodbye to what had been his home for the last couple of years as this place would be destroyed as well as when the bomb blew incendiary devices would also detonate burning this place to ashes, until he reached the drive outside.
Where a limousine was waiting for him.
Without needing to be prompted Vosegus and Elena climbed into the back of the luxury car while the Jaftari Prime went and sat in the driver's seat. A few moments later the advanced hydrogen fuel cell engine started up and the vehicle got underway heading to join one of the country's main highways, specifically one that would take them to the Mont Blanc tunnel to France. Once there they would begin making their own roundabout journey across Europe – stopping at various safe houses at least those that hadn't been destroyed by the Zentraedi during Dolza's bombardment – until his agents could arrange for them to slip across the border without being detected and challenged by either UEG or EBSIS border guards.
As he sat in the comfortable leather seat, and sipped on a martini that Elena had thoughtfully had ready for him as he never got tired of enjoying the numerous different drinks the people of this world came up with, Vosegus estimated that it would take at most a month before he was fully secure and established in his new base.
A month in which he could refine his plans for revenge.
~~~///~~~
Wind Tunnel
Fort Minotaur
It took nearly thirty minutes for the signal booster drone to be made ready and brought to the wind tunnel holding the still active Stargate. The delay caused by a slight filing error that had the drone stored in the wrong part of the bases main warehouse. But it was finally ready and was about to start trundling down the wind tunnel on two powerful tracked wheels when without warning and with a puff of ethereal vapours the Stargate shut down.
"Doctor Zalenka what happened," General Richards asked looking over at the Czech scientist who had been joined by Doctor Carter. The bulk of the observers had left the room to return to what they had been doing elsewhere on the base leaving just the staff in the wind tunnel control room.
"I am not sure," Zalenka replied checking his readings with a puzzled frown. "There was no interruption in the signal from us to the Eagle drone on the other side and no fluctuation in the amount of power being sent from the base fusion reactors to the Stargate. It just switched off on its own."
"It's possible that there is a quantum mechanical limit on how long one of these wormholes can remain open," Carter said looking thoughtful, "after all we know there are ones of the wormholes through foldspace created by fold drives. Which is why you can only fold ten kiloparsecs in one go."
"I suppose it's possible," Richards agreed with a frown. "How would we test that hypothesis doctor?"
"The only way I can think of right now sir is we run the Stargate again and see if it once again shuts down after thirty-eight minutes of continuous operation."
"Alright we will do that. Would you mind going back into the tunnel and dialling that first address again?"
"Not at all I'll go suit up."
"No need for that this time," Richards answered, "sensors confirmed that there were no harmful emissions from the Stargate."
"Oh, thank heavens those suits are not the most comfortable things in the world," Carter said with a smile before standing up. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go dial the gate again."
"Please."
Carter smiled back and left the room, appearing a few moments later in the wind tunnel once again holding the computer tablet and going up to the dialling device. A few moments after that the Stargate came to life again with the same ka-woosh sound and explosion of energy as the wormhole formed.
"Sir we've regained the control signal to the Eagle drone," the drone operator reported as his holoscreens came back on showing the Eagle drones viewpoint of the now open gate.
"Send the booster drone through and sync up. Once done send the drone to find exactly where the airflow is coming from."
"Yes sir."
It took only a few moments to send the relatively slow moving signal booster drone through the Stargate and sync the Eagles control signal too it. As soon as that was done the operator began directing the drone across the cavernous space around the Stargate which they still hadn't fully mapped as the place was simply enormous easily rivalling the biggest caves ever explored on Earth. As it had the last time the cavern narrowed, and one side dropped away steeply to the river that long ago had to have carved the cave though a path that was easily wide enough to drive a car on continued onwards into the darkness.
Lights from the drone played across the rock walls, revealing many of the characteristic features of a tunnel that had been created by the erosive action of water. A point of light appeared ahead though it was still some way off.
Far enough in fact that they had to move the signal booster a little further into the cave before the Eagle drone could reach it. The entrance to the cave was vast at least as big as the main doors of many aircraft hangers and had a number of vines and creepers growing down over the entrance. Vines that the operators skilfully manoeuvred the Eagle around and directed it out into the daylight.
What it revealed was surprising. Extending out from the entrance to the cave, which itself was at the base of a giant cliff, was a large rocky plane that had to be over a kilometre long. Beyond which they could faintly see a vast heavily wooded valley that was currently covered in a light blanket of snow. The sky above was clear and blue but what was shocking was what was visible in the sky.
A huge saffron-coloured gas giant indicating that the planet was a moon.
"Holy crap it's a real life Yavin Four," one of the marines providing security in the room commented, prompting a slight outbreak of laughter.
"Well as long as the Death Star doesn't show up as I don't see Luke Skywalker with an X-Wing anywhere, I'd say its fine," Richards joked back amused causing everyone to crack up. Once everyone had settled down, he turned to the drone operator. "How far can the Eagle explore from the cave entrance?"
"About another two hundred meters sir there is still some interference from the rock and the booster drone is still in the cavern."
"Do a quicky survey as far as you can around the entrance," Richards ordered, "have we been recording all our drone footage?"
"Of course, sir."
"Then begin assembling it for presentation to the defence council."
"Yes sir."
~~~///~~~
United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City, North American Quadrant
Sometime Later
"The planet is uninhabited?"
Secretary Anderson's words hung pregnant in the air of the meeting room of the defence council. They had just finished reviewing the footage from the Eagle drone and it was quite interesting. They had really not expected to find a habitable planet on the other side of the Stargate, let alone one that was apparently a temperate real-life version of Yavin Four from Star Wars.
"From what we can tell yes," General Markwell replied. "Before the Stargate shut down for the second time General Richards had the Eagle drone do as comprehensive a survey of the immediate area around the cave where the Stargate is located. There is no sign of any form of habitation no smoke plumes from campfires, no artificial energy signatures no nothing. There is a sign of a natural path that leads down into the forest and there is no sign that anyone has ever been on it."
"Interesting," Gloval commented, "a completely virgin world. What's the environment like?"
"From what the drone could tell while the planet is chilly, though not that much different to what the Pacific Northwest was like during late autumn before the Rain, it has an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere in the correct ratios to support human life."
"What are you thinking admiral," Anderson asked looking at Gloval in interest.
"Mister Secretary you know my views on how our species needs to expand beyond the cradle of this planet," Gloval said, "this planet could be an ideal point to start out. Especially as this system is only six hundred and forty light years away from us."
"Possible," Anderson agreed knowing full well Gloval's views and honestly, he shared them. As did many people in the United Earth Government. They had just dodged the bullet of extinction in the Robotech War and with the Robotech Masters, and who knew what else like these 'false gods', out there they could not guarantee they would do so again. "Still, we know to know a lot more about this planet and the system in which it resides before we can even begin to consider colonising it."
"That is obvious," Gloval agreed knowing that there was going to be a lot more to colonising a planet than just checking if they could breathe the air. They would have to check that they could drink the water, that there was nothing in it that would make them ill, that there was no harmful bacteria or viruses present and a million and one other different things. "The question we need to ask is how we go about doing that?"
"There are two possibilities," Exedore said with a thoughtful frown. "One we could send a larger, manned expedition through the Stargate and begin a survey of the planet. Two I could speak with Lord Breetai and have one or more of our warships that are still capable of space folding sent to the system to commence a survey. They could also act as support for the ground team should they encounter any difficulties."
"Logical," Colonel Matthews admitted looking like he had bitten into a sour lemon at having to agree with a Zentraedi anything. As always everyone on the council ignored his xenophobic attitude, the man was good at his job and only occasionally needed a reminder to keep the anti-Zentraedi bias at bay. "I suggest that in this matter we follow both of Exedore's suggestions and dispatch both a team of experts – and some soldiers to protect them from hostile wildlife if nothing else – through the Stargate to the planet and ask Commander Breetai to send some ships to the system in question to commence survey operations."
"I think we can all agree on that," Anderson said looking around and getting concurring nods from the other members of the council. "Alright I'll speak to the Secretary General so we can begin setting things in motion. Exedore, would you speak with Commander Breetai on this issue."
"Of course," Exedore confirmed with a nod even as the door to the meeting room opened and a young officer came in, a look of urgency and concern on his face. He immediately walked up to Admiral Gloval and whiskered something in his ear. Whatever he said made the Russian man stiffen, go white for a second before turning to look at him.
"Are you sure," Gloval asked.
"Yes, sir we checked the readings three times there is no mistake," the young officer answered grimly.
"Bring the analysis here immediately."
"Aye sir," the officer acknowledged before leaving to do as he was bid.
"What is it admiral," Anderson asked.
"Mister Secretary our satellites just detected a nuclear explosion somewhere beneath the Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy," Gloval answered, drawing looks and gasps of surprise and concern from everyone in the room. "It wasn't a particular large blast, no more than sixty kilotons though it's quite deep underground and no radiation should reach the surface but…"
"…the point is there shouldn't have been any nuclear weapons anywhere near there," Anderson finished a grim look on his face as knew the diplomatic shitstorm this was going to cause especially with EBSIS and the UIR, "even a tactical one like that. How did it get there? Who the hell used it and why?"
"I have no idea," Gloval admitted looking grim himself as he too knew that there was going to be diplomatic and political hell to pay as a result of this blast. "Though given what Captain Hunter said about where his cousin disappeared for three and a half years before resurfacing as Prime, I can think of one likely culprit for the blast. Especially if that is where his base was."
"Vosegus."
"Yes."
A grim silence fell upon the defence council as they all considered this latest, and honestly most concerning, surprise that Vosegus had thrown their way. No doubt he had detonated the nuclear device to destroy a base he was abandoning for some reason – presumably being afraid of what they would be able to learn about it from Nathan Hunter whenever he woke up and assuming he would be mentally and emotionally well enough to be questioned after the ordeal he had been put through by Vosegus – but that was beside the point. The fact that he somehow had nuclear weapons – even low yield tactical level nukes – was a red blaring alarm that rapidly moved him up the threat totem pole from being a relatively minor annoyance to, alongside the likes of Khyron, being a very serious threat to the safety and security of their entire planet. A threat that they still knew far, far too little about…
…and that was going to have to change and change fast.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, this is the first of the chapters to have major changes from the original as Earth begins to explore beyond the Stargate. Before anyone asks the Linkotis arc of the original version has not been abandoned however it has been postponed and will not be happening until a bit later in this part. While they are exploring a completely different star system events won't be quite so uneventful there as they are hoping – a hope you like what I have in store for you in this new version.
While we will not be seeing Vosegus for a little bit after his cameo appearance in this chapter he has not, and will not, be forgotten about. He will be back, and he is going to cause our heroes some considerable trouble once he reaches and settles into his new base of operations in the Ural Mountains. Quite what that trouble will be you'll have to wait and see.
Chapter Seven
Secure Laboratory Section
Fort Minotaur, Crete
Next Morning
Major Claudia Grant would, if asked, admit that she was nervous as she gazed through a permaglass wall at the Stargate sitting at the far end of the long room that, when Fort Minotaur was originally built, had originally been intended to be a wind tunnel. The tunnel had never been completed before the Rain and now never would as the factory that would have made the massive fans to provide the wind no longer existed. Like so many other factories and industrial facilities around the world it had been incinerated during Dolza's devastating attack on the planet nearly two years ago. It had left the base with a large open space that they couldn't do anything with.
Until now that was.
The long, tall room was a perfect place to house the Stargate as they prepared to activate the ancient, alien device for the first time in who knew how long. Especially as they didn't know exactly what would happen when the gate powered up, if it actually even would, as the Zentraedi records were not very helpful there. She had heard that Exedore had done a search of what records he still had access to – as many had been destroyed with Dolza's command base – to see if he could find more information on the Stargates or star portals as the Zentraedi/Tirolian legend called them. Unfortunately, he had not been able to find anything more about them or about what happened when they were used. Meaning that they were venturing into unknown, potentially very dangerous territory with this planned activation.
The possibility of something going wrong was the main reason why they had moved the Stargate from the main lab where it had previously been analysed to the wind tunnel. A process that despite the weight of the device and its control pedestal had been fairly easy as – being originally intended to be a research base – Fort Minotaur had been built with the ability to quickly move large experimental objects around the lab levels of the base. For additional safety only one person – in the form of Doctor Carter – would be in the tunnel, operating the control pedestal, when the activation took place.
The sound of footsteps caught Claudia's attention and she glanced around. To see that numerous staff and observers were filing into the room. Many of the scientists going to various consoles that had been set up to monitor the feed from the batteries of sensors that had been set up to monitor the gate. Others were simply here as observers – much as she herself was -among them Daniel Jackson and to her surprise Rick Hunter. She could see that he was talking to Lisa and curious eased over to hear what they were talking about as she had noted that the two of them had started getting closer recently. Especially as she knew Rick had not seen nor even spoken to Minmei in nearly two years, not really since Kyle had taken over as her manager.
"…he's still sleeping," Rick was saying as Claudia got close enough to hear them. "Doctor Johnson said that's to be expected as his mind is still getting used to itself again. I managed to get Aunt Maria to agree to go to bed and promised I'd do the same but…"
"…you want to see the gate opened," Lisa finished with a smile.
"Given that its important enough for someone to attack us for you bet I do."
Claudia smiled slightly at the interaction between them – it was a good sign that they might be starting to get together, she hoped they were as the sexual tension that had been building between them ever since Mars had been driving her, Admiral Gloval, and the former Bridge Bunnies absolutely crazy – before moving over to speak to Dr Jackson before Rick or Lisa could catch her eavesdropping. Daniel was standing a bit closer to the window looking out on the interior of the wind tunnel and the Stargate standing proud and mysterious at the other end of it.
"Excited Daniel," she asked.
"I haven't been this excited in a long time," Daniel replied with a smile. He had really enjoyed his time here, translating the hieroglyphs on the cover stones – it had reminded him how much he used to like Egyptology, in the days before rigidly orthodox colleagues had laughed him out of the field for theories that they considered so farfetched they bordered on blasphemy – and now he hoped there would be a big final pay off with this Stargate thing. If it worked then finally, after twenty years of ridicule and derision by the archaeological community – well what little of it was left after the Rain as it had never been a massive community and its numbers had been decimated during Dolza's assault – he might at last get vindicated and proven right all along.
Claudia smiled knowingly before her attention was grabbed by General Richards clearing his throat to get everyone's attention.
"Is everything ready," Richards asked.
"Yes, general they are," one of the scientists, a Czech by the name of Radek Zelenka, answered. "All sensors and recording equipment are online and functioning normally. Power flow to the gate is nominal."
"Good," Richards replied before stepping forward and pushing a control opening a radio link with Doctor Carter in the wind tunnel. The former Air Force officer was cocooned within a UEDF hostile environment suit, little different to a modern space suit, for protection in case the gate activation produced something nasty. "Doctor Carter, are you ready?"
"Yes, sir I am," Carter replied immediately, glancing across the length of the wind tunnel at the ring-shaped device. She was really hoping that this would work and that nothing would go wrong as if it did then she didn't doubt that they would be on the verge of discovering something that was truly momentous. Possibly as momentous for humanity as the arrival of the SDF-1 had been nearly fourteen years ago.
"Very well then proceed with entering the first address."
"Yes sir."
With the go ahead given Sam looked down at the computer tablet she was holding in one gloved hand. While they had been able to recover the symbols from the central disc of the cover stones and reconstruct the heavily damaged – either by the ravages of time or the weight of the derelict Zentraedi cruiser that had been literally on top of them – ones using a combination of a laser scan and a computer comparison to the thirty-nine individual symbols on the inner ring of the Stargate. A comparison that had revealed that the third and fifth glyphs could be anyone of three separate glyphs. As a result, the computer had compiled a list of likely candidates starting from the most to the least likely.
She took a deep breath and mentally crossed her fingers before looking at the first probably address. Then she reached out and pressed the corresponding symbol on the pedestal control device which immediately lit up. The response from the Stargate itself was immediate as it began making a rumbling, grinding sound and she glanced over to see that the inner glyph covered ring was rotating. After a second, one that seemed to stretch out into eternity, the ring stopped rotating and one of the nine chevron shaped structures spread equally around the outer ring made a locking motion and the crystal above it lit up orange.
Encouraged she entered the next symbol in the sequence and watched the process repeat. Somewhat to her relief every single symbol caused the inner ring to rotate before the chevrons locked. Once all seven symbols were entered – she had no idea what the eighth and nineth chevrons were for – the crystal dome in the centre of the pedestal lit up. Guessing that it was something like a commit button she reached out and pressed down on it, the whole thing moving down with an unbelievable smoothness. One that seemed impossible for something that had spend a minimum of six thousand years buried beneath the sand and stone of the Giza Plateau.
The response from the Stargate was both immediate and spectacular.
A rumbling vibration, almost like a miniature earthquake filled the whole of the wind tunnel and there was a sudden feeling of some ethereal power being gathered. The innermost surface of the gate glowed for a second then abruptly the gate filled with silver-blue light that exploded towards her in a manner reminiscent of a volcanic pyroclastic flow. It travelled three meters from the gate before stopping and as abruptly as it appeared snapped back into the gate and stabilized leaving the inner part of the gate filled with a rippling wall of silver-blue energy that looked almost like water.
"Unbelievable," Sam breathed awed by the sight, both the person and the astrophysicist in her beyond amazed by the beauty of what she was seeing even though everything she knew, everything she had learned, said it shouldn't be able to exist on a planetary surface. That graviton particle interference from the planet should immediately collapse it. She was gazing upon the event horizon of a wormhole, albeit one that looked very different to the whirlpool like appearance of wormholes in popular pre-Rain science fiction. A faint smile tugged at her lips as she realized something then and there…
… for good or ill their world had just changed again.
~~~///~~~
Gasps of shock and awe from scientists and observers alike filled the air of the repurposed wind tunnel control room as for the first time in thousands of years Earth's Stargate came to life. For a few moments everyone stood or sat there staring transfixed by the shimmering silver-blue wall of energy, energy that rippled almost like ocean waves, that now filled the interior of the gate. It was certainly beautiful to look at and the way its shimmering light reflected off the hypercrete walls of the stillborn wind tunnel was downright mesmerising.
For a few moments General Richards was as amazed as everyone else, then he shook himself.
"Okay people I know it's beautiful to look at, but we've got a job to do here," he said prompting a few sheepish grins to appear on various faces before the scientists got back to work, scanning their screens and the reams of data that they were getting from their sensors. "Doctor Zelenka what exactly are we looking at here?"
"One moment I am attempting to determine just that," Zelenka answered his hands dancing across the console feeding in commands and reading the base computers analysis of their readings. "Unbelievable."
"Doctor?" Richards asked.
"I don't know how this can be as it shouldn't be able to exist in a planetary gravity well but it's a wormhole," Zelenka answered, "somehow the Stargate is bending space-time and creating a wormhole between itself and the Stargate on the other end."
"So, it works similar to a space fold drive," Claudia asked him curious knowing that fold drives worked by moving two points of space-time closer together in a specific subspace realm – which they referred to as foldspace – and creating a wormhole between the two of them. A wormhole that depending on the make and model of the drive, how much power was available, and the mass of the object being transported took anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to traverse.
"Maybe on a very basic level yes though the readings we are getting are very different to those produced by a corridor through foldspace. The Stargate must exploit a very different subspace domain."
"Is it safe to traverse," Richards asked.
"I believe so I cannot see any sign of the types of subspace energy particles that are normally encountered during a space fold," Radek answered even as he double checked his readings and confirmed that none of the particles normally encountered during a space fold, some of which could be dangerous to unshielded tissue, were present. There was therefore no reason to assume that this wormhole was not fully traversable on foot – which was something he would never have thought possible until now that was. This ancient alien device, this Stargate, was going to make them revise their knowledge of the laws of physics – again. It was something that they had become quiet used to doing ever since the alien warship that became the SDF=1 fell out of the sky back in ninety-nine.
"Alright then let's see if we can find out what's on the other end of this thing," Richards said looking over at one of the other control room technicians. "Send an Eagle drone through the gate."
"Yes sir," the technician answered giving the command to the console in front of him. In the tunnel beyond the permaglass wall a small drone on a table came to life. It rose on four small tilt-fan engines before moving past Carter and cruising down the length of the tunnel to the shimmering maw of the active Stargate. For a moment it hovered in front of the water-like event horizon before the operator directed it through the small drop making an odd slurping sound as it passed through the energy field and dematerialised and being sent shooting through subspace to the exiting gate where it rematerialised.
A projector field powered up and a holographic screen pixeled into existence showing a feed from the drone for everyone to see. It was immediately obvious that the drone was in a cave, a cave that was illuminated by the shimmering silver-blue light of the event horizon. It was providing enough light to see that the cavern the gate was located in was vast and very flat with only the occasional stalagmite breaking up the surface, a control pedestal that was identical to the one they had was sitting not far away from the drone.
"General the drone is picking up an airflow coming into the cavern," the operator reported. "It's coming from the far side of the cavern, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere just like our own though a little chilly."
"Direct the drone over there," Richards ordered, "and turn on its lights."
"Yes sir," the technician replied doing as instructed. Immediately the drones small but powerful LED searchlight came on, immediately revealing far more of the cavern. To say it was huge would have been an understatement as -while it was hard to get a sense of scale from the drone images – the cavern certainly looked to be comparable in size to the interior of the largest of cathedrals. The drone moved slowly across the space heading towards where the breeze coming into the cave seemed to be coming from.
Slowly the cavern narrowed and the speed of the airflow hitting the drone began to increase though it was nothing that the Eagle drone – being a military reconnaissance model – couldn't handle. The cavern narrowed still further and to the right there was a very sharp drop off at the bottom of which – a distance that was a good fifty-feet down – the drone, when it moved over it could see a fast flowing river.
"Looks like we know what made the cavern," Daniel commented knowing that rivers can and did create vast cave structures and systems here on Earth, so there was no reason they wouldn't be able to do the same on another planet.
"Indeed," Richards agreed.
"General we're starting to experience some interference with the drone control signal," the Eagle operator reported, "it's the rock. There's something in it, likely metallic ores, which are causing an interference in the signal."
"Is there any way you can compensate?"
"We could send a signal booster drone through the gate," the technician suggested, "it would let us boost the signal substantially."
"How long would it take to prepare one and send it through?"
"Approximately fifteen minutes, twenty at the most."
"Alright have one prepared and sent through. In the meantime, bring the drone back to the cavern with the Stargate. We'll have it explore a bit more around there while we wait."
"Yes sir."
~~~///~~~
Hidden Base
Dolomite Mountains, Italy
That Same Time
Dressed in comfortable travel clothes Vosegus paced anxiously back and forth in the barren room that had, until an hour or so ago, been his throne room. Over the last few hours his worshippers/slaves as well as the Jaftari had been systematically disassembling everything that could be moved to their fallback base beneath the Ural Mountains. As part of that process all the finery in the throne room had been removed and stowed aboard one of a fleet of lorries that would, using various routes, take it all to his new base. Most of his worshippers would travel in a fleet of busses all of them taking different routes until they all met up again.
Then he could begin putting his plan for revenge into action, it would take a while but one thing he had learned over his long exile here on the first world was the value of patience.
The sound of the door opening made him pause his pacing and he turned. To see Elena, dressed like he was for travel, and the new head of the Jaftari – dressed like a chauffeur – came into the room.
"My lord," Elena said with a bow.
"Yes, Elena?" Vosegus asked.
"My lord all equipment that can be moved has now left the base," Elena reported, "all personnel beyond the three of us are also all gone."
"Very well. Is the self-destruct device ready to be armed?"
"It is my lord," him new Prime answered.
"Excellent. Escort me there so I may arm it, then we will leave."
"Yes, my lord."
His answer of a Jaffa – well as close as he could get to making one without access to juvenile symbiotes to create the prim'tah – turned and began walking out of the room. Vosegus followed behind him with Elena bringing up the rear. For a few minutes they walked through the deserted, eerily quiet, base to a small, secure room. A room that only Vosegus himself could open.
Without hesitation he raised and activated his kara'kesh and held it over a small oval crystal set into the wall next to the thick door. Immediately he felt the elaborate locking mechanism in his mind as the kara'kesh formed a mental link between his mind and the door locks. He thought and pushed the proper code into the lock causing the door to make a clicking sound and slide aside with a whirr of powerful hydraulics.
"Wait here," he ordered.
"Yes, my lord."
Leaving the lotaur and Jaftari behind Vosegus walked into the room. It was fairly barren, just a two by two meter cube in the centre of which on a stone plinth was a small ornate box in a vague coffin shape. He walked over and carefully turned each of the four scarab-shaped locking mechanisms in the corners into the proper position causing the lid of the ark bomb to open with a soft whirr. Smiling he entered the proper sequence to arm the bomb and set the timer. Immediately the central crystal dome of the bombs control station lit up with a green light and red crystals around the perimeter began slowly pulsing as the countdown began.
In less than three hours the five pound block of naquada within the chest would explode and completely destroy the base.
Pleased he closed and locked the lid. Then he turned and walked out of the room, the door sliding closed behind him with a soft hiss. "It is done let us leave," he said.
"Yes, my lord this way."
~~~///~~~
It took only a few minutes for the three of them to reach the now abandoned, stripped villa on the surface. Vosegus followed them through the complex, idly bidding goodbye to what had been his home for the last couple of years as this place would be destroyed as well as when the bomb blew incendiary devices would also detonate burning this place to ashes, until he reached the drive outside.
Where a limousine was waiting for him.
Without needing to be prompted Vosegus and Elena climbed into the back of the luxury car while the Jaftari Prime went and sat in the driver's seat. A few moments later the advanced hydrogen fuel cell engine started up and the vehicle got underway heading to join one of the country's main highways, specifically one that would take them to the Mont Blanc tunnel to France. Once there they would begin making their own roundabout journey across Europe – stopping at various safe houses at least those that hadn't been destroyed by the Zentraedi during Dolza's bombardment – until his agents could arrange for them to slip across the border without being detected and challenged by either UEG or EBSIS border guards.
As he sat in the comfortable leather seat, and sipped on a martini that Elena had thoughtfully had ready for him as he never got tired of enjoying the numerous different drinks the people of this world came up with, Vosegus estimated that it would take at most a month before he was fully secure and established in his new base.
A month in which he could refine his plans for revenge.
~~~///~~~
Wind Tunnel
Fort Minotaur
It took nearly thirty minutes for the signal booster drone to be made ready and brought to the wind tunnel holding the still active Stargate. The delay caused by a slight filing error that had the drone stored in the wrong part of the bases main warehouse. But it was finally ready and was about to start trundling down the wind tunnel on two powerful tracked wheels when without warning and with a puff of ethereal vapours the Stargate shut down.
"Doctor Zalenka what happened," General Richards asked looking over at the Czech scientist who had been joined by Doctor Carter. The bulk of the observers had left the room to return to what they had been doing elsewhere on the base leaving just the staff in the wind tunnel control room.
"I am not sure," Zalenka replied checking his readings with a puzzled frown. "There was no interruption in the signal from us to the Eagle drone on the other side and no fluctuation in the amount of power being sent from the base fusion reactors to the Stargate. It just switched off on its own."
"It's possible that there is a quantum mechanical limit on how long one of these wormholes can remain open," Carter said looking thoughtful, "after all we know there are ones of the wormholes through foldspace created by fold drives. Which is why you can only fold ten kiloparsecs in one go."
"I suppose it's possible," Richards agreed with a frown. "How would we test that hypothesis doctor?"
"The only way I can think of right now sir is we run the Stargate again and see if it once again shuts down after thirty-eight minutes of continuous operation."
"Alright we will do that. Would you mind going back into the tunnel and dialling that first address again?"
"Not at all I'll go suit up."
"No need for that this time," Richards answered, "sensors confirmed that there were no harmful emissions from the Stargate."
"Oh, thank heavens those suits are not the most comfortable things in the world," Carter said with a smile before standing up. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go dial the gate again."
"Please."
Carter smiled back and left the room, appearing a few moments later in the wind tunnel once again holding the computer tablet and going up to the dialling device. A few moments after that the Stargate came to life again with the same ka-woosh sound and explosion of energy as the wormhole formed.
"Sir we've regained the control signal to the Eagle drone," the drone operator reported as his holoscreens came back on showing the Eagle drones viewpoint of the now open gate.
"Send the booster drone through and sync up. Once done send the drone to find exactly where the airflow is coming from."
"Yes sir."
It took only a few moments to send the relatively slow moving signal booster drone through the Stargate and sync the Eagles control signal too it. As soon as that was done the operator began directing the drone across the cavernous space around the Stargate which they still hadn't fully mapped as the place was simply enormous easily rivalling the biggest caves ever explored on Earth. As it had the last time the cavern narrowed, and one side dropped away steeply to the river that long ago had to have carved the cave though a path that was easily wide enough to drive a car on continued onwards into the darkness.
Lights from the drone played across the rock walls, revealing many of the characteristic features of a tunnel that had been created by the erosive action of water. A point of light appeared ahead though it was still some way off.
Far enough in fact that they had to move the signal booster a little further into the cave before the Eagle drone could reach it. The entrance to the cave was vast at least as big as the main doors of many aircraft hangers and had a number of vines and creepers growing down over the entrance. Vines that the operators skilfully manoeuvred the Eagle around and directed it out into the daylight.
What it revealed was surprising. Extending out from the entrance to the cave, which itself was at the base of a giant cliff, was a large rocky plane that had to be over a kilometre long. Beyond which they could faintly see a vast heavily wooded valley that was currently covered in a light blanket of snow. The sky above was clear and blue but what was shocking was what was visible in the sky.
A huge saffron-coloured gas giant indicating that the planet was a moon.
"Holy crap it's a real life Yavin Four," one of the marines providing security in the room commented, prompting a slight outbreak of laughter.
"Well as long as the Death Star doesn't show up as I don't see Luke Skywalker with an X-Wing anywhere, I'd say its fine," Richards joked back amused causing everyone to crack up. Once everyone had settled down, he turned to the drone operator. "How far can the Eagle explore from the cave entrance?"
"About another two hundred meters sir there is still some interference from the rock and the booster drone is still in the cavern."
"Do a quicky survey as far as you can around the entrance," Richards ordered, "have we been recording all our drone footage?"
"Of course, sir."
"Then begin assembling it for presentation to the defence council."
"Yes sir."
~~~///~~~
United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City, North American Quadrant
Sometime Later
"The planet is uninhabited?"
Secretary Anderson's words hung pregnant in the air of the meeting room of the defence council. They had just finished reviewing the footage from the Eagle drone and it was quite interesting. They had really not expected to find a habitable planet on the other side of the Stargate, let alone one that was apparently a temperate real-life version of Yavin Four from Star Wars.
"From what we can tell yes," General Markwell replied. "Before the Stargate shut down for the second time General Richards had the Eagle drone do as comprehensive a survey of the immediate area around the cave where the Stargate is located. There is no sign of any form of habitation no smoke plumes from campfires, no artificial energy signatures no nothing. There is a sign of a natural path that leads down into the forest and there is no sign that anyone has ever been on it."
"Interesting," Gloval commented, "a completely virgin world. What's the environment like?"
"From what the drone could tell while the planet is chilly, though not that much different to what the Pacific Northwest was like during late autumn before the Rain, it has an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere in the correct ratios to support human life."
"What are you thinking admiral," Anderson asked looking at Gloval in interest.
"Mister Secretary you know my views on how our species needs to expand beyond the cradle of this planet," Gloval said, "this planet could be an ideal point to start out. Especially as this system is only six hundred and forty light years away from us."
"Possible," Anderson agreed knowing full well Gloval's views and honestly, he shared them. As did many people in the United Earth Government. They had just dodged the bullet of extinction in the Robotech War and with the Robotech Masters, and who knew what else like these 'false gods', out there they could not guarantee they would do so again. "Still, we know to know a lot more about this planet and the system in which it resides before we can even begin to consider colonising it."
"That is obvious," Gloval agreed knowing that there was going to be a lot more to colonising a planet than just checking if they could breathe the air. They would have to check that they could drink the water, that there was nothing in it that would make them ill, that there was no harmful bacteria or viruses present and a million and one other different things. "The question we need to ask is how we go about doing that?"
"There are two possibilities," Exedore said with a thoughtful frown. "One we could send a larger, manned expedition through the Stargate and begin a survey of the planet. Two I could speak with Lord Breetai and have one or more of our warships that are still capable of space folding sent to the system to commence a survey. They could also act as support for the ground team should they encounter any difficulties."
"Logical," Colonel Matthews admitted looking like he had bitten into a sour lemon at having to agree with a Zentraedi anything. As always everyone on the council ignored his xenophobic attitude, the man was good at his job and only occasionally needed a reminder to keep the anti-Zentraedi bias at bay. "I suggest that in this matter we follow both of Exedore's suggestions and dispatch both a team of experts – and some soldiers to protect them from hostile wildlife if nothing else – through the Stargate to the planet and ask Commander Breetai to send some ships to the system in question to commence survey operations."
"I think we can all agree on that," Anderson said looking around and getting concurring nods from the other members of the council. "Alright I'll speak to the Secretary General so we can begin setting things in motion. Exedore, would you speak with Commander Breetai on this issue."
"Of course," Exedore confirmed with a nod even as the door to the meeting room opened and a young officer came in, a look of urgency and concern on his face. He immediately walked up to Admiral Gloval and whiskered something in his ear. Whatever he said made the Russian man stiffen, go white for a second before turning to look at him.
"Are you sure," Gloval asked.
"Yes, sir we checked the readings three times there is no mistake," the young officer answered grimly.
"Bring the analysis here immediately."
"Aye sir," the officer acknowledged before leaving to do as he was bid.
"What is it admiral," Anderson asked.
"Mister Secretary our satellites just detected a nuclear explosion somewhere beneath the Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy," Gloval answered, drawing looks and gasps of surprise and concern from everyone in the room. "It wasn't a particular large blast, no more than sixty kilotons though it's quite deep underground and no radiation should reach the surface but…"
"…the point is there shouldn't have been any nuclear weapons anywhere near there," Anderson finished a grim look on his face as knew the diplomatic shitstorm this was going to cause especially with EBSIS and the UIR, "even a tactical one like that. How did it get there? Who the hell used it and why?"
"I have no idea," Gloval admitted looking grim himself as he too knew that there was going to be diplomatic and political hell to pay as a result of this blast. "Though given what Captain Hunter said about where his cousin disappeared for three and a half years before resurfacing as Prime, I can think of one likely culprit for the blast. Especially if that is where his base was."
"Vosegus."
"Yes."
A grim silence fell upon the defence council as they all considered this latest, and honestly most concerning, surprise that Vosegus had thrown their way. No doubt he had detonated the nuclear device to destroy a base he was abandoning for some reason – presumably being afraid of what they would be able to learn about it from Nathan Hunter whenever he woke up and assuming he would be mentally and emotionally well enough to be questioned after the ordeal he had been put through by Vosegus – but that was beside the point. The fact that he somehow had nuclear weapons – even low yield tactical level nukes – was a red blaring alarm that rapidly moved him up the threat totem pole from being a relatively minor annoyance to, alongside the likes of Khyron, being a very serious threat to the safety and security of their entire planet. A threat that they still knew far, far too little about…
…and that was going to have to change and change fast.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, this is the first of the chapters to have major changes from the original as Earth begins to explore beyond the Stargate. Before anyone asks the Linkotis arc of the original version has not been abandoned however it has been postponed and will not be happening until a bit later in this part. While they are exploring a completely different star system events won't be quite so uneventful there as they are hoping – a hope you like what I have in store for you in this new version.
While we will not be seeing Vosegus for a little bit after his cameo appearance in this chapter he has not, and will not, be forgotten about. He will be back, and he is going to cause our heroes some considerable trouble once he reaches and settles into his new base of operations in the Ural Mountains. Quite what that trouble will be you'll have to wait and see.
Chapter Eight
New
- Location
- South Wales, United Kingdom
Chapter Eight
Recovery Room
Secure Medical Section,
Fort Minotaur, Crete
A Few Hours Later
Maria Hunter looked up from where she was sitting at her son's bedside at the sound of approaching footsteps. She wondered if it was one of the nurses or another member of the base medical staff coming to check on Nathan's progress as the last time Doctor Johnson had looked at his neural scan, he'd told both her and Rick that Nathan could wake up at any time now. However, it wasn't a nurse or anyone like that, it was just her nephew returning from wherever emergency meeting he had been summoned to a short time after they'd returned from getting some much needed sleep.
Not that she herself had slept that much or easily to be honest. She had found her thoughts, as they had frequently been for the last few years, preoccupied with thoughts of Nathan. Until Commander Hayes had come to see her, and she'd been brought here after being told what had happened, her thoughts had always been dominated by trying to understand why he had suddenly run away in the way he had. Wondering if there had been any warning signs that she might have missed, any sign that someone was turning him away from her. Of course, now she knew that there had been no sign and that Nathan running away had not been a voluntary choice of his but the result of him being deliberately infected with some kind of mind controlling biological compound.
Since she'd learned that and learned what had happened to Nathan with his own mind and personality overwritten by another artificial one, she had found herself worrying and thinking about everything he had done and been through while under the control of this Prime persona. Had he been aware of what had happened to him the whole time. Had he been trapped in his own head screaming and beating on some type of mental wall while not only was his body altered – she'd been told that his very DNA had been restructured somehow into a form that wasn't as human as he had been before – but the personality in control had done who knew what was his hands? Or had he just not known, had he essentially ceased to exist as Nathan when his mind was overridden by the other personality? There was currently no real way to answer those questions – though according to Dr Johnson he shouldn't have been aware at all as his mind while suppressed had been essentially in a form of cerebral stasis – and wouldn't until after he woke up whenever that was.
Though she had already determined that, no matter what, she would help him get through this. Help him recover and find out who he was now as she wasn't so blind as to assume he would be able to go back to being exactly the person he was before. His experience would have left psychological scars and those could change a person. She clearly remembered how much Mitch had changed after his combat deployment to the Middle East during the Gulf War, especially after his best friend Daniel Fokker was killed after their F-16 was shot down by Iraqi missiles. She'd also seen the differences in Rick's behaviour and mannerisms since his experiences in the Robotech War, he was harder and while still friendly and loving there was a hardness in his blue eyes that hadn't been there before and there was no longer any innocence left in him.
"Aunt Maria," Rick said breaking her out of her thoughts. She jumped slightly, before looking a little sheepish at getting so lost in her thoughts that she had clearly ignored his presence and looked up in time to see him offering her a steaming mug of liquid. A liquid that from its scent was clearly coffee.
"Thank you, Rick. Milk and two sugars, right?"
"Yeah, I remember just how you like your coffee Aunt Maria," Rick replied as he sat down in another chair. "Anything?"
"Doctor Johnson came in and checked him just after you were called away," she answered. "According to him the latest neural scans show Nathan could wake up anytime now."
"So, it's a waiting game again."
"Unfortunately. Though if I can ask why were you called away after we got up? Assuming you can tell me."
Rick frowned slightly and took a swig of his coffee. He honestly wasn't sure if he could tell his aunt about the emergency briefing, he'd been called to but then again, the news media were soon going to learn about a large underground explosion in the Dolomites and it wouldn't take them long to realize what caused it. Enough independent experts survived in the world to confirm that the explosion was nuclear in origin or at least looked nuclear. He'd heard that their preliminary analysis of sensors data from orbiting satellites and a Zentraedi cruiser that had been in orbit directly over the area had confirmed that while a nuclear level explosion it had not been a nuke as they understood it but a naquada-based weapon. There was EBSIS and the UIR. Both of whom had also detected it – though without the Zentraedi sensor data they didn't know it wasn't a nuke -and were already screaming murder about it accusing the UEG of illegal underground weapons testing and other such political bullshit. They would no doubt brief the worlds media on it and there were enough anti-UEG media outlets out there still – all of whom had access to the steadily being rebuilt internet – to let the whole world know what had just taken place.
Thus, there was no reason for him not to tell her. Well as long as he left the naquada part out as the existence and properties of that material had been classified by the Defence Council. He only knew about it because he had a high enough security clearance to know. It was another of the little perks that came with having been the CAG of the SDF-1 during the latter half of the war and still being the leader of Skull Squadron.
"I can," he said at last. "Sensors on our orbital satellites, and on some of the orbiting Zentraedi cruisers, detected a nuclear explosion beneath the Dolomites a few hours ago. Ground based seismometers detected it a few seconds later. We've determined that it came from somewhere beneath Marmolada."
Maria blinked. "Someone detonated a nuke beneath the highest peak in the Dolomites," she asked incredulous, vaguely remembering that she and Nathan had planned to climb the Marmolada during their trip to Italy, after exploring the old World War One trails that the Italians had cut into the very rock of the mountains, as they were both were – or in her case had been as she was a bit too old for it now, the ravages of time in the form of arthritis beginning to take their toll, years of worrying about Nathan and the surprise death of her brother hadn't helped there either – keen and experienced mountaineers. Well until Nathan ran away to serve whoever this Vosegus character was.
"It looks like it," Rick confirmed. "The working theory is that Vosegus – whoever or whatever he really is – is behind it, probably to destroy whatever base he had hidden there as he had to know that we would find it eventually, though we cannot be certain. Though it's really set off a political shitstorm both within the UEG and with those independent groups like EBSIS."
"Maybe it was part of his plan? Cause chaos while going to hide somewhere else," Maria suggested though she didn't comment on how they would have eventually found the bases location. That was obvious as they would simply ask Nathan as she was sure that, if he were well enough, her son would have to answer some questions about what had been going on these last four and a half years with him and with Vosegus.
"Very likely. I know that possibility has occurred to Admiral Gloval. The council will look into it."
"You respect Admiral Gloval a great deal, don't you Rick," Maria noted with a slight smile. "I can hear it in your voice."
"Yeah, I do all of us who were on the SDF-1 – either because they were assigned there like Roy was, or like me and the citizens of Macross City, got caught in the space fold and dumped out near Pluto – do. Because he earned it as I don't think anyone else would have been able to get us back to Earth in the way he did not with an entire fleet of Zentraedi warships in the way. He's a good man, tough as hell, ruthless in the way only Russians can really be when he wants to be but compassionate and fair."
"You'll have to tell me a bit more about that voyage I don't know anything really about it. Hell until just after the Rain I thought that…"
"… that I and everyone who was on Macross Island was dead," Rick finished for her with a shake of his head and once again feeling a stab of anger at the way they had been treated by the government after they got back to Earth the first time. All to maintain a lie that they had died in a sudden volcanic eruption and hadn't been teleported to the far side of the system due to a desperate move to escape attack by a Zentraedi battle fleet. "You can blame the late, and very unlamented by just about everyone, Senator Russo, and his cronies for that. They wanted to hide the fact that we were attacked by the Zentraedi to a) avoid causing a panic and b) to buy time to finish their white elephant Grand Cannon projects."
"Politicians," Maria said with a snort, letting the distain she'd long had for politicians show in her voice. Rick chuckled at her response. "Though what's a Grand Cannon?"
Rick blinked and was about to reply when a soft groan from the direction of the bed caught both their attention. Both their eyes shot to the bed…
…just in time to see Nathan open his eyes. Before abruptly shutting them again as he was suddenly dazzled by the overhead lights.
"Ooh bright light, bright light," he said, making both Rick and Maria chuckle as he sounded so like the Mogwai Gizmo from the Gremlins movie as he said that. It was a promising sign that despite everything he had been through Nathan's sense of humour – which according to Aunt Maria he had inherited from his father – was still intact. At the sound of their chuckles Nathan opened his eyes again, blinking against the overhead lights and looked at them. "Mom? Rick?"
"Yes, we're here," Maria replied with a smile even as Nathan raised a hand to shield his eyes from the overhead lights, only to pause gazing in shock as he saw his arm and the sheer size of the muscles there.
"What, what's happened to me," Nathan breathed lifting his head and looking down at his torso, gaping in shock as he saw the muscles before looking back at them again. "Where am I? And Rick you're in a uniform! I thought you said you would never join the military. That you'd never let them turn your skills as a pilot into a weapon of war."
"For the first part you're in a recovery room in the infirmary of Fort Minotaur, a UEDF military base on Crete," Rick answered even as he remembered those comments he had made to both Nathan and Roy. It had been the last time they had all been together before Nathan and Aunt Maria had made that fateful trip to Europe after the former's graduation from High School. He had changed so much since then, grown up so much.
"And I know I said that" he continued, "but life has a way of changing everything you had thought or believed. In my case it involved getting dumped out by Pluto in a battlefortress with seventy four thousand other people and having to fight against a thousand ship strong alien armada across the length of the solar system to get back home after the fold drive mysteriously goes bye-bye."
"Huh when was this?" Nathan asked confused as he didn't remember any of this and what the hell was a fold drive? And why would it mysteriously vanish? "And does me being in this place have something to do with me suddenly looking like I've had a body transplant from Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
Rick and Maria exchanged a look both concerned by the fact that Nathan didn't seem to remember anything from the last four and a half years. "What's the last thing you remember baby?" Maria asked, making her son pout slightly at being referred to as baby. She knew he hated it when she did that not that she was going to stop as no matter what had happened to him, what he'd been through or how big he was Nathan was and always would be her baby and that's all there was to it.
Nathan frowned puzzled by the question. "I went to that party at the nightclub I was invited to. I remember drinking a lot like you do. Someone must have slipped me something when I got tipsy as I remember feeling euphoric and then I got dizzy. I went back to the hotel then…" his voice trailed off as he was suddenly assaulted by a barrage of images, memories, and feelings. They were his and yet not his at the same time and swept through his mind like a flood making it impossible for him to ignore them.
"What's happening," Maria demanded looking at her nephew as Nathan's eyes abruptly shut and he suddenly started gripping the sheet on the bed with a white-knuckle grip. Behind his eyelids she could see his eyes moving rapidly and his breathing was getting faster too.
"I can't be sure, but I think he's remembering everything that's happened to him over the last couple of years," Rick answered a moment before Nathan abruptly screamed and writhed on the bed as though he was in tremendous pain. It only lasted for a moment or two before he went still but maintained his death grip on the bedsheet before his back arched again and he began talking in a language neither of them had ever heard before. Though that ended a few seconds later being replaced by shaking and shivering before he seemed to calm.
Nathan's eyes opened again. "Mommy," he breathed sounding like a small, frightened child and not the six-foot tall two hundred- and forty pound man that he now was. His expressive green eyes shining with tears of pain, humiliation, rage, shame, and regret.
"It's okay Nathan," Maria said standing up and moving to sit on the side of the bed. Gently she reached over and pulled him over to her, letting him bury his head in her lap. "It's over now, your safe, Vosegus cannot hurt or use you anymore."
At her words the floodgates opened, and Nathan began to weep. Maria gently wrapped her arms around him, comforting him as she had done ever since he was a small child. Rick for his part reached out and put a comforting hand on his cousin's arm. Neither said anything, they didn't need, to nor was there really anything that they could say, all they could do was what they were doing and offer as much support and comfort as was possible while Nathan cried out his pain and humiliation.
After what seemed like hours the tears slowed and then finally stopped. Nathan slipping back into an exhausted sleep. Maria gently laid him back on the bed, stood up and placed the sheet back over him. Then she stood there and just watched him sleep, her own emotions churning as she gazed upon his reddened, tear-streaked face. It was going to take him a long time to really recover from this, if he ever truly could, and that infuriated her to no end. After a moment she felt Rick's hand touch her shoulder.
"Rick, I want you to promise me something," she said at last voice thick with numerous emotions. "Find this Vosegus character whoever he is, whatever he is and wherever he's hiding. Find him and kill him for what he's done."
"Oh, you can bet I will Aunt Maria," Rick answered as his expressive blue eyes – normally so full of kindness and warmth – turned colder than artic ice as he let his own anger and hatred for the person/being/whatever who had done this to Nathan and who knew how many others - show. Whoever/whatever Vosegus was he had made himself his enemy and – as any Zentraedi who had faced him in war and managed to survive it would attest – that was the last place anyone would want to be. "I will find him, and I will kill him."
~~~///~~~
Secure Briefing Room L22
A Few Hours Later
Colonel Louis Ferretti, formerly of the United States Air Force regiment but now of the UEDF STORM Commandoes, couldn't help but feel a twinge of nerves as he arrived in the briefing room, he and the rest of his unit had been summoned to. He had already heard rumours that the mission that they were going to be sent on had something to do with that alien ring device – what was it called again? Oh yes, a Stargate – that they had sitting in an incomplete wind tunnel on the science levels of this base. He had heard that they had even been able to activate it and, in the process, learned that they were going to have to once again review everything that they had thought they had known about physics.
He supposed that it was something that scientists were used to doing in the modern day that it no longer bothered any of them that laws and theories that had for years, and in some cases over a century, been thought immutable had turned out to be anything but. The discovery and reverse engineering of the incredible, and sometimes downright magical, sciences and technologies known as robotechnology had ensured that. From what his scientist cousin had told him before he knew that robotech had forced over a dozen revisions so far and had opened the door on sciences that should have been impossible. Sciences like super dimensional physics that were frankly like something out of that old British sci-fi series he'd watched one time while stationed in the UK, Doctor Who.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now and glanced around the briefing room. To see that his whole unit was here, all looking impressive in their distinctive grey uniforms. They were not the only ones present there were at least two, possibly three, full teams of army combat engineers and a whole gaggle of scientists and civilian civil engineering specialists. There were even a few micronized Zentraedi present, notable due to the fact that they were wearing the micronized version of the new red and white uniform being adopted by the Free Zentraedi Forces replacing their old green and purple Imperial uniforms.
It was quite an eclectic mix to say the least.
Which told him that something that was both weird and potentially truly momentous was going to be going down here today. And he was willing to bet that that Stargate thing was going to be at the very centre of it all. It all added up to one thing in his mind, they were planning to send them all through it. Why though was anyone's guess.
Thankfully he didn't have to speculate for very long for at that moment the door to the room opened and more personnel from the base began to filter in, including Doctor Carter and General Richards himself. One of the combat engineers immediately yelled attention at the presence of the commanding officer of Fort Minotaur causing every one of the military personnel, including Ferretti, to immediately leap back to their feet and stand at attention. Ferretti inwardly smiled as he saw Carter struggle not to do the same. You can take the woman out of the Air Force, but you can't take the Air Force out of the woman, he thought amused knowing that Carter had left the military years ago to focus on scientific endeavours especially after the alien ship crashed into Macross Island.
"Stand easy," Richards ordered immediately as he moved to the podium at the front of the room. Everyone did as bid. "Please be seated."
Immediately the military personnel did as they were instructed, sitting down with a fair few rustles and creaks of the synthetic leather fabric covering the seats. Not for the first time Ferretti inwardly smiled as one of the really major improvements with the UEDF over the old US Air Force was that the seats you sat in for briefings and so on were actually really comfortable. Once everyone was settled Richards cleared his throat to get their attention, especially the attention of the scientists, before speaking up.
"Good afternoon, everyone," he said in greeting. "I am sure you are all wondering just why you have been summoned to this meeting."
"The thought has crossed our minds sir," Ferretti admitted. "I assume it has something to do with the Stargate?"
"That it does Colonel Ferretti," Richards confirmed with a nod to the head of the STORM commando unit that had arrived a few days ago with the neuro-somatic imprinter. An imprinter that would soon be sent back to the secure storage site in North Wales, once an appropriate escort was arranged and once the North Atlantic storm that was currently battering the coastlines of the United Kingdon and Ireland with very heavy rain and force ten gales passed them by.
"As you are all aware by now several hours ago, we were able to successfully activate the Stargate and make a connection to a planet located in a star system six hundred and forty light years away from Sol," Richards continued, creating a small hubbub especially among the scientists who couldn't help talking about it especially how the Stargate completely violated the laws of physics as they understood them. Richards held up his hands for silence and slowly the scientists settled down and looked a little sheepish. "The world we have found is habitable and from what we have been able to tell so far completely uninhabited. It is these two factors that have prompted a rapid response from both the Defence Council and the UEG in New York."
"What decision is that sir," Ferretti asked guessing it had to be both for both the Defence Council and the UEG to have decided on the planet so fast. Normally it took forever for the latter especially to make a concrete decision on anything, as almost everything would have to be reviewed by this or that committee and debated over at least a dozen times first.
"Given that the planet is habitable the decision has been made to do a primary assessment for the potential for colonisation under the Gloval Initiative."
A confused murmur ran through everyone in the room as none of them had ever heard that term before. After a moment one of the scientists put up a hand for attention. Richards looked over at the younger man and nodded.
"General Richards might I ask what this Gloval Initiative is?" the scientists asked.
Richards smiled. "It is the brainchild of Admiral Gloval himself," he replied, "due to the devastation of the Robotech War the admiral has been arguing for quite some time now that humanity must spread its wings out into the galaxy. That it is time that we leave the cradle of this world – as battered, bruised and battle scarred as it is – and begin establishing ourselves out there among the stars to avoid getting nearly wiped out again.
"The issue is still being discussed in some areas of the government, but the Secretary General has made it clear that the idea will be adopted in full, and that the committee stage is simply following formality," Richards continued knowing that even the blindest politician in the UEG was well aware of the bullet of extinction that they had barely dodged at the hands of Dolza. One only had to look out at the scorched desert that covered much of Earth, desert created when anything and everything in the path of the quantum firestorms created during the reflex cannon bombardment had reduced anything and everything they encountered into clouds of superheated elementary particles. "While the plan was to begin building colony ships at the Factory Satellite, once its repairs are completed, to carry our people to the stars and beyond the discovery of the Stargate now offers us a new option. While the colony ships will still be constructed, we will also take advantage of the gate that has fallen into our laps. Which is where we here at Fort Minotaur – well until a better site can be found to house the gate – come in."
"What do they want us to do sir?" Ferretti asked curious.
"I am glad you asked Colonel. All of you assembled here will embark through the Stargate to the planet in question and first begin setting up an outpost in the cave system that houses the Stargate on that world," Richards explained, "easily portable supplies and equipment will be sent through with you while more bulky and extensive equipment will be brought to the system by a squadron of Zentraedi warships being dispatched by Commander Breetai.
"Once the outpost is set up and running you will begin a thorough assessment of the planet in question searching for suitable sites for a colony, useful resources as well as any potential threats or complications. The Zentraedi ships being sent will sweep the system as well to make sure nothing is amiss," Richards continued. "After all the last thing we want is to start settling and find out the next planet over is inhabited by something like a real life version of the Klingons."
A ripple of laughter ran through the room at that though the Zentraedi all seemed to perk up slightly at the mention of the Klingons. The various fictional warrior races in science fiction from Star Trek's Klingons to Star Wars Mandalorians and even Mass Effect's Turians and Krogan had become a subject of fascination for the Free Zentraedi. Especially as they worked to discover a new identity for themselves, and build a new society for themselves, outside of the narrow box that the Robotech Masters had kept them in for their entire existence.
Richards waited until the laughter died down before speaking again. "If everything checks out then the combat engineers will be in charge of laying the groundwork for a settlement by one of these," he continued before pressing a button on the podium. Immediately a large projector field in front of him powered up and a hologram pixeled into existence. "This is what the shipwrights are calling an Angel-class colony ship."
Everyone leaned forward to examine the hologram. It showed a massive disc shaped spacecraft that was nearly two and a half kilometres in diameter and whose disc was nearly a hundred meters thick. Rising from about five hundred meters into the disc was a large domed structure within which they could see a small city.
"Each of these colony ships when completed will be able to hold up to half a million people," Richards continued, "and will carry anything and everything needed to establish a new home on another world. They will be designed to land and form the nexus of any new colony we build."
"Incredible," one of the scientists breathed. "And we actually have the capability to build these things?"
"We will once the Factory Satellite finishes its repairs in a few weeks' time" Richards answered, "that will give you plenty of time to do the initial surveys and assessments. Any questions so far?"
"When do we leave sir," Ferretti asked.
"You will be leaving to begin your task tomorrow once the last of the required supplies have arrived from warehouses in Heraklion," Richards answered as he dismissed the hologram, "so everyone prepare yourselves accordingly. If there is anyone who for some reason doesn't want, or cannot, go please inform either me or the senior officer who will be in command while you are there before departure. And speaking of that it is time I introduce him to you."
As he spoke, he pressed another control on the podium. For a moment more nothing happened then the door opened and a tall man in the uniform of a UEDF Brigadier General came into the room. The moment he came in Ferretti's eyes widened in shock and recognition as he beheld a man he had not seen in years, not really since the near-fatal shooting of his son had prompted him to take a leave of absence from the then US Air Force. Naturally he was older now and his once dark hair was now salt, and pepper coloured due to the ravages of time, but he was still tall and strong. It was all he could do not to laugh in delight as he knew this man well and knew he could do the job and would do it with both style and sarcastic sass…
…their new commanding officer was none other than Brigadier General Jack O'Neill.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, another chapter of this rewrite/reboot bites the dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. And I really hope you all liked my little surprise there at the end of the chapter as yes in this version of the story Jack is alive – I took on board all the negative feedback about how he was dead and figured out away to change it – as in this reality while Charlie O'Neill did still accidentally shoot himself while playing with Jack's personal sidearm it wasn't a fatal wound though it did scare both his parents half to death and led to Jack first taking a leave of absence from the military and upon returning accepting a desk job to be closer to home. I will be slowing down now though on the updates for this, especially as we move further away from the events of the original version – though some of those events will still take place though the timings and so on will be very different – of the story in a hopefully better direction. Until next time.
Recovery Room
Secure Medical Section,
Fort Minotaur, Crete
A Few Hours Later
Maria Hunter looked up from where she was sitting at her son's bedside at the sound of approaching footsteps. She wondered if it was one of the nurses or another member of the base medical staff coming to check on Nathan's progress as the last time Doctor Johnson had looked at his neural scan, he'd told both her and Rick that Nathan could wake up at any time now. However, it wasn't a nurse or anyone like that, it was just her nephew returning from wherever emergency meeting he had been summoned to a short time after they'd returned from getting some much needed sleep.
Not that she herself had slept that much or easily to be honest. She had found her thoughts, as they had frequently been for the last few years, preoccupied with thoughts of Nathan. Until Commander Hayes had come to see her, and she'd been brought here after being told what had happened, her thoughts had always been dominated by trying to understand why he had suddenly run away in the way he had. Wondering if there had been any warning signs that she might have missed, any sign that someone was turning him away from her. Of course, now she knew that there had been no sign and that Nathan running away had not been a voluntary choice of his but the result of him being deliberately infected with some kind of mind controlling biological compound.
Since she'd learned that and learned what had happened to Nathan with his own mind and personality overwritten by another artificial one, she had found herself worrying and thinking about everything he had done and been through while under the control of this Prime persona. Had he been aware of what had happened to him the whole time. Had he been trapped in his own head screaming and beating on some type of mental wall while not only was his body altered – she'd been told that his very DNA had been restructured somehow into a form that wasn't as human as he had been before – but the personality in control had done who knew what was his hands? Or had he just not known, had he essentially ceased to exist as Nathan when his mind was overridden by the other personality? There was currently no real way to answer those questions – though according to Dr Johnson he shouldn't have been aware at all as his mind while suppressed had been essentially in a form of cerebral stasis – and wouldn't until after he woke up whenever that was.
Though she had already determined that, no matter what, she would help him get through this. Help him recover and find out who he was now as she wasn't so blind as to assume he would be able to go back to being exactly the person he was before. His experience would have left psychological scars and those could change a person. She clearly remembered how much Mitch had changed after his combat deployment to the Middle East during the Gulf War, especially after his best friend Daniel Fokker was killed after their F-16 was shot down by Iraqi missiles. She'd also seen the differences in Rick's behaviour and mannerisms since his experiences in the Robotech War, he was harder and while still friendly and loving there was a hardness in his blue eyes that hadn't been there before and there was no longer any innocence left in him.
"Aunt Maria," Rick said breaking her out of her thoughts. She jumped slightly, before looking a little sheepish at getting so lost in her thoughts that she had clearly ignored his presence and looked up in time to see him offering her a steaming mug of liquid. A liquid that from its scent was clearly coffee.
"Thank you, Rick. Milk and two sugars, right?"
"Yeah, I remember just how you like your coffee Aunt Maria," Rick replied as he sat down in another chair. "Anything?"
"Doctor Johnson came in and checked him just after you were called away," she answered. "According to him the latest neural scans show Nathan could wake up anytime now."
"So, it's a waiting game again."
"Unfortunately. Though if I can ask why were you called away after we got up? Assuming you can tell me."
Rick frowned slightly and took a swig of his coffee. He honestly wasn't sure if he could tell his aunt about the emergency briefing, he'd been called to but then again, the news media were soon going to learn about a large underground explosion in the Dolomites and it wouldn't take them long to realize what caused it. Enough independent experts survived in the world to confirm that the explosion was nuclear in origin or at least looked nuclear. He'd heard that their preliminary analysis of sensors data from orbiting satellites and a Zentraedi cruiser that had been in orbit directly over the area had confirmed that while a nuclear level explosion it had not been a nuke as they understood it but a naquada-based weapon. There was EBSIS and the UIR. Both of whom had also detected it – though without the Zentraedi sensor data they didn't know it wasn't a nuke -and were already screaming murder about it accusing the UEG of illegal underground weapons testing and other such political bullshit. They would no doubt brief the worlds media on it and there were enough anti-UEG media outlets out there still – all of whom had access to the steadily being rebuilt internet – to let the whole world know what had just taken place.
Thus, there was no reason for him not to tell her. Well as long as he left the naquada part out as the existence and properties of that material had been classified by the Defence Council. He only knew about it because he had a high enough security clearance to know. It was another of the little perks that came with having been the CAG of the SDF-1 during the latter half of the war and still being the leader of Skull Squadron.
"I can," he said at last. "Sensors on our orbital satellites, and on some of the orbiting Zentraedi cruisers, detected a nuclear explosion beneath the Dolomites a few hours ago. Ground based seismometers detected it a few seconds later. We've determined that it came from somewhere beneath Marmolada."
Maria blinked. "Someone detonated a nuke beneath the highest peak in the Dolomites," she asked incredulous, vaguely remembering that she and Nathan had planned to climb the Marmolada during their trip to Italy, after exploring the old World War One trails that the Italians had cut into the very rock of the mountains, as they were both were – or in her case had been as she was a bit too old for it now, the ravages of time in the form of arthritis beginning to take their toll, years of worrying about Nathan and the surprise death of her brother hadn't helped there either – keen and experienced mountaineers. Well until Nathan ran away to serve whoever this Vosegus character was.
"It looks like it," Rick confirmed. "The working theory is that Vosegus – whoever or whatever he really is – is behind it, probably to destroy whatever base he had hidden there as he had to know that we would find it eventually, though we cannot be certain. Though it's really set off a political shitstorm both within the UEG and with those independent groups like EBSIS."
"Maybe it was part of his plan? Cause chaos while going to hide somewhere else," Maria suggested though she didn't comment on how they would have eventually found the bases location. That was obvious as they would simply ask Nathan as she was sure that, if he were well enough, her son would have to answer some questions about what had been going on these last four and a half years with him and with Vosegus.
"Very likely. I know that possibility has occurred to Admiral Gloval. The council will look into it."
"You respect Admiral Gloval a great deal, don't you Rick," Maria noted with a slight smile. "I can hear it in your voice."
"Yeah, I do all of us who were on the SDF-1 – either because they were assigned there like Roy was, or like me and the citizens of Macross City, got caught in the space fold and dumped out near Pluto – do. Because he earned it as I don't think anyone else would have been able to get us back to Earth in the way he did not with an entire fleet of Zentraedi warships in the way. He's a good man, tough as hell, ruthless in the way only Russians can really be when he wants to be but compassionate and fair."
"You'll have to tell me a bit more about that voyage I don't know anything really about it. Hell until just after the Rain I thought that…"
"… that I and everyone who was on Macross Island was dead," Rick finished for her with a shake of his head and once again feeling a stab of anger at the way they had been treated by the government after they got back to Earth the first time. All to maintain a lie that they had died in a sudden volcanic eruption and hadn't been teleported to the far side of the system due to a desperate move to escape attack by a Zentraedi battle fleet. "You can blame the late, and very unlamented by just about everyone, Senator Russo, and his cronies for that. They wanted to hide the fact that we were attacked by the Zentraedi to a) avoid causing a panic and b) to buy time to finish their white elephant Grand Cannon projects."
"Politicians," Maria said with a snort, letting the distain she'd long had for politicians show in her voice. Rick chuckled at her response. "Though what's a Grand Cannon?"
Rick blinked and was about to reply when a soft groan from the direction of the bed caught both their attention. Both their eyes shot to the bed…
…just in time to see Nathan open his eyes. Before abruptly shutting them again as he was suddenly dazzled by the overhead lights.
"Ooh bright light, bright light," he said, making both Rick and Maria chuckle as he sounded so like the Mogwai Gizmo from the Gremlins movie as he said that. It was a promising sign that despite everything he had been through Nathan's sense of humour – which according to Aunt Maria he had inherited from his father – was still intact. At the sound of their chuckles Nathan opened his eyes again, blinking against the overhead lights and looked at them. "Mom? Rick?"
"Yes, we're here," Maria replied with a smile even as Nathan raised a hand to shield his eyes from the overhead lights, only to pause gazing in shock as he saw his arm and the sheer size of the muscles there.
"What, what's happened to me," Nathan breathed lifting his head and looking down at his torso, gaping in shock as he saw the muscles before looking back at them again. "Where am I? And Rick you're in a uniform! I thought you said you would never join the military. That you'd never let them turn your skills as a pilot into a weapon of war."
"For the first part you're in a recovery room in the infirmary of Fort Minotaur, a UEDF military base on Crete," Rick answered even as he remembered those comments he had made to both Nathan and Roy. It had been the last time they had all been together before Nathan and Aunt Maria had made that fateful trip to Europe after the former's graduation from High School. He had changed so much since then, grown up so much.
"And I know I said that" he continued, "but life has a way of changing everything you had thought or believed. In my case it involved getting dumped out by Pluto in a battlefortress with seventy four thousand other people and having to fight against a thousand ship strong alien armada across the length of the solar system to get back home after the fold drive mysteriously goes bye-bye."
"Huh when was this?" Nathan asked confused as he didn't remember any of this and what the hell was a fold drive? And why would it mysteriously vanish? "And does me being in this place have something to do with me suddenly looking like I've had a body transplant from Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
Rick and Maria exchanged a look both concerned by the fact that Nathan didn't seem to remember anything from the last four and a half years. "What's the last thing you remember baby?" Maria asked, making her son pout slightly at being referred to as baby. She knew he hated it when she did that not that she was going to stop as no matter what had happened to him, what he'd been through or how big he was Nathan was and always would be her baby and that's all there was to it.
Nathan frowned puzzled by the question. "I went to that party at the nightclub I was invited to. I remember drinking a lot like you do. Someone must have slipped me something when I got tipsy as I remember feeling euphoric and then I got dizzy. I went back to the hotel then…" his voice trailed off as he was suddenly assaulted by a barrage of images, memories, and feelings. They were his and yet not his at the same time and swept through his mind like a flood making it impossible for him to ignore them.
"What's happening," Maria demanded looking at her nephew as Nathan's eyes abruptly shut and he suddenly started gripping the sheet on the bed with a white-knuckle grip. Behind his eyelids she could see his eyes moving rapidly and his breathing was getting faster too.
"I can't be sure, but I think he's remembering everything that's happened to him over the last couple of years," Rick answered a moment before Nathan abruptly screamed and writhed on the bed as though he was in tremendous pain. It only lasted for a moment or two before he went still but maintained his death grip on the bedsheet before his back arched again and he began talking in a language neither of them had ever heard before. Though that ended a few seconds later being replaced by shaking and shivering before he seemed to calm.
Nathan's eyes opened again. "Mommy," he breathed sounding like a small, frightened child and not the six-foot tall two hundred- and forty pound man that he now was. His expressive green eyes shining with tears of pain, humiliation, rage, shame, and regret.
"It's okay Nathan," Maria said standing up and moving to sit on the side of the bed. Gently she reached over and pulled him over to her, letting him bury his head in her lap. "It's over now, your safe, Vosegus cannot hurt or use you anymore."
At her words the floodgates opened, and Nathan began to weep. Maria gently wrapped her arms around him, comforting him as she had done ever since he was a small child. Rick for his part reached out and put a comforting hand on his cousin's arm. Neither said anything, they didn't need, to nor was there really anything that they could say, all they could do was what they were doing and offer as much support and comfort as was possible while Nathan cried out his pain and humiliation.
After what seemed like hours the tears slowed and then finally stopped. Nathan slipping back into an exhausted sleep. Maria gently laid him back on the bed, stood up and placed the sheet back over him. Then she stood there and just watched him sleep, her own emotions churning as she gazed upon his reddened, tear-streaked face. It was going to take him a long time to really recover from this, if he ever truly could, and that infuriated her to no end. After a moment she felt Rick's hand touch her shoulder.
"Rick, I want you to promise me something," she said at last voice thick with numerous emotions. "Find this Vosegus character whoever he is, whatever he is and wherever he's hiding. Find him and kill him for what he's done."
"Oh, you can bet I will Aunt Maria," Rick answered as his expressive blue eyes – normally so full of kindness and warmth – turned colder than artic ice as he let his own anger and hatred for the person/being/whatever who had done this to Nathan and who knew how many others - show. Whoever/whatever Vosegus was he had made himself his enemy and – as any Zentraedi who had faced him in war and managed to survive it would attest – that was the last place anyone would want to be. "I will find him, and I will kill him."
~~~///~~~
Secure Briefing Room L22
A Few Hours Later
Colonel Louis Ferretti, formerly of the United States Air Force regiment but now of the UEDF STORM Commandoes, couldn't help but feel a twinge of nerves as he arrived in the briefing room, he and the rest of his unit had been summoned to. He had already heard rumours that the mission that they were going to be sent on had something to do with that alien ring device – what was it called again? Oh yes, a Stargate – that they had sitting in an incomplete wind tunnel on the science levels of this base. He had heard that they had even been able to activate it and, in the process, learned that they were going to have to once again review everything that they had thought they had known about physics.
He supposed that it was something that scientists were used to doing in the modern day that it no longer bothered any of them that laws and theories that had for years, and in some cases over a century, been thought immutable had turned out to be anything but. The discovery and reverse engineering of the incredible, and sometimes downright magical, sciences and technologies known as robotechnology had ensured that. From what his scientist cousin had told him before he knew that robotech had forced over a dozen revisions so far and had opened the door on sciences that should have been impossible. Sciences like super dimensional physics that were frankly like something out of that old British sci-fi series he'd watched one time while stationed in the UK, Doctor Who.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now and glanced around the briefing room. To see that his whole unit was here, all looking impressive in their distinctive grey uniforms. They were not the only ones present there were at least two, possibly three, full teams of army combat engineers and a whole gaggle of scientists and civilian civil engineering specialists. There were even a few micronized Zentraedi present, notable due to the fact that they were wearing the micronized version of the new red and white uniform being adopted by the Free Zentraedi Forces replacing their old green and purple Imperial uniforms.
It was quite an eclectic mix to say the least.
Which told him that something that was both weird and potentially truly momentous was going to be going down here today. And he was willing to bet that that Stargate thing was going to be at the very centre of it all. It all added up to one thing in his mind, they were planning to send them all through it. Why though was anyone's guess.
Thankfully he didn't have to speculate for very long for at that moment the door to the room opened and more personnel from the base began to filter in, including Doctor Carter and General Richards himself. One of the combat engineers immediately yelled attention at the presence of the commanding officer of Fort Minotaur causing every one of the military personnel, including Ferretti, to immediately leap back to their feet and stand at attention. Ferretti inwardly smiled as he saw Carter struggle not to do the same. You can take the woman out of the Air Force, but you can't take the Air Force out of the woman, he thought amused knowing that Carter had left the military years ago to focus on scientific endeavours especially after the alien ship crashed into Macross Island.
"Stand easy," Richards ordered immediately as he moved to the podium at the front of the room. Everyone did as bid. "Please be seated."
Immediately the military personnel did as they were instructed, sitting down with a fair few rustles and creaks of the synthetic leather fabric covering the seats. Not for the first time Ferretti inwardly smiled as one of the really major improvements with the UEDF over the old US Air Force was that the seats you sat in for briefings and so on were actually really comfortable. Once everyone was settled Richards cleared his throat to get their attention, especially the attention of the scientists, before speaking up.
"Good afternoon, everyone," he said in greeting. "I am sure you are all wondering just why you have been summoned to this meeting."
"The thought has crossed our minds sir," Ferretti admitted. "I assume it has something to do with the Stargate?"
"That it does Colonel Ferretti," Richards confirmed with a nod to the head of the STORM commando unit that had arrived a few days ago with the neuro-somatic imprinter. An imprinter that would soon be sent back to the secure storage site in North Wales, once an appropriate escort was arranged and once the North Atlantic storm that was currently battering the coastlines of the United Kingdon and Ireland with very heavy rain and force ten gales passed them by.
"As you are all aware by now several hours ago, we were able to successfully activate the Stargate and make a connection to a planet located in a star system six hundred and forty light years away from Sol," Richards continued, creating a small hubbub especially among the scientists who couldn't help talking about it especially how the Stargate completely violated the laws of physics as they understood them. Richards held up his hands for silence and slowly the scientists settled down and looked a little sheepish. "The world we have found is habitable and from what we have been able to tell so far completely uninhabited. It is these two factors that have prompted a rapid response from both the Defence Council and the UEG in New York."
"What decision is that sir," Ferretti asked guessing it had to be both for both the Defence Council and the UEG to have decided on the planet so fast. Normally it took forever for the latter especially to make a concrete decision on anything, as almost everything would have to be reviewed by this or that committee and debated over at least a dozen times first.
"Given that the planet is habitable the decision has been made to do a primary assessment for the potential for colonisation under the Gloval Initiative."
A confused murmur ran through everyone in the room as none of them had ever heard that term before. After a moment one of the scientists put up a hand for attention. Richards looked over at the younger man and nodded.
"General Richards might I ask what this Gloval Initiative is?" the scientists asked.
Richards smiled. "It is the brainchild of Admiral Gloval himself," he replied, "due to the devastation of the Robotech War the admiral has been arguing for quite some time now that humanity must spread its wings out into the galaxy. That it is time that we leave the cradle of this world – as battered, bruised and battle scarred as it is – and begin establishing ourselves out there among the stars to avoid getting nearly wiped out again.
"The issue is still being discussed in some areas of the government, but the Secretary General has made it clear that the idea will be adopted in full, and that the committee stage is simply following formality," Richards continued knowing that even the blindest politician in the UEG was well aware of the bullet of extinction that they had barely dodged at the hands of Dolza. One only had to look out at the scorched desert that covered much of Earth, desert created when anything and everything in the path of the quantum firestorms created during the reflex cannon bombardment had reduced anything and everything they encountered into clouds of superheated elementary particles. "While the plan was to begin building colony ships at the Factory Satellite, once its repairs are completed, to carry our people to the stars and beyond the discovery of the Stargate now offers us a new option. While the colony ships will still be constructed, we will also take advantage of the gate that has fallen into our laps. Which is where we here at Fort Minotaur – well until a better site can be found to house the gate – come in."
"What do they want us to do sir?" Ferretti asked curious.
"I am glad you asked Colonel. All of you assembled here will embark through the Stargate to the planet in question and first begin setting up an outpost in the cave system that houses the Stargate on that world," Richards explained, "easily portable supplies and equipment will be sent through with you while more bulky and extensive equipment will be brought to the system by a squadron of Zentraedi warships being dispatched by Commander Breetai.
"Once the outpost is set up and running you will begin a thorough assessment of the planet in question searching for suitable sites for a colony, useful resources as well as any potential threats or complications. The Zentraedi ships being sent will sweep the system as well to make sure nothing is amiss," Richards continued. "After all the last thing we want is to start settling and find out the next planet over is inhabited by something like a real life version of the Klingons."
A ripple of laughter ran through the room at that though the Zentraedi all seemed to perk up slightly at the mention of the Klingons. The various fictional warrior races in science fiction from Star Trek's Klingons to Star Wars Mandalorians and even Mass Effect's Turians and Krogan had become a subject of fascination for the Free Zentraedi. Especially as they worked to discover a new identity for themselves, and build a new society for themselves, outside of the narrow box that the Robotech Masters had kept them in for their entire existence.
Richards waited until the laughter died down before speaking again. "If everything checks out then the combat engineers will be in charge of laying the groundwork for a settlement by one of these," he continued before pressing a button on the podium. Immediately a large projector field in front of him powered up and a hologram pixeled into existence. "This is what the shipwrights are calling an Angel-class colony ship."
Everyone leaned forward to examine the hologram. It showed a massive disc shaped spacecraft that was nearly two and a half kilometres in diameter and whose disc was nearly a hundred meters thick. Rising from about five hundred meters into the disc was a large domed structure within which they could see a small city.
"Each of these colony ships when completed will be able to hold up to half a million people," Richards continued, "and will carry anything and everything needed to establish a new home on another world. They will be designed to land and form the nexus of any new colony we build."
"Incredible," one of the scientists breathed. "And we actually have the capability to build these things?"
"We will once the Factory Satellite finishes its repairs in a few weeks' time" Richards answered, "that will give you plenty of time to do the initial surveys and assessments. Any questions so far?"
"When do we leave sir," Ferretti asked.
"You will be leaving to begin your task tomorrow once the last of the required supplies have arrived from warehouses in Heraklion," Richards answered as he dismissed the hologram, "so everyone prepare yourselves accordingly. If there is anyone who for some reason doesn't want, or cannot, go please inform either me or the senior officer who will be in command while you are there before departure. And speaking of that it is time I introduce him to you."
As he spoke, he pressed another control on the podium. For a moment more nothing happened then the door opened and a tall man in the uniform of a UEDF Brigadier General came into the room. The moment he came in Ferretti's eyes widened in shock and recognition as he beheld a man he had not seen in years, not really since the near-fatal shooting of his son had prompted him to take a leave of absence from the then US Air Force. Naturally he was older now and his once dark hair was now salt, and pepper coloured due to the ravages of time, but he was still tall and strong. It was all he could do not to laugh in delight as he knew this man well and knew he could do the job and would do it with both style and sarcastic sass…
…their new commanding officer was none other than Brigadier General Jack O'Neill.
~~~///~~~
Authors Note: Well, another chapter of this rewrite/reboot bites the dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. And I really hope you all liked my little surprise there at the end of the chapter as yes in this version of the story Jack is alive – I took on board all the negative feedback about how he was dead and figured out away to change it – as in this reality while Charlie O'Neill did still accidentally shoot himself while playing with Jack's personal sidearm it wasn't a fatal wound though it did scare both his parents half to death and led to Jack first taking a leave of absence from the military and upon returning accepting a desk job to be closer to home. I will be slowing down now though on the updates for this, especially as we move further away from the events of the original version – though some of those events will still take place though the timings and so on will be very different – of the story in a hopefully better direction. Until next time.