Chapter 17
23 July 2000
2pm mountain time.
Six days later, my small fleet arrived in orbit of Earth. Not Altair, as I'd decided that I needed to handle something first. My searching of Earth had been going quite well, and I had found a few of the things I was looking for. I still hadn't found some of the things, including something that would probably be happening soon. That was making me nervous.
I had, on the trip over, built myself some personal weapons. Zats, plasma weapons, railguns, pistol, assault rifle, submachine gun, grenades, chemically-propelled weaponry just in case. I'd had to fabricate a Research Core in the hanger of the Stormfront in order to do the designs, but that wasn't really a hassle.
We'd also gotten the Altairian tech base captured. Nothing too interesting, except forcefield walls and some AI research. They also had spacesuits. Fairly unremarkable, but something useful if I planned to have humans around. Some cute little weaponry and body armor as well, and medical technology that was only better in terms of brain knowledge. They also had power transfer technology, but it was so far below my own that I didn't even bother.
I wasn't doing just that, either. Once the Altairian tech base was captured, I tried to have the research network take a look at the Stargate design, only to find that I couldn't. Turns out the Research Network can't handle assigning two core to the same task if they're more than 532.5 AU apart, because of network lag meaning syncing is too time-consuming. I could try writing some scripts to fix it, but there was a simpler way to handle this new limit. It'd have to wait until I was done throwing down all the fleets, but it would work.
Meanwhile, Lindy had looked over the list of units in the default package, started complaining about her engineering sensibilities, and then went and redid our unit base. First, she'd compiled every weapon and chassis combination together. Flak turrets on a Leviathan? A flamer on the Drifter? We had those. Regardless of what type of situation we found ourselves in, we had a full set of tools to handle the situation.
Then, she'd redid the factory interfaces to handle the sheer number of units we had now. She'd tagged them with the type of units and situations we'd be using them in. And she'd set the lists up to filter out units we couldn't make yet, which wasn't a problem in an established system, but when we were just building up it would would be a difference of microseconds, which could be important if we were running up against an enemy that could also von Neuman on the same scale we could. It would also be useful if we didn't have access to a Research Core.
Of course, we'd also been checking over the systems that were getting assimilated. Since it would take a month for us to check the "Yoink Stargate" protocol regardless, that was one possible bug. But it'd been fairly smooth sailing with the rest of the protocols. There'd been a few random fires, but no one had died, even with the dozen inhabited systems we'd already run across. Probably after another week we'd let our fleets go nuts and go after everything.
But soon enough, it was time to reclaim the blackened, dented sheet of Progenitor solid armor that was sitting on the deck of my Stormfront. Fun with weapons and designs time is over, time to SG team. By myself. No one to crack jokes with. Dang it.
One of the things I had found on Earth was Merlin's cave in Glastonbury Tor. I had a Progenitor-grade avatar, the location of the thing, a ring transporter platform, and access to Dr. Jackson's Reading Ancient for Dummies. Okay, he didn't call it that, probably. More likely he called it his cheat sheet or something.
Time to get started. I fully linked to my new avatar, dressed in my camo outfit with my railgun SMG, and activated the ring transporter. Rings float up, flash of light, and I'm down in the cave. It looks far more like… it doesn't look like it did in the TV show. The floor is polished black stone, the walls and ceiling polished grey. Bronze panels run down columns built into the curving wall. Ancient writing runs in circles around a cylindrical plinth in the center of the room, which has a sword stuck into it. It looks very Lantean. Or rather, it looks a lot like the sets in the Atlantis TV show.
I walked over to the sword and yanked it out. Unlike the sword they used in the show, which was an unremarkable broadsword (or whatever category of sword it was) this sword is very Lantean in design. A long bronze tube for a hilt, with slots cut in it to show the glowing crystal beneath. The crossguard is a silver hexagonal plate, bulky and chamfered on the edges. The blade doesn't look like anything like any human sword used, with the blade broader than my hand and the tip not smooth at all, but made with hard angles. The side of the blade is flat, and slits have been cut in the surface to show the crystal underneath, the same as in the hilt. After looking it over, I save the design to a folder. If I ever have to wield another blade, I want it to look like this.
I held it one-handed, and walked towards the only door. Actually, I should probably read the Ancient writing on the floor. Speaking of other differences between the show and reality, Ancient letters aren't blocky. They're all flowing lines that would have to be blurred to look like the symbols shown in the TV show. After translating, I don't find anything too important on the floor of the main room, so I pass through the door. Interestingly, I can fit all 205 cm of myself and my horn of hair through the door. Were the Ancients taller than modern humans?
The door goes into a corridor with a bunch of doors on either side, with the wall-fused columns between each one. (I'm sure there's a term architects use for that.) There are a dozen or so of them, and only one is open. Hmmm. Looks like the system noticed my arrival and only opened one of them.
I step inside. There's another plinth in the middle of this room, and no columns or writing on the floor. The door closes behind me as I look at the plinth.
It's covered by a glassy surface, showing Ancient writing. One large paragraph, and several words beneath it. I look at Reading Ancient for Dummies, and try to translate it.
<A city/fortress/state great/mighty/awesome is under threat/attack/siege. It has a shield powerful/invincible/impenetrable surrounding it. It within there is food/sustenance sufficient of years ten. It within there is energy/capability sufficient of years uncounted. The city rests above a cliff. The cliff reinforced enough of years ten…
...and attempts of drains/exhaust/runoff travel/climbing were met only with shield/wall. Nevertheless attacker will/might/thought could/would city/fortress/state capture.>
There's a lot of text here, describing how the city cannot be attacked. And it ends saying the city can fall whenever the attacker wants it to. The answers at the bottom are: <Plague/sickness, asteroid/meteor, drill/underground, river/stream, rust/corrosion, storm/rain/clouds, night/darkness/end, falling/mass.>
Which makes no sense. Like, even if they could get through the shield, the defenders have walls wide enough to race on, if my translation is right.
And then I notice my horn bending. The ceiling's already falling, and I haven't even selected an answer.
Hey, you know what would be great? If I could accelerate time like Uber said Commanders could do in their writings. First the instant research, now this.
Have you considered writing your own Commander fic?