Disclaimer: I do not own the Stargate franchise, that is owned by MGM, which is owned by Sony. Nor do I own the Evangelion property, that belongs to Gainax.
Ori Archaeological Expedition
Unknown Planet
July 14th, 2015
To say that Janus Lacasa was bored would be an understatement. It was bad enough that he had somehow pissed off someone higher up the chain of command to get this job that essentially amounted to ferrying around a bunch of academics from planet-to-planet across the Milky Way in an old mothership retired after the Second Ori Crusade because of cost overruns from reparations to the Milky Way. It was, all in all, a recipe in political posturing and mind-numbing lectures on the long history of the Quad-Galaxy Area: the archaeologists had discovered some documents back in their home galaxy that eluded to the ancient Ori launching a series of weapons after the Alterans and into the Milky Way, and since nobody wanted unexploded ordinance laying around unattended Janus had been ordered to go and collect all the weapons before they could be set off. So far the weapons had been non-existent and the mission had been a dud, even if the space monkeys (as the Tau'ri called archaeologists) did find enough Alteran ruins to cover a small continent.
Today was just one more dig like all the rest: they'd gone to the coordinates of some backwater planet that didn't even have a stargate, found some ruins, and started scanning for anything unusual while using a plethora of digging instruments (including some modified Earth-built Caterpillar excavators bought from an intermediary) to dig up anything "unusual" – which usually was just simple tablets or murals that the space monkeys found interesting. In a few hours the fighters fitted with the ground penetrating sensors would finish up their sweep, find nothing, and then he'd yank the space monkeys away from their dig so that they could continue on their merry way . . . "Milord, we've found something. You're going to want to see this too, it's . . . big."
Or not, Janus thought to himself quickly before grabbing his comm and walking over to the transporter ring platform. "Yeah, yeah, I'm on my way, Mora. And for the love of . . . goodness, please don't call me 'milord'," Janus replied back, still stumbling over the proper religious terms to use after all these years.
"I understand . . . sir," the man at the other end of the line said before shutting off the connection.
Ugh, I'm getting too old for this, Janus thought to himself before ordering one of his subordinates to activate the rings.
They had come, after countless thousands of years they had finally come. Truly, this was a joyous day for all of them. And yet protocol must still be adhered to, Ariel would confirm that their visitors' intentions were pure.
"So, what have we got here, gentlemen?" Janus asked the moment he reached the hastily set up archaeological camp next to an area where practically all of the expedition's excavators were rapidly assembled and starting to dig something out of the ground.
"It's the big one, mi... sir," Mora responded. "It's an artificial structure, near perfect circle, slightly tapered at the bottom, 13.5 kilometers in diameter at its widest point."
"That is big," Janus deadpanned.
"There's more, sir," Mora continued. "Not only is this thing sitting on ground zero of a massive crater, but it's hollow, and we started detecting unknown energy signatures inside it about five minutes after we detected it."
Janus took a moment to absorb that. They really weren't operating under false intel, there really was a gigantic weapons system produced by the ancient Ori sitting right under their . . . No, that was just jumping the gun, they still had no idea whether it was Ori or not, or even a weapons system for that matter. "Step up the excavation. If this thing really is coming back on line, and if it is a weapons system, we need to disarm it as fast as possible. Move all non essential personnel back to the staging area on the other side of the mountain range as well, if this thing blows I want to save as many people as we can."
So the orders where carried out, and the digging commenced in earnest. Hours passed, darkness came, lights were lit, and they pressed onwards. Thousands of tons of dirt of was removed, thousands more tons of rock were blasted away, until they finally reached the outer wall of the huge structure two days later. As yet more rock and dirt was removed to make way for the drilling equipment – in reality a re-purposed beam weapon from one of the many motherships scrapped after the war – several archaeologists made their way to the edge of the wall and began searching for any way into the structure that didn't involve blasting a hole in it with a giant anti-ship weapon. Needless to say, it wasn't going as well as the diggers would have liked.
"Tell me you got something, Mora. Please tell me you got something," Janus implored as he skidded his way onto the bottom of the truly massive pit they had dug in the ground.
"Well, I've got good news and bad news," Mora began, checking his clipboard as he did so. "The good news is that we've found a way into the structure. The bad news is that it was fused up by energy weapon fire, and of course, by the several thousand degree high-friction plummet into the atmosphere quickly fallowed by the massive kinetic-energy blast caused by aforementioned plummet.
"Thank you, Mora," Janus replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Is there any other double-edged sword you'd like to throw at me today?"
"Just one, sir," Mora began again. "We were able to find one surviving insignia on structure, and . . ."
"And?"
". . . And it's Ori," Mora finished.
"Wonderful," Janus sighed, that settled it, it was either a heavily armored warship or a weapons platform of some kind, there just were no other reasons for the Ori to have been in the Milky Way at the same time as the Alterans. "Well, there's no point in fighting any longer. Get the cannon ready to fire, we'll bust this thing open within the hour."
Twenty minutes later, everyone had cleared the pit and they were ready to do just that, all they needed was Janus' command and they would begin "drilling." For his part Janus was only slightly annoyed at this turn of events, on the one hand it showed that the space monkeys weren't completely wrong and there was still an once of credibility and competence left in his once great nation, while on the other it meant he'd have to stay away from home for that much longer while they went around disarming the things. Still, no sense prolonging the inevitable, whatever was in that thing would just be getting more powerful the longer they delayed.
"Fire it up!" Janus called out to the cannon operator. "Cut a hole, 100 meters by 100 meters!"
The cannon fired, it was a terrible weapon of war turned to a slightly more peaceful purpose and it seemed to protest that change in status every step of the way. As the terrible screeching sound filled the air everyone covered their ears and grit their teeth, trying desperately to block out the unholy screeching. Everyone, that is, save for the operator of the cannon, who for some inexplainable reason was laughing manically at the top of his lungs and was somehow still able to be heard by a large number of people.
The unbearable screeching went on for a good fourteen and a half minutes before an entrance was finally cut, a near-perfect square that promptly collapsed in on the structure as soon as the cutting was done . . . and they shot at it with two dozen extra-large bore recoilless rifles. "Yush, Hanna, take your squads up and explore the area. Stay alert and keep in constant comm contact, we don't want to be unawares by whatever unsavory booby-traps the crew may have left in there," Janus yelled out at the assembled troops. "Everyone else, grab a weapon and get ready to either open fire or make a fighting retreat. Now!"
Everyone moved to carry out the commander's orders, moving with a speed and efficiency that conveyed their years of training and experience as warriors, as well as the years of peace since the last war. They started to cluster around the newly made hole, two squads of five equipped with rappelling equipment and armed with Crusade-era staves and wrist-mounted pulse weapons, an old but still very reliable force that take on any force allied against it – or at least stay alive long enough to report being slaughtered by some unfathomable cosmic horror. The hole itself looked just like that, a big square pit of utter blackness that was just barely illuminated by the sun overhead – it was either far bigger on the inside then it was on the outside or the area around the hole had been specifically engineered to create the optical illusion of infinite blackness, neither of those possibilities really appealed to the intergalactic spelunkers.
Suddenly, a bright beam of light lanced out of the hole and struck the lead soldier. Immediately everyone jumped and pointed their weapons into the inky blackness of the abyss, even as the light covering the soldier began to die down to the point where they could see the solder being hit with it. "Hey, everybody!" the soldier called out. "I think it's all right. It feels like this is just their way of communicat . . . Ugh, no. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Janus could sense everyone assembled collectively hold back the almost inevitable cascade of vomit as the soldier's tortured screams echoed through the pit, only to be silenced a few seconds later by a horrendous gurgling noise that sounded the soldier's death by massive brain hemorrhage. "Staves only! Open fire!" Janus called out at the top of his lungs. As soon as the words had left his mouth the gapping maw of the structure was simply flooded with cyan-colored lances of energy, all stabbing through the dark, desperately looking for a target yet hitting nothing.
A full 10.735 seconds after the firing started a ghastly sound halfway between fabric tearing and a thunderclap split the air, and a being that should not have existed came into the fray on top of the structure. It was over 80 meters tall, stood atop four spindly legs that laughed in the face of every law of physics they could in their support of the monstrosity they were connected to, said monstrosity was a boat like hemisphere that was covered with eyes that seemed to reach into the deepest depths of the soul and pull out the deepest fears of all those who gazed upon them. The assembled warriors barked their response as soon as they could, sending all their firepower at the abomination in the hopes that it would die.
As luck would have it, it would not, and it sent forth its reply to those attempting to harm it posthaste. A neon green stream of rapidly evaporating liquid that shouted to the human psyche sickness and death, and dissolved all it touched. The men being attacked barely had time to register what was happening before a full twenty-five percent of their forces with simply gone, their final death wails before their vocal cords fell apart being forever burned into their remaining comrades' minds. Seeing the enormous destruction wrought Janus did the only thing he could, he ordered everyone to retreat back to the ship. Many escaped through the industrial-sized transporter rings, which somehow managed to get all their passengers safely to the staging area despite being used at a far more rapid pace then they were designed for. That evacuation stopped soon afterwards though when the ring platforms were destroyed by an energy beam fired by yet another unspeakable horror, this one looking much like a giant flying scorpion that had been fused with an anti-aircraft gun and a pair of bolt cutters in a way that broke the minds of the remaining soldiers.
Janus was there to witness it. He had failed to get to the rings before they had been destroyed, and now stood at the center of the storm as the monsters from a dozen Tau'ri monster movies swarmed about. However, the demons did not seem content to merely kill the meager remains of the archaeological team, opting instead to let the one who had first drawn blood against them to have its way with them. And so, a massive bird with skin like the central core of the old Ori mothership the expedition had used to get to the planet rocketed high up into the sky through the hole they had drilled in the structure before spreading its wings, leveling out, and coming back around to make a pass at them.
Janus could only stare dumbstruck at the gigantic half-snowflake shaped weapon of a war long since over. He was dimly aware of the remains of his forces blindly firing at any one of the monsters they could get in their sights, he was dimly aware of the spotlight-like beam hitting him and his men, but at that moment all he could think of was that one moment when the "bird of light" had reached the apex of its climb and he had looked around at the various giant monsters only to find them to be completely and utterly ridiculous, hardly worthy of fear, all before the bird had swooped back down and the fear returned – though not as intense as it once was. At least, that was what he thought about until a Molotov cocktail went off inside his head, and his mind was assaulted by thousands of images.
He saw his mother crying, why was she crying? Oh . . . it was because his father was dead. At least he thought it was his father, he didn't recognize the man. Then why did he think of him as his father? Wasn't he a father? No, he never had kids. Who's that? The Prior that came to his village when he was young? He grabbed a young boy and executed him for heresy. What was his crime again, exactly? A fine example of why one shouldn't horde demonic artifacts, that's what the Prior said. The demons, who were they? They called them the Alterans, they were the ones who made the stargates in the Milky Way, who seeded life across said galaxy, and who fought a war with both the Ori and Wraith, whoever they were. Hundreds of images flashed all around him, of horrific blue-skinned humanoids sucking the life out of people, of large spheres like the one they had dug up crashing into planets and disembarking their cargo of monsters, of Ori and Alteran ships clashing above several unknown worlds whose names were lost to time, of thousands of people dying of sickness and disease. The images were all out of order, like they were being taken from several sources all at once with no regard to chronology, it was very confusing and . . . was that Yush sitting on a metal folding chair in the middle of the Plains of Celestis while holding a severed arm and screaming? Why was everyone congratulating him? Ugh, there was too much confusion in this place, and it didn't look like he'd be getting any relief soon. He needed order, he needed some kind of enlightenment, he needed . . . Origin. No, Origin was a lie. But, but why did he believe that? Had he not been a loyal soldier of the Ori for many years? In fact, he still was, right up until . . . until the moment the Tau'ri had opened the Ark of Truth, it was then that he had realized that Origin was a lie, and that even if it wasn't it didn't matter because the Ori were killed when the Tau'ri activated the Sangraal in their home galaxy. Actually, come to think of it, the Tau'ri were responsible for a lot of things: the people in a lot of the galaxy's villages had said that the Tau'ri had defeated the Gou'ld and freed the galaxy, the Tau'ri had defeated the Replicators, the Tau'ri defeated the Ori, the Tau'ri were allies of the Alterans' allies, the Tau'ri had been named the Alterans' successors, the Tau'ri had blown up a sun! Humans from Earth. Stargate Command. The Tau'ri! The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. The Tau'ri. . . .
Back in the real world the beam continued to shine down on Janus and the others, even as blood streamed out of every orifice their heads had. They died soon after.
"Captain, start the engines, charge the main gun, and bring up the shields – we're getting out of here," Mora barked out as soon as he got onto the bridge of the old mothership back at the rapidly packing up staging area.
"Why the rush, Mora?" the old Prior who had control of the vessel asked in his oft-used kindly tone of voice. "What has happened? Is Janus around?"
"I don't know, Ashter. We lost contact with each other during the evacuation," Mora said hurriedly, even as the various systems around the ship began to power up.
"Am I to assume that something went wrong?"
"The structure turned out to be inhabited by giant monsters."
"Oh dear," Ashter responded softly. "Am I also to be assuming that such creatures were made by the ancient Ori?"
"You are," Mora replied before checking the security camera footage of the staging area. "OK, it looks like everyone is aboard, once the . . ." Mora was interrupted by a bright flash from several kilometers out in front of the ship, which soon left a 190' tall silver humanoid with a bolling ball-shaped face in its wake. "Ashter!"
"I've got it," Ashter called out before slamming his staff into the floor dramatically and causing the ship to rise up into the sky – he had always wondered why that particular feature had been installed, it seemed rather unnecessary given the neural interface.
"Shoot it!" Mora screamed, pointing at the large humanoid.
"Relax, Mora. I am firing," the chalk-white helmsman replied in a rather jovial tone a split second before a large beam shot out of the bow and hit the humanoid dead-on, to no effect. However, Ashter was well aware that it often took more then one superweapon strike to bring down an enemy's shield and quickly followed his initial blast with two more. Then four. Then seven. Then thirteen. Then nineteen. Then twenty-two, and still no effect. "Hmm," Ashter mused aloud. "It appears that we do not have the firepower to engage this enemy. Might I suggest a strategic retreat so that me may return with reinforcements?"
"Do it," Mora responded quickly, just before the ship shuddered due to a disruption in the shields. The young second in command then took a look at several of the external security cameras to confirm his fears, white fungus-like organism was growing on the hull. "And do it quickly, it looks like one of those freaks has teleported under our shields and latched on!"
"I'll lower the shields and ascend then. I doubt it'll be able to survive in the vacuum of space for long."
With those words the massive ship rocketed into space, quickly shedding the warming atmosphere for the relatively extreme temperatures of the insulating vacuum of space. It should have dislodged the foul creature clinging to the ship's back, but it did not. That wasn't to say that there wasn't something dying in orbit around that world that day though, for soon after they had cleared the atmosphere many of the ship's systems began going haywire, and soon after that all of the ship's doors were locked open. The results were as expected.
The leader of the sentient weapons systems turned its bird-like mask upwards towards the now descending ship. This was bad. Not only had they failed to destroy their mortal enemies, not once, not twice, but three times, but their descendants had also managed to completely destroy faith in Origin and even the gods themselves using their ancestors accursed inventions. Well, they may not have been able to destroy the Alterans and return to their galaxy conquering heroes, but they could certainly reek their vengeance upon these Tau'ri for all the grave injustices they committed. It would take several weeks to make their new ship ready to transport them to Earth, but it would be ready, and then the Tau'ri would die. After that though . . . well, there were three entire galaxies to explore, and the Tau'ri had many outposts. They would be busy for a long time.
Author's Note: Ho-boy, it's been how long since I uploaded a story here? Must be going on three years, easy. Well, as you can see, the fanfic writing bug has finally bitten me again, only this time it's not Kim Possible. Can you guess what is? . . . That's right, it's Evangelion. (That was easy though, it's in the description for Pete's sake.) Why Evangelion? Well that's rather interesting, for you see I originally got really interested in the fandom after reading Gregg Landsman's excellent fanfic NGE: Nobody Dies after it was recommended to me by someone on Spacebattles' creative writing forum, and was cemented by reading the absolutely suburb (and slightly KP-ish) fan-novel The Second Try by Jimmy Wolk. Both of which can be found on TV Tropes and this website, and both of which come highly recommended by myself. However, as for the series itself and why I like it . . . I honestly couldn't tell you. Logically speaking there's absolutely no reason for me to like the series, especially since I've seen very little it outside of Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone. (Which I own, by the way.) Perhaps it's because I see way too much of myself in Shinji, and Rei . . . and Asuka, but whatever it is the fact remains that I love the franchise, and as such I decided to cross it over with my favorite science fiction franchise: Stargate!
Anywho, be sure to leave a review or comment below, and stay tuned for chapter 2! There'll be lampshade hanging. ;)