Terra's destiny: Rise of an empire
Hello there, this fanfiction of mine is a crossover between mostly stargate and XCOM. It is not under crossovers as it is also a crossover with other sci fi universes, but it is mostly between Stargate, XCOM and later Star wars ( the extended universe, not Disney´s shitty new canon).
Samantha watched the landscape that could be seen through the windows of the train she rode. Other people would may have felt sick if they looked at the quickly rushing images, but for the woman who used to fly the finest machines the US Air force had to offer, motion sickness was an alien concept. Sam smiled in nostalgia, thinking back to some of the more stomach twisting stunts she had pulled while piloting a F16.
"Penny for your thoughts?" a well known voice asked her, hugging her from behind. She turned her head around and looked at her husbands mischievous face.
"It's nothing, I was just thinking about my time in the Air force and some of my more adventurous maneuvers. You still remember the one time, when I took you on a little trip in a F15?" she answered and laughed, while he turned green at the memory.
"Yeah!" he muttered, "I can still not believe that you actually were allowed to do that!"
"Well being the daughter of a general is certainly handy!"
"Yeah how is your father, I mean he was sick for a very long time. Is he alright?"
Samantha frowned at being reminded of the rather touchy subject for her. Jacob Carter, her father, had been diagnosed with cancer three years ago. The doctors predicted he had maybe two months left, three if he had a lot of luck.
She had spent every free second she had with him, even leaving the astronaut program for his sake. It had been the worst experience of her entire life; seeing him slowly die, while being unable to do anything, only spending time with him and praying.
One day when she was back at work, she got a message from one of the nurses working at the hospital where her father was treated, telling her to come immediately. Fearing the worst, she raced to Washington. And fate, or god, or whatever, decided to send her a blessing in disguise. In form of a car crash only twenty miles away from the capital.
She woke up with a concussion, four broken bones and minor inner bleeding in hospital. And in the bed besides her was the man who had pulled her out of her burning car, after she had wrecked his and had probably saved her life by performing first aid on her damaged body. Joseph Fauxton, Star diplomat of the United states, her future husband.
The next shock for her was when she asked to phone her dad, fearing that he had to die without her having one last talk with him. Instead she learned he had been introduced to a certain therapy, which could potentially save him. It was however a very risky new procedure, what meant that he shouldn't be stressed. What it translated to was it would be the best if he didn't hear of his daughters accident.
She spent the next two months in hospital, in which she chatted a lot with the Joseph. He had only suffered minor injuries and was released from hospital after a week, but frequently visited her. Not, as she had thought, to press charges for the incident, but to continue their talks.
Then talks became quickly fancy dinners in five star restaurants, reserved for high ranked politicians, millionaires and others of that sort and after that things between them got official. She constantly visited her father, who had made it through the therapy and slowly regained his strength.
And precisely one year after her first "meeting" with Joseph, (he often choked about how they would tell their children, that mum's and dad's first meeting included her nearly accidentally killing him and that it was symbolic for who had the pants on) they told her dad.
It had been an awkward event. Joseph Fauxton, one of Washington's top diplomats, who had to deal with some of the worst dictators in the world, men who murdered people in cold blood, looking so timid and intimidated by a man in his late fifties who had had been reduced to a thin skeleton by the therapy.
It ended with Jacob Carter, who had decided that it was the ideal moment to clean his old Enfield rifle, while talking with her boyfriend.
Needless to say, Sam had been very, very embarrassed by this, despite expecting it to happen. Her father acted like this whenever she had brought a date home, during her time at high school and college. That had also been the reason why not one of the boys (and one time a girl; during a particular period of college, her father had still adopted the same behavior) had stayed.
Carter Senior was the kind of man who expected of Sam's partners to be ready to die for her. After college came the military academy, where the rule was to not fuck with the daughter of a general, no matter how attractive she was. Sam had kinda hoped Jacob would act differently this time, and given that she was a grownup woman, she did not need his approval.
He had still pulled his normal acting, but that quickly fell, when Joseph told him how he had pulled his daughter out of a burning car and then saved her life via intense first aid.
One year later something changed. Not with her ever more progressing relationship with Joseph, but politically. A sudden boom in technology rushed through the western world engulfed the rapidly expanding EU, the US, and Canada, as well as Japan and other modern nations.
The US had started to arm itself. That had already happened after the world trade center attacks and the invasion of Iraq, but nowhere near the extent it was done now. It seemed that every available dollar was being put into buying weapons and researching new technology. And it wasn't only the United states, that decided to prep up. It's allies did as well.
Germany, Japan and Italy acquired large nuclear weapon arsenals, while expanding their armies to near their WW2 sizes. The EU began to militarize, not only expanding it's rather meek rapid response forces, which consisted of about a dozen battlegroups each with a strength of about a thousand soldiers strong, to large army formations, each had tens of thousands of troops as well as hundreds of tanks and aircraft, but also specific command centers for each force to be able to act independently throughout the respective regions of the Unions territory. They also started the so called Blue Army initiative, in which large parts of the individual state armies would be put under the direct control of a newly formed European command staff.
Throughout the entire West, new conscription laws forced every capable man and women into the army. It went so far as to send teenagers as young as sixteen into army camps during their holidays. Huge protests and riots erupted, and were put down by the military, which now held large scale army maneuvers almost monthly.
Russia, China, India as well as several of the Middle Eastern and South American countries went even further by drafting children in their armies, while mass producing and stockpiling colossal amounts of arms and ammunition. And during the greatest Rearmament the world had ever seen, multiple times larger as even during the hottest times of the Cold War, strange things happened.
People started disappearing, terrorists attacks amassed to an insane degree and reported "UFO" sightings went through the roof.
And then Sam got pregnant.
She decided to leave the military the day she got the news. It a way she was lucky, because the passing of the Second Patriot Act had made leaving the armed forces next to impossible, especially for experienced pilots, tank commanders, and spec ops.
Two weeks later made Joseph her luckiest woman on earth by asking her the Question. She wasn't sure if it was her saying ,yes or her telling him of his two daughters, but it was too much for him. He asked her after waking up from the half hour long coma if her saying yes and him becoming a father had been wonderful or reality.
She had answered his question by putting one of his hands on her already slightly widened belly and allowing him to feel for himself. The very next moment he held her in a tight embrace and kissed her for what seemed like a lifetime before letting go of her and screaming his glee to the sky. A little discussion followed over how the marriage should be done, given that Joseph was a Protestant while Carter was Catholic, which ended in Carter winning as Joseph followed the wise directive to appease his pregnant fiancee, and they were husband and wife.
And now Sam was here, pregnant with twins in the seventh month, her husband at her side, both of them enjoying their honeymoon in Scotland.
"He's well, even returned to full service a month ago." she answered, her frown remaining on her face. "Despite me insisting he shouldn't. I mean he nearly died, he isn't ready for the stress of a general, especially with what has been happening lately!" Namely the partial mobilization of the US Army as well as the EU's Blue Army and the state armies. That had caused the Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China to mobilize as well, what made Japan and India to mobilize as well.
In the span of a week, everyone had their armies, air forces, navies, and in the case of the four superpowers USA, EU, China, and Russia, their enormous nuclear stockpiles, all readied.
"You know that he had no choice in the matter, like me." Joseph told her, and grimaced. The situation had also speared their plans for honeymoon.
They had originally intended to travel through all of Europe, where Fauxton would have shown his wife all the charming places, that he got to know on his numerous diplomatic trips to the continent starting in Glasgow. That had been cut short to two days in Scotland, before he had to travel to the European Union's seat of government in Brussels.
Sam was set to answer to that, when suddenly her mobile phone started to ring. She quickly pulled it out of her pockets, a short glance on the display telling her the person calling her was her father. "Hi Dad, what…."
"Samantha, are you alright? Where are you?"" interrupted her father her, sounding extremely concerned with a stressed voice.
"Eh, yes I am, I'm in a train on the way to Glasgow with Joseph." she answered, bewildered over his question.
"Why, what's the matter? Dad? Are you there?"
Instead of an answer heard she only frantic shouting on the other side of the phone. She could vaguely hear her father, demanding something she couldn't quite understand. This continued for a minute or two. She saw how Joseph shooting her a questioning look, which she could only answer with a confused shrug.
Jacob got finally back at the phone, breathing heavily. The noises on his side grew only louder while he spoke. "Sam, please, you have to get out of the train immediately! They are all over Britain! London, Edinburgh, Dover, they are hitting all big cities. The same is happening everywhere else! Sam you have…"
Something that sounded like an explosion deafened out the voice of Carter senior. The next moment were the unmistakable sounds of gunfire audible, as well as screams of people who were dying, together with inhuman roars. "Sammy..." came a pained voice out of the phone, "I love you."
With that was the phone line cut.
Samantha Fauxton Carter felt numbness take over her body. She tried frantically to phone her dad, but to no avail. She slowly raised her eyes and looked at her husband, seeing shock and disbelief in his face. Turning her face around to peer through the window, she now had a clear view of Glasgow.
Or rather, what had been Glasgow.
The entire city was set ablaze. Strange Objects, ranging in size from a dozen of meter to giants, comparable to the navies battle cruisers in size, floated over the burning city, raining green lights and yellow beams at what was below them.
Between in total six of these were hundreds of smaller UFO's, who either participated in the bombardment or engaged British and EU aircraft, annihilating some of Earth' finest fighter planes with ludicrous ease.
Sam faintly registered her husband shouting out, her eyes and attention trained on the green balls of light racing towards them. She felt Joseph slam against her back, forcing her to the floor, while throwing himself over her in a desperate attempt to cover her.
The next moment exploded the world around her.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sam screamed, ripping her purple glowing eyes open, her hands shooting down to the adamantium blades at her belt.
A psionic surge shoot through her body, paralyzing her senses and thought. The trained psi knight broke through the paralysis with only minor difficulties, drawing the two adamantium swords in one thousands of times practiced motion.
Only then she realized her surroundings. She was no longer on the train, where her Husband and her two unborn daughters died, taken from her by the Xenos during that day, the one which would forever be remembered by Terrankind as The Day when the old world died and the war for survival started.
Before her stood an about two meter twenty tall Terran. His combat knife, that he had used to block her swords, as well as the high tech Power armor he wore, indicated, that she had just attacked a soldier, most likely a trooper of one of the various Terran guard legions.
A considerable length away from the two stood a small crowd of people, mostly civilians, but she could also recognize a couple of security personal, who nervously aimed their pulse and laser rifles at her.
"Are you okay?" a voice asked and Carter needed a couple of seconds to realize it belonged to the man in front of her.
She nodded slowly and shoved her weapons back into the their sheaths, before slumping down at the bank on which she had fallen asleep, while cupping her face applying a bit of psionic energy to ease her headache. She felt how the Terran slowly sat himself besides her, and she opened her exhausted eyes to stare at the object he pulled out of a pocket.
It was a tube, with had the words 'Anti-PTSD' written on a label. The bottle was from Med-Tech, a somewhat large corporation which made much of it's credits from treating the countless mental scars and wounds left on the few survivors of the eight years long hell, otherwise known as the War for Survival.
She took the tube without a word and sprayed the narcotic liquid in her mouth. Her Terran body would have the drug purged of her system in half an hour, but that was enough time for her to banish the nightmares filling every non conscious minute of her existence. All back into darkest hole in her mind, from where they would crawl out again in the foreseeable future.
She muttered a couple of quick thanks and returned the now completely empty tube to it's owner.
"Sooo." the trooper said, and gestured at the white armor she was wearing, as well as the cape with the big red cross on it. It was a symbol that showed she was one those that had fought in the Eighth Crusade against the Xenos. "You are a Templar, aren't you? Are you on your pilgrimage? I heard you guys do that regularly."
She sighed, feeling another headache on the way.
"No." she answered, "I'm not on my pilgrimage. On the contrary, I am planning to use to travel to Terra Nova. The Ecclessia Militante and all members of the knight orders in the second echelon or higher are to attend."
She herself wasn't in picture of what was going on. The last time something had caused such movement in the Ecclessia, especially in her military branches, had been the assassination of Pope Franziscus through a group of Vipers thirteen years ago. The event had pushed the New Asian Federation and the free Mars republics, who housed the sole surviving race of the alien alliance that had ravished Terra four decades ago, at the brink of war with the Terran empire, the faction which had risen of the ashes of the American continents, Europe, Russia, and Africa.
The authoritarian superpower had vowed to unite all of humanity under it's ruthless dictator, in order to be prepared for the inevitable return of the Xenos. It had been in a cold war with the democracies in the East and on Mars against the Terran empire, reigning over the devastated continents of Europe, the Americas, and Africa.
It was a true irony of history, this new cold war between East and West. From the view of someone of the "old" world it may have seemed like the Terran empire would have a truly dominating edge over the NAF, especially given the overwhelming amount of psi operatives, territory and especially space ships it possessed.
The larger amount of psi warriors originated from the Templars and project Nightfall.
The Templars, fervent champions of the Lord, in exchange for their complete deviation to Christ, had been gifted with tremendous psionic abilities. They had enabled the broken Europeans and Russians to continue the fight against the Xeno invasion, after coordination and will to fight had been nearly annihilated. Following the fall of Brussels, Sankt Petersburg, as well as the Xeno forces finally breaching the Verdun and Berendino defenses and assaulting Paris and Moscow, resulting in Street fighting. The sheer intensity could only be compared with the battle of Stalingrad, or more recently the fall of London, the destruction of Tokyo, the downfall at Beijing, the hell of New York, and the last stand in Rome.
While the losses of the Xenos could not be compared to the hundreds of millions of human martyrs, the nightmarish fighting had also taken a heavy toll at the alien forces. The costly victories at Verdun and Berendino had only been achieved by pulling most of their forces out of Asia, where victory had been achieved in the first three years of the war. Leaving the Vipers back in Asia to oversee the process of turning the populace into drones by control chips, and than to change them into what would ironically be the first version of the Terrans.
The forces becoming free in Asia were split, with the largest force being sent against the Ural defense in order to force the Russians to divert soldiers to it's rear. The second largest force was sent to the United States, where the Xenos advance had not only been stalled but fully stopped after suffering multiple defeats at the hand of the Americans.
The third force was sent to Europe. They were to reverse their earlier defeats, to regain lost territory after being forced out of Wales, Scotland and Italy, following humanity's victory at Rome.
These two victories had been possible through the first two Terran knight orders. The Templar order, who had defeated the alien menace in Naples using psi powers, freed the besieged city of Rome after gathering tens of thousands of followers, before the Ethereals were able to close their grip around the Vatican.
And in the Vatican, or better what of it remained, they found the greatest treasure of them all, his holy Pope Franziscus himself together with the survivors of the Swiss guard, who had fought heroically to protect citizen of Rome who had searched for shelter in the cathedrals and churches of the Vatican.
They had, like the Templars, gained psionic abilities. In fact throughout the world had dedicated priests and monks, Mullahs and Imams, Rabbis and Reverends slowly awoken psionic powers, but few were able to use them in combat. In Wales at the same time, a certain resistance group been able to achieve success. The Knights of the Round. The same resistance group, that Samantha had joined and never left.
She remembered those times. After giving birth to two lifeless bodies, dead from the impacts of being wildly thrown around, when the Xenos had bombarded the train, she had sought death. Death, and revenge.
She had joined several militias, surviving their inevitable destruction. Joining resistance cells and surviving their ends when they were inexorably stomped by superior alien forces was soon the norm.
She had heard rumors of a supposed save haven, protected by God, and untouchable for the aliens. A laughable rumor at the time, it's insanity only reinforced by the claims that the defenders of that safe haven mostly fought with swords and that it was protected by a God, she had stopped believing in, when she buried the corpses of her two daughters, who never had even a chance to live.
And yet she joined them, after stumbling over one of their ambushed scout parties.
When she first saw Camelot, she saw a mess of a city, made out the simplest of materials and the remains of the countless Xeno vessels, torn apart by the Ancient weapons stored in the truly huge cave system. Below was the actual Camelot.
Those weapons made Camelot indeed near untouchable for Alien incursions from air. So great that was, it also caused the Xenos to attack with other means.
She took the tube without a word and sprayed the narcotic liquid in her mouth. Her Terran body would have the drug purged of her system in a half hour, but that was enough time for her to banish the nightmares filling every non conscious minute of her existence. All back into darkest hole in her mind, from where they would crawl out again in the foreseeable future.
She muttered a quick thanks and returned the now completely empty tube to its owner.
"Sooo." the trooper said, gesturing at the white armor she was wearing, as well as the cape with the big red cross on it. It was a symbol showing she was one those who had fought in the Eighth Crusade against the Xenos. "You are a Templar, aren't you? Are you on your pilgrimage? I heard you guys do that regularly."
She sighed, feeling another headache on the way.
"No." she answered, "I'm not on my pilgrimage. On the contrary, I am planning to use the gate to travel to Terra Nova. The Ecclessia Militante and all members of the knight orders in the second echelon or higher are to attend."
She herself wasn't in the know if what was going on. The last time something had caused such movement in the Ecclessia, especially in her military branches, had been the assassination of Pope Franziscus because a group of vipers thirteen years ago. It had pushed the New Asian Federation and the Free Mars Republics, who housed the sole surviving race of the alien alliance that had ravished Terra four decades ago, at the brink of war with the Terran empire, that had risen of the ashes of the American continents, Europe, Russia and Africa.
She closed her eyes and concentrated, gaining entrance to the Ultra net, checking the news.
"Hm." she thought while hundreds of images flashed through her brain. Nothing really important happened, except some apparent incidents on some of the outer colonies. A group of teenagers, barely in their mid twenties, claimed to have seen some UFO's. As far as the article stated it, the orbital defense platforms as well as the warships covering the level two colony had detected nothing, but the military investigated the matter nonetheless. On a more personal level, was she delighted to read sword sister Amelia's message, a psiblade of the order like her, whom she sparred and chatted with from time to time, had finally managed to impregnate her wife.
But with the exception of the news, nothing real notable was in her Psi-Mail, and she quickly left it and instead accessed Google, one of the few surviving corporations of the old world. She did not expect to find anything about the reasons for the templar meeting in the Ultranet, but instead looked up when the gate would dial Terra Nova.
"Guess I can keep talking with you for the next thirty minutes." she said to the Terran beside her. "My name is Samantha Carter, Knight of the templar order, servant of the holy Ecclessia, second echelon, and you are?"
"My name is Charles Kawalski, Major of the Eighth Corps of the First Guard legion." he answered, clearly proud of that fact.
"The Eighth Corps of the First, wait... were you one of those who defected from the Empire eighteen years ago?" Carter asked, clearly surprised by that information.
"Well yes." said he before smiling cheekily and ramming one of his thumbs against his chest, "To be more exact, I am one of the bad boys who helped O'Neill storming the Imperial Palace, to bring down that bastard Kinsey!"
"Wait did you actually meet the legend himself? The hero of Terra, O'Neill?"
Kawalski grinned upon hearing the question. "If not only met him, I am his best bud! Let me tell you from when he and I went to Stargate and made the first Xeno kills in history."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Medusa yawned loudly, showing her large poison fangs to the world, while tiredly rubbing her half closed eyes.
"Rough night?" someone asked, before placing a cup of coffee on the table before her.
The young viper muffled a yes, took the cup and drained it down her maw in one go. The fluid quickly went in effect and even managed to partially wake her up.
"Thanks Allen." she said to white haired man beside her. "So has anything remarkable happened?"
"Nothing too big. Some tourists from Mars brought some funny substances with them so the Captain had a little 'talk' with them." he answered, slightly turning his head to the stern woman staring at the monitors. Currently they showed the two Terrans who, judging from the civilian armor and armament they wore, were most likely military. Not that it was a rule or anything like that, but military people, especially those in the guard legions and those who lived through the war for survival, tended to always wear armor even when they were off duty.
Medusa could understand it though; enduring the most brutal war that earth had ever witnessed gave many of them rather persistent paranoia... And chronic PTSD.
"Wow, they actually brought illegal drugs through the gate? Were they already stoned?" That had to be pretty powerful stuff, considering how insanely resistant the Terran body was to any form of poison.
"You bet!" Allen said, laughing. "They were. But believe me, they were back to reality quite fast! But you lucked out! These guys completely averted her attention from the fact you had overslept."
The Viper exhaled in relief at that news. To be honest, she had been terrified of the tirade she had expected to receive from Mary.
"Anything else besides that?"
"Well yes, there was an incident involving a Templar a couple of minutes ago, and it did look like it would turn ugly. But luckily the problem got defused already."
"Templar, huh." Medusa shifted uneasily. She had a couple of unpleasant meetings with these xenophobic fanatics in the past, and well, she wasn't looking forward to meet another one.
"Don't worry Med, she seems rather nice…. For a templar." Allen assured his friend, who now sat herself with some trouble on the chair beside her.
"So…." she began, a bit confused. "Is someone important coming from Terra Nova?"
"Wha…?" Before Allen could even finish the first word he noticed what she had meant. Something was going on with the gate.
Someone was dialing in.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Wait you surrendered to Goa'uld?" Samantha asked skeptically.
"Well yeah." Kawalski answered. "You see, the 'never surrender, fight to your death' tactic of the Survival War wasn't a thing back then, and the movie adaptation was horrible inaccurate."
To give Ruben Steelbel credit, he had done his best with the scarce information he had. While the first Stargate mission was no longer a secret to the public, nearly all of the information about it had been lost during the war, and then the troubled times of the aftermath years that eventually led to the rise of the Terran empire. O'Neill himself had not even bothered with the movie, his aversion to the public was legendary.
Only three persons knew where Jack lived. He, Feretti and for some reason Melbourne had been entrusted with that knowledge. He didn't like Melbourne, but since it was him who had informed Jack of what had been going on with the assassination of Pope Franziskus and subsequently Kinsey's death through Jack's hands, he was sure he could trust Melbourne.
.
.
.
.
.
No, he was not sure he would never trust that snake.
"Really, I must confess I watched the movie. What was wrong?"
"Really, and here I thought that the knights of the templar order did nothing but pray all day." Kawalski joked.
"No." Sam plainly stated, while rolling her eyes. "Ora et labora is the way of the monks and nuns. The templar follow et pugna preasidio. We are allowed to have fun which doesn't circle around sending Xenos to hell."
"Oh, is that so? Well I actually meant that as a joke." he told her, slightly embarrassed. He was about to continue, when he heard the familiar sounds of the Stargate dialing.
"Huh? They're too early. The gate was supposed to dial Terra Nova only in about ten minutes. Or is my watch malfunctioning?" he asked himself, glancing at the old thing.
It was nothing fancy like the intelligent things the youth carried around these days, devices which told them all possible things and had multiple mods and forms, but a relict of the old world made out of gold. Not that that really meant anything. Asteroid mining as well as large founds on terra's colonies reduced golds worth basically to nothingness.
What the watch had however, was a lot of personal importance to him as it was one of the few things left of his family. It had belonged to his Mother, who had perished when the hell started. His father had died two months later at the Chicago front, fighting despite his age. He never found out what happened to his girlfriend, but he figured long ago she was dead too.
With a WUUSSCHH the gate opened and the arrivals caused both Kawalski and Samantha jump up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mary Humbler sighed in annoyance, as she observed how a bunch of people in stylized snake armors came through the gate and took stance before it, not twenty meters away from crowd of Terrans. "Oh, it's one of those days again. Ellie tell these cosplayers they are about to get in serious trouble for this stunt.
I hope you enjoyed it. If that is the case leave a favourite or a review.
Until next time General AllenWalker out.