Author notes: this story is a prelude to another one I am preparing for Halloween. In a way, it can be seen (or read) like the opening credits of the Watchmen movie.
It considers true the possibility that Sunnydale replaces Santa Barbara.
Disclaimer
Summary: In a world where aliens and demons both exist, some things are bound to change. Like who was in a certain Time Jumper when Atlantis' shield collapsed, and what they did afterwards. AU (Stargate + Buffyverse merger).
Fandom I do not own anything of:
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Stargate SG-1 and spin-off series.
- Elements of Mass Effect and the the Shadowrun RPG are being used, while this is not a full crossover with these sources.
These books (one graphic novel and one book) have also been sources of inspiration for this story:
Scourge of the Gods: The Fall (Original title: Le Fléau des Dieux)by Valerie Mangin and Aleksa Gajić.
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.
Rating: FR18
Special thanks to Narsil for betaing this chapter
Antarctica, October 1947
Philippe Venturi wondered once again what devil had possessed him to sign up for this job. No, he had to be fair. He knew perfectly why he was freezing his ass off in Antarctica. One of his old friends had told him about a civilian mission reuniting some British Commonwealth, Belgian and French scientists who would take advantage of the fact the US Navy was running a big operation from Ross Island during that period. Camp Diogenes was much more modest. Its goal was to set up a base in a sheltered valley on the continent side of the Transantarctic Mountains and overwinter there. It was a proof of concept for the inland stations that would inevitably be settled later. During the austral winter, their little seven-man team had also taken advantage of the continual night to make a lot of astronomical observations. Now, they were finishing their work and waiting for the Americans to come back to Ross Island in November. The boat to bring them back to Australia would be there too.
As for himself… well he wasn't really a scientist, more kind of an adventurer as far as his colleagues knew. Initially, he had brought his experience of cold climate life, gathered during the time he spent in Tibet before the war, plus a knack to improvise equipment… and handle explosives, as the Germans had the misfortune to experience during the war. Explosives were easy chemistry for him. His family was usually dealing with far more delicate procedures.
Thankfully, I managed to resist the temptation… some procedures I know… there are dragons it is best not to wake up. Let's be positive. I may be freezing my ass off but no vampire is going to be nuts enough to come here.
The truth was that he came from a long line of alchemists. They were no charlatans or simple dabblers, but a family firmly rooted in the supernatural side of the world. They were not 'politically' motivated like the Watchers or many demon factions. Instead, they had provided a variety of services to paying customers. This kept the family's coffers lined and the labs supplied.
Sure, there were some things they didn't do. While the Venturi had, over the centuries, gathered methods from both the West and the East, they had no interest in witchcraft. Spells, black or white, too often exacted a terrible price from their caster. Alchemy, on the other hand, mostly took time, skill and resources.
The source of his family's downfall had not been in their art, but in the way they used it. As mercenaries, they were neutral and respected for their skill. On the other hand, this meant they had been alone dealing with the consequences of one of their contracts.
He was in India when it started, in 1937. Someone hired him to make sure that the German expedition to Tibet would not find a certain place and certain items. At the same time, his father was occupied in America, hired to fix a problem concerning a vampire called Heinrich Nest and his minions, the Order of Aurelius. Philippe's own assignment went without too many problems even if he ended stuck in the Himalaya for two years. No, the problem was with his father's contract. At first, everything went well and Marco Venturi managed to entomb Nest – also known as the Master – in a cave under Sunnydale. The Mayor rewarded them well for their services, offering them among other things a house in the town. But then, Nest's followers, led by the vampiress Darla, decided to kill the Venturi down to the last family member.
Being stuck in Tibet saved him. When the Order raided the Venturi manor in Corsica, they destroyed a lot of records in their blind rage, which made the rest of their hunt very difficult. When he finally came back in France in fall 1939, they already thought they had killed everybody. Then, well… war happened. Stuck in Lyon, he joined the Resistance. He also met one of his best friends during that period, a member of the Marco Polo resistance network like him.
Which reminds me… I really need to pay Jacques a visit next 'spring'. I miss our discussions. I just hope that whatever he is doing for the government is not undercover…
And now, in this good year 1947, he was the only member of the Venturi family left. He couldn't say that he felt sorrow for the decidedly not nice things he had done during his occult career. Nor did he feel anything for the even less nice things he did to the 'Fritz' during the war. Those actually felt even better than the first ones because he could tell himself that for those he wasn't a mercenary, but a patriot fighting for his country's freedom.
No, his reason to change was different. It was because he knew what would happen if he let the education his father gave him guide his actions. His children would be raised to avenge the fallen and rebuild the clan. This was why he had said enough. He had to stop the cycle and, should he ever marry, give a nice, normal future to his kids.
And so here I am… what is this?
He stopped his sled and took out his binoculars. It had only been for an instant but he didn't stay alive by ignoring his instincts when they were telling him something was worthy of attention. He heard the sled of his colleague Alain Desportes stop near him. He rather liked the Belgian glaciologist and had often accompanied him on his expeditions to get more samples.
"Anything interesting?" asked Alain in French.
"Just here, near that little rocky crest. There is a metallic shine," replied Philippe, handing him his binoculars.
"Some leftover of a previous expedition, probably."
"I am sure it wasn't there the last time we took that route… sure we had a lot of blizzard lately and it might have revealed something that was buried so far."
"It's not far from our usual route and we have time before sunset. Do you want to check?"
Philippe quickly weighed the situation. Antarctica didn't have any known occult history but it didn't mean it had none at all. Still, none of the expeditions had met any demons and the… bareness of the place would probably have them looking for bloodier pastures.
"Yes but let's be careful."
He saw Alain nod but he knew that it wasn't out of any occult-related fear. It was the ever-present, much more mundane risk of crevices. Philippe was not forgetting it either, and he started to probe the snow, walking in front of his sled. He finally reached the shiny spot he had seen in the distance. It was undoubtedly metallic but…
"What is it? That's not steel," said Alain, passing his hand on the light grey metal.
"Aluminum, maybe? But that's not what's most important. This is some kind of beam," he replied, removing more of the snow.
"Yes, it looks a little like what they use for steel structures in skyscrapers… and I don't think it was brought here by an earlier expedition, at least not an official one. So… tell me if you see any swastika?"
"Right," replied Philippe, smiling as he shook his head. The rumor about Nazi U-boats coming to hide in a secret Antarctic base at the end of the war had become a kind of private joke for the men of Camp Diogenes, referencing it every time they found something unusual.
They started to probe the snow around the beam and soon found an area where their avalanche probes reached an empty space after half a meter of packed snow. Philippe looked at his watch.
"I see two options. We can mark this place, go take the samples at site D, then back to the camp. Then we make a dedicated expedition for this place. Or…"
"Philippe, I am always glad to have redundancy in my measures but we have a whole building buried under the snow here. According to Georgie, there will be more blizzards in the coming days, so we risk having it completely buried again. So I say we make igloos for the dogs and us and then we explore and take pictures. As long as we're back tomorrow night, we'll be on schedule."
"All right, let's get to work then," said Philippe, taking a shovel out of his sled.
They worked quickly, first unharnessing the dogs. After so many months here, they both knew all the tricks for saving time and avoiding errors.
"One thing I really like about working with you is that bit of Tibetan sorcery you have with dogs," said Alain.
Philippe just smiled mysteriously. There were many things about his life that he just couldn't explain without introducing people to the darkest side of the world. Letting them believe he was the kind of adventurer you find in serials like the Shadow was far more comfortable for all of them. Liking to read Lovecraft and knowing that he had tried to warn the world about the horrible reality were two very different matters. Unfortunately for his own sanity, Philippe was in the latter category and he understood perfectly why people who brushed the surface of the abyss often spent the rest of their lives violently denying it existed.
As for dogs, well Alain was half-right. There was some bit of sorcery there, but it was African, not Tibetan. The Elephant Primal Spirit had possessed a witch doctor, making life for the local human settlements, including a European company with an interest in diamonds, very difficult. Philippe had been sent to 'fix things'. Finding methods to understand and get along with animals had been a matter of survival then.
The result here was that the dogs saw him instinctively as their pack leader. He wasn't sure he deserved such a level of trust but it made working with the 30 dogs of the Camp a lot easier. Currently, it meant that he could trust them to stand watch as they worked and that chaining them as other people sometimes did was unnecessary.
They worked a little bit more, digging in what seemed to be the shallowest area and soon giving them enough space to enter the sunken building. They took a break so that the both of them and the dogs could eat, before prepping their lamps and the camera.
"Ready?" asked Philippe.
"As much as I can."
Philippe nodded and went to the hole. He let the rope descend in the darkness. They supposed that it was some kind of dome and that the 'beam' that protruded was maybe a mast standing above it. The hole they had found was one place where a triangular panel was missing.
He tested the ropes one last time and rappelled down. Philippe followed him. He would have preferred if someone stayed up so that they could climb more easily on the way back but he knew there was no way the glaciologist would agree to that.
They landed on the ground and lighted the walls. They were indeed inside a geodesic dome, with triangular panels of glass held by a metallic structure. What was remarkable was that despite the snow's pressure above, only one of the panels had effectively come loose.
Only one… how convenient. Ah, I think I see why. The metallic border is different from the others… yes, this is an opening system. Probably a trapdoor to access the roof… and the structure the beam at the surface was part of given its position.
"Philippe? Look at that glass!"
He joined his friend who had approached the border of the dome. He passed his hand on it, removing his glove. Then he looked at the fallen panel on the ground. A panel that didn't even have a crack despite a six meters fall.
"Alain… are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yes. This is no ordinary material. The structure resisted the weight of tons of snow without a crack. In fact… I don't think this is glass in the common sense of the word. Rather some kind of crystal."
Following a hunch, Philippe took out his knife and tried to graze the fallen panel. He didn't leave even a scratch and he was sure that if he continued, it would be his knife that would dull away. He knew a transparent material like that but… if he was right… the quantity was staggering.
They turned their attention to the machines at the center of the dome then. They like nothing they knew but they thought that they were some kind of measuring instruments.
"What do you think? An observatory?" asked Alain.
"It would make sense but… I think we can definitely ditch the swastika hypothesis."
"Why?"
Philippe hesitated slightly then decided this tiny bit of knowledge would fit with the persona the others built for him if he tweaked it a little.
"You see those signs, the ones that are composed of blocks? It's not just some decoration. That's a writing system. I saw that in some old texts and it's rumored to be from a lost civilization."
In fact, according to a footnote in Dramius volume eleven, this is the language of the Powers That Be but let him think of Atlantis… more comfortable that way.
There was a part of him trying to convince the rest to knock his friend out and get the out of this place as quickly as he could. The presence of such inscriptions here… this place was old, probably older than the biblical age of the world. Dramius said that the Powers themselves had abandoned this system and adopted another that they finally taught to the tribes of Latium.
Which explains why, apart from the Powers themselves and, big maybe as the sources are really not reliable, Merlin, there is no one left able to read those. Well… who knows? With all the work on codes done, maybe someone will try to crack that one. So… let's explore. At least, it's not some demonic script, or worse, Primordial Sanskrit.
He shuddered at that thought. He knew how to recognize and, in some cases, decipher, the most common demonic languages. One of them, sometimes called Primordial Sanskrit, was the language of the Old Ones, the antediluvian demons that once reigned on Earth, the ones that inspired Lovecraft's Cthulhu. Finding a site with these kind of inscriptions… convincing the Americans to use one of their atomic bombs on the place was probably a good idea.
He watched as Alain opened one of the machines, exposing its innards and took some pictures. There were crystals again, of various colors and shapes, all arranged in a frame of metal and something that was maybe some kind of plastic.
"You know what it makes me think of?" said Philippe. "Not the pieces themselves but the way they're arranged on those racks that can be easily taken out. It's like the vacuum tubes in a radio."
"Yes... but… I suppose there are only so many efficient ways to arrange things so that they are both easily accessible and packed in the smallest possible space. What does it tells us else… pieces look standardized, I can see small inscriptions on each of them."
"Serial numbers?"
"Again logical, but it supposes that whoever built this is doing a lot of things like us."
No, Alain… we are the ones doing a lot of things like them. Because they taught us. The Powers That Be… what did Father say… rumors of them being in fact Immortals in the Chinese sense rather than mystic entities born that way.
"There are stairs," said Philippe, lighting the way. "We will have to come back anyway."
"Right."
They walked slowly on the ancient steps, finding them to again be the transparent crystal held in dark gray metallic frames. The level they soon reached seemed to be furnished as some kind of private quarters.
"How old is all of this?" asked Alain.
"Old enough for all the plants to be little more than dust," replied Philippe as he lighted a planter. "The fabrics too… I have seen Egyptian relics in better shape than this."
"And that despite the cold and dry air… Do you think… Plato said…"
"I know, ten thousand BC or so," cut in the former adventurer. "I thought about that possibility. Let's check the other rooms at this level."
"Agreed. I take the left corridor, you take the right one," he replied
They separated, exiting the circular room that they supposed to be a living room.
"I have more stairs here but they're blocked by rubble… looking at the geometry. They're not following a curve like the ones going from the dome to here… interesting," said Alain. "If I am correct, we are in a kind of tower built on the flank or maybe on the top of a mountain that is now completely buried in snow. This flight of stairs looks like it's going inside the mountain. Anything interesting on your side?"
"Something that was maybe a kitchen and bathroom. Let's continue."
Philippe soon reached another room with a big window of the same crystal material. There were remainders of what had been a double bed and other furniture that gave the impression of a bedroom.
His eyes were immediately attracted by a motif on the wall. It was something that should normally have been invisible but the frost had damaged some of the wooden decorative motifs of the wall. Taking out his knife, he removed the ice in some places and quickly reached a conclusion.
"Hidden door," he whispered.
He removed his glove and let his finger run on the motifs looking until… yes, this one was slightly misaligned. He smirked as the ornamental piece of wood rotated under his fingers. He nodded appreciatively as the wall started to slide into the ground in complete silence, revealing a hidden alcove. He turned his light inside.
"By the Trimegistes…" he muttered.
At first sight, the alcove seemed filled out with ice. The problem was the 'item' resting inside the ice, suspended like a prehistoric insect in amber. It was a young woman with black hair and rather dark skin, from the little he could tell under the light of his lamp.
"Nothing interes… Jesus-Marie-Joseph!" said Alain as he entered the room and saw the woman. "You found a tomb?"
Philippe thought quickly about the room and, following a hunch, checked the inside of the alcove. Yes, there was also an opening command for the door on this side.
"I… a tomb wouldn't make sense. This is a bedroom and the alcove was hidden behind a secret door," he replied, tapping at the place where it had sunk in the floor.
Unless she's a vampire… but I don't think so. Anyway, better be ready in case she wakes up very thirsty.
"This is not normal ice," said the glaciologist who had approached. "I mean that this is not water ice, maybe dry ice."
"You're right," replied Philippe, letting his ungloved hand briefly touch the surface.
The ice immediately started to glow in eerie white light. He felt a small air flow as the frozen gas sublimated away, freeing its treasure.
He rushed forward, taking the woman in his arms as she collapsed. This wasn't a matter of gallantry but rather of being ready to do the needful if she was revealed to be undead. His knife wouldn't be enough to dust her but a stab in her spine would limit her mobility until he could do something more permanent.
He relaxed as he felt a pulse on her neck. It was faint, but it was here. He could also feel her starting to shiver in his arms. He knew that she could still be some other kind of demon but… he pushed back his doubts and decided to do the humane thing. He removed his jacket and put it around her shoulders.
"She… she's alive? How?"
"Some kind of hibernation I think… Alain, now is not the time. She's not dressed for the cold and… we have to get her back to the Camp."
"Right… there is some kind of briefcase in the alcove. I'll take it back while you take care of the lady… hem, I mean you have the muscles to carry her, I don't."
Not too far away, almost at the same time
She was standing on a ridge, completely oblivious to the temperature, despite the fact her dress would have been better suited to Mediterranean weather than to the Antarctic one, even in the beginning of summer.
She had a little smile as she looked through the eyes of her emissary and saw the two men come out of the sunken building and put an unconscious woman inside the shelter they created a few hours before. They lost no time in reharnessing the dogs and raced away, securing the now fur-wrapped woman on one of the sleds.
In a way, it was just a little pebble. Had she not intervened, this man would have been in Sunnydale with his father. Barely escaping the Order of Aurelius, the shock would have been so intense that he would have buried for good any supernatural aspect of his life and never, ever mentioned anything about it to any of his kids. Finally, a car accident would have taken him out of the picture long before his granddaughter was called and met her first vampire. There would be no one to tell the most famous Slayer of her time about her heritage and the role it played in some 'peculiarities' about her destiny.
This part has been easy… I just needed Whistler to deploy some resources and tailor the offer to match his profile. The ink wasn't dry before he was on his way to Karachi.
As for the woman… in another timeline, an earthquake in the eighteenth century would have destroyed most of her shelter. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, some events would push the SGC to discover the Astria Porta left here by the Alterans millions of years ago and start an archeological dig. After a long search, they would find the sleeping woman. The lead scientist would call her Ayiana, her real name staying unknown. Unfortunately Ayiana would die soon after her awakening, having spent the last of her energy to cure the members of the expedition infected by the disease she carried, the very the plague that had wiped out the Ancient civilization.
Well, not this time… this time, Ariana, to give you back your real name, I wish you a long and happy life. This time, your future will be different from the past I remember.
She remembered all the little details she had discovered when going back in time and preparing things so that history had no chance to repeat itself. Like the fact Ariana didn't bother with correcting the SGC people because she thought 'Ayiana' was just how her name was pronounced in the humans' language.
She also had been able to fill another little blank, an incoherence between what she learned about the limitations of Alteran coldsleep technology and the fact Ariana survived for seven million years of it without any added wrinkle. The disease was actually the answer. It was magical, necromantic in nature, and it changed a simple slowing down of metabolic processes into a complete pseudo-death.
Thankfully, the original Ariana did not rise after she died of exhaustion… or maybe she did and the NID omitted to tell us about it. Ah… and do not forget the last little tidbit: the reason why a Goa'uld could heal it while all of the Ancient technology of the time couldn't. Naquadah and magic are non-mixy to quote an old friend.
But that was then. In the now, in the present she was forging, Ariana would live. Apollo had the knowledge the Alterans of the time lacked. A cure had been applied before she opened the ice to allow Philippe to find her. She extended her arm, letting the snowy owl that had observed the scene for her perch on it.
"So it's done?" asked a voice near her as she petted the bird.
The woman who said that was busy rolling herself a cigarette. With her white soldier gear, probably pilfered from some Red Army stock and the Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle on her shoulder, she was far from the image classical authors had of Diana the Huntress. She had decided on a change of gear since she gave her blessing to a hunter of the Ural Mountains during the last war. This had made… kind of a mini-scandal in Olympus.
"Yes, it is done. Our first big alteration to the timeline, or rather the first one that can be detected by seers if they're lucky enough."
Diana sniggered at Minerva's remark. Both knew very well that Janus' machines in Olympus were pouring out a lot of 'temporal smog'. It made things very difficult for any seer that wanted to look at anything other than an established prophecy. It also made it much more difficult to realize that the relevance of those prophecies was decreasing.
"Weird to think that's B's grandparents… and that we just made sure she would have a different gran. By the way, Janus says taking care of Jupiter is not something we can push back much further. He said that with what we just did, the last limit is in 1969."
"It will be done before that. The pieces for removing that bastard are almost all in place."
"Amen to that… each time he looks at me with that decidedly un-fatherly gaze, I feel like shoving his lightning bolts where the sun doesn't shine."
"It's not like he's really your father, Faith."
"Aaah," replied the former Dark Slayer, taking a long drag on her smoke. "Sure. In my head I know that. I know that I'm just pretending and that thanks to the trick the original Diana did with her memories, most of the 'family' just wrote off any difference between her and me as the usual Olympian quirkiness. In my guts now… I've been playing that game for twelve thousand years. When I think of myself, I say 'Diana', not 'Faith'. There is just too much glue on the mask and I'm not sure it will ever fully come off. I'm also sure it's the same for you… Elizabeth."
"You are, sadly, right," replied the other goddess after a short silence. "I remember being Elizabeth Weir but I am still her? Am I Minerva or something in-between? I don't know but I know why I did it. And so do you."
"Yeah… so that our past isn't their future… and I feel like a fuckin' X-Man saying that. I'm not saying that we didn't have good moments in the last twelve thousand years… but I would like to try to be a little more like the old me."
"Hence the sniper rifle."
"Nah, that's something Diana would… well maybe not as she had that whole… how did you call her?"
"An eco-terrorist."
"Right, nature good, civilization bad, that thing. What she missed is that hunting is not a question of technology, but of spirit. You wait for your prey, meld with the environment and strike at the perfect moment. Snipers live for that. So I had a little chat with Mars and we agreed that snipers are under my protection. But that's not what I meant by the old me. What I meant is to finally be able to do all the things our dear Venus loves so much without having to make sure I send all the paparazzi to Uncle Pluto."
Minerva could only laugh. Of course, mythology was only an approximation of reality. It wasn't simply the fact that, unlike the modern monotheisms, there were no official sacred texts or dogma and that each poet was pretty much free to interpret things as he wanted. The problem was that the Olympians themselves had taken some liberties with the truth when telling some stories to the humans. Add to this the fact that the gods did not necessarily agree on which lies to tell… the result was a little messy, particularly when you considered the genealogy.
And, in other cases, it didn't matter that we told them the truth. They saw the facts through the filter of their own values, their own idea of political correctness.
The chastity vow Minerva, Diana and Vesta took in mythology was such a divergence. It was true that the three goddesses did not have a family or children but… it wasn't for the reasons the Greeks or the Romans believed. For Vesta, it was a matter of belief. While the Alterans were not religious people they still had some kind of ancestor cult and sometimes, an Alteran decided to become a Guardian of Virtues, acting as a philosophical counselor and renouncing family life to serve the community.
Diana's case was a different matter. Contrary to what certain myths said, it wasn't a question of having been disgusted by the pain of childbirth experienced by Latona. It was the matter of Diana being a misanthropic bitch who considered humanity an invasive species that should have stayed in Prometheus' lab. Faith had taken some little steps to change that reputation since she took over, like maintaining a suite of nymphs, but there was only so much she could do while maintaining the masquerade.
And for me as Minerva… well, putting my career before any personal life is something I was already all too familiar with as Elizabeth Weir. But, just like in Diana's case, this was not acceptable for the Greeks and Romans. It remains that, unlike to my predecessor, I am not a frigid bitch taking out her frustrations on poor girls like Medusa or Arachne.
"A sesterce for your thoughts," said Diana.
"Just thinking about how much of a bitch my predecessor was…"
"I have to agree with Mars on this one, M. She was in dire need of a good lay… and so are you in my opinion. With a little luck, we'll be finished with 'Daddy dearest' for the Summer of Love and you will be able to take the occasion to liberate yourself too."
She blushed a little. She knew that Venus would never let her live it down if she was caught but she longed to be considered as a woman again instead of some untouchable, virginal marble effigy.
Only a few decades left before D-Day… then it will be a whole new game.
She delved into the perfect memory her predecessor had gifted her with. She remembered the choice they both took, so long ago…
SGC, alternate 2004
Elizabeth Weir was looking at the refugees going through the Stargate. There was no more time for secrecy or carefully prepared Alpha site list now, not when Cheyenne Mountain was besieged and the enemy already slaughtering its way through the upper levels. They were evacuating everyone they could, the defense falling back as they did. Once the last group started to cross, they would switch the self-destruct on and abandon the planet.
Where did it go wrong?
Of course, the SGC had known enough alerts to have procedures put in place in such cases. There had even been some exercises, as much as could be staged without telling the people of the upper levels too blatantly what they had already guessed: the Deep Space Telemetry project hosted in the deepest levels of the mountain was a cover for something else, something that probably went in the same folder as the project Blue Book.
The problem was that all of those scenarios had not been thought out for their present enemies. When they had been designed, the capabilities of the Goa'uld System Lords were what they thought about. No one would have thought that they would be using that evacuation plan because of a demon invasion.
She remembered when the world was simple, when she was an idealistic young woman freshly out of the university. She thought she could get people to talk to each other, that peaceful negotiations were better than war. Since then, she had learnt that there were things you should never negotiate with, not if you valued your soul.
Her first brush with the supernatural had been while she was an aide during a UN mission in Africa. She had been shocked to learn that governments knew but that they preferred people to live in a blissful ignorance rather than reveal that monsters were real. Even if that meant disguising the slaughter of a whole village by demons as an Ebola outbreak.
So she had worked, climbing to reach the highest levels, hoping to change things once there… and ended up looking at a box of pills and a bottle of tequila when she understood how screwed up the game really was. Thankfully, a call from on high interrupted her morbid thoughts and again gave her some hope as she was offered command of the SGC. She thought that with the resources of alien worlds, she would finally be able to do something.
But I was too late, far too late.
She looked again at the refugees. How many did they manage to save? A few hundreds? A thousand? Did it really matter when billions were dying – or worse – outside? They weren't even necessary for humanity to survive. The Goa'uld had, ironically enough, already taken care of that when they took slaves from Earth thousands of years ago. Their descendants had formed new civilizations and the refugees from Earth would likely ally with some of them. Maybe they would manage to keep something of Earth's culture alive and that would at least be something.
Still, there is one chance, she thought as the gate deactivated, the last of the refugees having gone through.
"Rodney?" she asked the man sitting at the control computer.
"Programming the sequence for Pegasus galaxy now. We will have to go quickly. The ZPM is burning its last reserves."
She nodded. This was their last chance. An Ascended One called Janus had contacted them shortly after they lost Antarctica to the demons, barely managing to take the Zero Point Module from the ruins of the Ancient outpost. He had given them a set of coordinates and told them there was very little time left, because Wolfram and Hart had found a way to recreate the Holy Grail. The other Ascended Ones would, according to him, soon decide to blow up the planet to preserve the rest of the galaxy.
So they were taking that chance. What Janus had said about the set of coordinates corresponded to what Daniel Jackson had managed to tell them about the City of the Ancients. Maybe, just maybe, they would find there something that would allow them to save Earth.
"… Chevron eight locked," said Rodney McKay. "Wormhole for Pegasus stable. We have six minutes before we run out of energy."
"Lock the computer and let's go down with the others."
The scientist nodded as she took a remote. Once she pushed this button, there would be thirty seconds left before a nuke vaporized the SGC. The Stargate would probably survive, but be buried under the mountain. More importantly, there would be no data for the demons to retrieve.
She joined the rest of the team in the embarking room, noticing they were already crossing. Still… a group of soldiers rushed in, closing the blast door behind them. A young brunette woman kicked a bucket with enough strength to leave a mark in the concrete wall the metal recipient hit.
"Faith?"
"Sorry, Doc. Buffy… she just had to play hero again. She charged the demons to give us time to retreat and… she was on the wrong side of the charges when the tunnel collapsed."
Elizabeth took a deep breath. Her history with the Watchers and the Slayers was complicated. During her first contact with the supernatural, she had seen the worst of the Watchers. True, their paternalistic attitude was not completely unwarranted. They had been doing their job for a long time and mostly doing it well. Their problem was that they didn't understand the changes the world had gone through since the Industrial Revolution. When the demon called the First Evil used terrorist methods to take them out, they crumbled faster than the French Army in 1940.
So when, after beating the First Evil and destroying the town of Sunnydale in the process, a few surviving Field Watchers and a host of newly-activated Slayers reformed the Council, she had taken advantage of her recent command at the SGC and made contact. It had not been easy. Buffy and her folks had had some bad experiences with a black operation called the Initiative. They were still working things out when… shit hit the fan.
She had a look at Faith. She knew the girl's past, the mistakes she made and how much she paid for them. Right now, she was probably thinking things like 'it should have been me staying back'.
"Faith…"
"It's okay, Doc. Buffy… she wasn't well since they killed Dawnie."
They. Faith didn't have to say who they were. The Circle of Black Thorns, the cabal of demons and sorcerers behind all of this. The ones who opened the gates of hell by sacrificing Dawn Summers in an unholy ceremony marrying Ancient technology and black magic.
"Ladies, I'm sorry," said the Major Ferretti, "but we have to go."
They all nodded and Elizabeth had a last look for the SGC. She pushed the button of the self-destruct remote and walked through the Stargate.
Camp Diogenes, 1947
Camp Diogenes had been built in a small valley roughly two hundred kilometers away from the Little America station set up by Operation Highjump a few months before. Finding the place had actually been easy. Shackleton's people had scouted the area during the Nimrod expedition and marked it down as a possible emergency camping site. As for the name, it had come as a kind of pun after seeing the half-barrel shape of their main shelter.
All in all, the experiment had worked, even if transporting all the materials to construct and supply the base for the winter had been a pain. Even if things had been working relatively well, all of the members of the expedition agreed on one point. Without technical progress on generators and vehicle consumption, the concept of inland bases would probably be considered too costly.
Georges Farnsworth, meteorologist and chief of the expedition, was busy taking some weather readings from the observatory they had set up on an exposed rock above the shelters when he saw two sleds approaching the valley's entrance.
Alain and Philippe? They're in quicker than expected.
He finished noting down the measures of the last series and walked down, reaching the shelter's entrance at the same time as them. He frowned as he saw Philippe scoop something human-sized and tightly wrapped in furs from his sled.
Bar that. Not human-sized. Human with the way he is holding that body.
"Alain, the door," said the Frenchman.
The Belgian glaciologist did not wait and opened the door for his colleague and his precious burden. Georges could not help but notice how agitated the two men were.
"Who is he?" he asked.
"She, Georgie," replied Alain as they entered the shelter. "It's a woman… and maybe the greatest discovery since… since…"
What did he see? Thought the Englishman, seeing his colleague's haunted gaze. "Alain, where did you find her? What did you see?"
"See… right, focus. We have pictures. I will go develop them."
"No, you're too nervous," he replied taking the camera from the man's hand. "Nigel, you develop them," he added, handing the device to another member of the expedition. "Samuel, you take care of the dogs. Alain, you come with me."
"On it, Georgie," replied Nigel and Samuel.
Farnsworth dragged the glaciologist behind him, entering the camp. Just as he thought, Philippe had gone straight to their small infirmary and was having Marc examine her. The Canadian doctor frowned at them disapprovingly before shooing Philippe out of the room and closing the door.
"He…" started Alain.
"Yes, Marc is reminding us to be gentlemen and give the lady some privacy," replied Georgie. "Philippe, where did you find her?"
"Roughly three hours from here, near the Black Rock Pass," replied the Frenchman, using one of the unofficial names their team had given to local landmarks. "She… listen Georgie, this is so incredible that it will be better if you see the pictures we took. I will take care of the dogs while…"
"Phil, Samuel is doing that. I need to know what put Alain in that state."
"Right… there are ruins under the ice there. A civilization unknown to modern historians."
"Stop. Can you elaborate on that last sentence?" he interrupted.
"There are esoteric texts that reproduce inscriptions like the ones we found there, but the key to translate them is lost to humanity. They are said to be older than human history though. As for the woman…"
"She was sleeping in the ice," said Alain, "There were machines there… so old and yet more advanced than anything I have seen."
"Sleeping in the ice?" asked Georgie. "You mean frozen? How…"
"I don't know," replied Philippe. "I suppose that the machine she was in is some kind of hibernation engine."
The door opened and the three men looked inside. The woman was now tucked in the bed, her strange white and beige clothes deposited on a nearby chair. Marc came out and started to prepare his pipe.
"How is she?" asked Georgie.
"Sleeping soundly but other than that… no trace of frostbite or even hypothermia. Her temperature is normal and I could see no symptom of a disease. You all have to remember though that my equipment here is limited."
The four men turned their head as they heard faint noise of the nearby blankets moving. The woman was looking at them and Philippe was struck by the depths of her hazel eyes.
"Hem… Aveo," she said, raising her right hand to wave at them as she sat in the bed.
Georgie and Alain immediately averted their eyes when the blanket fell from her chest. Philippe, on the other hand, could not help but notice her lean body before her remembered his manners and did the same. Marc sighed and moved to have the woman cover herself.
She said something and, noticing their incomprehension, started to look around the room. Advising a notebook and a pencil, she rose from the bed, making sure to keep herself draped in the blanket and made a gesture toward them.
Marc, recognizing this as a request for permission to use the items, gave them to her. She sat back on the bed and immediately started to draw. It was a simple schema, showing a silhouette with something looking like a sinusoidal wave coming out of his mouth and another with the hand near his ear. Using the pencil, she pointed the one talking, then the men and the one listening, then herself. She drew an arrow and then two other silhouettes talking together.
"You mean that you can learn our language just by listening to us?" asked Alain, not really expecting a reply.
The woman nodded, smiling mischievously. Philippe smiled back as he was starting to understand. She seemed to be frighteningly, maybe even superhumanly intelligent and she had guessed the content of Alain's question, maybe gathering clues by interpreting his body language. This was probably how she intended to learn enough to communicate with them unless…
Unless there is magic at work. I need to make some elixir of true sight…
He noticed her gaze on him. Obviously, his own caution had not escaped her and she was maybe trying to understand its reasons. He had gone against his own training in the ruins, bringing her directly to the Camp because his guts told him it was the right thing to do. Even if she wasn't human, he knew several demons who were better people than many humans and had helped the Resistance during the war.
As his eyes locked with hers he felt something, like a contact. His own mental defenses fell like a guillotine. She frowned and looked at him with… was that understanding? She started to draw again, two silhouettes, one of a man and another of a demented, tentacled shape.
"Alteras," she said, pointing the human shape, then herself. "Nefastus," she added pointing at the demented shape.
"What can she… Nefastus… like néfaste in French, something bad," said Alain.
"A demon," added Philippe.
She nodded in understanding, then pointed at herself, before crossing the tentacled shape. Philippe easily took the meaning and understood how she was about to learn their language so quickly. She was using the conversation to direct their thoughts and collect what she needed directly from their mind.
But if she can do that, why not a direct contact? Maybe…
"Alteras?" asked Philippe pointing at himself.
She shook her head and started to draw again. A silhouette with a cane, made to look elderly. Another that looked like a child.
"Alteras," she said, pointing at the old person on the drawing, then at them with one hand while the pencil was on the child.
Yes, we're different species and she's afraid to fry our brains if she contacted us directly.
"Human," he said, pointing the child on the drawing.
Her hand brushed his and he felt again a contact, except this time, it wasn't mental. Yet, he was certain she was doing something, something magical.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Vril…" she pointed back to her first drawing, looking obviously frustrated.
They brought her warm clothes so that she could join them in the common room, as the infirmary was more than cramped with all of them. Of course, the three other members of the expedition joined them, Nigel with the now developed pictures.
They started to talk about what they were doing here, looking at her as she listened. It was as if her concentration diminished with time, her superhuman brain finding connections, reconstructing the rules of their language from what they said.
Still, one word was hammering Philippe's mind again and again: Vril. He knew that word all too well. Even before it became one of the concepts used by the theosophists of the nineteenth century, it was cited in several serious occult texts as an old word for a concept named chi, prana, ka, or, to use the one he was the most familiar with as an alchemist, Aether. The all-permeating fluid, the life force of the universe.
"My name is Ariana," she said after a while. "I thank you for saving me from my prison."
"You were imprisoned?" asked Georgie.
"Hmm… abandoned would be a better word. Left alone, the only Alteras on a world plagued with Nefastus."
"Philippe?" asked Alain, looking at him.
"There are ancient texts saying that the world did not start as a paradise… you remember that discussion we had about Lovecraft? He read those texts and decided to write about them. We call them the Old Ones and… it's not a very healthy subject. Suffice to say that they're gone and that there are people making sure to neutralize the crazies trying to bring them back."
"True," said Ariana. "Their powers were an insult to Reason itself and I am glad to know that they were banished from this universe. My people tried to fight them… but we lost. The last survivors have left this… how do you call the big band of stars in the sky?"
"The Milky Way," replied Samuel.
"Poetic… I like it," she replied. "In our last days, there were… a, not a fight… we were arguing. We had… servitors called Agyreas. We created them but our chiefs… they became angry when the Argyreas disagreed with our ways. They decided to destroy them but I was against it. I warned them and allowed them to flee… so they punished me by leaving me here."
"Are we the descendants of Argyreas," asked Marc, who remembered the drawing with the elder person and the child.
"No… I read Philippe's… life code and it's different. I know my creation."
She took back the notebook and started to draw again. This time, it was more intricate, like a portrait. The head she was drawing seemed human… except for one major trait: pointed ears.
"The ears are the easy thing… the chiefs insisted, so that we could easily distinguish them. But, there are other differences. We are… thinkers. Scientists. Argyreas are fighters. Stronger, faster. We made them for the war but it was too late. Humans are different and… I don't know. Maybe our life code mixed with this planet's life or maybe…"
"Maybe?" asked Georgie."
"Another group was left behind but… it was different. They left on their own, during the war."
"Were they fleeing?"
"No… the opposite. They… there are limits, things we refused to do. They thought… winning was more important. The Nefastus. We could feel they were bad, wrong. They… everything they touched became bad. Those who left… they decided to understand the Nefastus. Fight them with their own power. Contact with Saturn and his team was cut."
"Saturn?" asked Samuel with round eyes.
"You know the name?"
"Yes," replied Marc. "In our legends, Saturn was a god, associated with time."
"God?"
"A being you believe in and worship for protection," said Georgie.
Ariana rose and started to swear in her own language. Unsurprisingly after her use of the name Saturn, it sounded like some dialect of Latin. Tiny bolts of blue-white lightning started to dance between the fingers of her right hand. Seeing this, she immediately stopped her pacing and took a few deep breaths.
"Sorry," she said. "Ori… gods. This is a bad thing for us. Very long ago, before we came on Terra there was… a war among our people. My… parents' parents, they went in exile, because they would not submit to the Ori."
She sat back, suddenly looking very tired.
"Can I rest?" she asked. "Still… dormata… too long."
"Of course," said Marc. "The bed in infirmary is the best place. More private than our dorm."
On a nearby mountain, at the same time
"She scared me a little there," said Diana/Faith as she looked at the base. "I didn't realize she was that advanced."
"Pluto and Janus discussed the matter and they have a theory. According to it, the Alterans were in their golden age when they reached Earth. Vril users like Ariana were not unusual and they were often among the leaders of the Alterans. Of course, the Undying Curse the Old Ones released was tailored to target them more forcefully than others. Those who left with the city-ship… they were the broken remains of their people and despite all their efforts in the Pegasus galaxy, they never recovered the greatness they had before the Old Ones, even after they Ascended," replied Minerva/Elizabeth, her smile becoming cruel with that last sentence.
"And we Olympians being 'mutants' who dabbled in the forbidden arcana of the Ori, we're kind of heretics for her, right?"
"She'll come around."
"Speaking of the city-ship… do you think it has survived?"
"It did. I… may have asked Vulcan for a spare ZPM and gone there while we were all prevented from doing anything on Earth during the Goa'uld invasion."
Atlantis, around 10'000 BC
Faith was looking by the window, looking at the submerged city and at the force field protecting it. Since the Council allied with the SGC, she had slowly gotten used to all that sci-fi stuff the Air Force had been doing. She still had some difficulty wrapping her mind around a few things. Sure, she knew about demon dimensions so being on a different planet was not that strange. The problem was that what had happened since she crossed the Stargate to go to Atlantis had managed to top her bizarre-o-meter against the war she participated in against the First Evil.
First, there were the Wraiths. It had taken half a second to notice that the aliens registered on her Slaydar. Even without that, the whole 'life force absorption' thing was a big giveaway. It just wasn't a thing non-magical beings do. Sure, they were not as strong or fast as vampires, but, unlike most of them, they had brains and routinely used weapons and starships. It had forced her to reevaluate a lot of things about how she fought. Had she been less… set in her ways, she may have been able to save more of the expedition's people.
Second, there were all the problems that needed science-y people to fix, like the fact Atlantis had been running out of energy when they reached it in 2004. Like the problem they had now.
She listened a little while as Elizabeth and that Alteran scientist called Janus talked. Thankfully, the translator earbud she wore was translating things into English. She just knew a few words of Alteran that Radek taught her… she wiped a tear away. Radek Zelenka had always been nice to her. He respected her and there weren't all those wounds that never really healed like with the Scoobies… but she hadn't been able to save him.
Know what they're talking about anyway… We're the only two survivors from the expedition because we used that Ancient DeLorean and just like McFly, didn't check the time machine's settings before reaching the 88 miles per hour. Got shot down by the Wraiths because right now, a shitload of years in the past, there is that war the Ancients lost against the Wraiths and that we found traces of in the twenty-first century. And now Doc Janus Brown is telling us that the morons of the Alteran Council destroyed this period's DeLorean, so we're stuck for good.
Sure, they were welcome to follow the Ancients as they went back to Earth. The tiny little problem would be that she would have to wait over ten thousand years to find a Starbucks. She listened distractedly as Elizabeth talked with Janus about the energy problem the city had in the future – or the present – she was getting a little confused on the matter. There was something about making manual adjustments on the mega-batteries Radek called a ZPM… every three thousand years.
There has to be something we can…
"Janus," said Elizabeth. "Faith will go with you and I will stay, use one of your coldsleep capsules to make the changes. It will give the expedition more time when it arrives."
"This… is possible," replied the Alteran. "But for such a long duration…"
Images from Back to the Future rushed in Faith's mind. Marty disappearing from the picture, then almost from reality because history changed. She already knew it didn't work like that, something about parallel realities branching out from what little she had retained of Janus' explanations. But then…
"Liz, that's bullshit," she cut in. "Suppose you stay and do that battery thingy. What good will it do? Earth will still be lost. The Wraiths will still be there. If there is one thing I learnt working with B and the Scoobies is that you have to think big and don't let the rules bother you."
"What do you suggest?" asked Elizabeth.
"The fucking Powers That Be," she replied, reigning in her temper. "We go back to Earth now and find a way to warn them, to tell them Wolfram and Hart is going to use that Grail thingy to kill them and then free the Old Ones. Then we have twelve thousand years to do something about it. Between you and me, we know a lot of what's supposed to happen and we have a good idea of what caused it."
"Janus? Is everything all right?" asked Weir as she noticed the strange face of the Alteran scientist.
"I have heard you talking several times about the Old Ones and noticed it was different from the term 'Ancient' you used for our people," he said, while calling a file on his lab's control computer. "Are these creatures familiar to you?" he added while a grotesque, vaguely arachnid thing appeared on the screen, soon followed by a whole gallery of monsters with demented shapes.
"Sure looks ugly enough to fit," replied Faith.
"When my ancestors visited Earth, those creatures that we call the Nefastus were there. Contact… did not end well. They released a bioweapon…"
"The plague that wiped out your civilization in the Milky Way?" cut in Weir.
"Yes. It was using methods we did not understand. Some of the victims… they mutated into this after clinical death," he concluded, making a bald, pale humanoid appeared.
"Übervamp… I mean a Turok-Han," said Faith. "Those methods, they're called magic."
"One of the most brilliant minds of the time said so but he was ridiculed and he and his research team stayed behind, trying to understand the enemy. Is the name Saturn familiar to you?"
"Like the planet?" asked Faith.
"Rather like the Titan we named the planet after and I think I understand. Saturn's team somehow managed to Ascend and our legends about the Olympians are about him and his team… I wouldn't be surprised if the Powers That Be are his descendants."
"Very well… I will help you to the best of my ability," said Janus. "But be aware that our project must stay secret. This… magic is still something many of my people refuse to consider."
"Nothing new here, pal," replied Faith. "Or old… well, whatever! So, what do we pack?"
Camp Diogenes, 1947
"Okay…" started Samuel. "We all saw those tiny electrical arcs on her hand?"
The men in the common room all nodded, including Marc who had just come back.
"Good… so either we all went crazy and had a collective hallucination or… honestly I don't know if her telling the truth is not worse."
"But… I can admit that the electric eel can generate a painful discharge but for visible arcs… her hand should be burned," said Abelard.
"It wasn't electricity," said Philippe, deciding that secrecy wasn't an option anymore. "She used the word Vril.""
"Isn't that some occult nonsense…" asked Georgie.
"If you refer to the things that reached the public, yes. But there is the real deal… the simplest applications are the things fakirs or kung fu masters do, controlling their own body in ways that seem impossible. Mesmerism, magnetism, if done correctly, they just brush the surface. But her…"
"What is she?"
"I may have an answer," said Nigel, the biologist. "She used the word Argyreas and her people seem to have influenced the Romans, between a Latin-like language and one of them being called Saturn. Anyway, Argyreas, that's near from Argyreum, which means silvery in Latin. If I remember my mythology correctly, there is something about 5 races of men, from gold to iron."
"In Hesiod," confirmed Abelard. "We have to remember that this is a relatively 'late' work. Philippe, anything in those occult books of yours?"
"Not about the Argyreas. There is a group of supernatural entities called the Powers That Be that often came up in the text. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Saturn's people. If you're wondering why… it's because the Old Ones aren't here anymore. Saturn won."
"On a more practical matter," said Samuel, "what do we do about her? Alain was right and this is the greatest discovery in decades but… listen, she seems like a nice woman and she looks like she trusts us. With the way things are going between the Yanks and the Commies… both sides will want what's in her head. You heard her when she spoke of those Argyreas: my creation. They will want her to mass produce Captain America for them. Really, I don't trust us to use what she knows wisely."
"But then what?" asked Abelard.
"We keep quiet," replied Georgie. "We all swear not to reveal anything and we help her to disappear. Philippe… you're the one with all the… shady contacts. Can you help her?"
"I can. The hardest part will be to get her past the Americans but I have some ideas."
"Good… do we all agree?"
The seven men looked at each other. They were scientists but they were also apolitical, almost an exploit in this year. They had all known the horror of war to some degree and they knew how bad the situation between the USSR and the USA was becoming. They realized that by revealing the secret they had discovered here in Antarctica too soon, they risked losing it for good.
One by one, they swore.
Aboard the Southern Star, 1947
Ariana stretched with delight as she felt the warmth of the sun on her skin. Sure, there was a part of her bitching about the primitiveness of their vessel, an ugly can of steel burning some kind of mix of organic molecules to power itself. She was doing her best to keep it quiet. She had received first contact training and she had a whole new world to explore and societies to study. Also, those people saved her from her frozen pseudo-death.
That and Philippe is very handsome…
She fought down a shiver and looked at the sea, letting the dancing pattern of the waves calm her. As far as she knew, she was the last Alteran on the planet, maybe even in the galaxy. Yet, the legacy of her people survived. With a month to discreetly study the humans who saved her, she had come to the conclusion that them being gen-engineered by Saturn's people was the most probable explanation.
Probably Prometheus… he created them as successors, creatures that could become the new Alterans given enough time… they are even similar enough for me to…
She blushed, her thought drifting again toward a certain handsome Frenchman. While all of the seven had been always civil toward her, there was a certain distance. She could guess why. They had been able to use their reason to accept her existence, but they would never feel fully comfortable near her, because of her powers. Philippe didn't have that problem.
He had been the one to help her get past those 'Americans', hiding her inside the equipment. The mind-altering substances he had used to make the crate she was hiding in completely uninteresting to the casual observer… They had proved her that the humans' knowledge of chemistry was not as limited as she had initially thought.
Correction, some people's knowledge.
"So, we're going to meet your friend in that city called Melbourne?" she asked, feeling his presence.
"Jacques? No, he is in Europe… pretty much on the other side of the planet. I will send him a telegram from there so that he can arrange for you to have all the legal documents you need."
"Right, you are still working with physical supports for most things. What's a telegram?"
"A mode of communication available to civilians. It's…"
He started to explain what he knew about telegraph, radio transmissions and Morse code, answering to the best of his ability her numerous questions regarding the history of those technologies and their impact on human society.
As she played with a lock of her hair, he started to smile.
Above them, completely invisible to the mortals around her, Venus of the Olympians smiled as a traitorous wave sent the Alteran into the human's arms. She nodded appreciatively as she noticed the level of synchronicity between their auras.
"Here, my little Ariana," she said softly. "You may not like us, and the Parcae know you have your reasons for that, but we will care for you. I give my blessing to your union with this man. You will heal his heart and he will give you bearings in this new world."
The goddess, still smiling, disappeared as Ariana basked in the warmth of the arms of a very flustered Philippe.