Disclaimer: No copyright is mine, thus no copyrighted character is. If you recognize them from something that's not written by 'Pale Wolf', I have no legal claim to them. Frankly I don't really own this prologue either, it's mostly writing up scenes as they appeared in the source material so the people reading this know roughly what's going on (well, the first scene's mine, at least).
The Shadow on the Other Side of the Mirror
By Pale Wolf
Prologue
So Close, Yet So Far Away...
-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-
The Stargate looked somehow forlorn. The alien device was covered in a tarp, for its planned shutdown. The rest of the base was no better off... it existed solely for the Stargate, after all.
Samantha Carter didn't really feel like looking at it. She just sat in one of the briefing room's chairs, waiting. Daniel must have been thinking of... a lot, as he stood, looking out the window at it. The Stargate... Sam loved it, but it was more than just that to Daniel. And to Teal'c, for that matter. For her it was work she loved... for them, though...
This shutdown was ill-advised... it was an ostrich burying its head in the sand and thinking the butcher didn't see it. They'd already pissed off the goa'uld in general, Apophis in particular, way too much to hope he was just going to leave them alone.
And despite the grand dreams of the President, the Stargate Program's first year hadn't brought back any magical superscience device to save the world.
All three of them looked up hopefully as their team leader, the older Colonel Jonathan (nobody called him anything but 'Jack') O'Neill, walked into the otherwise-empty briefing room, stepping up into the center of their group.
He rubbed his chin, sighing, and shook his head. "... Hammond's given up. They're gonna bury the gate. Day after tomorrow."
Sam took a deep, slow breath. That... was it, huh?
Teal'c straightened up. "Then I must return through the Stargate as soon as possible." Back to his homeworld... Samantha understood. Just because the United States was bowing out of this war didn't mean it was over. He still had his responsibilities to take care of. Of course, the shutdown ordered by Senator Kinsey had been proceeding without consideration for 'details' like that... Hammond would authorize it, though.
"Yes," Daniel agreed. "We all should go through the gate as soon as possible."
"Whoawhoawhoa," Sam interrupted. "Go through? To where?"
"To the coordinates I got in the other reality."
Sam wasn't really sure what to think of that story Daniel had spun, but he had come home with an energy-weapon-blasted arm and a whole lot of panic. ... Though seriously, her and the Colonel? That was... that was... certainly something. And yes, she found that part more mind-boggling than the 'travelled to an alternate reality in time to witness an alien attack conquering or destroying Earth'.
"Daniel, dammit-!"
"Jack! It was real." They stared one another down for a moment.
Sam frowned. "Hey, even if it was, how do we know that that address correlates with this reality?" Just because it had been the staging point for an attack in one possible arrangement of events didn't mean it had to be the case every time.
Daniel shrugged. "Well... there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"
Teal'c nodded calmly. "We should enter the coordinates and attempt to open the gate."
Daniel nodded. There was a moment of silence as they all chewed on that.
"Okay, wait, hold on." Sam rubbed her forehead. "Has anyone considered that we would be in gross violation of orders?" She looked up at O'Neill. "Sir, we would be court-martialed the second we got back."
"If." The Colonel sat down. "If we got back."
Daniel looked sharply at him. "Jack, if we don't go through, what I saw in the other reality could happen here. This whole planet could be wiped out."
It wasn't like they didn't already know that. Still... it was worth repeating, and repeatedly chewing on, until the planet wasn't facing annihilation.
Daniel let that sink in for a bit before continuing. "Now... in the other reality, by the time I left, Sara was dead." He eyed O'Neill... probably not quite sure how the man would take the mention of his ex-wife. "Carter, your whole family was dead... Hell, I was dead. Everyone was dead."
O'Neill interrupted before Daniel could continue. "Daniel, I get it!"
"Okay! Well don't you think we should see if we can stop the same slaughter from happening here?" O'Neill met his eyes for a moment, and then turned away. "... Let me ask you something, Jack. If we don't go through now. And the gould do attack later... How are you gonna feel?"
O'Neill snorted, standing up and turning to look out the window, at the covered gate.
Sam shook her head. "... How are just the four of us going to stop the attack anyway? Even if we do go through?"
O'Neill rubbed his eyes.
"Well, we'd have a lot better chance now, than we would trying to stop an overwhelming onslaught later. Trust me, I have seen it."
Teal'c spoke up. "If the coordinates are for a goa'uld world which is not on the Abydos cartouche... the goa'uld will most likely not expect us. ... I believe a medical attack could be successful."
"Surgical attack, Teal'c," O'Neill corrected with a sigh. "It's called a surgical attack, and I'd feel like an idiot."
Carter blinked, looking up. "... Sir?"
O'Neill turned around. "Was answering Daniel's question. ... If we don't do something now, and they do attack later, I'd feel like an idiot."
He took a moment to think it over... and then nodded to Daniel. "We go."
Teal'c stood... Sam craned her neck up. When he was on the ground it was always so much easier to forget how big he was... "I, too, will go."
Slowly, the eyes of all three men turned to Samantha.
O'Neill paused for a moment. "... It's not an order, Captain."
She nodded. "... I understand that, Colonel. Thank you." ... Screw it. Better to be court-martialed than caught on the ground. "I'm going." She stood up.
Jack clapped his hands together. "All right, let's get our gear. We're not gonna have time to turn around, so be sure to pack your floss and spare undies."
Daniel sighed. "Jack..."
Carter had to agree, silently. Not one of his best.
"Hey, they can't all be gold."
-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-
"Why...?" Selain Meneth's expression didn't change, but she certainly felt like cringing as the young man's voice came over the tactical radio. It was a violation of protocol, but nobody had the heart to tell him off for it. Not now. "Why does this have to be happe-?"
The sudden end of the transmission marked the death of Master Sergeant Ryusei Date at the hand of his former commanding officer. Selain swallowed. For all he'd done, he deserved so much more...
Her hands moved over the controls of her RGV-30 Randgrid. He'd bought time for Selain's unit to come into position to receive the oncoming enemies. He may have deserved a better end than he'd received, but he certainly deserved better than to have his sacrifice wasted because she was mooning over things she couldn't change.
To the left, the blocky, green-painted, vaguely humanoid forms of the rest of her team braced, as she was doing, settling the long cannons over their right shoulders to face downrange. Neither the enemy, nor the Tesla-Leicht Institute they were protecting, was within visual range, but the massive breadth of today's battlefield was well within their sensor capabilities. There was more or less nothing here... a large swathe of Colorado was uninhabited to allow the top-secret research facility to do its work, and the terrain in this area was arid and rocky, the only feature was whether the rock was flatland or mountain or canyon.
They'd been doing this long enough they didn't need orders. They preferred them just the same, and so all waited until Lieutenant Brookside's taut, "Fire."
Four fingers tightened on the triggers near-simultaneously, and the Randgrids shook as their immense cannons fired a single round apiece, each one tearing across the desert at twenty times the speed of sound. The range was around ten kilometers, but they were recieving targeting telemetry from a unit to the front, and with the projectiles semi-guided, hits weren't impossible... Just difficult.
Seconds after firing, a single one of the oncoming Gespensts vanished from Selain's screen. It had been the one she was targeting. The remainder had been able to evade, or sustain the damage... as the tactical update came in, she nodded. One more glancing hit, from Lindsay Abbott, but the machine was still coming.
As were its thirty-four compatriots. And that one next-generation machine, coming up behind his subordinates after having dealt with the unit slowing them down. Luckily, that one, at least, was a slug next to his Gespenst Mark Two units, and didn't seem inclined to tell them to slow down and wait for him.
"Guh... this's gonna suck..." Lindsay.
Jacob Whey chuckled. "Could be worse. The amount breaking through the outer lines could be a lot more than thirty-six."
"Startin' to envy those outer lines..."
"Stow it," Selain interrupted. "They're not stopping while you chat."
Their machines finished reloading, and all four fired in unison once more. Two more blips disappeared off the radar - one previously unscratched one hit by Jacob, and Selain finished off the damaged one.
Jacob snickered over the radio. "Relax, my finger ain't slowin' down on the trigger. I don't plan to leave this life with anything left unsaid."
"Waitwaitwait!" Lindsay yelped. "I don't plan on leaving this life at all!"
Albert Brookside sighed. Selain could practically hear the elderly Lieutenant shaking his head. "Well, if we can all agree on that..."
Another round of shots. They were getting very close now, two more fell by the wayside.
Selain's finger shifted on her control stick. "Bandits are well in range for missiles. Alpha Strike them, sir?"
"Mm... negative. Wait to range 5k."
"Oy, boss, that's optimal range for their Splits," Jacob noted.
Selain nodded, shifting finger back to the trigger as the four fired another set of rounds. "They'll be distracted and might let ours in."
"Ah, what the hell. We're just buying time for the next team anyway." Jacob's machine shifted slightly, the top hatch on the shields over each arm opening up. "Next round, yeah?"
"You got it," the Lieutenant confirmed.
Lindsay sighed. "Lav-3, prepping for Alpha Strike." Her Randgrid's feet shifted on the rocks, positioning her machine to absorb the recoil of a full barrage
Selain tapped a few controls, tying her Randgrid's long-range missiles to the trigger, and allowing them to lock on. "Lavender-2, Alpha Strike ready. This next round is going to be the merge. You won't have time to say anything else, Jake, so get it done now."
"Ah, shit, don't rush a man!"
There was a sudden blur on their screens, and the radar blips suddenly fuzzed, as the Randgrid's computers lost an accurate track on the locations of each Gespenst, and began 'guessing' from what it could pierce of their jamming.
Selain tsked. "Forward UAV's splashed."
"Uh, one small step for...?"
"Laaaaaaaame," Lindsay declared... and the forward Gespenst line hit the arbitrarily decided five kilometer line in the Colorado soil.
From each Randgrid's shoulder, in quick succession, five large MLM-32 'Matrix' missiles shot out, the shields closing as soon as they were empty. As the fourty missiles tore ahead, fanning out, the four Randgrids fired their cannons for what was probably the last time of this engagement. Barely a second later, the missiles all reached terminal range, and split open, releasing their sub-munitions - four smaller, more maneuverable missiles, each locking in on the targets designated by their firing machine, and spiraling around the particle beam blasts as the Gespensts attempted to shoot them down.
The enemy line was only barely in visible range, and it would have made for a pretty light show, as pink beams fired up from the ground, highlighted against the mountains beyond them, and little sparks of flame twisted around them, diving for the barely visible shadows they were targeting. With the setting sun to light it all in red... But people were dying out there... and more people would die if they didn't.
The Gespenst's MP-23 particle rifle was built for anti-vehicle combat, not shooting down missiles, so it wasn't a surprise that they experienced limited success in shooting down the highly agile Matrix sub-munitions - it was more of a surprise that one of them actually managed it once.
Between the electronic countermeasures, the agility of the Gespensts, and the skill of the pilots, Selain only expected a hit rate around twenty percent, and sure enough, that number was borne out as, amid the wild maneuvering, thirty-one small missiles approached their targets on a good course.
Then the Skynet defensive system kicked in, firing small, contained blasts of metal fragments at the oncoming missiles.
Given the amount incoming all at once, and the fairly narrow area it was coming in on, the activated Skynets couldn't shoot down more than four of the Matrix sub-munitions each before they hit the Gespensts.
The armour was fairly tough, so they'd focused fire on one unit apiece. Fifteen missiles finally hit, after a single wild second, slamming into the Gespensts' thick armour plates... The Lieutenant's target, and Jacob's target, both fell to the ground, wreathed in explosions. Lindsay's target, and Selain's, remained intact, though with scorched holes all over their dark blue paint.
The cannon fire had been more successful, blotting out three more Gespensts.
"Splash five Beowulves, I repeat, splash five Beowulves!" Brookside called out, as he began maneuvering.
The enemy units hadn't been idle, themselves. Twenty-eight had survived until the five kilometer mark, and though only twenty-three survived to the four-kilometer mark, all twenty-eight had had ample time to pull the trigger.
Each unit fired three MMM-12 'Split' missiles from the packs on their back. The Split was similar to the Matrix, but shorter-ranged, slower to reach the target. The four sub-munitions released at terminal phase were equal, though.
As the cloud of warheads spread above them... it became apparent that Brookside's maneuvering was for naught.
All three hundred and thirty-six dove straight for Jacob's Randgrid. "Ah, shit!"
Jacob was a better pilot than any of the Beowulves. The Randgrid was nowhere near as agile as the Gespenst, but when you added in the far, far superiour jammers equipped by the Lavender squad, only thirty of the original three hundred managed to keep up with the rapid sidestepping, and near-pirouettes performed by Jacob's clunky-looking machine, the others detonating in midair, on the ground, fireballs blotting Jacob from view and radar as the Skynet protecting his own machine engaged...
There was a thunderous boom, and fragments of metal flew out of the firestorm, pelting Lindsay and Lieutenant Brookside's machines.
Selain swallowed, trying to get past the dryness in her throat. "... Lavender-4 is down. Sunfire." The brevity code for a reactor containment breach. "... No chute."
"TLI, where the hell is our backup?" Brookside roared into the radio.
A woman's calm voice came over. "Stand by, Lavender. We've got another incoming missile wave, Avalon's tied up intercepting it. Defensive line is shrinking now, Knox will be there to back you up in five minutes."
"We're not going to have that kind of time," Selain noted, watching the incoming Gespensts.
"TLI, the breach came way too fast! That's not going to be soon enough."
"Roger. I'll dispatch reinforcement your way, hold out as long as you can."
Brookside tsked, closing the line. "In other words everyone else is just as screwed as we are and there ain't backup to spare, so we're on our own."
"... Good," Lindsay muttered. "I wouldn't want to get bailed out before getting a crack at them for killing Jake."
"... Might be the first time we're in agreement," Selain noted, bringing up the shorter-ranged weapons held in her Randgrid's hands. M-13 fragmenting cannon (the colloquials insisted on calling it a mech-scaled shotgun) in the right, CCS-3 incision knife in the left.
"Phht." Brookside stepped up to join the pair of them. "I sure as shit don't want to die praying for backup while the women protect me."
Range three kilometers. The Gespensts opened fire with their particle beam rifles. Essentially as soon as they'd pulled the triggers, twenty-three narrow, relativistic beams of hydrogen crossed the Colorado Desert.
The Lavender team's preemptive separation, each sidestepping in a different direction, shook off most of them, only two beams hit each unit.
Each beam's means of dealing damage was to superheat the armour, causing it to vaporize under the impact. On the Randgrid's anti-beam armour, that was... not impossible, but near enough. Certainly impenetrable to the MP-23.
The heat rapidly conducted throughout the entire frame, spreading, but weakening as it spread until it wasn't enough to even mildly cook the armour, and then radiating away. Small, centimeters-sized flakes of armour vaporized under the impacts, before the heat reached the conductive skeleton and was dissipated.
There was a momentary waver in the Gespenst maneuvers, before they put away the rifles and accelerated. They must have used up the last of their missiles taking out Jacob... with their primary ranged weapon ineffective, they seemed to have realized they were going to have to close to short range.
That was when Selain's team opened up with the shotguns, calmly settling the rounded, red-visored, blue-painted frame of a Gespenst into her sights, squeezing the trigger, and reacquiring the target to fire again. It took her about three shots to take down a Gespenst. All hit, but it took some work to get through the Gespenst's armour plate. "Shack on... shack on... splash one."
... Well, Selain was calm, and the Lieutenant was fairly professional. Lindsay was yelling incoherent, and most likely impolite, words and pulling the trigger as fast as it'd cycle.
"Abbot!" Brookside barked, as they continued laying down a pattern of fire. "Don't flip out! Splash one!"
"Sorry sir! Uh, splash two!"
"Splash one, we have merge in three," Selain reported, as her next target - one of the ones pitted by the missile strike - took several metal fragments through the holes in its frame, reactor blowing it apart a moment afterward.
The Gespensts were in point-blank range now. Another shot from Lieutenant Brookside cut one in half, and then the remaining seventeen came for them. Evenly split, six for each (well, five for Brookside, as he'd just killed his sixth).
The three stakes on the Gespensts' left arms were glowing a brilliant blue as plasma wrapped around them... and Selain lost track of the others as she was surrounded.
Her hands danced over the controls. Her Randgrid's left arm came up as the first plasma stake came in. Slip the knife between the stakes, and... Gespenst's arm was trashed, sliced right down the middle. She brought the right leg up, and spun around, kicking it back. She could finish it, but it had just lost its primary weapon and she had bigger fish to fry.
Like that one that had connected with the stake, in the thick armour over her cockpit. It began melting through, so she brought up the shotgun and blew its head off. Wasn't going to kill it, but it was blind for a second as the backup sensors kicked in.
She used that second to snap her Randgrid's arms together, catching its arm between them, and lever the Gespenst around to block the next four from getting into the tangle with her immediately.
While carving it up with her Randgrid's knife, she began firing the shotgun as they attempted to get around the obstruction. Two shots... another one down, but she didn't have the breath to report it.
"Gah!" came Lindsay's voice. Selain only had a second to glance over to her Randgrid - pinned between three Gespensts and their plasma stakes holding her machine up in the air, with two more lying in tatters on the rocky ground beneath her - before she growled, "Initiating Code Ash to Ash!"
The Randgrid's self-detonation vaporized the artillery mech. Nothing would be left for the Beowulves to learn from. The three Gespensts, themselves, were too close to her, and fell back, destroyed or disabled... either way, they weren't moving anymore.
Selain gritted her teeth, turning back to her remaining four. She continued backing away as they approached - it gave her enough time to get another one down with the shotgun (unfortunately, it seemed to be the one whose arm she'd wrecked), before having to pin her knife into the torso of another to keep it away. She pumped the trigger twice, blowing its lethal left arm off, and used the hardened blade to swing it around in front of the last two.
"Shit! Sorry Selain, I'm trashed, ejecting now!" A glance showed Brookside's machine had taken a pounding, with chunks of armour blown off, the reactor exposed... His cockpit block tore loose, rapidly flying away, as the self-destruct sequence counted down.
Or... it should have. As soon as it hit the air, the nearest Gespenst's Skynet system turned, taking aim and lacing the ejection system with fragments of metal.
The Skynet normally, as built by the factory, specifically excluded ejection systems from their auto-targeting. The Beowulves... had a different setting.
Selain growled, and slashed down with the knife, carving her 'shield' Gespenst's cockpit in two as Albert Brookside's Randgrid detonated, taking the unit that had killed him with it.
Fine. She could live with that. Six remaining Beowulves from the leaker unit. She doubted she could kill them all, especially not with the commander coming up behind, but she could get a few, her short-range Phalanx missiles should be good for at least one or two - get in close, and set off her own self-destruct. She might even catch the commander with her.
But even as she began planning this, a blue glow surrounded her. "What?"
The woman from TLI came on the line. "Sorry for the wait, Lavender Platoon. We've got Lykeios active, and are picking up the defensive units." She sighed. "... Don't die just yet. You held the line. Vindel has jumped with Aguieus, we're at ten minutes to the final jump. You've got a billet on Avalon waiting for you."
Selain closed her eyes as the Gespensts attempting to attack her vanished. Or rather, as she vanished, the desert disappearing around her. Held the line... that was all Ryusei Date had gotten, and that was all her team was going to get.
... In times like these, that was pretty good.
-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-
Jack O'Neill was starting to wonder if this was going to become a habit. Captured by Ra... three years of retirement later, captured by Apophis... less than a year after that captured by his young friend Skaa - no, Klorel. Skaara was in there, but right now, the alien Klorel, son of Apophis, was in control.
It would be really nice if he could go a year without landing in some manner of dire straits. Just... for variety.
Teal'c walked behind him, and Ska-Klorel ahead. He wasn't armed, but that wasn't really what was stopping him from grabbing Klorel and beating him around until the pain made him release Skaara - for all that Klorel was armed, superhumanly strong, and of a race that had apparently been mistaken by early Earth cultures for gods, Jack O'Neill was, without bragging, the best, and he knew it. It was because he tried to pull insane stunts that he pulled them off so often.
Nah, the reason Jack wasn't giving Klorel a lesson in unarmed combat had less to do with Klorel himself, and more to do with the very large number of his father's Serpent Guard surrounding them. Who dares wins and all, but there was a limit, and no point in suicide. Not when a better opportunity would arise. And they always did.
The group filed through a thin opening, and came out in a familiar room - they'd just been there a while earlier. Gaudy as hell, covered in gold plating, thousands of hieroglyphs all across the walls... Apophis seriously needed to fire his interior decorator. The guards filed in behind them, taking up spaces around the bridge.
Jack barely glanced in their direction, filing their locations away for future reference. Seven total. Three in full armour, four not wearing that gigantic snake-shaped helmet, they'd be easier targets when the time came. And they were carrying the much more compact and dangerous zatni... zatke... zats. The zats were nonlethal, but Jack had done enough corridor fighting to know those long-ass staves would be spectacularly unwieldy, even in the gaping corridors of this ship (honestly, they were unwieldy in open space, he far preferred Earth weapons). Conveniently, they were also the closest - two helmeted guys holding their staffs in a pretty motionless parade position at the back of the bridge, one more along the right side behind Klorel and his prisoners, with an uncovered one beside him, and a pair of guards lacking the helmets on both the left side of the bridge, and the right side.
And he continued following Klorel in, glancing outside the window at the crazed swirls of hyperspace. Klorel moved to the front of the bridge, and came to a stop, turning around and looking O'Neill up and down. "You wish to go home to your planet?" That reverberating voice the goa'uld used was always a delight to the ears...
Jack frowned slightly, eyeing Klorel. How much control was Skaara exerting...? Was he going to let them go? "Of course."
Klorel turned to one of his father's Serpent Guard. "Jaf'fa. Rel toc remoc."
The metal-armoured soldier in question stepped up to one of the spheres in the room - the goa'uld ship's bridge - and laid a hand on it, as Jack and Teal'c watched. It began to glow faintly.
"O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up. "Prepare yourself for-"
The room suddenly leapt forward, the floor bucking under him and sending him hurtling forward into the console to the front (also gold, of course).
"... extreme deceleration."
Jack came back up, rubbing his forehead. "Yeah. Thanks, Teal'c." Well... he had a hard head, he'd be fine. A little more brain damage couldn't hurt.
... As he came up, he saw out the window. Klorel stepped up beside him, clasping his hands on the console. ... He'd never actually seen Saturn from this side before. He'd probably have appreciated the view, if he weren't aboard an alien attack vessel about to destroy all that he held dear and all.
Klorel smirked, glancing at him. "You will get to see your home... one last time. Before you, and everyone on your planet, are destroyed. And your kind... will disturb the goa'uld... no more."
O'Neill... simply stared out the front window as Saturn passed by. Mostly because he needed to hide the smirk until he could get it under control. That huge gold front panel was just a little reflective, and he could see a distorted, black-clad image at the back entrance of the bridge.
Every situation gets better. Though when this was all said and done, he was so going to need to remind Carter to stay low when she was being sneaky. It was apparently not really necessary, as the Serpent Guard clearly hadn't spent anywhere near as long as he had doing special forces work, but still. It was just good form, and the student reflected on the teacher.
Since Carter and Daniel hadn't gotten caught yet... hm. After she scoped out the situation, she'd duck back out. Plan a bit, and then make her move. Best way to run the rescue would be... tossing in a flashbang, he was sure he'd packed some. Then go in gunning when everyone was blind, disoriented, and ears ringing. He'd have to time closing his eyes to avoid getting blinded... the ears, he was going to have to suck up.
Her reflection vanished from the panel, and he let himself relax a bit. The snakes might not be as good as he was, but enough time and even the really unobservant can see things. He let his body hang loose. Was going to need to move soon to support them, a seven-to-two fight was a little much to leave to them.
Fifteen long seconds passed before he heard a faint rattling. Grenade pin. Then... that was the sound of a grenade rolling against metal. Bit faint, outside the bridge. Different plan than he'd thought. He'd have to improvise.
Hiss of smoke... and then three of the Serpent Guard thumped out of the room to check on the sudden source of noise and smoke.
The sounds of rapid nine millimeter gunfire were not even slightly surprising... well, to him, though Teal'c jolted around rather quickly - kind of gratifying to be able to outshine Teal'c every so often, after the man's demonstrations of tracking skills. It took a few seconds of intermittent fire to teach them their proper place in this solar system (dead and/or dying).
And then Carter came in through the door, gun up, and laced the first unhelmeted guard she saw with gunfire - that was the one on the middle left side of the bridge, near where Jack was.
He fell back after a short five-round burst, and Carter moved further in, taking cover behind the sarcophagus that dominated the bridge.
Jack, for his part, simply noted as the guard nearest to him decided to turn around start trying to shoot Carter.
Never one to let decency restrain him, he swung his leg around in a short arc that terminated right between the man's legs. There was an armour plate there, but he'd still feel it. Swing both fists down as he crumpled over in pain from the first...
Daniel came in the door next, wielding two pistols... oy. And Jack's thought about those staff weapons was proven true, as a helmeted guard sucked up something like half of both magazines and fell over onto his back before he could even bring the long thing's business end around in Danny's general direction.
Daniel ducked to the far wall of the bridge, taking cover behind one of those huge gold pillars just as one of the guards began firing his zat at him. Daniel crept out from behind the pillar and began exchanging fire with the man... scoring headshots, but they kept deflecting off that damned skullcap the man was wearing. Not only decorative after all, just mostly.
Teal'c simply walked up to Daniel's opponent, punching him in the face and apparently more or less knocking him out. A little sourly, O'Neill finished off his own.
Carter continued exchanging fire with the last one, on the middle right, but she didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Teal'c stepped up to him when she was ducking to reload, grabbed his arm and spun under it, and planted an elbow in the man's face. Then a left cross while he staggered.
Daniel moved up to the sarcophagus, trying to get to O'Neill's position... and then Klorel made his presence known, grabbing the archaeologist's vest in his right hand, raising the left with its golden glove thing, as it began glowing orange... the torture ray function. Daniel slowly fell to his knees.
Fortunately, one of his guns had skittered near to Jack. Jack grabbed it, bringing it up. "Skaara!"
The Abydonian boy didn't even glance in his direction. Smirking.
Jack's aim with the handgun wavered slightly. ... He didn't want to do this. Skaara had reminded him of his own son... "Skaara, don't!"
The possessed boy leaned forward, not paying attention to anyone but Daniel.
"O'Neill! You must take action!" ... Teal'c didn't want to watch Daniel die either.
And right now, he had to choose. But Skaara... he didn't even know if there was hope for him. A long moment passed... he hoped not too long for Daniel... before he smoothly squeezed the trigger twice.
Skaara falling to the ground was... anticlimactic, but that was just what guns did. No big show, they just killed you. Daniel clutched to the sarcophagus to stay up.
... The room was clear. O'Neill put down the pistol, and moved to Skaara's body, rolling him to face up. "... O'Neill..." ... At least he was back for his final moments.
"Skaara... I'm sorry." At least, for once, he got the chance to apologize to someone he'd failed so completely.
The boy tried to smile... and then his eyes shut.
Teal'c's voice came. "Colonel O'Neill."
"... Yeah, give me a second here." It wasn't that he wasn't used to losing people... but he preferred to at least have a few seconds to mourn.
"I cannot."
Fine. Jack looked up, and out the window. ... That was Earth. The rest of SG-1 slowly stood, moving to look out the window.
"I thought you said we couldn't be there for at least a year." Daniel seemed to be back up.
Carter shook her head. "... I guess the ship can go way faster than ten times the speed of light..." She looked back at O'Neill. "Colonel, we saw the Death Gliders. They're prepping for launch, sir."
O'Neill took a deep breath. Mourning time was over, or a whole lot more people were going to die. "Captain Carter?"
"Sir?"
"Were you able to put enough C-4 around the ship to make a dent?"
She nodded. "We placed charges where they should generate secondary explosions, so... yes sir. Should make a hell of a dent."
"Thank you, Captain."
"... Given enough time, I might be able to figure out..." The controls to the ship, he presumed.
"Negative." He paused a moment, then realized he needed to explain. "We should expect some of their reinforcements through that door any second." He shook his head. "Stand by to detonate your charges, on my order."
"Yes sir."
"Wait!"
Oh, for the love of... "Daniel! If we don't stop them now, we may never stop them."
He nodded, fumbling in his pack. "Yeah, I know that..." He pulled out a block of C-4, moving around to the front of the bridge console and planting it. "Let's just make it as big a dent as possible. Okay?"
Wow. Had Dannyboy become a half-decent soldier while Jack wasn't looking? Jack simply nodded.
Carter set the detonator. "... Ready and awaiting your order, sir." She looked up at him.
"Okay..." He took a breath. "Well, I suppose now is the time for me to say something profound."
A long pause as he tried to think of just what he could say to the people who were going to blow up this ship to save Earth... while they were on it. Something to hold to their heart when they sacrificed their lives...
He shook his head. "Nothing comes to mind. Let's do it." Nothing good enough for these people.
Carter just blinked, nodding.
Teal'c paused, turning to him. "O'Neill. Apophis's ship approaches." The large pyramidal shape drifted into view through the window ahead of them.
"... We overheard in the gate room. He said he would rejoin Klorel 'once they came out of the shadows'," Daniel noted.
Jack frowned. "... Teal'c. If we can knock out this ship, will it stop them?"
Teal'c simply shook his head. "It will not. Apophis's vessel is equipped with defense shields. He will still be able to destroy your cities from high above."
Thumping came at the locked door. Well... the reinforcements were here. Jack thought fast. "Tell me those C-4 charges are on automatic timer."
Carter nodded. "They're on automatic timer."
"Good. How long do we have?" He glanced down at his watch.
"Twenty-four hours."
"... Twenty-four hours?"
Carter shook her head. "At the time, sir, I still thought we were light years away."
The thumping intensified. "Just a minute!" Could barely hear himself think over all that racket, he'd really appreciate if the bad guys could be polite once in a while. He turned back to his team. "Teal'c. Work with me, buddy. Is there any other way out of here?"
"... None." And the doors began to whine open, slowly...
O'Neill tsked. "Take cover." They slipped behind the various projections of the bridge, as the door continued to be pulled open. "This is turning out to be a bad day..."
SG-1 opened fire as soon as the door was open enough. Jack emptied the pistol he'd borrowed from Daniel, and they fired several zat-blasts through the door...
It was pretty confused on the other side back there, he was pretty sure a few fell back... not enough, though. A large ball was lobbed through the door, rolling up to where Jack took cover. And then it flared with brilliant, painful white light.
Yyyyyuuuuup. Bad day.
-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-
It was night now. The sun had finished setting... There was only one feature visible for kilometers of desert and plateau - a facility, comprised of a tower, a number of outbuildings, and a sprawling hangar area. With a single machine standing at the eastern tip of the hangar. Simply looking to the east.
The EG-X Soulgain was a huge hunk of metal, a blue humanoid construction twice the already-impressive height and around four times the size of the Randgrid or Gespenst. White blades curling back from the forearms, and over the head. Green... he tried not to think of them as gems... scattered over its outer surface.
The red-haired, white-clad pilot Axel Almer had no idea what at least half of this thing did, it was an experimental prototype based off an already-mysterious technology sample that he'd frankly just grabbed a crash course on. His old unit was already trashed and nothing else they could spare was likely to even slow down the special unit. The weirder aspects of the control scheme would probably be months for him to master... combining the body frame control and the way the entire cockpit was a screen, it was almost more like becoming the mech than piloting it.
Axel was the last man standing guard, alone. Everyone else... was either loaded aboard the Arks, dead, or had chosen not to risk this one, last-ditch escape, and had already scattered. Axel wished them the best, but... he doubted they'd live out the year.
"Axel, the only ones left are us," she noted, the communicator displaying her face. His... his 'it's complicated', Lemon Browning.
He restrained the urge to run a hand through his hair - Soulgain would mimic it, and it would just look utterly humiliating. "I'll say it again, the odds are against us."
She shook her head. "Well... I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the other side."
"Are you serious? Don't tell me it's because of that thing of yours."
Lemon laughed. ... It suited her. He kind of wished she did it more often. "Perhaps."
Axel gnawed on his lower lip. "... You do know, even if you make it to the other side-"
"I know," she interrupted. "I'm not expecting anything. I'm just curious. That's all."
Axel frowned. She'd never explained her reasons... their relationship wasn't really one where they could casually ask each other things like that.
"Anyway..." she decided to fill the silence. Neither of them liked silence. "You've got to trust the Numbers we've sent ahead. Those children will arrange everything for us."
Axel tsked. "... I've said all I plan to about those dolls. Human fate should be decided by humans."
She seemed to be drawing breath to say something, but seven blue lights became visible over the mountains in the distance. Drive flares from the incoming enemies... typical. He hadn't bothered to wait for the rest of his forces to catch up, he'd gone ahead with what remained of his breakthrough team. She turned to her own display, and the hologram of her face shifted in his cockpit, so as not to block battle data. "... Codename's the usual. Assault 1."
"Lemon. Go ahead with Vindel and the dolls." He shifted, taking up a battle stance. Soulgain mimicked him.
She blinked. "... What are you planning?"
He shook his head. "I hate running away with our tails between our legs. ... With that power of his, he'll be a threat to us. Or more than just us."
"It can't be that. You know he won't be able to follow us."
"I'm not so sure. You haven't forgotten how many times he's chased us down already? I want to finish this."
The machines in front of the drive flares now became visible. Six Gespenst Mark Twos... and a single heavier machine, massive blocky shoulders, a single long, bladelike horn stretching from its head. The Gespenst Mark Three.
Axel tsked. "Well... they're here. Those damned ghosts of the rotted Federation."
"Shadow... Mirror..." came the commander's deep, slow voice. Open transmission to anyone that would listen. "You... who spread hatred into the world... cannot escape..." His speech was even more broken up than it was the last time... as if he said half of any given statement, and then needed to collect his thoughts. "I would not exist... without being created... The world would not exist... without silence..."
Lemon frowned. "... What the hell is he talking about?"
Axel shook his head. "... He's gotten even crazier since the last time we fought."
He continued on. "You will never create... the world you wish for... I will pierce through it..."
Axel glanced at the readouts. ... All his units were emitting even more power... their reactors should be burning from the inside out, trying to generate that much. He opened a channel to the lead unit. "We are the ones who wished for eternal chaos, Beowulf. What the hell is it that you want? You've won. We'll find our victory on the other side of this defeat."
"Victory... defeat... such things are without meaning... You may only... be created or destroyed... that is all." He laughed... deep. Slow. Axel... had no idea what amused him so. "Creation and destruction... destruction and creation... Creation is destruction... the destruction of creation..." The Gespensts accelerated.
Axel closed the channel with a tsk. "I wonder if he even understands us anymore."
"Axel, what do you plan to do?"
"Same as I told you. Settling this once and for all."
"Wait..." She was so rarely at a loss for words.
Axel shook his head, sighing. "... Looking back, I should never have let him live. I had him in my sights... just couldn't kill an old teammate. But... he's dangerous. He may not even be human anymore."
"But we don't have time until Wonderland jumps."
"... There's enough for him to get into the hangar. Lykeios still has to charge up for the mass. I'll make sure we jump without obstructions."
Lemon pursed her lips. "... I never have been able to talk you out of something you've set your mind to. You said 'we'. I'm holding you to that." She shifted, presumably keying in commands. "We'll jump as soon as we get the charge. Last hundred and thirty tons are for you. It's set to jump immediately after charging, and self-destruct immediately after. Don't be late."
"Understood. Now go!"
"... Axel. There will be differences between this world and the next. Please don't forget, the same goes for Beowulf." She closed the channel.
Axel sighed. "... You're right, Lemon. But what if there's something else like Beowulf when we get there? What do we do then?" He braced. They were getting in damn close now. "... We can't run away twice. We won't survive it. So I need to know... I can handle him. Maybe not the whole damn Federation... but Beowulf."
He opened the channel to the enemy. "Beowulf. I'm getting out of this world. I plan to go alive. And... I'm taking your head with me, KYOSUKE NANBU!" He leapt forward, and a thought initiated the thrusters.
"... All units... spread out. Take him down." The Mark III Gespenst fell back, but the Mark IIs accelerated, opening fire with their particle beams.
Soulgain's armour wasn't anti-beam hardened, but it was still tough enough to suck up the first six shots without flinching. They only had time for one volley before he was among them.
At this point, it felt less like a battle, and more like a good old-fashioned brawl. He... Soulgain... grabbed the nearest one by its extended right arm, and swung it into the one next to it. A kick shattered another one of the smaller mechs.
"Destruction... silence..."
"Just shut the hell up, you damn freak!" Axel backhanded a Gespenst, sending the machine tumbling back and flying at Beowulf's Mark III.
The heavier midnight blue machine simply batted it away with its left arm. The Gespenst flew off to the side, crumpled into a useless heap.
Axel didn't let it bother him. Beowulf was probably letting his men get the measure of the unknown new unit Axel was driving, but as long as the real heavy hitter was being... chivalrous... there was a chance.
A Gespenst tried to drive its plasma stakes into him, but he held it back with an outstretched arm, and then crushed its head... there was a... squelching, and a grayish fluid dripped down.
"... I see Beowulf wasn't the only thing to get weirder." He kicked the trapped unit, crushing the cockpit. He wasn't specially trying to kill the Beowulves, but if they didn't eject, he wasn't going to save them. He didn't have anywhere near the advantage he'd need to be taking special nonlethal measures.
And then jerked Soulgain's elbow back, cracking the armour of that last Gespenst trying to sneak up on him. Spinning around and punching it sent it flying back... and that was it. "Beowulf! You're the only one left!"
The Mark III shifted in preparation for a charge.
Axel took the time to regain his bearings. "Sorry for the wait. I'll send you down to your subordinates, now."
"... Subordinates...? They're all the same... with the same body... artificial beings..." Beowulf laughed again. "I'll just... create... some more..."
Axel glanced at a readout. ... Seven minutes until charge. Everyone else should have left by now. This is going to be a close call either way. "All right, Beowulf... let's do this!"
"You will rot away with the Ark." Axel could imagine the smirk as he said that. And both machines accelerated at one another.
A short stream from Beowulf's left-arm autocannon connected with Axel's Soulgain, but he simply charged right through it.
His armour could take it, and... he swirled low as he cut off his charge, ducking below the stake on the Mark III's right arm, and trying to hit the legs. He connected, but only with the left leg, Beowulf had already stepped back with the right.
The Mark III spun, and Beowulf tipped it over to the side, using the left hand to spring off the ground rather than letting it turn all the way around - he was back up and jumping at Axel almost instantly.
Axel had his Soulgain jump, thrusters firing, carrying it over Beowulf in a flip, and tried to hammer a fist down onto the mech's head.
Beowulf shifted aside, taking the blow on the Mark III's blocky shoulders, and spun, landing his machine's heavy fist over Soulgain's hip.
Then the stake came in... Axel gritted his teeth, and only just managed to catch the arm by the fist. He punched while the primary close-combat weapon was locked up, but Beowulf managed to catch him.
The mechs stood, and then began firing thrusters... rather than escape, they'd simply try to overpower one another.
Axel grinned, showing teeth. Soulgain overclocked the Mk III, not just because of the greater size, and it was showing - Beowulf was beginning to edge back. Beowulf was good, and well-armed, but if he could keep it a wrestling match, Soulgain's size would tell. "Don't get cocky! I've got more power!"
"Press... through... Mark Three!" Suddenly, Beowulf's thrusters flared... and the arms began generating force far beyond what the Mark III's specs should allow. Soulgain began falling back.
Axel's eyes widened. That shouldn't have been possible... He'd memorized the Mk III's capabilities... "Not... done... yet."
He opened up... letting his machine suck up a bit of what made him... him. He didn't understand how the damn technology worked. Even the people who'd built it didn't comprehend it, they just copied systems. But however it did... it took power from the pilot.
"Seiryuurin!" He had no damn idea what the word meant, but the TLI engineers had installed that as the voice activation for that particular ability. And because of it... Soulgain's left arm flared, glowing blue, before a beam of blue light fired off it, through the Mark III's right arm. The entire forearm came off at the elbow.
Beowulf yelled... in... pain? That hadn't gone anywhere near the cockpit... He and Axel both leapt back. Beowulf to nurse his damage, Axel to cover the sudden burst of fatigue.
"Your right arm's just the start!" It should be all downhill from here... that arm was the primary weapon.
"Destroy... Create... Sleep..." Beowulf chuckled. "Shape... does not matter." Gray fluid trickled from the broken joint. "Is it there? Is it not?" Something... green... came from the hole. "Is the right side there? Is the left side there?" Green tendrils spun together, swelling out... and the arm looked as though it had never been damaged. Beowulf breathed heavily. And then the entire machine began to... change. Grow. Redden.
Axel stepped back... in his experience, machines did not do this. It didn't take very long... by the end, Beowulf stood at a truly immense two hundred meters tall, towering over Soulgain five times, blocking out the moonlight. Red light... 'leaked' from seeming holes and whorls in the... 'armour' wasn't really the word anymore. 'Carapace' was closer. Sharp angles... a long tail dropping to the ground behind it... standing on sharply clawed feet.
"... I knew it. You're more of a monster than a wolf. Is that the new power you've acquired, Beowulf?"
"To silence the world... to recreate it over... You are all incapable of becoming pure beings. It is me... Yes, only me!" The now-red... being... began to glow. Plates of the carapace separated, revealing a huge sphere of pale red light. A mere second later, that sphere became a beam... as wide as Soulgain was tall...
Axel was damned glad he'd rolled aside, as he saw the Mark III's... the former Mark III's... immense feet skidding back, digging out huge divots as it was pushed back under the recoil of the blast...
It connected with the hangar behind him... wiping out a kilometers-sprawling hangar, instantly. Axel whirled. "The loading bay!" No... the refugees should be out already. He hoped. There was no way to be sure. He turned back as the glow began building up once more.
... Unfortunately, he was still on the ground, and he wasn't fast enough to get up, only barely rolling aside. The multicoloured maelstrom of light slammed into Soulgain, and drove it down through the ground, through numerous layers of protection...
Soulgain burst through the last layer, hurting, but the blast had ended... Axel didn't manage to get the engines to kick in before he slammed into the metal floor of the immense underground chamber, but that impact didn't really hurt him any more than he already was. And the sheer emptiness of the chamber lifted his heart. At the far end of the vast metal emptiness, there stood four monoliths, arrayed in a circle around one another. Soulgain stood, cradling its head in mimicry of Axel. "Ugh... I avoided a direct hit, and one shot still blew me all the way to the underground launch chamber..." With a thought, he called up the desired display. "... Still 150 seconds before it activates. Have to protect Lykeios until then. Might even have to defeat him here..."
The ground shook. Axel could not just hear it, but feel it, even through Soulgain. Steady. Slow, heavy footsteps.
Axel continued to run through the displays, giving a final check on the work. "... Authorization code, OK. Detonation timer's set... Time lag, five seconds." Axel chuckled to himself. "This is going to be one hell of an explosion."
Mechs do not roar. Humans do not roar. Axel did not just hear that.
He looked up, seeing the huge shadow of Beowulf's machine standing at the hole driven through the Colorado soil. "You're here. Time for the last showdown."
"Those who disrupt the silence... will be corrected!" He began charging another blast of wild light.
Even as he fired, Axel fired Soulgain's thrusters, weaving around it as it carved a hole through the ground, and rapidly climbed up the kilometers to the top of the chamber. "Take this, and fall!" Axel didn't attack Beowulf himself. Instead, he swung Soulgain's fist into the metal plating above, the last bit that was supporting Beowulf's weight.
Beowulf grunted in surprise as his machine fell into the chamber.
Axel slowly hovered above him. "Beowulf... this underground launch chamber is where it'll come to an end."
Beowulf stood once more. "Will it be yours, or the world's?" He had a sudden intake of breath as his machine looked around. "Nothing... is here... Where... is the Ark I was going to silence?"
Axel smiled. "They jumped away. To the new frontier. Whether they made it or not... I don't know."
"Jumped away?"
Axel's smile simply widened. This was going to hurt. Both of them. "Limiter released." Normally Soulgain had locks on its system preventing it from draining him dry. Now... it didn't. He dove at Beowulf, thrusters firing, and his machine began glowing. "Let's go, Beowulf! Code... Kirin!" The forearm blades began shifting, lengthening, and glowing, as Soulgain drained him.
Beowulf looked up, shifting slightly. Its hulking shoulder suddenly snapped open. ... Normally, that contained a set of short-range mines, and it seemed like it still did. It just normally wasn't mounted on a hinge that looked like a jaw, surrounded by teeth, with fluid dripping from it that looked far too much like saliva for anyone's comfort. Beowulf barely shook as the small bomblets fired up at Soulgain.
The spread was too wide, he couldn't evade them... so he flew straight through, accepting whatever damage they did to Soulgain. Almost a quarter of the left side was blown off, the left half of the head was consumed in the impacts, alarms ringing... but he was through the barrage, and whipped Soulgain's forearm blades through Beowulf's machine even as he came down to the ground, tearing a large track over the center of the chest, revealing a yellow sphere as carapace fell away.
Axel had no idea what that sphere was, but it looked large and important. He was shifting to hit it when Beowulf's arm came up, and sent Soulgain flying back with a crushing blow.
Some quick thruster bursts, and while his fall wasn't really controlled, the large blue machine at least rolled and skidded and bounced in a crumpled heap roughly where Axel wanted it to go. In the center of the four monoliths.
Axel chuckled, slowly coaxing his machine to its feet as Beowulf stomped towards him. No way he'd manage much more of a fight... the full drain had sucked him to the point he just wanted to go to bed. "... Look at the state I'm in... You blew the hell out of me." He glanced at the display. "But..." The monoliths began to glow blue, surrounding him, bathing him in their light. "I win." The Lykeios dome built around him, but didn't expand any further. It didn't really need to, nor did it have enough charge to do it. "I said I was saying goodbye to this world. You... you can just lie there and scream until Lykeios self-destructs."
Oh yes. Axel could hear his growl building up now. He was pissed. "Axel... ALMER!" Beowulf's Mark III monster charged towards him, immense strides eating up the ground as he went, tearing divots in the flooring... And presenting a much easier target than otherwise. Beowulf had had Axel all pissed off and not thinking clearly for years... it was impossible to iterate how good it was to return the favour.
"While I'm at it..." Axel let Soulgain draw a bit more from him. The right arm began cycling, the blade spinning around on it. "Have something to remember me by!" He stretched out into a punch, and the forearm detached, launching for Beowulf, and ripping his machine's left arm off, stopping him cold.
Well... if it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid. Colour me sold. Gonna need a new arm though... and a new everything else. "Farewell, Beowulf. I won't be seeing you in the other world."
The world vanished around him. The last thing he heard was Beowulf's enraged roar. Goddamn music to his ears. Five seconds to go, then the self-detonation should turn TLI into a new Colorado crater.
Shadow Mirror was an organization that believed 'overkill' wasn't even a real word.
-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-
Author's Notes:
First thing's first - thanks go out to prereaders - the list being Sunshine Temple, DCG, Ellf, and Belgarion213.
For those that don't recognize the crossover... I shall endeavour to make sure you're not left behind. There were probably enough hints planted in the crossover scenes that you can figure out roughly what's going to happen.
For those that do recognize the crossover... yes, I did.
This prologue is basically all setup. The actual cross will happen in the actual chapter... and after that, things will be so far off-kilter, I shouldn't have to run any more 'novelizations of the episodes'. (I thank you all very much for bearing with that, and apologize, I need to run over what's already happened in the show so the people who haven't just been marathoning Stargate remember just what's happening at this point. I hope my iteration was at least moderately entertaining, and there is original material in the next chapter and on from there.)
As always, reviews, comments, corrections, and etcetera are appreciated whether for good or ill, and my email's always open (PaleWLF gmail com).
(To clarify since I expect to hear this a lot: The use of 'gould' when some US personnel are talking isn't actually a typo - for more or less the whole show, most of the Americans pronounce it like that.)