The Cylon Chronicles
Chapter 1
Memories of an Old Soldier Pt. 1
It was a quiet red morning with a light breeze coming from the north. The day before had been rainy and dreary with the red hues of the upper atmosphere combining with the fresh rain to create a rather beautiful Martian morning. With the trees swaying gently in the breeze, one might mistake this for a quiet morning on any of a number of worlds, but the shortness of the tress made it impossible to mistake this for anywhere but Mars. For Calvin, this was a new experience; while Mars had only had real agriculture for about twenty years, he had never been near the planet before. In fact, he had never been in the Milky Way before. With this in mind he spent a moment gathering his things and getting ready to step onto the world that he had spent so long working to reach. Calvin was a historian and today was his first day of interviews for his newest oral history project. As a member of the Genii historical society he had accepted the honor of researching and writing the history of the Tauri and their emergence in the galaxy. Today would be his first interview of many to come.
Stepping out of his car he immediately noticed the aroma coming from the home directly in front of him. Calvin was not a huge fan of pork and its byproducts - like bacon - that the Tauri were so fond of, but it did remind him that he had not eaten breakfast this morning. The excitement of upcoming interviews and the things he would learn were usually more than enough to cause him to forget simple things like eating. The home itself was fairly ordinary, being only one story and fairly small. It belied the rather important person living here. If Calvin hadn't spoken directly with Mr. Laird he might have thought he was in the wrong place. Knocking quietly on the door, Calvin was surprised to hear Mr. Laird yelling from the back yard.
"Come on around!" He called, just loud enough to be heard. "There is a gate to the right." Calvin moved away from the door and to the right of the house. As he opened the gate, he was taken by how pretty the backyard was. Mr. Laird had a large yard with well-manicured grass and taller trees than were in the front of the house. They were not trees he had seen before. This was the first thing that indicated this man's importance; he reminded himself that he would have to ask about those trees. Beyond the manicured lawn and taller-than-normal trees, the yard rested on the edge of lake Beaderman. It was a pretty lake with blue-red hues and gentle lapping of smallish waves. Calvin did not take much note of it though as he passed around the side of the house and found the man he had been looking for standing next to his grill with spatula in hand.
"Hello Mr. Lavin," he said, raising his hand in greeting. Calvin raised his hand in response and continued to approach.
"Good morning to you, General," he responded.
"Have you eaten breakfast yet?" He asked as Calvin stepped up onto the back deck of the house and approached the General, who now had a fresh plate in his hand.
"I have not, I thought I smelled bacon in the air as I got out of my car," Calvin responded.
"Then you're in luck. I have bacon, eggs, and pancakes. A right and proper American breakfast," he said with a smile as he filled a plate with all three of the choices before him.
"Thank you for this. In my haste, I had forgotten to eat breakfast," Calvin said and set his papers down on the table not ten feet from where General Laird stood.
"All of these were grown here on Mars." He paused as he handed the plate to Calvin and picked up the next plate.
"I see you have four plates…were you expecting someone else?" Calvin was sure that the general had never remarried and he could not think of who else might live close that would be pertinent to their conversation.
"General O'Neill wanted to come over. He heard that we were getting together and said he had to be here and I think his wife, Sam, or General Carter, may be here as well," he explained, then he handed the other plates to Calvin who put them at different places on the table, completing the four table settings.
"I didn't realize that the Generals lived so close," Calvin remarked as they both sat down.
"General O'Neill just recently moved here and General Carter hasn't been home much with her work. Were you aware that they had moved the Milky Way command to Enceladus?" He asked. Just then, they both heard General O'Neill call out as he too came around the side of the house. They stood as the other two Generals came into view. Calvin immediately felt a little off guard.
"Hello Jeremy, how are you this morning?" General O'Neill said, greeting his friend with a firm handshake.
"I'm great. This is Dr. Calvin Lavin, the historian who is here to interview me about a book he is writing." He finished and both Generals shook his hand and then sat down at the table.
"Yes, that's right, I am writing a history of the Tauri in the universe at large for the Genii people. While we have been around for a while, the Genii people know very little about Tauri history and your place in the universe outside of Atlantis and the role you play in Pegasus. I get the honor of introducing my people to your people in a certain way." General O'Neill smiled at that as Carter and Laird both listened intently.
"Am I to understand correctly that you are only half Cylon?" General Carter asked.
"Yes, ma'am. My father was a One. One of the original members of the mission. He met my mother those first few weeks that they met the Genii. I am one of the first children borne from the melding of the two societies," Calvin answered earnestly.
"Do you have any enhanced attributes due to your Cylon lineage?" Carter inquired further.
"A few. I have an eidetic memory and a few other things. We usually try not to bring them up. Conversations usually go badly after we do," he said, putting that topic away quickly. At that prompt General O'Neill cleared his throat and began to speak.
"Part of the reason we wanted to be here was to give a good word for Jeremy. He has been a valuable member of our team from his first day with the SGC till his retirement last year. We also wanted to be here to hear him talk about his first days in the SGC. This is one story he has not talked much about and is not totally clear in the mission reports." He chuckled a bit while General Laird smiled.
"In many ways it was literally a trial by fire. You see, this was my first off-world mission." He stopped to take a sip of his coffee. "At the time, I was a part of the third armored cavalry regiment. We had just finished a tour in Iraq. On Earth we fought a war with another nation as part of what we refer to as the War on Terror," he stopped briefly as General O'Neill stifled a laugh.
"Only politicians could fight a war against a tactic." General Laird smiled at Jack as he continued and the historian looked on.
"Unbeknownst to me and my team General O'Neill had just lost SG-1 again. This time it had been the Ori. They had been taken prisoner while on a planet attempting to convince the local population to not accept the Ori invitation. Apparently the Ori had landed troops and other equipment to pacify the population but had found a somewhat modern population that was ready to accept what they had to offer. When Colonel Mitchell and his team arrived, they were immediately taken captive and given over to the Ori."
Earth: Somewhere outside Baghdad, Iraq
"Laird!" The captain in charge of the squadron called out as he came strolling back from the brigade command post.
"Yes, Sir." I replied as he stepped out of the back of his Bradley fighting vehicle and approached his CO.
"Prepare our vehicle to move out; we have new orders. We are to make our way to the nearest collection point and stow our vehicles."
"Yes, Sir. Are we going home?" I asked, turning to find the rest of the infantry squad and crew.
"No, we have a new mission that will not be divulged until we are Stateside." At that, the captain marched away to inform the rest of our squadron. Within the hour, we were back on the road towards the nearest collection. It was a strange day because by the time we arrived at the collection point there were already two C-130's waiting for us on the airstrip. I knew something must be very serious for us to be this rushed in getting back to the States. Normally after a collection point we would have two days of gear turn in and payload prep and then a day or more of waiting before we would board a plane of some kind and two days of transport back to our home station. It wasn't until we were airborne that we were told we weren't going back to Fort Hood.
"Gentlemen, the commander and I will be passing out some paperwork to all of you. What you are looking at is a non-disclosure agreement," the major announced. "My name is Major Davis and all of you who sign those papers will receive a top secret clearance. Currently only your commanding officer and his XO have such a clearance, but I assure you that all of your loved ones will receive visits from the FBI. The agreements are voluntary for you to sign but rest assured if you do not sign those agreements you will no longer be in this unit." With that he turned to the captain and began to hand out large stacks of paper to each of the troopers in the squadron. It took several hours until everyone had signed their agreements. The few that did not sign had been all but picked up and carried out of the loading bay. They disappeared towards the cockpit, only to be brought back into the loading bay with a parachute attached and then summarily shoved out the door.
"Sir, what are they doing?" I asked Captain Marimac as he walked by, checking on all of us.
"I don't know, Laird. I know as much as you do." He paused. "I am going to find out though." Major Davis came back into the loading bay.
"I want to let all of you know that the men who do not sign the agreement will be escorted off the plane. None of these men have been or will be hurt. We are still over land and they will be picked up by the local authorities. Unfortunately, due to the time sensitive nature of our mission, we do not have time to drop them off somewhere. There are two of you left who haven't signed. What are your decisions, Laird and Marimac?" He asked, approaching us both. The captain sat down next to me and signed his immediately. I did not relish the idea of being literally thrown off the plane so I signed as well.
"Excellent. Normally the briefing you are about to receive would take two to three days. However, we will start yours now. By the time we land in Colorado Springs tomorrow you will all have finished your briefing and be ready for your initial mission planning. The first packet I am going to give you is the specifications for the vehicles you will be taking into combat. All of you will be fighting these vehicles so familiarize yourselves with them. They are all new vehicles - fresh off the lines - so you will have to get them ready for combat." Major Davis started handing out data pads and paperwork to the different squadron members: data pads to the vehicle commanders, and paperwork to everyone else. One of the infantry squad commanders shouted a question to the major.
"Who are we going to be fighting in Colorado?" Everyone perked up because with everything swirling so quickly we just hadn't thought about that.
"We can talk about that once we are over U.S. soil, but I will tell you two things. First, they are not Americans, and second, you have as of right now been officially re-designated. You are no longer members of the 3rd ACR; you are now members of the most secret unit in the world. Welcome to Stargate Command." At that, the major took the unit insignia off of the questioning sergeant's shoulder and held up a strange insignia. The insignia looked like a pyramid with a small orb at the top, the earth in the background surrounded by stars.
"For now you will be designated SG-24 but you all have the distinction of being the first mechanized members of this unit. Once we are over U.S. soil I can tell you more, but suffice to say you will be designated as ACS-1 once this mission is over and we can design and print the appropriate insignias and such."
Then he walked back into the crew area while we began poring over the new vehicles we would be fighting soon. As the infantry squad leader for my Bradley, I had received a data pad as well as the paperwork that the rest of my men had received. Everyone had spent the last ten minutes or so moving around and getting back into their vehicle teams and to study the paperwork.
It was a raucous time as all of us began to wonder at what we had gotten ourselves into. All of the vehicles that we were being assigned were about a foot and a half narrower than our old ones, but where the engines had been in our vehicles now sat what I could only describe as a strange new power source, which the papers described as something called "Naquadah". Apparently it was much more powerful and, apparently, very volatile because there was a lot more armor around it than even the ammo bays on the M1's. In addition it looked like the lost weight was made up for by additional weight from the new armor. Apparently they had taken the Chobham armor that we loved so much and added some of this new thing they called "trinium." Most of the other items on the Bradleys and Abrams were the same as those on the M-125's but had seen some significant improvements. If I had read this correctly, they could now keep up with even the fast speed of the tanks and had the armor they needed to protect themselves. This could be a very good thing.
"Gentlemen, we have passed over Hawaii and I can now hand out the basic briefing materials. There are much more specific items in the paperwork that I want all of you to read, but I will start this by saying that in the Second World War we recovered an artifact from the Egyptian desert. We did not know what it was and, until ten years ago, we did not understand how it worked. A Dr. Daniel Jackson was able to decipher the writing on the device and other artifacts recovered with it. This is what we now know of as the 'Stargate.' This device," he paused as he held up a full-page picture from the briefing book. "Is designed to open a stable artificial wormhole from one of these Gates to another Gate at the other end." Everyone stopped looking down and talking quietly to stare at him. Most of us had seen Wormhole X-treme and had some idea of what he was saying. Myself, I had enough knowledge (I was half way through a Master's degree in physics) to know it was possible in some theoretical universe.
"Do you mean to tell us that we have a device that can take people to other worlds?" I asked, fully expecting to get some snickers and a no from the major.
"That is exactly what I am saying, and you are all now a part of the command that uses this Gate." Everyone had started to chuckle or smile until he finished his sentence, and then we all again stopped talking and stared, surprised. "It is a lot to take in. You all need to read the specifics and become acquainted with the idea. This will not be the last shocking revelation that you will have today, so get past this one as quick as you can. I am having the crew pass out lunch. Take an hour break, read the specifics, eat some lunch, think this through a little, and we will talk more in an hour." For the next hour we all ate and read. There was very little talking as all of us were trying to wrap our minds around the Stargate and all it meant for our worldview.
"Gentlemen, I need your attention!" The major shouted. We all turned our eyes to him. "As part of the Stargate program, we have been traveling to other worlds for nearly ten years and as such we have fought and defeated several enemies. The specifics are in this next packet on the data pads that we will be handing out to you shortly. The rest of your briefings will be on these, as we could not risk any more of this information being disseminated on paper. The data pad you receive will be yours for the duration of the time that you are a member of this command. This data pad will be with you at all times while you are on base. It will never leave the base so it will not go off world with you or off post with you. They are encrypted and as such are not yours to play with or mistreat."
He stopped talking and started handing out the data pads. "When you receive your pads, it will ask you to input your name and social and then it will take a fingerprint. This is how you will access your pad from now on." Once I received my pad, it was a relatively easy thing to access it. The pad began to play a video right away. I and the rest of my men quickly inserted the headphones we had received and listened to the rest of the briefing. We learned about the Goa'uld and their minions, the Jaffa. We learned about the Free Jaffa and the actions of Teal'c. It was rather shocking to think that Americans had been interacting and operating with aliens.
"I have to go. Sorry I can't stay," General Carter said, standing. She walked to the edge of the deck while we all stood to tell her goodbye and she vanished in a column of light. It was after eleven now and we moved off of the deck and sat back down at a table under a young sequoia tree near the edge of the lake. It was a beautiful day and sitting at the edge of the water provided a nice breeze.
"Are you not recording this?" General Laird asked.
"There is no need. As a Cylon, I have an eidetic memory and can remember every word you speak. I will write all of that down later."
"I didn't realize that you guys were the first ones with the data pads. I was pretty busy at that point though." O'Neill said as he thought back to that time.
"You were busy with the planning of the coming mission at that point, I think. I am sure that was one of Walter's things," Laird interjected.
"Yep, that was one of Walter's pet projects. He was trying to get us out from under the mountain of paper we were generating. I was just happy to finally have that huge stack of files off of my desk. At least, until I realized that none of the work was actually gone." They both smiled at that.
"As I was saying…
The rest of the flight went fairly smoothly. From that point on we had kept our headphones in and Major Davis had briefed us over an intercom that was apparently piped into our data pads. It was quite a leap for us, but we all took in the new information. We learned about the Ori and their craziness as well as their very real incursion into our Galaxy. We were also very shocked to learn that we had an earth battle cruiser or two in the arsenal. Hard to imagine that we had space capable ships. What was the point of NASA again? I was also a bit surprised to find that we had not advanced further with our basic weapons. With everyone else getting new stuff I figured we would at least have fancy new ray guns or something. When we passed over Colorado Springs, I was surprised they did not have a big airfield with all of our equipment there waiting for us, or some type of indication of an armored cavalry squadron waiting to deploy. Really all we got to see from the air was a scenic view of the Air Force Academy and the few trainers that they had there for students. The landing itself was rather abrupt as the airfield was not meant for airplanes as big as ours.
"Gentlemen, we are about to land in Colorado Springs. We will quickly board four buses on the tarmac. From there, we will be going directly to NORAD, which is a short drive from here into the mountains. Before we go into the facilities, you will all be given one hour to get whatever personal items you may need or make whatever phone calls you like. From that point until the end of the upcoming mission you will have no further contact with the outside world. Does everyone understand all of this?" Davis finished as we were touching down.
Everyone gave the "OK" and stood up to ready their personal equipment. The ride in was uneventful through the quiet forest. It was hard to believe the enormity of what we were approaching because of how quiet the area seemed. Fortunately for all of us there was a large shopping center not far from the post because we all needed some things after having spent months in the sand and grime of Iraq. For most of us, though, it was phone call time. A few of us were smart and went inside the Wally World to buy the prepaid cells rather than waiting at the pay phones. Personally I had been married for a couple years at this point and I needed to let my wife know that I wasn't going to be home for a bit. Since we were not allowed to tell anyone about the new command or where we were located, all I could tell her was that we wouldn't be coming home as planned and that I would call her again as soon as I could. We both cried a bit as our anniversary had been coming up and we had plans to spend a nice weekend together. With that done, we were all quickly back onboard the bus and on the way to the post. Again, very non-descript although I will say the checkpoint at the post was definitely more intense than anything you would normally see stateside. What we did finally see was a large hangar door in the side of the mountain, which opened to reveal several more of our vehicles inside.
"I need everyone out of the bus and in formation in three minutes," Major Davis shouted. Everyone got up and exited the buses. "Attention!" He kept shouting and all of us snapped to attention. He quickly issued marching commands and we were off to those same hangers that we had seen on the way into the post. It was surprising how large the hangar was. It was easily three hundred meters wide and at least that long with fairly wide support columns throughout. On the floor they had painted streets and parking spaces. Our few dozen vehicles did not look very imposing inside the structure but we were all excited to see these new pieces of equipment. I also noticed that the two mortar support vehicles looked different. As Major Davis brought the squadron to a halt and turned the formation in front of the vehicles, several civilians came up to the formation and waited for Major Davis to release us. He did not do that though as General O'Neill came from the elevators at the back of the parking area and addressed Major Davis. Major Davis turned to the General and relinquished command of the squadron.
"At ease!" General O'Neill called out in a very commanding voice. "My name is General Jack O'Neill. I am commander of this base and all off-world activities that go on here. I started my career in special operations serving in several different area of the world. In the last ten years I have been a member of this command. I am an original member of both Stargate Command and SG-1 and, as such, I care a great deal about what happens to this command and all of the people who work for me. It is for this very reason that you are here today. Right now we have an off-world team that has been taken captive and we cannot allow them to remain prisoners. For too long we have been a small infantry command. That ends today. I am not one for long speeches; those of you who get to know me will understand, but know this: if all of you stay in this command you will be joining a family. A family that is not easily broken." At that General O'Neill stopped talking and called us to attention to pass us off to another officer.
"I am Colonel Chekov. I am acting XO of this command and today I am in charge of your orientation and preparation. You will report by squads to the three load bay elevators at the back of this hangar. From there, you will be directed to your temporary quarters where you will spend ten minutes stowing your personal items. Anyone going off world will stow all personal items up to and including wedding rings and anything else identifiable. After those ten minutes you will report with your squads to the designated areas for your initial load out. Once that is done you will have time to eat while your leaders will be receiving the mission briefing." He paused for a moment to let us internalize our orders. "Fall out." While his heavy Russian accent made it apparent where he was from, we all understood perfectly what he expected and we all moved quickly.
The ride down the central elevator was longer than I expected. Once the technicians explained that we were fifty floors further down inside the mountain it made more sense. The cavern that the elevator dropped into was easily as big as the one up above with the same thick support columns and two-and-a-half-story ceiling. The Abrams Tanks should fit easily in here. On both sides of the main hangar there were doors that we saw people coming in and out of, but at the front and center of the room there were floor to ceiling blast doors that were easily thirty feet wide. These were the doors that we marched though. What we saw next though was amazing; as the doors began to slide open, we could see there was this great ring inside and it was spinning. I now know of course that it was the Stargate, but at the time I just thought it was fascinating and a bit scary because the technician that was leading us through the base stopped us just as the ring stopped turning and this amazing swoosh of water came rushing out at us and then reversed itself and went back into the ring and somehow stayed there, flat inside the ring. It scared us all at first. The technician smiled at us and explained what it was and I was again shocked by the reality of what we were experiencing. Standing not sixty feet from this ring, we were all amazed again as three men in what I could only describe at the time as medieval-looking armor walked out of the pool of water
Author's note: Thanks for reading the first chapter. Like I said in my short chapter three of Rise of the Phoenix, this will be a collection of shorts that will all fall within the Rare Friends AU. Some of these stories will be single chapters and some like this one will be more than that. As a response to some more than fair criticism I have cut the first chapter in half and adjusted some paragraphs to break up the too large blocks of text. I hope you enjoy the re-reading. Let me know what you think. More to come soon. Thanks again for reading.