General James Ironwood sat at his desk and finished signing the last requisition forms, and he did so with a certain amount of satisfaction – and no small amount of eagerness. It had taken him years to get to this point. After their first breakthrough of working with the device, it had taken several more months of urging on his part to be allowed to move forward. The council had hoped for a weapon when they first invested in this project. They had repeatedly balked at the sheer expense of it, not to mention the ridiculous power requirements.
Once they had realized that the ring was, in fact, not a weapon, they had nearly pulled his commission. Had it not been for the intervention of the Schnee Dust Company, he very likely would have found himself not only out of a job, but possibly facing prison time as well. He paused to write himself a note, a reminder to speak with Jacques personally. With that done, he glanced at the time; the clock read nearly 0830. He gathered up a stack of folders as he rose from his chair, and he strode through the doorway into the briefing room.
Commander Ruby Rose noticed his entry and stood up straight. "Attention on deck!" The other officers and enlisted gathered around the long conference table snapped up, and he nodded to himself with approval. There were a pair of civilians in this group, and though protocol didn't require them to stand, they did so anyway.
He kept walking toward the far end of the table. "As you were, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats." He paused to sort folders while everyone got settled. The red folder he placed in front of his own seat, and then divided the remaining blue folders as evenly as he could. Each of those stacks were then pushed to either side. Commander Rose took one, while Senior Chief Nikos took the other. They each pulled one off the top and passed the rest down the line to be shared with the others.
Once everyone had their briefing packets, he cleared his throat before idle talk could start. "Good morning. I'm sure that many of you have had questions about the unexpected transfers that brought most of you here." Everyone was looking at the reports, but most of them glanced up at his remark. Commander Rose and Chief Nikos had both opened theirs, but Ruby had a sly grin on her face. "These briefings are deemed classified, and there is a great deal to cover. For now I will give you the highlights. After this briefing concludes, I recommend you study the reports carefully in order to prepare for tomorrow's mission."
He pulled out his scroll and activated the holo-projector situated in the middle of the table, which began with a series of pre-war photographs depicting an archaeological dig. "Approximately one hundred years ago, an archaeological expedition uncovered a number of artifacts in the desert of Vacuo." The images flickered across several items as he continued. "Many of these were tablets with pictographic writings, some were tools made of an as-yet unidentified metal alloy. Things one might expect to find when searching for clues to our murky history."
He pressed the button and advanced to the last pair of images. One was a very large ring that had been stood up on edge, with a handful of people standing next to it. The tallest of them were perhaps one fifth the size of the thing. Murmurs of interest fluttered down the table, and he carried on. "The device you're looking at is, as near as we can tell, referred to as a Stargate." He indicated the other image by causing it to outline. The other item is part of the device." The picture was of a pedestal with an angled disk. Symbols were arranged radially around a large, orange half dome in its center. "At this point I will turn the briefing over to Professor Jaune Arc," he said, indicating the young man at the far end of the table."
The blonde man perked up at the mention of his name. "Oh! Really, sir?" He stood up slowly, as if he hadn't expected to be called on.
James gave him a rueful grin. "Go on, son. After all, you're the one who figured it out." His attitude was genial, and he had no small amount of gratitude for the young man. If it hadn't been for the breakthrough he had made, the Vale Council would probably have thrown away the key to his jail cell by now. He hadn't thought much of Professor Arc when they'd first met, but there was no denying that his tail had been pulled well clear of the fire he'd found himself in half a year ago.
Professor Arc stood a little straighter and bobbed his head. "Right then, thank you, General." He shuffled over to get closer to the screen so he could illustrate his points as he made them. "So what you're looking at here is a series of pictrograms." He pointed first to the smaller device. Then he took his hands and placed them near the edge of the ring and spread them apart to zoom in on a portion of the ring. "As you can see, these are on both devices." He took a moment to outline a few of them before moving on.
"At first, we thought this was some kind of variant language, an ancient dialect that we hadn't seen before." He shrugged his shoulders when a few people grumbled. "Yeah, if you've ever followed archaeology, I'm sure the story sounds familiar. The interesting thing is, this isn't a language at all."
Professor Arc excitedly zoomed out the image, and then re-focused to another part of the ring. "Do you see it?" Several people squinted, but there were one or two shrewd looks as he 'drew' over the lines, making large dots at the intersections.
"That's The Lantern!" a white-haired young woman exclaimed. The General recognized her, Specialist Weiss Schnee. He did his best to keep his face neutral. The SDC had insisted that she be included in exchange for their support. He had been reluctant to bring on someone as young as she was, but her record was impressive. Time would tell if the compromise was a good one.
Professor Arc beamed a smile at her. "Give the lady a prize!" Her brittle smile made her look as if she'd just bitten into a lemon, but the young man carried on with excitement. "The symbols all correlate to star constellations that can be found in our night's skies. Some of them have shifted a little bit, but-"
A young blonde woman waved her arm – a top-of-the-line prosthetic. "Okay, hold up Prof, I have a question." James hid a smirk behind his hand by feigning an itch on his nose. He had known her for many years, and it was surprising that she'd held out for this long.
He paused and leaned over to get a better look at her. "Okay, um, what's your question… Miss?"
She stood up so he didn't have to lean. "Gunnery Sergeant Xiao Long, or Gunny if you'd rather. My question is, what's the purpose of the constellations?" She sat back down and leaned on her elbows fingers laced.
Professor Arc snapped his fingers and pointed at her with a nervous smile. "Excellent question, Gunny. General, if I may?" he asked as he pulled out his own scroll. He gave the man a nod and tapped a control. "So this is basic math – you know how you determine position in a three-dimensional space?" He finished pairing his scroll with the projector and started a whiteboard. As he continued, he drew a pair of overlapping squares that appeared on the holo-projection. He made dots on each corner and then connected them to make a cube. "You need six points to do that – make sense so far?"
The sketch was surprisingly precise, and there were nods all around. "So, wait," A young red-head said. The young man next to her elbowed her gently, and she jumped in her seat a little. "Oh, right, sorry!" She stood up and lifted her hand in a salute. "Corporal Nora Valkyrie, sir. If each of those dots is a constellation, does that mean whatever's in the middle is a place in space?"
Professor Arc nodded vigorously. "That's right, Corporal – though you don't have to salute, and call me Jaune." She blushed and sat back down. "So far it seems like everyone's following along, so I'll move on to the main point." He flicked his fingers across his scroll and brought the two pictures back up. "Now there is one discrepancy to this little theory of ours that threw us for a loop."
He blew up the pedestal and focused on a particular symbol. It was a diamond shape, with lines connecting the opposite corners. "This doesn't match up with any constellation whatsoever." He paused and looked around the table dramatically. When nobody tripped to the hint, he chuckled nervously. "If the cube is the destination, how do you figure out the distance?"
Yang gasped and stood up. "Whoa whoa whoa, put on the brakes! Are you saying this thing can, what? Go someplace? In space?" Her voice had started out at an even contralto, and had gone up to a squeak by the time she finished.
"And the grand prize goes to the Gunny." Professor Arc's grin was positively manic.
Yang, however, looked and sounded as if she'd been told that left was right. "No way."
"Yes way," he replied. James squeezed his eyes shut and waved a hand when the younger man looked to him in barely-contained anticipation. "The Stargate can open a door, and we can go there." He punched up a video feed of the Ring that showed several angles. The inner ring spun around and paused. Everyone watched with bated breath as a clamp at the noon position locked onto a symbol, and then it started to spin again. As the sixth symbol locked in, the cameras all began to shake and rattle. When the final symbol locked in, there was a whining sound, followed immediately by a bursting wave of energy that stretched out briefly. Then it settled back inside the ring and rippled.
The briefing room exploded into several excited conversations at once. Many questions were flung at Professor Arc, who tried to look everywhere at once. All semblance of decorum had vanished, and it was hard to even be a little bit annoyed. Say what James might about his confidence, but the Professor had earned the attention. He sat back in his chair and looked left. Chief Nikos had pressed her lips together in a thin line, though he couldn't say if it was in disapproval or amusement. When he swiveled to the right, Commander Rose had pinched the bridge of her nose, and her shoulders were shaking in silent laughter. When he finally caught her eye, she merely shrugged.