Chapter 2: Rendezvous on the Pride

Larry stretched the sleeves on his jacket as he examined the stitching and the dark black color of the uniform.

"This was the best you had?" he asked, looking over the sleeve at Whitestar.

Whitestar shrugged. "We haven't really received much in the way of a standard uniform yet. We got that outfit off of the same raider who took a pot shot at our Blackhawk on Xantex IV. It's fairly nice."

"It wears like it's made of canvas! I'll bet no one has issued a uniform like this since World War II!"

"Hey, if you don't like it, we'll give you something else later. Alright?"

Larry nodded and moved to the back of the small transport spacecraft. The shuttle was a short, stubby thing, with just enough room for roughly four people in the back and a pilot and co-pilot in the front. To Larry it felt like a large box with attachments on the sides that served as engines. Whitestar said it was a shuttle from the Star Trek series, so Larry had started calling it "Shuttle 03."

Larry took a seat down where he had set his stuff in between Biffy and Spacer. Biffy was starting to nod off. How was that possible? Weren't they already asleep here in DreamLand? Larry posed this question to Spacer.

"Of course we sleep here! That's how we wake up in reality. Time works differently here. We sleep here while we are physically awake. That's how our bodies sustain themselves here. You can die here too, remember. So, it's best if you find a safe place to rest or else someone will shoot you while you are not logged into the device," Spacer explained.

"I think Biff here will nod off soon. He can't stay up that long. The system won't allow it; you cannot remain for more than five hours inside of the Dream with out real sleep...it's too exhausting." Spacer looked cockeyed over his pair of eyeglasses, "Didn't you read the manual on all of this stuff? You can check how much realtime you have spent in DreamLand on your PDA. Time moves differently here, like I said."

The shuttle gave a shudder as Larry laid the rifle across his lap and pulled the PDA out of his pocket. Flipping it open, he pulled out the stylus and tapped it to the 'clock' option. The screen read 3:59 minutes remaining. Larry sighed, "How much time do you have left, Spacer?"

"About 30 regular minutes. Seems that I will have to leave shortly, but neither Biffy nor I will leave until we're safely out of the Dantooine system. Then we cannot be hijacked by anyone or attacked. It's pretty cutthroat around here. Any other clan will gladly relieve us of this shuttle."

"How would they do that? Or how would we defend? It seems this is a little more than a shuttle?"

Spacer grinned, "We have our ways." And with that, he pulled his cap down, signaling the end of the conversation.

Larry got up to the front of the craft and sat in the co-pilot's seat next to Captain Whitestar. The coat he was wearing was still itchy and old feeling, plus the sort of forest green color of the pants did not match the coat. He could not wait to get the regular CH uniform. "Sir? Can I ask you a question? Where are we headed exactly? I may be new to all of this, but I really want to know where we might be going, in case I recognize it."

Whitestar looked up from the controls. "We're going to a place that our Flagship scouted out. It's just another ship just like this one, but it's got the flag on it, hence the name Flagship. Fleet Admiral Ben and the rest of his company are already there. They have found a base that they find suitable for our clan. High Command is enroute from Earth as well, on another ship like this one," Whitestar explained.

"The flag?"

Whitestar gave Larry the same look Spacer had just given him, "Don't you understand anything? The flag is...well...it's the flag!" Whitestar ran fingers through his blonde hair, a hint of a frown showing on his emotionless face.

"It is what is important to the clan. Getting another clan's flag back to your base is rewarding because your clan gets 50 of the defeated clan's remaining funds. Besides, it is really embarrassing and a new flag must be made. That is, unless the victor clan is willing to give the old one back, which they won't be."

Larry considered, "Then why hasn't the High Command taken possession of the flag and the ship it's on? Why this Admiral Ben?"

Whitestar looked at him consideringly, "You are not completely unintelligent, it seems. That is because it is the first place an enemy would think to look. Nikita trusts Ben, and it was the Pillar of Destiny that found our new base. Travel between two points here is nearly instantaneous, but unless we enter 'travel' space, as it's called here, we will simply be incinerated. That's why good navigators are a good thing to find. Good for us, I am a good navigator. But, I still prefer to call it 'warp' space and not 'travel' space...I believe John Call ran out of names when he designed that..."

Larry shrugged and hefted the Springfield out of the seat and moved towards the back again as Whitestar called out, "Why don't you sit here in the co-pilot's chair? That way you can get a nice view of a jump."

So, Larry put his rifle down and sat in the co-pilot's chair. The space around them thinned out into one long, continuous white light and the space went from being dark to being bright white in a single moment. A moment after that, it reverted back to normal space.

As Larry opened his mouth to ask another question, a loud Klaxxon went off inside of the cabin and Whitestar sat straight up. Biffy and Spacer came to as well, instantly alert and wide awake. "Gou'ld Mothership!" shouted Spacer, as he noticed a large, pyramid-shaped vessel hovering just off the surface of a green, gaseous giant.

"What's a Gou'ld Mothership?" Larry screamed over the Klaxxon.

"Gou'ld are parasites that use humans for hosts, one of the things that John Call incorporated into the system. No Gou'ld or Jaffa, which is their soldier, actually exist, but they still plot and attack any human they can get their hands on. If you get captured, you're better off dying and getting a new account!" Biffy explained all in a rush.

Whitestar was jerking backward and forward on the control stick looking for a way out, with absolutely no shock or feelings on his face, almost as though he either expected this or was not surprised.

Larry took it that this Captain Whitestar had a large amount of control over his emotions. While looking out past Whitestar's seemingly carved-out-of-rock face, Larry saw three other small shuttles sitting calmly on the rim of the system. He was just about to open his mouth and tell his spooked friends this, when the loud speaker on the shuttle's comm system crackled to life.

"Pillar of Discovery, this is Pillar of Destiny, Master Chief Hero speaking. Admiral Ben requests that you meet him onboard the newest collection to our fleet. I'm sure you have noticed the Gou'ld Mothership in orbit there? It's being renamed Pride of Clan Hunters, as at the moment it's stronger than any other ship any clan owns. Though I doubt any of them know it yet or where to find us…eh, Whitestar?"

With Hero's words, the entire cabin went from being very tense to very relaxed in a heartbeat. To Larry it felt as though he was coming off the street during a blizzard into his favorite Pub amongst friends.

"Roger, Hero. How do we board?" replied Whitestar, thumbing a button in the dashboard of the shuttle.

"The shuttle bays themselves are all not functional at the moment, so I believe that we will have to use your shuttle's teleporter. Good thing the Federation decided to put short-range ones in those shuttles, eh?"

"Roger, Hero. We do not know how to work ours at the moment. Seems no one decided to get a degree in engineering to figure it out."

"Yeah! And Whitestar does not even really know how to fly this thing!" Spacer shouted into the communications to Hero on the other end.

A look of what might have been vexation crossed over Whitestar's face, but it was gone so fast Larry was not sure he ever saw it in the first place. "Can you operate your system and take us aboard the Pride?" he asked.

"Sure thing. Stand by, Sir."

Larry stepped into a heavily armored and heavily gilded hallway that looked as though it were made up of a lot of golden bricks — not a metal that any space-going vessel would be made out of. Larry was going to ask about it when he noticed something that he had not considered in the short time he had been there.

A girl was standing down the hall dressed in a completely camouflaged outfit, except for her boots, which were black. She had a deadly grace about her, like what he felt off of soldiers back in the States when he saw them walking by. She even had eyes that scanned as though expecting attack at any moment. But that was not what surprised Larry the most. She had a long curved sword down her back. The hilt was protruding out from her long, black hair, as she stood as though expecting to have to reach for it.

Her eyes shot right over to where Whitestar, Biffy, Larry, and Spacer were standing and she snapped to attention.

"As you were," Whitestar said to the girl. "Can you tell me where Ben is?"

"Sir. He requested you meet him on the bridge of this excellent vessel. Ownage, Cano, and Fury are there already. He does, however, request that your underlings report to the shuttle bay. He instructed me to show them the way."

"Thank you, Lt. Commander Tex. I'll let you lead them. I know my way around this...ship..." Whitestar trailed off as he walked beyond the next bulkhead, which had a large number of fancy pictograms.

"This way," she said, waving with her hand.

After a couple odd turns and a couple staircases down a few decks of gilded hallway, Larry, Spacer, and Biffy all stood in front of a large door that had even more hieroglyphs plastering the front of it. The door hissed open as Tex stood before it.

Inside was another ship that appeared to take the form of a pyramid, only the edges of the pyramid bowed inward, looking like a tent draped over a frame. Near the ship, a goodly number of people were all talking and pointing at various weapons. The general feel of the room was a friendly sort of congregation, and Larry could see every single kind of person present. Although, most surprising was that most of the room snapped to attention with the entrance of Tex, except for one man who was dressed in a long, tan trench coat with a Lt. Colonel's rank stripes on his broad shoulders. He had long hair that was stringy black and the two bulges under his coat told Larry he was carrying a large amount of firepower. While Tex's prowl and dangerous stalk — which gave Larry the impression of a stalking leopard — made him wary, the relaxed stance of the Lt. Colonel made Larry uneasy.

"At ease," Tex said, flinging her hair over her shoulder. "The Pillar of Destiny has arrived. We now have four shuttles in addition to the one that was captured by Fury when he took the Pride. Furthermore, Alpha Two has finally figured out the transport system. Here are Ben's orders: The Pride is to become our new Flagship once Nikita, Bobby, and the rest of High Command arrive from Earth, shortly. In the meantime, we are sending fire teams down into the surface of the Ring to find and discover a new base location for CH. All of the members of the clan are to be connected by radio to the Mother ship here. Split up into four groups and we will send those groups down. I will lead the first one. Lt. Commander Recon will lead Fire Team 'Bravo.' Commander Fate will lead 'Charlie.' And, 'Delta' will be led by Lieutenant Junior Grade Justice. Any questions? No? Good. Dismissed."

The crew looked at Larry questioningly, but he was under the impression that these guys were new to DreamLand as well, and that it would not be unusual to have new people show up without warning.

Tex stood next to Biffy, Larry, and Spacer as they started checking weapons. A tall, slim person with unruly hair eyed the rifle Larry was checking and sauntered over to him.

"Howdy, there," said the boy, in a strong Southern drawl that was reminiscent of the American Deep South. "My name is Fox. Pleasure's mine. I noticed you have a long rifle there, a Springfield 1903 .30 caliber, if I am not much mistaken. Can you shoot with that?"

"I can, somewhat. I'm Lar...Harrod the Barbarian. I am looking to replace it though, as I prefer getting close to my enemy and a long rifle with a bolt action is not what I had in mind."

Fox's eyes lit up as though he had just heard exactly what he wanted to hear. "Ya see, I've been lookin' for a Springfield ever since I entered the World of Dreams, but I haven't found it because fate has conspired against me." A man with pale skin and bright blue eyes looked over when Fox mentioned fate. "Not you, Sir. I mean 'fate'...'karma'...'destiny'?" Fox's voice rose in pitch as the superior officer rose an eye brow, and then turned and began talking to the cowboy-dressed Lt. Commander…Recon?

"Anyway, I'd like to trade you this…" Fox produced a small handle that Larry first thought was the handle bar off of a bicycle, but Lt. Commander Tex's open gaping told him to look again. "It's a lightsaber, Harrod. You want it?"

Larry looked the rifle over in his hands and then handed Fox the rifle and the box of remaining bullets from his coat pocket. "That's all very well and good," Tex spoke up for the first time, "but do you know how to use that, Harrod?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

"That's what I thought. If you misuse that, it'll put a nice hole in you. And I do not think Doc D can patch you up, if you do. Listen, I can help you learn that after this mission, but right now we gotta go to the transporter room. The Gou'ld apparently use some sort of ring...thing…maybe A2 could tell you better, but I can't. Now, we don't know what is down on that Ring, but some of the officers suspect that it is a Halo. If that's the case, we need to be extra careful. So, if we're done chit-chatting, let's rock and roll!"