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As a Sith Lord Kratos frequently commented 'on limts', and the simple facets of the force. Then of course he'd spend hours toying with red crystals... it was a headache for Daala. Not because it complicated her responsibilities, because it really didn't, but because the Sith Lord would rearrange his schedule or the schedule of patrol assests to investigate out of the way planets. Most the time it was the latter and thus had no bearing on the Harrow or its day to day operations.
The problem was of course after they returned, and various security procedures needed to be run. No one complained to a Sith Lord without a lengthy flag rank tenure to hide behind, and even then Vader was prone to choking them all the same. Kratos could bounce someone off of a bulkhead and no one would be surprised, not really, so naturally complaints for the orders were tossed at the admiralty, which was Daala's perogative.
It was a nuisance.
"I heard you the first time."
The brunette frown deepened, "I didn't say anything,"
"You should clear your mind," He replied, as he picked over the reports that had been transferred to his slate. Khaine's command presumed that whatever they were doing involved a network of deepspace anchorages throughout the Outer Rim, which wasn't entirely inaccurate... one supposed. It at least cut down on questions. "The current deployment rotation is much as the last one," Mainly because by establishing a routine it would avoid stirring up questions. As greater numbers of more modern ships became avaiable there were would be increasing need to expand maintenance yards, and the permanent prescence in the Outer Rim, which would in turn justify a greater Imperial oversight for the regions. "We will transition through the pathway," Follow the general security procedures, and such, and at that point relieve the holding forces on the other side. They would transfer back to the Star Forge. "Moving the Maw into position is our primary agenda, we will rotate back every four months, and that will be that." Kratos sat the Sith Holocron down on his desk, and placed his slate beside it. "Current departure schedule remains, so if there is anything you need to square away now would be the time to do it." She half expected that to be a dismissal, but pushed the slate over the desk towards her, "and that is for you." The Ipsi, and a pair of prototype ISD III were being transferred along with the Maw station. "I'll detach escort ships as you need them if something does crop up.
The simple reality was that 'Republic era' technology or whatever Intelligence deemed it as aside that didn't make them not a threat at least in sufficent numbers. The question was still out on what exactly constituted 'sufficent' when facing non star destroyers. What in the next galaxy over might threaten one of his Victory-class Star Destroyers. There were still a number of looming questions remaining, for now though they needed a permanent base of operations.
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"Heard their cruise was coming back in," O'neill muttered. Maybe it was just a human thing, but the Imperials followed a similar organization as the Earth Militaries. Ships were deployed, they stayed on station for a while, then went home while other ships picked up the slack.
"The Liason Officer says they haven't gotten back yet," Daniel Jackson replied. There were a handful of concerns throughout the state department... the Secetary of State was a little leery about how their name, plain as it was, was litterally 'Galactic Empire'.
Carter, who was busy leaing over a panasonic toughbook, paused, "Their hyperdrive may not be Asgard fast, so it takes them some time to get here." She swirled the computer, "To the point that they probably live in the neighboring galaxy. Or one of them," The Asgard Home Galaxy was out of the question obvious, because Thor had never heard of them, and the Imperials had never heard of the Asgard, but things remained hazy. "The Secretary of State may have a point. Its a long way to travel for no special reason."
"Uh Carter shouldn't that connect the Milky Way with another galaxy," O'neill waved his finger out and away from his chest into the air, "instead of you know just out there," There in lay the rub, because that was a good long run between Galaxies. The Asgard managed it with individual ships, but they were unique.
Either way right now it wasn't important. Right now Stargate command was spinning its wheels, and waiting for the infrequent updates on the status of the galaxy. In the current frame of reference there was the worry of the System Lords, but now there was the concern about other threats. Right now the looming concern was that the System Lords were at least stable there were new threats coming out of the woodwork.
Some up and coming goa'uld out there had been launching attacks, mostly just raids, on the others, but it wasn't just border outposts. The current thinking was that the same party had also been responsible for the dozen ha'tak which had veered off to attack earth. The system lords were too busy pointing fingers at each other to bother with that, and that was the problem. They were blaming each other, and given the precarious balance of power that could spiral the galaxy into a major conflict.
It was precisely the kind of fight that Earth could have a part in. This wasn't about dashing around planet to planet it was about the likelihood of a war involving hundreds possibly thousands of Ha'taks. Right now Earth had one ship, and the Prometheus wasn't up for going toe to toe with a Ha'tak, and the Prometheus had cost billions in R&D. On the otherside, that was now that the ship could fly, production costs were expected to be a mere two or three times that of the Seawolf-class submarine, which ran off of a similarly sized crew. The question that was still up in the air was whether Congress would chose to give the USAF the money needed to push forward for more starships.
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The sirens on the watchtower worked, and everyone through out the station knew just how well they worked. Superman dug his pinky out of his ear as his hearing finally stopped ringing, "How many ships is it this time?"
"Its the big one." Flash muttered sipping on his slushy. "A couple of the others. Bats already sent us a reply that he's coming up," It wasn't that big of a deal the Batcave had a transporter, in addition to a hangar for the myriad of bat themed aircraft so it was really dealer's choice.
Right now the watchtower was occupied by dozens of Earth's heroes. The reconstituted Justice League was supposed to promise something better for the future. For Batman and Superman though day to day life was more than just the run of the mill heroics. While the design for the Watchtower had existed prior to the Thanagarian Invasion the old one had been enough for the seven member league. In the time it had taken to construct the Watchtower primary and its array of substations... well new things had cropped up.
Superman turned away from the console, "Alright people lets get back into it." There was nothing to get involved with when it came to the alien fleet. There had been three to five ships in the outer solar system ever day for the last six weeks, and more before that. A few more ships weren't going to make a major difference.
Years ago there had been a real chance for nuclear disarmament. Now it was pipe dream that had been completely discredited; the kind of thing that could get you accused of treason for suggesting if you were lucky. So all of Earth's militaries had rebuilt, rearmed. Not that disarmement hadn't had some good turn around. Nuclear security was tighter than ever; any supervillian who could steal one could probably just build his own. After the Thanagarians though people were looking towards space. So now there were armed spaceships... well a spaceship. That little thing called the Prometheus that was currently sitting by Neptune trawling through smashed alien ships.
There plenty of people aboard the Watchtower, and beyond the Justice League who felt the larger danger to people was probably not even outside of Earth's gravity well. The biggest danger were probably a handful of people on Earth itself.
Batman had insisted still though that everytime there was a flux out of hyperspace that the Watchtower's deep space monitoring network picked up that the sirens would go off... that way everyone would know about it... just in case. All the same the league ran off to deal with catastrophes on Earth, and the various supervillians without much heed for what was going on beyond the Asteroid belt. Day to day life for the League went on as if all they'd done was gotten a new set of lodgings, and new members for the most part... though that was something that took some getting used to at times.
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In shattering the Rule of Two there had been a number of important shifts, and ripples. For all of that though there existed a particularly thorny issue. Kratos had picked up, and tutored a plethora of acolytes. He distributed copies made from various records compiled by the Ancient force users, and provided a foundation to establish what might flourish into an order.
The massive T shaped tower loomed over the bay. Kratos didn't presume to understand how this kind of thing was condoned, but it functioned to some extent at this planet had been more advanced the growing orbital presence might have made more sense. Multi polar segments vying for authority might have made sense if there was a reason for such a disparity in technology. As things were it was just alien, but apparently this was what passed for normal.
Kratos spun the silver hilt of the lightsaber; just one of many he'd built over the years in the increasing effort to make progress. Darth Tyrannus, Count Dooku, had been a master of the light saber, but he had also expected the greatest threats to exist from the Jedi. The Jedi were gone now, and even if there was some remnant did it really matter. The lightsaber was an ancient weapon. One which required skill, and talent to master through mastery with the force it rendered most direct solutions inviable save of course another blade. So the use would survive into the centuries.
The blade ignited red and swept through the floating gold attack drone. The Titans Tower seemed to have a particularly nasty habit of getting attacked, this latest incursion seemed to involve some organization called the hive.
He twisted flipping his grip on the hilt, and moved on. This assault though, it was different. He didn't precisely consider it military, but definitely professional.
"BOOYAH!" There was a blast of blue energy from Cyborg's sonic cannon into the air. The gold drones continued to buzz through the air, but the spider like scurrying ones seemed to have been dealt with... for now at least.
"They're not retreating." Robin remarked eyeing the circling fliers. Still there were too many, as the Titan's leader Robin was mostly a jack of all trades, but neither he or beast boy were really suited for long range combat. Cyborg couldn't fly, which left the girls against and uncounted number of flying bots. "Blood must have something planned." This wasn't like fighting students from the Hive Academy... this wasn't like fighting their instructors. Brother Blood was the real deal, up there with Slade when it came to major villians. Unlike Slade though the allegeded mastermind behind the academy of villiany was more the type to rely on raw numbers than a direct confrontation of skill.
Cyborg entered the room pieces of his armor covered in blackened soot, "I can try and jam the signal but those drones are all probably networked together," On the other hand at least it wasn't magic they were dealing with.
The real question was why Blood would even bother with something like this.
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Various technical afficionados, and program managers had been quick to chime in about the scientific ground of the Thanagarian fleet. This had dominated news coverage for months after the invasion, but even as it slowly stepped away from focus by the twenty four hour news cylce it remained the forefront of focus by real powers.
The arrival of the Imperial Fleet, much like the Asgard ships who occassionally flitted through the solar system, went unnoticed by the predominantly ground based deep space observation arrays intended to serve as an early warning system. Still the other memebers of the UNSC's P5 had been apprized of the arrival of the Imperial Fleet by the US government mostly as a gesture of good faith... and truthfully because it really didn't cost anything. What the other Permament Five members didn't get was access to the Goa'uld salvage being collected out past Neptune... there were some slightly strained feelings from this understandably.
The US though had the advantage of finally having something to justify raising taxes; it literally only took an alien invasion. Things like infrastructure spending were being marketted as such things had been during the cold war. Such expenditures made it easier to not only work out compromises in congress, but to also construct various expansions to military installations without raising a lot of questions.
It didn't change a lot geopolitically though. It also didn't change the fact that conventional nuclear weapons were demonstrably ineffective against Goa'uld shields. Despite being suggested there was no point in ramping nuclear production up to cold war levels... it would only needless inflame public sentiment. So the world powers were sitting at the table looking at each other shiftily. It was why there delegates from the armed forces of almost all the NATO countries gathered at Area 51 talking.
Right now there were just talks about inviting observers to these functions in the future. Right now it was extremely tenuous about inviting the various members of NATO, never mind outsiders to the military alliance to these proceedings. "Gentlemen, come to order." An american general in USAF dress declared at the front of the room as the lights began to dim. In many ways the room resembled an observatory that had been crossed with a college lecture hall. Its projectors were about the same fare as one might expect from a state university as well. So in many ways the Projection of the Prometheus up on the wall didn't do the battlecruiser justice. It was lamentable, but even admitting to the existence had been an ordeal, "This is the X 303, the Prometheus" A knowing look was shared between the US, French, and British members, "is the first homebuilt space based warship of the planet Earth. It was constructed here at Area 51 utilizing a hybridization of alien technology, and human technology. It is also capable of faster than light travel." What followed was the more or less generic glossing over of the basic facts, and perhaps as coy pointing out that the Prometheus was larger than the French Mistral, which could have gone without saying.
What followed though was the more difficult matter to address. Replacing the X 303 program information card was the planet Neptune in a recent picture with the Prometheus in profile alongside a dagger shaped ship. The whole Star Destroyer moniker broke up what was otherwise a nice and orderly system. The Imperial-class obviously fulfilled the role of capital ship in most instances, except that between the Imperial and the massive Executor there were things called 'battlecruisers'.
When this meeting had been drawn up the pictures had had to be selected and approved to be released, even to allies. As a result of these security precautions the descision had been made to demonstrate the Prometheus side by side with a visiting ISD.
A colonel stepped in to explain, "This is the ISD-class warship Coordinator currently the lead ship in a detachment of Imperial Ships stationed in the Outer Solar system. Its a mile long. The majority of the crew are humans. In fact in the Milky Way alone there are countless planets inhabitted by other humans." Formal introductions of Imperial Officers would have to come later, because truthfully that wasn't important today... not really. When France, England, and China had been brought into the loop the Prometheus, and the F 302 had been a major issue. Hyperdrive was really the bigger game changer, engines or shields, because truthfully the weapons on the Prometheus were not as tremendous a leap forward. The thing people thought about were those noticeable guns on the ship, and little else. "We can't build anything this big." The colonel admitted, "This is however about standard for capital ships." Footage from several months previous played of an unfortunate Ha'tak being bombarded by one of Coordinator's fellow star destroyers. "The pyramid ship here is a kilometer across, its called a Ha'tak." There was more than just the Thanagarian out there... the Thanagarians might not even come back. The goa'uld though they didn't show any signs of going anywhere... not after lording over who knew how many planets for the last several thousand years.
Another ship appeared, and the Colonel explained it in turn as an Asgard Biliskner-class Battlecruiser. That designation was one selected by the Air Force, justified after the fact by their independent mission profiles. The asgard warships was a little over the half way point between the length of a Ha'tak, and Imperial-class.
There was no need at this stage to talk about Thanagarian, or even Gordanian ships. Those had been speculated to death about in the weeks following the end of the Thanagarian occupation. This was a new topic.
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