This story is a work of fanfiction and any similarities to the characters of any television, film or literary work is completely intentional. The author does not in any way shape or form profit from the following work nor claims any responsibility for the efforts of others. Said author acknowledges that they simply weren't cool enough to think of something like this on their own. The following story is a fanfiction cross over.
The Willed Future
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They looked on as their descendants proceeded with the titanic endeavor. The potential that they had long ago foreseen within these children all those millions of years ago had finally come to fruition. There were many who contemplated returning to the physical realm to share in new adventures as equals. There were a few who had already done so, discreetly living their lives anew among these wonderful children.
There were others who yet remained to observe from a higher plane of existence as their second evolution tackled problems that had plagued their ancestors and found solutions that equaled, if not in some ways, exceeded the works of their forebears. The new type of gateway that this second evolution had created was an achievement as monumental and potentially troublesome as the very first Astria Porta.
A being of light watches carefully from a higher plane of existence…
Even as he observed the final preparations for the re-activation of the Quantum Gate, the ascended being once known as Daniel Jackson could not help but contemplate how far mankind had come nor recall how easily it could have fallen both to threats without and within. The Great Alliance had once again been reborn though by this time it had only been in existence for a mere fraction of the length of time that its previous incarnation had lasted.
Still lasted as the Nox yet existed, living in peaceful contemplation of the universe and periodic diplomatic contact with the other species of the Alliance. The Asgard lived on in the spirit of the fifth race if nothing more. The Asgard Datacores gifted to the Tau'ri and the founders of the then fledgling Edenian League were guarded by the sleeping minds of those Asgard who had been kept in waiting until such time that a cure for their genetic degradation could be found.
There was talk of one day seeding a few worlds of the Ida Galaxy with proto-forms of Asgard life, much as the Alterans had done with humans, but such an undertaking required careful study, millennia of planning and constant observation to ensure that what life came into being did not constitute a threat to the survival of the species of the Alliance and more importantly that those beings who were allowed to live, grew and evolved in peace.
Modern humans had learned from the errors of the Alterans and through hardship the races of the Alliance had learned to treat the words of the Nox with the careful deliberation that they deserved. Parenthood on the individual level and especially on the level of creating an entire species was an exercise of love, pain and care where too much or too little could lead to disaster.
The Cimmerian Federation of Worlds, a protectorate of the Edenian League was adamant in their lobby but the magnitude of the task required deep deliberation from all involved.
As Daniel Jackson viewed the entirety of the Milky Way Galaxy in his mind, a place known to the Alterans as Avalon, he contemplated the fact that the alliance territory actually encompassed three Galaxies and the majority of a fourth.
The Origin Galaxy, so called by the members of the Human Systems Confederation founded by Tomin, and the Lantea Galaxy named by the Federation of Allied Worlds and Atlantis, a place also known to Terrans as the Pegasus Galaxy. Combined with the Terran Federation, the Free Jaffa Federation and numerous other species and territories in the Avalonan Galaxy's United Federation of Allied Systems, the Great Races Alliance had attained a size and power that greatly dwarfed its predecessor and was still growing.
There were more than twelve trillion known sentient life-forms and thanks to the actions of the Alterans, the machinations of the Goa'uld and the pseudo-benevolent plots of the Ori nearly nine trillion of these life-forms were humans, human-like, human-hybrids or artificially modified humans like the Jaffa.
The Ori had long ago exterminated the majority of non-human life-forms in the Origin Galaxy in their quest to maximize the amount of power that could be extracted from the worship of their followers. While sanctioned Alliance explorers were discovering that Origin wasn't quite as devoid of non-human life as feared, for the most part the reports from the SSV's (Scientific Survey Vehicles) indicated that the Ori had obliterated thousands of non-human civilizations at the first sign of being capable of interstellar flight and thus a threat to their 'Great Truth'.
To date the most advanced species encountered by survey probes lived on an earth sized moon orbiting a gas giant 1.7 times larger than Jupiter in the habitable zone of a binary star system. The species discovered by the Edenian SSV Far Places appeared to be of living through the equivalent of Earth's Paleothic Period and after a violent encounter with a terrain survey probe the Alliance had left a cloaked satellite in the Star System and declared the local space a restricted zone.
The Wraith of the Lantea Galaxy had held to only one type of diplomatic tactic when dealing with species that were not compatible food sources or were considered possible competition for resources, extermination. Many species had been spared complete annihilation due only to their not having developed communications technology capable of being detected across interstellar distances.
The fact that the Wraith, having used humans as their primary food source, restricted their foraging range to the planets of the Stargate network despite being capable of hyperspace travel was something that also contributed greatly to the survival of an uncounted number of pre-spaceflight, and sublight travel capable nonhuman civilizations that had escaped the notice of the Wraith Swarm.
While the Avalonan Galaxy still held several thousand known species of space-faring and non-space-faring non-human species the Goa'uld had dominated the vast majority of the Galaxy for close to six millennia spreading their human slave races across conquered worlds ever since the System Lord Ra discovered the viability of the new type of host body.
Due to the sheer size of Avalon, there were vast volumes of space that hadn't been touched by humans or Goa'uld. The Alliance had spent close to five hundred years trying to catalogue the planets of the Stargate system and that was merely a fraction of the millions of potential life-supporting worlds to be found.
The true irony of the situation was that predominance of humans in galactic and extragalactic affairs was entirely the work of various superior species and at least one egomaniacal group of parasites with a tendency toward megalomania and delusions of grandeur.
"The meek really did inherit the galaxy." Daniel muttered.
"What was that space-monkey? I didn't hear Ya!" Someone called out from somewhere behind him.
Turning around in response, the vastness of space melted away and was replaced by the scene of a familiar sixties diner. The patrons of the of the cozy eatery were clustered around square tables muttering to each other with rare excitement while periodically pointing to an article in copies of a newspaper that they all seemed to have tucked under an arm or clutched in hand.
The title of the paper was, THE DAILY UNIVERSE
One of the waitresses was a short, dark-haired woman with an aristocratic nose and angular cheek bones who simultaneously winked at Daniel, refilled cups of coffee and pocketed a stolen watch in an oddly bulging apron.
Shaking his head in exasperation Daniel made his way to the counter where he waved away another waitress who went back to talking to a handsome dark-haired cook as the man rolled up his sleeves and placed a plate heaped full of hash browns, eggs and gravy on a tray that was passed along by a dusky-skinned waitress to another customer at the counter.
This person was a slightly over-weight man who was engrossed in a quiet argument with his thin, wild-haired breakfast companion over some trivia of Unified Field Theory. At the other end of the counter, a grey-haired man was filling out a crossword puzzle while pointedly ignoring the suggestions whispered to him by a couple of eighteen year old boys who hung over his shoulders like the devil and angel characters from old cartoons.
One of the boys was of Arab descent and leaned away and smirked playfully at something that the other boy had said. This teen could have passed for the son of the grey-haired man. A younger blond woman and a muscular black man, with a solid horizontal strip of white hair passing around the back of his head from temple to temple looked on in poorly restrained amusement.
After glaring at the harrying teens the grey-haired man seemed to look at Daniel with visible relief as he sat next to the blond woman.
"Jack-" Daniel began.
"What's a nine letter word for a very satisfactory state of being?" Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill, two l's, asked.
"You're not supposed to tell him Daniel." Samantha 'Sam' Carter interrupted as Daniel opened his mouth to respond.
"Indeed, O'Neill has come very far in the six hundred years since he first started this puzzle; I have faith that he will finish it, eventually." The Jaffa, Teal'c added in a bland and slightly mocking tone.
"Aw c'mon!" Jack exclaimed, waving the paper madly he stabbed a finger at the immensely complex crossword puzzle that seemed to shift and change as Daniel watched it. "The first question on this thing was, 'What is the meaning of life?' for crying out loud!"
Sam and Teal'c exchanged wry look as Daniel, predictably, attempted to rationalize the situation. "Well Jack that paper is just an extension of the part of your psyche in tune with the universe around you so the answers are probably related to some personal truth or…"
Daniel trailed off as Jack shot him a dirty look that just screamed 'Shut up you're making my head hurt!' Jack, for his part, decided instead to follow up on his original question, the one that had drawn Daniel's attention.
"So how's it going?" He asked.
"I was just thinking about how far things have come since we first found the Stargate, who would have thought that it would have lead to this? They're building an inter-dimensional gateway now." Daniel answered.
For a second Jack looked pensive, before stating, "Shouldn't they be exploring their own universe, or maybe doing something useful like, fishing?"
Sam rolled her eyes but initially spoke up in agreement, "Well, there are already several expeditions to other Galaxies they should be supporting but they've also been planning this mission since they rediscovered how to create a quantum mirror. To be fair, if they can master this trans-luminal technology and apply it to extra-galactic travel then the exploration of galaxies beyond our local group should be even easier to undertake, I have to admit that it sounds exciting."
Daniel smiled at the woman's enthusiasm but Jack raised an eyebrow as he raised another important point. "What about the endothermic facade whatchamacallit?"
"It's called the entropic cascade effect and they were trying to get around that problem by opening a portal to a completely divergent quantum reality, in theory the effects should not be as pronounced as it would be if they were to travel to a parallel earth. They've already launched multiple probes to measure the rate of entropic failure and so far it seems like they've accounted for that possibility and they have ways of counteracting the effects until they can hopefully return. There shouldn't be any problems" Sam lectured.
A broad-chested man with graying brown hair sitting behind them snorted so hard at those words that he dropped the spoon that he was balancing on the end of his nose. After glancing at the man and Vala who was making her way over to see what the commotion was about Jack began to sneer sarcastically.
"If I had a nickel… You'd think that after all that we've been through someone would finally get a clue, that messing with the weird glowing ring/pedestal/box/door/book/wall ornament/jewel/chair/bug/plant/crystal/mushroom/what have you, especially if you don't know what it is, especially if its humming, humming and glowing! Bad idea. It's like humanity's mission is to go where no-one has gone before, and to piss 'em off in new and interesting ways." He complained.
Sam sighed and Daniel looked as if he was going to speak up but it was Teal'c who spoke his mind.
"Indeed O'Neill, I have found that most humans have a curious tendency to engage in what may at the time seem like ill-advised endeavors that others would find in their best interests to avoid. I have witnessed this tendency bring disaster to many human civilizations, yet I feel I should point out that it was this same trend has also resulted in many of your race's greatest achievements..." Teal'c looked at his companions with a measured gaze willing them to remember the time when he had first joined them in what seemed like a helpless cause.
He finished his sentence with a slight nod of respect. "You learn from your mistakes and grow and improve becoming more than you were before."
It was the lightening of the atmosphere of anxiety in the diner that alerted the small group to the fact that all of the occupants had actually been eavesdropping on their conversation.
It seemed that the Alterans were worried.
Jack shrugged with an unconcerned air and went back to his crossword puzzle uttering only a final bit of wisdom. "I wonder how the fishing is in that quantum reality."
"Copasetic." Vala said.
"Whuh?" Jack turned to her puzzled.
"The word that you're looking for, a condition that's very satisfactory or acceptable, copasetic." She answered with her hands on her hips. "I don't know what you're all so worried about, compared to what the Alliance went through before I doubt that you have much to worry about. Right Daniel?"
Daniel understood, they all remembered the early days of the Alliance when the Wraith and Micheal were still a threat and for all intents and purposes the Terran Federation was largely on it's own with sporadic help from the Tok'Ra, the Jaffa Nation and very rarely, the Nox. The Edenian League had been of great aid to Earth in spite of a number of diplomatic incidents resulting from the desire of certain individuals to secure Earth's position as a galactic power.
He thought back to the days that he had lived in a physical body, the founding of the fledgling International Space Force and the machinations of the most annoying and persistent megalomaniac that SGC had ever encountered. He remembered the war he himself had caused that had very nearly resulted in the extinction of all humans on earth.
They sat together in a diner that was not a diner thinking about the past and the willed future.
"Do you think we should warn them?" Daniel asked.
The others paused and considered the proposal.
"Nah" Jack said after a moment's contemplation. "They'll do just fine. We did good, didn't we?"
Those at the counter shared an intent look as Daniel silently informed the Others of the fact that he was only going to keep an eye on things. After all, what could go wrong?
Vala grinned and threw an arm around Daniel's shoulders, "Sounds interesting…What were we talking about? And what's my cut in the take?"
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Terran Federation Space en route to Binary Star System Symplegades, currently under the jurisdiction of the United federation of Allied Systems (UFAS), Restricted Zone
Time: Day Cycle - 0900 Terran Calendar 2773 CE, Alliance Calendar Year 7
Location: TFSF DSBS Prometheus, assigned to UFAS 33rd Monitor Fleet, Currently in Hyperspace
Reading…
Cmmd. Log: Entry no. 7732 UFAS Victor Stromner Col. TFSF, reg. no. 06094092
Warning, Black Book Entry, Contents may be censored by UFAS security directive #32-F and 45-A through J violation of said directives punishable by life imprisonment at a level 4 confinement facility
Warning, Black Box Entry, Fidelity of contents suspect due to damage to DSBC AJAX Data Core 98.7% restored by OFI (UFAS Office of Fleet Intelligence) Division 2 Signals Intelligence
Loading…
Please Stand By…
The following is a record of the 666th activation of the quantum gate during Project Symplegades as taken from the mission record of Colonel Victor Stromner TFSF Cmnd. DSBC AJAX.
A mature human male sat in an ergonomic chair that seemed to be made from a glowing blue liquid. The chair seemed to mold itself to the form of the seated man and appeared to be suspended above the floor by nothing other than faint threads of light visible as they stretched across its base and back, fading from sight as they came out of contact with the chair, looking like a delicate spider-web. The man looked to be in his late forties, mid-fifties and had graying dark hair that burned silver at the temples in the brilliant light of the white, featureless room.
His elbows were propped on the armrests of the seat that was made from the same gel-like substance. His hands were clasped in his lap instead of in the complex bed of viscous circuitry that pooled in the hand-rests. A virtual desk made of coherent light and ions held in suspended fields of force was arranged before the man and on this desk and floating above it were several reports of seemingly similar insubstantiality.
Images flickered about quickly as lines of information and raw data scrolled through the air, quickly replaced by holographic displays of three dimensional objects the revolved in place quickly before settling on a display of what seemed to be a display of disparately designed spacecrafts. The man blinked and all other displays cancelled, bringing up a enlarged view of the fleet. His attention seemed to be focused in particular on a single craft more than any other.
"Telamon, please display the FJF Rak'sha with specifications." The man said quietly.
Those commands could have been made without vocalization. Utilizing the secure neural interface keyed to the Colonel's brain activity, gene indicators, nano-implants and mitochondrial aura he could have quickly and efficiently performed his duties in perfect silence if he so wished. Yet there was something irrationally unnerving about the hollow emptiness of the security veil that made UFAS Commander John Stromner want to speak aloud if only to hear his own voice.
The FJF (Free Jaffa Federation) Ha'tak looked like a wedge-shaped isosceles based pyramid that floated in space on the widest face relative to the system plane. The widest face was 631 meters in width at the base and the entire body was 1432 meters in length. The other two faces were 540 meters in length at their base. Three massive neutrino-ion powered engines were attached to the rear of the vessel and eighteen comparatively smaller gravimetric projectors were attached in clusters of six along the vertices of the craft within wedge-shaped, armored pods. The projectors were used in conjunction with the vessels inertial dampeners to maneuver the enormous bulk of the Executor class Ha'tak Rak'sha.
"Zoom in on that image, focus on weapons emplacements." The colonel requested in a firm voice with only the merest hint of his Austrian heritage.
The hologram smoothly swiveled as array upon array of directed energy weapons was highlighted in turn. Covering every available surface of the Star Destroyer themed vessel, designed by and for Free Jaffa the FJF Rak'sha was an intimidating sight.
Next highlighted were the shielded launch silos for the notoriously unstable antimatter/naquadriah warhead, Pillum XII 'shield penetration' missiles. These weapons were originally a Terran creation that was of a design vaguely reminiscent of a cross between a grey, metallic Alteran drone and a swordfish.
The image rotated to present the dorsal surface and then the ventral surface in turn before settling on a lateral view. Indicators pointed out where the plasmatic beam projectors, and well, as Colonel General Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill once said, big honkin' space guns were arranged in staggered rows along the length of the hull on three of the four faces along with disguised and heavily armored shield projectors on all four surfaces.
The graying colonel silently input another command with a mere thought and the voice of Telamon Ship AI began speaking.
"Executor class, Free Jaffa Federation Ha'tak Rak'sha… Weapons, plasma cannons of anti-fighter defense, plasma beam cannons for capital vessel warfare, anti-capital ship missiles of variable yield warheads."
The image above the virtual desk changed to a recording of a similar ship disgorging a massive amount of smaller craft the size of fighters and bombers along with what looked like two corvettes shaped like a flying wing.
"Carrier capacity, ninety-six aerospace domination gliders divided into twelve squads. Two wings of twelve heavily shielded troop transports and twelve cloaked and shielded bombers capable of carrying ground, orbital and anti-capital ship bombardment weapons load-outs." The normally stoic AI lectured calmly.
On the image three large flight bays were slowly rising out of the hull on each face, opening toward the rear of the ship under the cover of massive, rearward facing double barreled plasma cannons and clusters of anti-fighter batteries.
"Point defense and close in anti-fighter support is provided by weapons platforms capable of firing phase-modulated bolts of plasma constrained within a degrading energy field. Rate of fire is classified- OFI estimates between six hundred and one thousand rounds a minute. Range, fifty thousand kilometers, point defense batteries sacrifice effective range for power as the dynamic energy fields that contain the fusion energy for a few seconds before unleashing their payload in clouds of high energy particles."
The recording continued, depicting an ovoid bubble surrounding the ship, pulsing with a golden yellow glow. The image paused and Telamon continued.
"Shields are based off of designs used by the former System Lord Anubis to protect his vessels and have been upgraded over the decades in accordance with the twenty-fourth century Terran and Tollan Remnant Treaties."
The image shrank into the background before returning to a representation of the space outside the vessel.
"In summation an Executor class Ha'tak is a super carrier with the equivalent of half a Lagrange Point Defense Station's fighter compliment and capable of carrying more during war time. These vessels are a well rounded asset capable of fielding both terrestrial armies and space forces with a slightly greater emphasis on offensive options rather than defensive."
Victor leaned back into the seat and sighed, shifting from side to side until the semi-intelligent viscous solid material of his chair altered its contours, inclination and firmness to suit his mood. He frowned slightly in a fit of pique, remembering his grandmother's admonition that chairs were meant to be functional not comfortable. He wondered idly what she would have thought of him now.
The control-chair, in which he sat, like most working surfaces exposed to the crew of the Ajax, generated a mild force field with subtle energy and inertial dampening capabilities. In the case of his chair the fields were adjusted so that it felt like he was being suspended by an embarrassingly soft blanket of air while still ensuring his safety in case of an emergency.
The idea was to reduce injuries to the crew in the event that the shipboard EID generators were stressed during combat, a similar precaution to the one that in the earliest of Earth's spaceflight generations ensured that all loose materials onboard a vessel was stowed away or bolted down during special maneuvers.
Victor started, and then sighed audibly when the lobes o his headrest touched against his temples and began to vibrate gently.
Screw functionality…
"Telamon, give me an armament analysis of the Langaran Batlemoon Ossa." He requested with his eyes half-closed.
At his request a massive irregular sphere appeared before him. It was approximately three thousand meters in diameter according to the flowing stream of text scrolling next to the three dimensional image. There were multiple weapons emplacements strategically positioned over the weapon station's entire surface in a grid pattern.
"Langaran Battlemoon Ossa; a Langaran Battle Moon mounts a higher density of destructive weaponry on its surface area than a FJF Executor-class Ha'tak but possesses shields that are several orders weaker than normal within the Alliance military, relying more on structural integrity fields, gravimetric deflectors and heavy amour, hundreds of meters thick, capable of withstanding multiple nuclear strikes."
The AI stopped speaking for a moment and enhanced the image while highlighting a raised section of armor, seventy-one meters across that followed along the meridian and equatorial lines of the battlemoon, crossing once under a mound at the rear of the station and meeting again at a massive dish that was set in a large crater.
"At the end of the Ori War the Langaran people, already beginning to unite against threats of extraterrestrial origin formed the Langaran Governing Council. During occupation by the forces of the Orici, the Priors had dissolved the former governments of Kelowna, Terrania and the Andari Federation. The Langaran Governing Council, formed by the surviving resistance leadership of all three nations with popular support, made reverse engineering the pieces of technology left behind on the planet, their primary endeavor aside from rebuilding and tallying the loss of life."
A flat image of the dish was projected into the air and the battlemoon rotated beside it.
"The Lagrange Point Battlestation alpha-666600, better known as the Battlemoon Avana was the ultimate culmination of this research. Intended to be the primary weapons platform for the Odessa project one of the Langara System's moons was towed to an L1 point and, using excavation technology first pioneered by High Minister Jonas Quinn large volumes of mass were removed from its core."
The image of the Battlemoon shrank and a series of linked, concentric rings were presented in an assembly view.
"Eighteen plasma shockwave synchrotrons were constructed along the station's median and equatorial lines, each consisting of a 1,873 meter in long storage ring and a 992 meter long initial booster ring and a 300 meter long terminal booster ring. Eight powerful antimatter/naquadria reactors power the eighteen linear accelerators that fed high energy particles harvested from the reactors into each booster ring."
The rings receded back into the expanding image and the dish array began to emit a faint blue glow.
"The particles are accelerated to 99.99999999987% the speed of light then shunted into the storage rings. The mass packets are kept there, periodically feeding the anti-particles formed in the ring back into the reactors. When there were sufficient mass packets for firing, the particles were again shunted en masse into terminal booster rings which channeled the flood of particles into a shielded array of emitters."
The crater began to fill with an intense blue light that shone with an intense white light at the core, lighting up space for millions of kilometers like a giant spotlight.
"Using their rudimentary understanding of gravity manipulation, the Langarans were able to create a lens effect that allowed then to focus the ultra-high energy particle beams into a powerful, though crude gravity assisted laser."
The next image was of a battlemoon targeting an asteroid ten light-seconds away. A bright blue tinge outlining the laser was all that could be seen of the energy beam that converted the nickel and aluminum ore asteroid into a rapidly expanding ball of gas.
"Unfortunately, the power generation requirements mean that the laser is only capable of two high power bursts each lasting only 700 milliseconds. After each cycle the system must enter a cool down cycle lasting close to twenty-six minutes to preserve its structural integrity. Due to these power generation limits the artificial gravity generators are limited to the tiny control center in the battlemoon core during firing and neither sub-light travel via gravimetric projectors nor hyperspace travel are possible while the main weapon is cycling. In addition hyperspace travel is restricted to the lower energy bands and hyper light jumps are impossible."
Telamon's voice almost seemed condescending as he concluded his lecture.
"In summation Colonel, a Langaran Battlemoon such as the Ossa is a woefully inadequate as a defense station. The battlemoon needs a dedicated support fleet which must in turn take care to avoid radiation leakage from the large firing envelope of the station's main weapon. Without a properly positioned fleet, enemy ships can simply hold position out of range and use mass drivers to sling asteroids at the station until it is destroyed."
A faint musical tone could be heard ringing softly and persistently as Telamon droned on.
"Thirty-four of these weapons were created and upgraded during the twenty-third century. After the Ikarran disaster when a reactor core breach irradiated a New Kobol colony the resulting reparations and cost of maintenance forced the Langarans to discontinue their Battlemoon project and sell off these installations to interested parties. The Terran Federation acquired ten of these stations for use as commercial waypoint stations after the moons' main weapon was removed. A further eleven was procured during the Serrakin Syndicate Crisis by the Edenian Space Forces (ESF) and the TFSF in a bid to keep the orbital weapons out of the hands of the Lucian Alliance. Most of the installations wer-"
The ringing came again, this time louder and more insistent. With a thought the floating images and Telamon's voice faded into the background as a three dimensional, holographic icon in the shape of a musical note floated before the colonel's eyes. It blinked it time with the musical ringing until it received Colonel Stomner's silent acknowledgement.
With that and a quick mental command, the surrounding energy fields, shields and holographic projections began to collapse. As a result the bubble of force containing the illusionary whiteout that surrounded him vanished, ceasing to cut off all noise from the rest of the CIC/CDC save for emergency alarms and priority queries from his operations staff like the one that had interrupted him.
"siR, Sir?!" Senior Operations Officer Captain Katherine Yaxley spoke to him from her station on the second tier of the CDC, her voice warped slightly in his ear as the last of the privacy screen dissipated.
The Combat Information Centre/Combat Direction Center (CIC/CDC) was the tactical command center of the Ajax; located deep within the vessel. Under the control of the craft's commanding officer directed by the senior watch-standers, the CDC handled reports from all shipboard stations and issued orders.
It was composed of three tiers, each connected by three wide steps with the rest of the area separated and enclosed by five foot tall trinium-carbon-titanium barriers that surrounded each tier. The entire command deck was located within an armored capsule that was lined with safety mechanisms and holographic projectors that were used to create an omni-directional display of the Ajax's sensor feeds. The CIC/CDC primary and secondary pods were meant to be self-sufficient and capable of protecting the command crew and marine compliment from any harmful event up to and including an unpowered crash landing on a planet.
Of the three CIC/CDC tiers the first and highest tier enclosed an area of 64 square meters, enough space to seat a commander, embarked General Staff Officer and a civilian observer.
The second tier was a three meter wide strip three steps lower where the 2IC who held the position of Senior Operations Officer and two assistants worked. The third tier was a wider strip of area three steps lower where different groups of action station officers worked including communications watch, engineering watch, tactical weaponry watch, defense screens watch, navigation watch, internal security watch, damage control and medical watch.
The only entrances or exits from the bridge was a sealed one-way matter transport alcove on the second tier that could only be used by authorized Command Deck officers to access secure areas in case of emergency. Constantly under the watch of a marine detail it was deactivated during battle situations when the Commander was in the CIC/CDC.
The only other method of entry was through a Neutronium blast door situated one level below and behind the CIC/CDC and was accessible from the third tier. It was located in such away as to allow marines in defensible positions on all three tiers to enfilade any forces attempting to gain access to the bridge.
"Report!" Colonel Stromner commanded.
"Commander Zhu of the Battle Moon Ossa has just signaled that his team has completed calibration of the sensor package and is ready for the Radek Zelenka to send the activation signal to the Gate." Yaxley stated in her calm and measured tone.
"Major Hussein has indicated that his Marines have secured the facility and verified that the subspace transponders are nominal."
Nodding in acknowledgement the UFAS Commander gazed pensively at the image displayed on the holographic viewer high overhead. There was a structure floating in the depths of space that at first glance would have fooled the eye into believing it was much smaller than it actually was.
From his research the Colonel already knew that the technology was in actuality born from the McKay-Carter Dimensional Bridge theory one of the possible solutions put forward by those seeking to improve upon the ZPM design using what was learned at the Alteran science station Avaria and from Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay's first stint in an Alteran evolution accelerator.
The theory behind the ZPE or zero point energy extractor was that it drew its energy not from subspace or local space but from a parallel reality. The problem that had been encountered was that the method of extraction warped the physical laws of the local region where the extraction process occurred.
This prevented the accurate prediction of the proliferation of exotic particles and the formation of containment fields capable of shielding against the hard radiation that resulted. The McKay-Carter Theory and the McKay mathematical proof allowed for the interaction between parallel realities. This could be used to extract dark energy from another reality, while at the same time leaving the problem of dealing with the exotic particles that formed as a result of extraction in a separate universe.
The problem with this approach had been that finding realities where no life existed was much harder than first thought. The problem had been that most inter-dimensional windows opened into parallel realties were attracted to realities similar to the one in which the Alliance existed as proposed in the Hailey-Miller Theory. Finding an uninhabited quantum reality had turned into a game of roulette with the odds stacked against the player.
The solution to this was the re-discovery of the theory of Quantum Tuning. Through centuries of experimentation and pooling resources with aid from the Nox the Alliance had gained the ability to crudely seek out dimensions using a method of exclusion. After a few decades of encountering both good and evil twins from other realities the ability to discriminate against parallel realities had been partially attained and the ability to enter divergent quantum realities was in part, gained.
Those who were familiar with the superficial design, among whom numbered the combined races of the Great Alliance, would have recognized that the Dimensional Gate looked like two disconnected halves of a Star Gate similar to the ones located in Lantea, only much bigger.
The true scale of the construct could only be understood once one realized that the inner circumference of each half-ring when joined together was a just large enough for the entire fleet currently occupying the lifeless binary system to enter at the same time if every vessel moved to within half a kilometer of each other.
However, what was staggering about the scale of the construct to the onlookers was not simply its size but the fact that the entire project had only taken fifty years to complete and twenty five of those years had involved lobbying for permission to begin construction and the allocation of sufficient resources.
This was of course after several centuries of failure due to the Governing Council's justifiable stance that the Alliance wasn't yet ready for the challenge that such an endeavor would present and that there needed to be far more research into the safety of the technology.
Some had argued that in the first days of the Stargate program, widely credited for setting Earth on the path to the stars, the legendary Jack O'Neill the first and Daniel Jackson, subjects of many historical studies, hadn't even known if they would return once they stepped through the Stargate.
The point was made that at the time nobody working in the Stargate Program during it's activation in 1995 really knew for a fact that the artifact that they were about to use was really anything other than an elaborate execution device or a molecular blender. Those in favor of the Dimensional gateway used that fact to argue for more aggressive experimentation.
Those who were against research into the technology and favored caution, rebutted with the argument that most sentients in the Alliance had thankfully evolved past the stage of leaping without wondering just where they would land. They argued for smaller scale experiments and a timeline of ten Alliance Standard Years (one thousand Earth years).
HIGHCOM had been one of the parties in favor of this longer time line. It was perhaps because of Victor's own skepticism that he had been placed in charge of protecting the UFAS DSRV Radek Zelenka that was directing the experiment.
Since the isolated Binary star system they would be using was situated 'close' in cosmological terms to the inhabited teritories of Free Jaffa Federation space, the majority of the UFAS vessels were under the FJF banner although the TFSF Ajax was in nominal command.
The FJF Rak'sha had been tasked with a different mission from his own by HIGHCOM. If anything that came through the gate proved to be even remotely hostile the Executor class Ha'tak and its companion vessels would open fire and destroy anything coming through while the science teams worked to deactivate the gate.
"I only hope it works…" Victor thought moodily.
Captain Yaxley, perhaps picking up on his mood busied herself distributing hushed orders through her assistants with Telamon's aid. The AI that conversed with her had projected himself in ghost interaction mode, appearing as a faintly glowing, semitransparent image of an elderly twentieth century college professor.
A minute later Colonel Anezka Dvorak PhD commander of the Radek Zelenka signaled her readiness to begin.
It was a historical moment in more ways than one.
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Terran Federation Space Binary Star System Symplegades, currently under the jurisdiction of the United federation of Allied Systems (UFAS), Restricted Zone
Time: Day cycle – 0930 Terran Calendar 2773 CE, Alliance Calendar Year 7
Location: TFSF DSBS Prometheus, assigned to UFAS 33rd Monitor Fleet, Currently in Hyperspace
Reading…
Warning File #4341 Corrupted
Warning File #4342 Corrupted
Warning File #4343 Corrupted
Warning File #5762 Corrupted
Warning File #0082 Unexpected End of File….
Warning Read Error… Rebooting…
Reading…
Cmmd. Log: Entry no. 9987 UFAS Dr. Anezka Dvorak PhD, EngD, MEng, Col. TFSF, reg. no. 18054121
Warning, Black Book Entry, Contents may be censored by UFAS security directive #32-F and 45-A through J, violation of said directives punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment at a level 4 confinement facility without the possibility of parole.
Warning, Black Box Entry, Fidelity of contents suspect due to damage to DSRV Radek Zelenka, Lost All Hands, Data Core 8.6% restored by OFI (UFAS Office of Fleet Intelligence) Division 2 Signals Intelligence.
Loading…
Please Stand By…
The following is a record of the 666th activation of the quantum gate during Project Symplegades as taken from the final mission record of Colonel Dr. Anezka Dvorak (deceased) TFSF Cmnd. DSRV (Deep Space Research Vessel) Radek Zelenka.
The activation of the Dimensional gate was a beautiful ting to see. The two halves of the gate slowly moved together propelled by their gravimetric drive systems. Upon completion of the assembly the Radek Zelenka sent the activation codes to the gate. Wisps of star fire was drawn from the binary stars and danced around the ring before seeming to be absorbed by the gate. The activation of the device was obvious from the shimmering view of an alien field of red shifting light and nebulous clouds of gas that could be seen through the ring.
Data was forwarded from the enhanced targeting sensors of the Battlemoon Ossa to the Radeck Zelenka. In order to make the most of the brief, fifteen second activation window allowed by Colonel Stromner. The science vessel DSRC Radek Zelenka had taken the risky move of lowering its primary shield system in order to fully utilize its impressive sensor suite to the fullest potential.
HYLDAR (Hyper-light Direction and Ranging) passive scans, AEGISS (Active Emissions Gravimetric Interferometer Subspace Sensors) active sweeps, ARGUSA (Active Radiation Gravimetric Unidirectional Subspace Array) scans, remote drones deploying ARGOSA (Active Radiation Gravimetric Omnidirectional Subspace Array) scans, metallurgical, psychic, aural, tachyon, lidar even radar scans were utilized.
Although it was slightly unprofessional, Colonel Dvorak felt her heart swell with joy as Petra, the Radek Zelenka's AI began downloading the millions of exabytes of data into the quantum multi-phase computers that had been loaned to the UFAS Science Council by the Edenian League of Allied Worlds.
There was laughter and applause as nanosecond by nanosecond they learned something new and amazing about the strange universe before them.
She turned to her excited Serrakin xenobiologist, Dr. Iain Hobb and lightly commented. "Sentient beings throughout the Great Alliance are going to be celebrating this find for centuries."
The scientist turned his reptilian eyes to her and was about to answer when the great law of Murphy came into play.
The first indication TFSF colonel, Dr. Anezka Dvorak had that the situation was going spin ward for the DSRC Radek Zelenka was when her psyhcogenic telemetry specialist Dr. Volgen assumed a fetal position and started muttering from the floor.
"P-power…beyond comprehension…hunger…hunger!"
He also pissed himself.
Things got worse from there...
It was the sensors that very nearly doomed the vessel more than its lack of a primary shield. The Radek Zelenka was a converted Arbalest-class Frigate, now obsolete with the introduction of the new Veda-class Long Range Frigates fielded by the TFSF MILCOM, the Arbalest class frigates found a second life due to their interchangeable, modular design. By swapping out weapons emplacements for science modules the entire fleet of vessels was handed over to the UFAS Science Council and Survey Division as mobile laboratories and ranged exploration vessels mapping the unknown space beyond the Stargate system in the unexplored territories of the Inhabited Galaxies.
The long range research craft was a half the size of the Ajax measuring little more than 350 meters in length and one hundred and seventy meters in width. Its hull was covered in sensors using the O'Neill/Carter integrated CSS system and the craft was unarmed save for two lateral launch silo's capable of carrying up to twenty Terran designed variable payload drones used in its second life more often for research than actual combat.
The telemetry officer was an Edenian and had been in charge of directing the psychic and aural scans. He was among the first to fall under the thrall of the invader's signal being received by the sensors. The weapons control officers on several Jaffa ships including the one aboard the Ha'tak Ka'lel had also fallen under the influence of a hostile mind and had fired upon and the Rak'sha before he was wrestled to the deck by his commander.
Colonel Stromner's voice could be heard over the PA system. "Report! Anna report! What the hell is going on?!"
The space around the opened gate lit up with weapons fire from half of the FJF all directed at the Radek Zelenka.The FJF Freedom an older, upgraded pyramidal Ha'tak that once belonged to the System Lord Nirrti, moved in to provide cover along with the Ajax while the other ships traded fire with the enthralled.
The primarily Galaran crewed MRBD (Mid-Range Battle Destroyer)Noble and the mixed crew of the MRBD Honor, two of twelve Vili-class destroyers assigned to the fleet, were performing interception duties against rogue death gliders targeting the Zelenka when it was struck multiple times along the lateral profile of its shield by a plasma beam from a rogue Ha'tak. The destroyer's primary shields failed after the third hit but the eighty year old CSS hull system kept out the nuclear fire, although there was severe structural damage from the stresses of the kinetic impact and secondary energy discharges.
The Optrican/Terran crew DSBC Anathema attempted to draw fire away from the destroyer which was attempting to perform an emergency hyper-light jump in order to escape to the safety of an extra-solar fleet tender. Tragically, a rogue death glider powered through the hole in the Destroyer's anti-fighter cover and impacted at maximum sub-light fighter velocity on Noble just as she jumped out.
The last image that Anezka had of Noble was an expanding ball of flame, lightning and twisted metal that vanished in a small distortion of space-time with a flash. Distraught, she didn't apologize for kicking her crazed defense screens officer out of the way and undoing the damage caused by the man in order to raise the ship's primary shield system. The battlemoon Ossa and a group of four of Ha'taks were engaged in a pitched battle. There was a blinding flash and the Zelenka's radar and AE/AR (Active Emission/Active Radiation) systems were filled with static when Ossa fired her ultra-high energy, gravity assisted particle/antiparticle array.
For twenty seconds the displays blacked out as sensors either overloaded or shutdown in order to preserve themselves. After the CSS system cycled the optical hyper-light sensors, the awesome power of the Ossa's main weapon could be seen in the afterimage of the beam path burned into the imaging medium of several receivers. Floating dead in space were the four Ha'taks with their weapons emplacement's destroyed, their hulls charred, glowing and highly radioactive.
The AE/AR sensors regenerated after forty seconds of inactivity. The radar system remained offline… As did the Zalenka's subspace uplink to the dimensional gate.
"Uh oh!"
Colonel Dvorak anxiously attempted to restore the connection as her stricken crew began to slowly recover from what ever had happened. Damage control and medical response alarms were screaming for the attention of dazed and disoriented officers. Hobbs fortunately seemed unaffected by mysterious bout of madness that afflicted a quarter of her crew and aided her by manning a station. A radiological alarm went of as someone tried to sabotage an experiment in one of the labs. Petra closed off the lab and flooded the section with quickly generated radiation nano-scrubbers.
Frustrated at her failure to restore the uplink she snapped harshly as Petra attempted to gain he attention.
"What!" Anezka snarled.
Unperturbed Petra brought up an image of a subspace energy wave form. "I believe that I have isolated the cause of this disturbance captain, with your permission I will attempt to jam i-"
Anezka didn't hesitate.
"Do it!"
As if a switch was thrown on board the Zelenka maddened crewmembers fell to their knees in pain, some losing consciousness, others regaining their senses. The effect were slower to take effect outside the ship and ineffective in the vessels furthest from the Zelenka but the Ajax AI picked up the data packet sent by Petra and quickly began transmitting a jamming signal of its own along the low subspace energy band.
It seemed like the battle was over.
Then they came…
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Terran Federation Space en route to Binary Star System Symplegades, currently under the jurisdiction of the United federation of Allied Systems (UFAS), Restricted Zone
Time: Day Cycle - 1000 Terran Calendar 2773 CE, Alliance Calendar Year 7
Location: TFSF DSBS (Deep Space Battleship) Prometheus, assigned to UFAS 33rd Monitor Fleet, Currently in Hyperspace
Reading…
Cmmd. Log: Entry no. 212 UFAS Zhu Shuang-tan MEng. Col. TFSF, reg. no. 27124112
Warning, Black Book Entry, Contents may be censored by UFAS security directive #32-F and 45-A through J violation of said directives punishable by life imprisonment at a level 4 confinement facility without the possibility of parole.
The following is a record of the 666th activation of the quantum gate during Project Symplegades as taken from the mission record of Colonel Zhu Shuang-tan (promoted to Brigadier General) TFSF Cmnd. Langaran Battlemoon Ossa.
He wished he was home.
In this case home was not Colonel Zhu's birthplace, the Terran Federation member world of Fanyang. Settled by the People's Republic of China, now the highly successful Chinese Federation, during the first heady days of Earth's extrasolar territorial expansion Fanyang was a TFSF academy world, dedicated to raising and providing a first-class education to the children of the far flung personnel of the TFSF. It was a place of fond memories for Zhu but it wasn't home.
Home was the DSBC (Deep Space Battlecruiser) Guangxi currently in the care of his second in command Captain Huang Pei and the Terran AI Judith. Unfortunately Zhu had been ordered to take command of the Battlemoon Ossa for the duration of the 'great experiment'.
He hated every minute of the experience.
He was seated on a blocky control chair, in a cramped control room, surrounded by several hundred meters of lead, trinium-coated titanium armor, Hydrogen storage tanks; Water reservoirs and numerous anti-radiation force-fields. Zhu desperately tried to act as if he wasn't bothered by the fact that there were eight massive and extremely temperamental mutual annihilation reactors within a brisk jog of his control centre.
It was an act that would have been much easier if, after a hurried conference with one of the engineers, his medical officer hadn't abruptly and urgently insisted that everyone up their dosages of tamoxifentanol, an anti-radiation medicine that had been issued to the crew and technicians working aboard Ossa.
"Signal the Ajax that we are ready to go any time that Zelenka is." He ordered the Re'ol communications officer.
"Ajax has received and acknowledged our transmission." The androdioecious control officer informed him. "The Radek Zelenka is transmitting the activation signal." He/She added a second later.
"Make sure we get as much as possible." Zhu told watch-standers at the expanded sensor station. "I don't want to hear those eggheads over at the Zelenka complaining over any aborted scans."
For a few minutes the situation was boringly normal; then, a small alarm went off in the dim control room.
Zhu stiffened in his chair. "What was that?!" he demanded.
"FJF Ha'tak Glory of Senecon has locked on to us with their main weapon!" A sensor operator hurriedly informed the colonel.
"What! Hail them! Increase power to the targeted hemisphere!" Zhu bit out tersely.
"I'm getting no response, Senecon is ignoring our hails!" The communication officer responded.
"Sir, the FJF Ha'taks Wise Wanderer, Warrior of Sands and Du'ran Risen are moving in on attack vertor- Senecon is firing!!" The Sensor operator paled in shock as he relayed the information from his station.
"Activate shields and gravitic defense fields, interception fire only! Get me the Ajax!" Zhu ordered with a forced calm.
"Colonel, Major Hussein from the marine detachment is reporting that a tech in Segment 5A started a disturbance." The Security officer frowned. "Fights are breaking out in Sections 5A-K, no explanation as to the cause."
Zhu frowned pensively, those were all areas beyond the core force-fields, beyond Section 5K was the shielded personnel section where the Marines were stationed. For a moment he was at a loss, and blankly asked.
"Who is fighting who?"
"The techs sir, the techs working in those sections are fighting each other." The security officer replied.
"Sir, we have the Ajax on the line!" Communications informed Zhu.
The Colonel watched as the face of Symplegades Taskforce Commander Colonel Victor Stromner was projected onto his command chair's monitor.
"Zhu, are you still with us?" The older man asked.
"Yes sir." Zhu replied. "What's going on?"
"Telamon informs me that there is some sort of signal emanating from the gate, I tried to get through to the Zlenka but communications are down. Our multi-spectrum shields seem to be able to keep it out but the FJF ships aren't quite so lucky, especially the older ones." Col. Stromner stated grimly.
Zhu swallowed. "So it's an attack then." He stated more than asked.
Stromner nodded. "At the moment we estimate that the majority of the crews aboard the attacking vessels are attempting to retake control of the rogue ships. But for the moment only the FJF Rak'sha and the FJF Ka'lel seem to be under Alliance control, the other seven Ha'taks and the majority of the fighter craft out there are to be considered rogue hostiles."
Colonel Stromner shifted in his seat as the Ajax took fire from a flight of death gliders that turned about, vectoring for an attack on Ajax's ventral surface. A silent command from a weapons control officer, gave Telamon weapons release authority for the ventral interceptor weapons grid.
As the fighters closed on the Ajax, the CSS hull system tracked the incoming bogeys and it formed several dimples on the ship's ventral surface, in the optimum firing locations. The weapon's grid materialized several quadruple bore, rapid-fire ion repeaters mounted in a spherical housing that floated within the hemispherical depressions in the hull on manipulated bosonic force-fields.
Each of these weapons was a miniaturized version of the now obsolete Tollan Ion cannon. Though generally useless as an anti-capital ship weapon, by increasing the firing rate of each bore to a mere 600 rounds per minute, updating the tracking and acquisition programs while maintaining its original energy output, these weapons became excellent anti-fighter weapons.
Each bore was capable of tracking fighters within its firing envelope both separately and in concert. Each bore fired at 10 rounds a second releasing forty rounds per turret per second. In the thirty seconds that it took the Ak'ran-class death gliders to enter their fifty thousand kilometer weapons engagement range, the fifty turrets spread across the Ajax's hull had already answered with sixty thousand bolts of charged particles and ionizing radiation.
The twelve fighters were bracketed with convergent fire and had their shields battered down in seconds. The crazed pilots continued on, screaming incoherently even as the second salvo blasted them into balls of radioactive fire and cooling gas that were dissipated by the navigational deflectors before they even came close to touching the Ajax's defensive shields.
Stromner met Zhu's eyes seriously. "If possible disable the rogue ships and give the Jaffa on board a fighting chance. This is likely a prelude to an attack through the gate."
Zhu nodded with the unspoken knowledge that he would have to kill allies if the fighting endangered the lives under his command. "I understand sir."
Turning from the deactivated monitor, Zhu faced his weapons officer. "What is the status of those Ha'tak that were firing on us?" He asked.
The woman replied promptly. "Sir, we've destroyed Wise Wanderer's main plasma cannon and Glory of Senecon has lost sublight propulsion but Du'ran Risen and Warrior of Sands are towing it into position to fire on the Array."
Zhu thought for a moment, and then he came to a decision.
"Tell the Marines that they have six minutes to get everyone that they can inside of the Core shield. Lock any troublemakers in the crew cabins and stun anyone who resists." He ordered the Security officer. Turning to the watch stander at weapons control he issued the following orders. "Set the Grav-lens to minimal power, maximum diffusion and put those Ha'tak square in the field of fire!"
The Pangaran's eyes widened. "That'll-"
"Burn off the shield and weapons emplacements if we do it right. There are allies aboard that ship that I don't want to have to kill." Zhu finished for the startled man who nodded and began briskly entering the necessary commands.
For six minutes the clock counted down as the Ha'tak struggled under the Ossa's counter-fire to destroy the batlemoon's main weapon. The crater had its own smaller shield dome in addition to the Grav-lens that deflected fire away from the crater.
While the Ha'tak's had stronger shields and had clustered together so that only one hemisphere at a time could bring weapons to bear, Colonel Zhu countered by rotating the Ossa on it's horizontal axis relative to the system plane, moving the Array out of the line of fire and placing the Ha'taks into the field of fresh weapons.
After six minutes of playing cat and mouse, Zhu watched as the rogue ships again moved into the Array's firing solution which was directed away from the rest of the fleet, especially the weakly shielded death gliders.
He gave the order.
There is no noise in space, within the Battlemoon control core, there was a feeling of tension for a few seconds as the Storage rings shunted half of their payload into the terminal booster ring and the radiation detector whined as the Array discharged. If Zhu had stood upon the surface of the battlemoon wearing a s'isor to protect his eyes, in the millisecond before he was fatally dosed with radiation and baked into the hull, he would have seen the particle/anti-particle discharge disperse and shine upon the four Ha'taks like a titanic searchlight reaching out into space.
The Ossa was already aiming at the Gateway when the first of the invaders came through.
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Terran Federation Space Binary Star System Symplegades, currently under the jurisdiction of the United federation of Allied Systems (UFAS), Restricted Zone
Time: Day Cycle - 1030 Terran Calendar 2773 CE, Alliance Calendar Year 7
Location: TFSF DSBS Prometheus, assigned to UFAS 33rd Monitor Fleet. Currently in Symplegades System.
Cmmd. Log: Entry no. 6312 UFAS Melinda Moran MEng. Archon, HSC reg. no. 33185752
The human female sitting in the virtual chair was the only other person, aside from the Fleet Commander, General Simone De Salle TFSF, to be physically present in the sealed conference room onboard the DSBS Prometheus, flagship of the TFSF fleet.
The General was an ash blond woman who looked far younger than her actual age of 366 earth years. Through somatic treatments and nanobiotic gene restoration the senescence of a human body could be temporarily suspended and in some cases even reversed. Although actual physical immortality was beyond the scope of medical technology and many of the more advanced species in the Alliance did not seek it, preferring instead to ascend. The Great Alliance did have the medical technology to greatly extend the lifespan of most beings by hundreds if not thousands of years.
In General De Salle's case she was one quarter Edenian and had inherited her grandmother's longevity which, in addition to the normal medical treatments offered freely to those who serve the Alliance, allowed her to have the appearance of a fresh and healthy twenty-five year old.
"There you have it people, that's what we're getting into." General De Salle remarked.
Melinder ran a hand through her short black hair as she and her fellow commanders absorbed the information from the immersive environment constructed from the logs of commanders long ago.
The Zelenka's sensor logs would later reveal in detail the existence of mental patterns being broadcast to all ships in the fleet. Using the lens effect of hyperspace on subspace carrier waves the extra-dimensional beings were able to magnify the power of their psychic weapon's tachyon emissions. Since the shields of the DSBC Ajax had been fully activated from the moment that the gate had been opened it had thus proven immune to the influence of the carrier weapon.
The enemy's main assault craft, called Caldera ships by OFI analysts was roughly twice the size of a battlemoon and mounted a massive, volcano shaped (and sized) plasma cannon that unleashed diffuse gouts of plasma and radioactive material from the alien's titanic ships. The task force had managed to destroy several of the vessels before Ajax was forced to evacuate the Ossa. The battlemoon was sacrificed in order to stop the invader's dreadnaught vessel, a spheroid craft 12,800 kilometers in diameter, from passing into their universe.
It had been like a fly trying to stop a truck.
In the end, the Radek Zelenka was destroyed when Colonel Dvorak heroically brought her vessel within close enough range to launch a stellar probe on a collision course with the emergency stop that was hardwired into the gate. The first three hundred kilometers of the dreadnaught was sheared off when the gate deactivated and separated into its components. In the process the Zelenka and her escort came under fire and were destroyed.
The DSBC Guangxi was destroyed along with the FJF Rak'sha, the Vili-class mid-range destroyers Hellenic, Kotaka, Swift, Havok, Noble and Bainbridge along with the Veda-class Frigates Heligo and Chandra. Among the dead were close to five thousand beings including Captain Huang Pei and the Terran AI Judith who perished, but not before buying time for the Radek Zalenka to deactivate the gate before the science vessel was in turn destroyed.
The Alliance forces had very nearly been forced to retreat from Symplegades System, leaving the gate in enemy hands. Fortunately this was not to be as the ELAW Contractor Ship Lapsed Apathy, picked up the emergency hails for the Radek Zelenka and responded under the command of Elysian Mediator Arielle Acoxochitl Anacoana Acolhnahuacatzin-Tonks Lupin and her XO Sebastian PSL Guan Yin.
The Nemesis-class vessel was responsible for destroying twenty-eight of the twenty-nine remaining Caldera ships during the engagement and aiding in the disposal of the super dreadnaught segment left floating ominously in space.
In the end the data gained from that final test had allowed the Terran Federation to discover the key to an infinite number of divergent realities devoid of life. And a few that held life forms that greatly interested Alliance scientists especially those interested in resurrecting the Asgard genome and those wishing to create a working zero point energy extractor.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on one's point of view, The Alliance Governing Council had instituted a general ban on all large scale experiments into accessing quantum realities for a period no less than two Standard Alliance years (200 earth years). At which time the Alliance Science Council would be allowed to make recommendations into whether or not it was time for the Alliance to try Project Symplegades again.
It was time.
"We had best get ready." General De Salle stated. "Dismissed!"
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Battlecraft Profile: Argonaut Class Deep Space Battle Cruiser
Length: 712 meters
Width: 344 meters at propulsion block
Height: 215 meters
Offensive/Defensive Weapons:three hundred type one combat drones, two hundred type two variable payload drones, one caesim beam projector, two Tollan ion beam projectors, six antiproton enriched plasma beam cannons, 16 exotic particle emmiters, quantum teleportation array, Tollan ion cannon weapons array, weapon materialization grid.
Defense Systems: Asgard based shielding using partial application of the Mackay Alteran shield upgrade algorithm. O'Neill/Carter Crystal Shield and Sensor System using partial application of Mckay algorithm. Gravimetric force deflectors, Energy and Inertial dampening field generators.
Armour:Trinium-Carbon-Naquadah-Iridium hull one meter thick and energized utilizing the regenerative properties of the O'Neill/Carter CSS, Neutronium-trinum-titanium space frame.
Engines:Asgard hyper-drive systems utilizing Carter-Mckay Ancient hyper-drive engine upgrades. Carter-Hailey Neutrino Ion sub-light engines powered by one zero point energy module. Gravimetric maneuvering projectors, utilizing EID generators to manipulate inertial vectors for fine maneuvering control.
Notes: Terran Federation Capital Military Spacecraft. Possesses artificial gravity, inertial dampening systems, energy dampening systems, localized force field technology, matter-energy transportation technology, matter replication technology, holographic systems, neural interfaces, nanotechnology repair systems, limited phase technology.
While these vessels are capable of being equipped with phase cloaking technology, such upgrades are currently prioritized for the Office of Fleet Intelligence and as of 2431 T.C.E.
Further not on various fleet designations. Each member of the Alliance may join as an individual entity, organization or star system(s) provided that said body represents the greater majority of the member's population, employees, family etc. For example TTFSF, HSC, ELAW, LMW, FJF are all representatives of various such entities.
Battle Cruisers sacrifice carrier capacity and armor for weapons emplacement on par with a Battleship. In addition to its ZedPM and Neutrino Ion Generators, these vessels are equipped with a twelve compact antimatter-naquadriah generators six of which are on standby while the rest power tertiary systems. These craft also posses a secondary CIC/CDC for Fleet co-ordination.
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The first time that I tried writing this there were so many ideas that everything just gushed out in total defiance of my attempts to record my thoughts in some semblance of order. I confess to being inspired in part by the other Stargate stories that I've read although in truth it was not my intention to simply copy and paste someone else's work and most of the similarities are just me grasping subconsciously for what felt apt. This is my second attempt at the Willed Future which will be taken down when I've gotten to the point in the plot that I've currently planned. Hopefully things will be more coherent. TTFN.