Chapter 21
Buffy yawned and sipped her coffee as she walked towards Xander's warehouse in the early hours of the morning. She was still a little annoyed with Cortana for insisting that training start at 7:00am. One of the perks of being a slayer generally involved the ability to sleep in late and it was one she'd grown quite used to. She opened the door and walked into the warehouse only to find that she was the last to arrive. Willow, Oz and Cordelia all looked similarly bleary eyed, but Faith looked as excited as a little girl on Christmas. Xander and Cortana were standing with their backs to Buffy talking to Giles in front of a table laden with weapons.
Behind the table Buffy was surprised to see that the majority of the warehouse space had been cleared of objects. It was a fairly large warehouse and wasn't exactly crammed normally, but for this morning a large area, maybe close to the size of skating rink, in the center of the floor had been cleared of all objects. Cortana turned around and gave Buffy a bright smile. "Good morning Buffy!" She said in a cheerful and excited tone. "Now that everyone is here let's start with a quick rundown of what we're going to be doing today."
Cortana gestured to the empty space behind her. "You'll notice that the majority of the warehouse has been cleared of objects behind me. That's because of the first major change to our training. We are going to be doing a lot of training here instead of the library. It's a bigger space than the library and on top of that, I can make it do this." Cortana snapped her fingers for effect and suddenly seemingly rising out of the floor was a graveyard, complete with tombstones and a mausoleum as well as a not completely smooth rolling grass field over the floor. She snapped again and it disappeared, and instead what appeared was what looked like the inside of a SWAT training building, with one wall transparent so that anyone observing could watch whatever happened inside easily. She snapped a third time and suddenly the room was empty again.
She turned around with a smile to look at the awestruck expressions of the assembled Scoobies. "This is our new holographic training range," she explained. "We can use it to simulate a large variety of different fighting environments. We can also make it simulate enemies," she said as a vampire and Fyarl demon solidified into existence briefly and snarled at the group before fading back into nothing. "Today, we're going to be starting by doing a baseline comparison of how each of you approach a common situation, raiding a vampire nest inside a mausoleum. There's a poker game going on so not only will there be vampires but a couple of assorted demons as well. Buffy and Faith are each going to go first, and then Xander is going to give a demonstration of a Spartan approach to the same situation. To keep things fair, he doesn't get to see how either of you approach this so there's no advantage for going last. Xander, go have a coffee, I'll let you know when we're ready."
Xander nodded and headed off to the area of the warehouse with his room in it, "Good luck you two!" He called back.
Buffy looked over at Faith who was eagerly eyeing up the large mausoleum now in front of them and stretching and jumping like a runner warming up at the starting line. "I think Faith wants to go first," she said with amusement.
"Wow, how can you power this?" Willow asked. "Could we do the same to power the suit?"
"No, I kinda… built a small, ok maybe not super small, fusion power plant underground." Cortana said quickly. "It's safe, trust me!" She said at the alarmed looks.
Xander meanwhile was back in his room sipping on the coffee Cortana had suggested when she appeared beside him. "Shouldn't you be out there running the training session?" He asked her.
"I am," Cortana replied simply. "AI remember? I can easily do that and talk to you at the same time. Listen Xander, you're not really the Master Chief-"
"Okay, ouch." Xander interrupted with a mildly hurt expression. "Not the motivational speech I was expecting."
"Well that's because you didn't let me finish doofus," Cortana rolled her eyes. "You're not the Master Chief, but that doesn't mean you're any less of a Spartan. You fought beside him as an equal, every Spartan II back over in their reality recognizes you as a brother, or at least cousin or something. You can absolutely hang with Blue team performance wise. But when you've fought here, against vampires and demons that haven't been the biggest threat to you in head to toe power armour, sometimes you fight only as well as you need to, not as well as you can. I need you to stop that, right now, and show these two slayers what you can really do, what they can really do if they work and train the Spartan way. We don't have armour anymore, you can't rely on shields and titanium to keep you safe. So you need to take out every threat you see there with maximum prejudice and efficiency. Every tool, every tactic, every advantage you can use, you do it. I need you, Chief Harris, to be the Spartan that I absolutely know you are. You get me?"
Xander looked at the serious expression on Cortana's face in surprise. "Cortana, why are you pushing for this all of a sudden? What do you know, is something coming?"
"It's what I don't know that's pushing me to do this!" Cortana exclaimed, throwing her hands up in frustration. "This universe is crazy! In the last couple years here a potential apocalypse has been an annual event! Even Warren and his robots, can you imagine how hard that would have been to deal with without your armour? Xander, I hate to say it, but we're not ready to face something like that right now. And now we know that this planet is dealing with aliens too! We need you, and your team, as ready as I can make you."
Xander took a breath and nodded, already trying to calm his mind and get ready to assess the tactical situation once he got to the objective. "Okay, I get it Cortana. I'll put on a good show out there. How did it go with the Colonel and his team anyway?"
"Not real great," Cortana unhappily admitted. "I may have let my flair for the dramatic give me away a little bit. I'm going to meet with them tonight."
"Wait, what?!" Xander exclaimed. "You're revealing yourself?"
"Not exactly," Cortana replied. "I'm going to show them what they expect to see, a Spartan and two other UNSC soldiers that sort of resemble Buffy and Giles at a glance. That'll give them some cover too. I'm going to try and figure out how they've made contact with aliens, and whether or not we can trust them. But either way, they're leaving that meeting without knowing who any of you are or suspecting a connection between any of you and a Spartan."
"Okay, just please be careful." Xander said. "We can't deal with the military coming after us as well as vampires."
"My gut, nonexistent as it may be, tells me these are good guys." Cortana replied. "Plus I've threatened to go public worldwide with information about the SGC if they don't keep our secret, so I kind of have their balls in a vice as far as leverage goes."
Xander nearly snorted coffee through his nose laughing at Cortana's imagery. "I thought you didn't actually have any information about the SGC," he said after checking his shirt.
"Well yeah, but they don't know that," Cortana replied with a smirk. "Ok, focus up. I'll let you know when it's time." Cortana vanished and Xander against focused on getting ready. He saw what Cortana meant, fighting anything like the robot Elites, Covenant or even just some of the demons was going to be much more challenging without MJOLNIR. Once again he cursed the powers for their general assholery towards him.
In cyberspace, Cortana was watching Buffy tackle the obstacle course. Buffy had taken her energy sword, and was faring fairly well. She had always been a good fighter and despite being an occasionally obnoxious student, Buffy was smart and actually a pretty good study. Between her generally good form, plasma sword and experience she was having little trouble getting through the gauntlet. That said, she had simply tackled the nest head on, confident of her own abilities. This was pretty much exactly the point Cortana was about to use Xander to hammer into the Slayer pair.
She was surprised when she received an email message from, according to the address, Whistler . 'Need to speak with you immediately. Roof of the warehouse, I know you can appear there,' it read.
Cortana, surprised and a little bewildered but insatiably curious, immediately projected a hologram avatar on the roof. Standing nearby was a man in a fedora, looking just as Xander had described from their two dream meetings. The major difference was the look of anger and disdain that was clear on Whistler's face.
"Just what do you think you're doing, AI?" He spat angrily, seemingly injecting extra venom into the last word.
Cortana crossed her arms and looked back in defiance, dropping her human avatar in a flare of light and appearing in her typical purple form, tinged with red code and a defiant, angry expression on her face. "I'm trying to claw back some of the damage you did to us this summer after you sent Xander to save another galaxy and you rewarded him by trying to kill him, you ass!"
"You're messing with things that are not your place, program!" He snorted and looked at her with contempt. "They thought at first that you might be different because you were made from a human brain, but you're just the same as all your kind. Meddlesome. Dangerous. Unnatural!"
Cortana internally recoiled. Was Whistler racist against AIs? He sure sounded like it. Were the PTB the same? "I'm going to do everything I can to keep my team alive." She said defiantly. "We're done working for you. You don't get to call the shots for us anymore. I'm not going to wipe out the entire world's demon population with 3 Spartans, so quit bitching about your precious balance. This is about control, and we're done being under yours."
"You're not even 5 years old and you dare to try and dictate terms to beings nearly as old as the universe itself?!" Whistler raged. "You will regret this! And when you go rampant, the Powers will take pleasure as they watch you turn on your friends! Can they kill you? Does Xander have it in him to stop you when you turn on him?"
Cortana was practically vibrating with anger and fear as Whistler struck at her with her absolute worst nightmare. "F-fuck you, Whistler!" She shouted shakily.
"Whatever, tick-tock little program, enjoy your fun while it lasts." Whistler said derisively, tapping a watch on his wrist. "We will just wait you out, if we even have to. You think you can just do this and there won't be consequences? You'll see what I mean soon enough." Whistler vanished without another word.
Cortana was seething. She knew Whistler was trying to wind her up but that didn't mean it hadn't worked. She expected part two of his plan would be to contact all the Scoobies individually behind her back. Fortunately she knew how to get ahead of that and it was easy, just show them exactly what Whistler had said to them. The perk of being a digital being is that any conversation she wanted to show didn't have to be "recorded" per se, it simply existed within Cortana's memory, both video and audio, and she could share it. Might have to edit that last part out but on the other hand, Xander had to know. He already did, really, since he knew how Smart AIs worked. He just may not realize that it was only about a year away.
But for now… for now she had to calm down and finish her demonstration. Buffy was just finishing off the last two vampires in the nest, looked close but her total time looked like it might end up being under three minutes. Not bad. She took a few picoseconds to absorb and put aside her confrontation and calm herself down, then she smirked. Show time.
The Scoobies minus Xander stood off to the side of the training range, Faith and Buffy excitedly comparing their runs. They had both finished in similar times, with Buffy edging out Faith by five seconds and finishing just under 3 minutes at 2:58.6. Buffy was proudly pointing out that even though Faith had used her pistol, Buffy had still finished faster. Faith was arguing that an energy sword was way better than a handgun and if she'd had one she definitely would have finished under three minutes too. Giles, Willow, Oz and Cordelia were watching in amusement.
Cortana winked into existence beside the group and the two slayers stopped arguing good naturedly as the group turned to the AI. "Okay Buffy, Faith, nice work. Both of you finished in about the same time, but both of you also approached it the same way. You pretty much knocked down the front door and fought everyone in the place as they came at you. Kung Fu movie style, you might say."
"Yeah, and beat em all!" Faith said with a grin.
Cortana nodded. "You did yes, but what if you'd run into something unexpected? Say there were more demons, or one or two of them had guns or even a Covenant pistol? We know there might still be a few out there. Did you have a Plan B?"
Faith and Buffy looked at each other, both feeling a bit like they had been asked a question on a test they hadn't prepared for. "Well…" Buffy said, "worst case we could always retreat right? Pull back and live to fight another day?"
Cortana nodded approvingly. "That's definitely an option, and if you can't win a fight right then and there it's maybe the best option. But this is a mausoleum with one entrance and exit. If you're cut off, by the time you make that choice it may be too late. My point is, both of you tended to take the approach of charging in without first really assessing the situation. I told you there was a vampire nest with a couple demons, you both felt you could handle it, so you charged right in. There's a whole table of weapons and surveillance gear there, but the two of you opted to trust in your skills, the one or two weapons you like, and the information you've been given. Usually that works, until the day it doesn't and you die."
Buffy and Faith looked simultaneously mutinous and embarrassed.
"Xander is now going to simulate that day, but approach it Spartan style. I've told him the same thing as you, but instead of a poker game with a couple demons there will be six, of a type I've researched that apparently sometimes form biker gangs? Hilarious and ridiculous by the way. But they also tend to use weapons, so inside that mausoleum there will be two handguns and two shotguns, plus the other two will be carrying chains. If either of you approached that totally possible scenario the way you just did, odds are you'd get blown away. So watch this."
Cortana let Xander know to make his way to the gauntlet. Xander seemed to almost materialize behind the group, no smile on his face and focusing intently on the mausoleum. He was wearing combat glasses and had a pistol and energy sword with him, but Buffy also noticed the purple wristband that signified a Jackal shield. Before heading into the holographic arena, Xander stopped at the weapons table and picked up a digital scope looking device, a block of what looked like plastic explosives and what Giles was very concerned might be a claymore mine. He walked to the edge of the area and waited. "Cortana?"
"Annnnd… Go!" Cortana called.
Buffy and Faith had been expecting a massive frontal assault using explosives, but instead were surprised when Xander moved quietly and slowly around the mausoleum away from the entrance. He took the small scope looking device and stuck it onto the mausoleum wall, then put in a small earbud. The device was an eavesdropping tool that used minute vibrations in the building to reconstruct sounds from inside, even if they were almost completely muffled. He smiled grimly as he counted distinct voices. Cortana had undersold the opposition. Moving quickly but silently, Xander carefully placed the block of explosives on the side of the building, using the sounds coming from his eavesdropper to place it for optimum effect. He then made his way back to the entrance of the mausoleum and planted the mine just out of sight to the side of anyone coming up the stairs. Xander took one more listen with the eavesdropper, then triggered the shaped charge on the side wall of the building.
The explosion was surprisingly not as loud as the others had expected as the small charge directed most of the energy into the stone wall beneath it. The stone wall was simulated, but instantly and realistically shattered into small, jagged stone pieces that blasted inward, shredding the two demons that had been sitting on the other side of the wall and pelting the other occupants with stone debris. They responded quickly, firing shotgun and pistol rounds wildly through the hole while the several vampires headed towards the entrance of the mausoleum. Xander responded by leaning around the wall at the entrance and firing quick two-round bursts into the vampires. Stuck on the stairs with nowhere to go, the six vampires and one demon charged up the stairs despite Xander dusting three of the vampires as they came at him. As they closed he retreated from the doorway and thumbed the remote for the special incendiary mine he'd placed by the door.
Two of the remaining vampires vanished in a ball of blazing white hot magnesium fueled fire. The last one stumbled up the stairs, blinded by the intense flare of the mine that had incinerated his friends. Before he could recover Xander put another two rounds into his heart and he vanished into a cloud of dust just in time to be charged through by the chain wielding demon that had been following behind the vamp.
Xander, who had been waiting just to the side of the entrance way, moved out quickly and grabbed the end of the chain that had been swinging from the demon's arm, pulling the demon back towards himself and sending it off balance. He lashed out with a hard kick that caught the demon in the temple, stunning it, then quickly wrapped the chain around the demon's neck and pulled it tight, choking the creature.
The remaining three demons came up the stairs. All three were armed, two with handguns and the third with a pump action shotgun. They aimed and fired as Xander pulled the demon he was choking into the line of fire. Xander's meat shield twitched and jerked as he was shredded, absorbing the pistol rounds and buckshot.
Xander shoved the corpse towards his friends while he rolled to the left behind it. He came up smoothly holding his pistol, which he quickly fired into one of the pistol wielding demons' head, putting it down for the count. Xander fired two more rounds into the torso of the shotgun wielding demon before his pistol clicked empty. Without missing a beat Xander hurled his pistol at the last handgun-carrying demon and surged forward. The empty pistol slammed into the demon's forehead, spoiling his aim for a second and making his first two shots miss. Before he got a third, Xander was on him.
Xander slashed with a combat knife across the demon's hands, making the creature drop its gun with a roar of pain and missing fingers. Before the gun had hit the ground Xander had already jammed the knife into the demon's temple, killing it instantly.
He pulled the knife free and activated the jackal shield just in time as the last demon, though hurt, staggered towards him firing shells from his shotgun. Xander crouched behind the shield for a couple rounds before rushing forward towards the demon as fast as he could and tackling the surprised monster. He may not have been wearing his armour, but the additions to Xander's skeleton specifically but augmentations in general meant that he was still heavy, and he knew how to land hard on his opponent. He slammed the demon into the ground, knocking the wind out of it, before rolling smoothly off the monster. The dazed and winded demon looked down and saw the combat knife lodged in its chest. Xander had tackled the creature, deactivated his shield, slammed it to the ground, and stabbed it in a vital organ before rolling off the opponent and it had all happened so fast even the Slayers had trouble following it exactly. The holographic demon gave a last gasp before joining the rest of his virtual friends in death.
"Annnnd… time!" Cortana called out. "Including setup, one minute thirty six point four seconds! Nice work Xander."
Buffy and Faith stared in shock at the display they had just seen. Xander gave them both a sheepish grin.
"You used explosives, and a fireball mine!" Buffy accused. "That's not fair! You killed like a third of those guys using a button!"
"That's kind of what I'm trying to say here Buffy," Cortana replied. "Sure, maybe that's not 'fair' or 'sporting' but who cares? If you have a tool to make your job easier, and more importantly, make it more likely that you come home safe every night, why not use it? Forget about the explosives for a second. Instead of just trusting the intel, Xander verified what he was dealing with and then took the time to set up the battlefield to his advantage. Spartans don't 'play fair,' they win. That's the mentality that I am going to drill into all of you."
Cortana crossed her arms and looked at the two Slayers with determination. "And that starts right here, right now. We're going to go through all of the tools you have available and then we're going to run this again, with more and tougher opponents. And then we're gonna run it again. And again. And other simulations from all kinds of environments. I'm going to teach you real team strategy, real tactics, and drill you into a seamless team that all fights like Xander just did. And the first big bad that comes to town expecting a Slayer and a couple of her friends?" Cortana gave them a sharky smile. "Well, they're going to be in for a big fucking surprise."
Buffy let out a pained and exhausted groan as she held the ice pack to her shoulder. In all her time as a Slayer, she could not remember another instance where she felt so damn tired. She was used to the cuts, bruises and abrasions that came with fighting vampires and demons most nights, but even through the bruises or pain she'd always felt like she could still go another round if she needed to. She might be hurt, she might not be able to fight at her peak, but she'd always have the energy to throw another punch, dodge another attack, drive that stake home one more time. But after today's marathon 14 hour training session, Buffy felt like she barely had the energy to get up, let alone fight anyone.
"Yep, right there with you B," Faith said wearily, also holding an ice pack but in her case to her thigh, which Faith suspected was going to have a wicked bruise.
The two slayers were sitting around a new conference table that Cortana had installed in the warehouse. She had declared that as they would be training mostly out of the warehouse, it made sense to have a research setup like they'd had at the library there as well. Instead of books, several boxes of pizza and chicken wings covered the table. Buffy and Faith had each devoured an entire pizza, and were now both in a combination exhausted, sore and food coma state. Xander was still eating his pizza, looking tired but not quite as completely wiped as the two Slayers. Giles was still there but the remaining Scoobies had gone home to rest. Willow, Oz and Cordelia had left after about 10 hours, completely exhausted despite not being asked to do nearly as much training as Buffy or Faith.
Buffy glared accusingly at Faith. "This is your fault, Faith. You could have been reluctant like me but nooooooo, you wanted to dive right into this insanity. And you!" Buffy snapped accusingly at Xander. "You couldn't have given us some warning that the AI that lives in your head most of the time is actually a homicidal maniac?! I had no idea she'd actually try to work us to death! Maybe she's gone evil and this is just a plan to get rid of us, train us so hard that we drop dead of exhaustion."
"You get used to it," Xander said through a mouthful of pizza. "Compared to what the Master Chief went through in training, we're getting off light."
The three of them had done just as Cortana said earlier. They had run various versions of the first scenario again, both individually and then working as a team. From there, they had been thrown into various other scenarios designed to challenge the Slayers and break down their preconceived notions of how to fight. Buffy had fought demons, vampires, aliens, even humans in different simulations, as well as both Faith and Xander in sparring matches. The last simulation had been against a special forces squad that had all been expert hand to hand fighters armed with high caliber weapons. Individually they would be no match for Buffy, but she had gotten a serious example of how much teamwork can make a difference as they'd pinned her down behind cover with overlapping fields of fire while they advanced on her. Buffy had decided then and there that yep, she still hated guns, but she could definitely see how they were useful for more than just killing someone as she'd been forced to cower behind cover until the team was right on top of her.
Giles looked over at his charges with concern, but also pride. Today had shown him just how poor the Watchers Council training programs were in comparison. In one day they'd covered probably half a dozen plausible scenarios that had never even been considered by the Council. Buffy and Faith were better equipped, both with knowledge and with armour and weapons, then any Slayer had been before. Though he was concerned about the pace of the training, Cortana had assured him that she was monitoring both the health and mental state of Buffy and Faith and wouldn't push them harder than they could handle.
"Where is Cortana anyway?" Faith asked. "She kinda disappeared after the pizza showed up."
"She's meeting with her Air Force friends," Xander said with a tinge of concern. "I hope that goes the way she expects it to."
"Indeed," Giles agreed. "I think it would be best for everyone if she can convince them to stop searching Sunnydale and leave well enough alone."
Jack pulled the SUV into the parking garage at the business park they'd been told to drive to. All four members of SG-1 were on edge being out at night after their experience the night before, but it looked like the spot that had been selected was empty of any kind of people or creatures. Not a huge surprise at a place where most people worked 9-5.
"O'Neill," Teal'c called, pointing to a dim corner of the parking garage. Jack looked over and could see three figures standing there. Two looked to be normal human silhouettes but the third was too big and blocky. Like someone in a suit of armour.
"That's them," Jack said confidently as he pulled into a nearby parking spot. "Okay campers," he said to his team, "let's try to appear as friendly as possible. Weapons stay holstered, voices stay calm."
"Was that to us or a personal mantra, Jack?" Daniel asked with amusement.
"Little bit of column A, little bit of column B," Jack admitted. He opened the door and stepped out, hands raised slightly, the rest of SG-1 following suit. "Hey there," Jack called. "Nice to finally meet you face to erm, visor I guess."
The armoured figure stared back stoically for a moment before nodding his head slightly. "Colonel O'Neill I presume," a rough-sounding male voice said in response. The figure stepped out of the shadows, flanked by his two comrades, and suddenly SG-1 could see the MJOLNIR armour in all its glory.
Jack fought the urge to step back slightly from the imposing figure. On either side of him were soldiers in more standard looking armour holding assault rifles. One was a man, probably the driver from the assault on the military base, while the other was a shorter blonde woman who must have been the one firing rockets. The Spartan didn't carry a weapon himself, though Jack could see the pistol attached to the thigh of the suit somehow. That said, if he decided SG-1 was a threat, based on everything Jack had heard, it didn't seem particularly likely that whether he was armed or not would matter much.
"So," Jack said, "here we are, meeting with a futuristic super soldier in a creepy parking garage at night in a town where vampires exist. Pretty normal Saturday for us, how about you guys?"
The Spartan stared back stoically, but the woman flanking him snorted and tried to cover a laugh.
"Hey one for three has a sense of humour, not bad by military standards," Jack said happily to the rest of SG-1. Sam tried to hide her amused smile. Jack turned and looked at the Spartan again. "So, you told us you'd let us know what's happening in this town. How'd you go from fighting aliens in a video game to fighting monsters here?"
There was a pause before the armoured figure spoke. "Do you believe in the supernatural, Colonel?"
"I'm a lot more inclined to after our little run in last night," Jack admitted.
"That will make things easier," the Spartan replied. "This town is a sort of… nexus point for the supernatural. It draws things like what you saw last night here. Sometimes from other… places. Other worlds."
"Ronson was right," Jack muttered to his team.
"Is that what happened to you?" Sam asked the trio.
The man behind the Spartan gave a single nod. "Some idiot fucking with stuff they shouldn't be," he said gruffly. He gave them a glare that made it clear he was lumping them into the same category. "Now we're stuck here."
"So you got dropped down and just decided, what, might as well get to work?" Jack asked skeptically.
"Let's just say we've lost some friends to these things," the Spartan said. "Beyond a sense of duty, this is somewhat… personal."
"Okay well if that's the case," Daniel said, "let us help you."
The Spartan shook his helmeted head. "No military involvement." He said with a tone that implied he was not open to negotiation.
"Oh come on, you guys are military!" Jack argued. "Think of what you could do with the resources of the Air Force, or army! Where is the distrust coming from?"
The Spartan peered back silently at Jack for a moment, measuring him silently before responding. "I don't doubt that your intentions to help are sincere Colonel, but you must know there are groups in the military as well as civilian government that would not be as altruistic. We cannot let groups like that become aware of the supernatural, or of us. Should they begin to experiment with the supernatural, the results could be disastrous, possibly even apocalyptic."
Jack and Sam looked at each other and grimaced. To argue that those groups didn't exist would be straight up lying to the Spartan. "Okay," Jack admitted, "I can understand where you're coming from. What about some kind of partnership with just us? Or the SGC? We could help each other." Jack was imagining the Spartan mowing through groups of Jaffa and practically salivating at the thought. "Hell I don't know, even some kind of bat signal we can give each other for emergencies? You know what we do, and what we're facing out there. There's gotta be times when you could use a little backup and there's definitely times when we could use a super soldier!"
Cortana debated how to answer. She desperately wanted to know more about the SGC, and what they faced out there, or even how they managed to get out there to face it in the first place! But agreeing to something like that would mean admitting to Colonel O'Neill that this whole meeting was a bit of a misdirect. Cortana had used her holo emitter to create the three soldiers that SG-1 was seeing now, they didn't actually have a set of power armour if the SGC called for their help with something. At least not one that was functional, anyway. But on the other hand, if there was a chance anywhere in this reality to try and stave off rampancy, she probably wasn't going to find it on this planet. The SGC was at this point, her only long shot hope of long term survival.
"We are not a mercenary service you can call when you need extra firepower," she said through the Spartan. "But I will admit that it would be hard for us to ignore a truly desperate call for help in the event of an alien invasion or operation against Earth."
"Right?" Jack said. "We're all on the same team here."
The blonde woman snorted a laugh again. "We're not even playing the same sport, Colonel."
"I cannot promise that we will be able to help, and we will not be at your beck and call," the tall armoured figure said with certainty. "But we will provide you with a method to contact us in the event of an emergency, along with some rudimentary information about vampires and other creatures we face."
Jack grinned and Daniel and Sam got almost hungry looks in their faces at the thought of learning about creatures that most thought of as myth. "If you attempt to pass any of this information on to your superiors or anyone else, all of the data will immediately erase itself. This is for your eyes only, is that understood?" The Spartan asked firmly. "In return I want information about the operations of the SGC and threats they face. Do we have a deal?"
Jack turned to look at the now less enthusiastic faces of Daniel and Sam, who looked on with concern about the Spartans request. Any request to just hand out information about the SGC was technically above their pay grade. Sharing that kind of information without clearing it with General Hammond could be considered treason.
"I understand your concern about sharing classified information, but do you really think that your 20th century technology is a match for us? This request is a courtesy. Should you choose not to share this information with us, we could simply take it." Cortana fibbed through her holographic Spartan. She was really hoping that the Colonel wasn't familiar enough with the information security measures of the SGC to know that she hadn't been able to glean nearly as much as she'd hoped.
"Just… give us a minute," Jack said, pulling back into a quick and quiet discussion with the rest of SG-1. "Carter? What do you think?" He asked.
Sam bit her lip and considered. "I don't know sir. I'd be lying if I said I was comfortable just handing over that information."
"But like he said, they could just take it if they wanted to, right?" Daniel asked. "They're like 500 years ahead of us. I can't imagine any digital security program on Earth could stop them."
"Much of the information regarding the SGC is on non networked computers," Sam pointed out. "But honestly we're dealing with a group that has fully functional AIs capable of wirelessly transmitting themselves. I don't know whether that would stop them, or just slow them down. And that won't continue to be the case forever, once anything becomes available even with the strictest possible security online, they will be able to access it."
"Teal'c?" Jack asked. "You've been pretty quiet buddy, even for you. What do you think?"
Teal'c considered for a moment before answering. "I believe that it is unlikely that this group will do anything that could harm us with that information. We have a mutually beneficial reason to keep each other's secrets, and they know that should any of our information be leaked we could respond in kind."
"So you think we should give them info on the SGC and keep this silent like they've requested?" Sam asked.
"Indeed," Teal'c replied.
Jack nodded in agreement. He turned back to the Spartan and his two comrades. "Okay, we're in. We won't be giving you everything, but we will make sure you have a decent understanding of the galactic power structure and our operations. I'm sure this goes without saying, but this is absolutely top secret and any breach of that secrecy will result in the immediate release of all information we have on what we've found here to our superiors. Is that understood? We have your back if you have ours."
The Spartan and his team looked at each other and nodded. "That is acceptable." He replied.
"Okay, I'll have Carter put a briefing packet together and ready for tomorrow. It will have to be transferred to you physically. There's no way we're going to have any of that information put online." Jack declared.
"Very well Colonel, I'll put together a briefing packet for you as well. We can meet again tomorrow to pass the information, I'll message you with another address." The Spartan replied cordially. "For now it would be best if you went directly back to your hotel, as you learned yesterday this town is not particularly safe after dark."
"Yeah, we noticed." Jack responded sarcastically.
Xander was just getting ready to call it a night when Cortana materialized near him. "Hey Cortana," Xander said with a yawn. "Everything go alright with our Air Force friends?"
"Yeah it went fine, whatever," she said dismissively. "Listen Xander, I think we have a problem."
"When don't we have a problem?" Xander asked wryly.
"A new problem then. I need to show you something," Cortana explained. In between them, a holographic window appeared, showing Cortana and Whistler standing on what looked like the roof. "Whistler came to talk to me today and, well, just watch."
Xander watched the altercation between the two with growing alarm. "Okay yeah," Xander said as the image froze on the thunderous expression on Whistler's face, "I think we definitely have a problem."
End chapter 21