Chocky's Dawn
by Chaoseternus

Note that italics indicates telepathy.
Thank you to everyone hwo has reviewed

Six

I told the twins of course, they might not be full officers yet but I trusted them and had already pulled a few strings so that I could be the one to determine their next assignments. Getting them some experience in Naval Ops as soon as they graduated would be easy and as soon as they had proven themselves on their own, this project would more then likely have use for them. Their instructors were already commenting that they were excellent organisers and had distinct command potential.

Having known who there parents were, I really wanted to know where they got it from but still…

Admiral Winters… sorry, Ex-Admiral Winters I did not inform, like all former command-rank personnel he was periodically monitored and as he had his clearance fully revoked instead of just reduced when he left, he would most likely be monitored more then most. It would be just my luck to have them monitoring him just as I briefed Winters and wouldn't that just be a colossal breech of Operational Security?

I had to brief a few of the Sea Lords of course… but which ones? And how would I prove the rather incredulous tale I had to tell? Not to mention, how did I ensure security was maintained? You didn't reach high rank in the military, and that was pretty much any military without knowing that you would be observed, both by agencies wanting to check and maintain security and those with an eye to breech it.

Frankly, I wanted more then standard security procedures for this little job, but that in itself was noticeable and very much note-worthy to an outsider.

It was Bond who caught the ball on that one. Everybody had periodic interviews with MI-5 in the Admiralty, mainly briefings on the latest intelligence, MI-5s overviews of certain situations, it would be an easy enough task to divert them into the Double-0 section once they were in the building and once there… well, anyone who could breech that security deserved too.

Naturally, Bond found himself dealing with a certain Cossack quite soon after that but no security system is perfect; there is always the human element.

Still, the opportunity to present Chocky to M wasn't to be missed, having her on your side was always helpful. Chocky really didn't like that but saw the necessity… reluctantly.

From there, it was a simple matter to get the First Sea Lord briefed, followed swiftly by the second and third Lords and the current heads of both the Army and the Airforce.

Getting the PM briefed was harder task, but eventually we dropped the word in the right way to certain ears that the PM would be coming in for a briefing on the crisis of the week and suddenly it was a bog standard meeting, perhaps juicy to the right intelligence types but not something to make a special effort to breech.

It helped that this could easily be classed as the crisis of the week and when it came down to it, all you were doing was letting them come to their own conclusions in the right way…

Disinformation, one of the most useful tools in keeping the other guy off guard.

Naturally, the PM didn't believe and frankly, didn't want to believe but that was a response I was getting far too used too. His orders when he finally got around to it were to step-up Intel operations around the mountain and associated complexes, which pretty much meant create a Intelligence Gathering group for these areas and get more intelligence.

Easy enough said, not easy enough done.

That I left in the hands of M, MI-5 and the Double-0 section, it wasn't really my area of expertise in the first place and if you have experts available and willing, why force yourself? They would do a better job then I could anyway, besides, as the new Commander of joint-taskforce 'dawn', I had to delegate. There would be enough for me to do.

Like setting up the core of the taskforce from scratch for one, including recruitment, a tricky task considering that anyone we recruited would have to have useful skills, be appropriately cleared, be able to keep their mouths shut and maintain their sanity with the world-changing revelations they would be facing, not to mention, they would have to be on nobodies watch lists.

Tricky, and it was another task I had to delegate at first to M who had her own people check out and brief a few recruitment specialists, all of whom went on to psycho-analyse, clear and brief the next round of recruits, to include the nessecary paper-pushers, security specialists, surveillance teams, extraction and special forces groups and then scientists.

Within a year, we hit two-hundred people, a third of whom found themselves inserted into such places as Norad, the Pentagon and a few others in order to watch the mountain. A few were discovered but as they did not reveal their true purpose, indeed, in a few cases didn't know what their true purpose was, they just had to suffer a few weeks of three-star accommodation on behalf of the US Government before being kicked back across the pond.

The advantages of a 'special' military relationship and an ongoing commitment to testing each others security was working for us here, though M did mention a suspicion to me on a few occasions that a few of our people had been spotted but left in place, their watchers hoping we would bird-dog out some useful intelligence for them… The Intelligence game, isn't it just a beaut at times?

At the same time as we were setting up, using monies skimmed from the budgets of all three forces but mainly the Navy as we had stumbled across the mess in the first place, the kids, now under several layers of covert protection, were starting to work, reluctantly, on more militarily significant technologies, not all of which Chocky was providing or assisting with. What would eventually become the Pulse Laser technology for instance was started by a laser technician recruited to assist Chocky's Children and with their assistance and their extra knowledge he was able to bring the first prototypes online with two years. That was a wholly Earth-grown technology.

At that time, we were also recruiting experience warship and spacecraft designers to begin plans for the various stations and warcraft we would need. The latter was the difficult task as experience spacecraft designers were few and far between and whilst they all tended to have high security clearances; most were felt by Recruitment to be an unacceptable risk. Their psyche profiles in a lot of cases indicated that if they had proof aliens were real; they would most certainly not keep quite about it. A pity, because that critical lack ended up causing a years delay before actual construction started. Perhaps that was a good thing though, it gave us more time to not just increase the available budget but increase the monies saved up for the burst of activity that would be the initial launches.

As it turned out, we certainly needed that extra cash when the time came but I get ahead of myself.

In Summer of 1999 we got our first and longest lasting agent placed inside Cheyenne Mountain, in particular, inside the Stargate Command complex underneath Norad. The beauty of it was, not only did he have a photographic memory but he was stationed inside the canteen, okay, so clearing away dishes was a job not normally associated with somebody whose name shall for obvious reasons remain unmentioned, who had spent three years training for 'special' operations after four years as a marine and actually getting the intelligence off him was extremely difficult at first but the information we obtained was first class.

It should be noted that in the end, a small tunnel was covertly built between his lodgings and a house two blocks away and he would just drop his notes down a small and well hidden hole into the tunnel where they would be retrieved by later by another operative.

It was simple, but effective… though there were incidents including a partial collapse of the tunnel which damn near lost us one of our operatives. In the end, it was the Canteen operative who faintly heard the retrieval agent's shouts for help and was able to inform headquarters without compromising himself.

It wasn't until the end of 2000 we moved to RAF St Athens, a base that was at one time one of the largest airbases in the world but had been massively drawn down. At the point we moved in, its fate could best be described as becoming uncertain but with a 'research institute' moving on site as well as a major repair complex and then the planned arrival of large number of soldiers, a task that was brought forward by the need to maintain security around our operations, (trust me, there are few things more conducive to preventing a break-in then large numbers of armed soldiers on-site), St Athen actually ended by buying back several sections of land that had been vacated decades ago.

The obvious massive work was a security nightmare of course, it wasn't as if you could hide it but again, MI-5 was on the ball and allowed several less important things to leak, indeed, they even manoeuvred a few known leakers and agents into positions they wanted them, resulting in a steady flow of information from St Athen, enough to keep the various Intel agencies happy but without compromising the operations of taskforce 'dawn'.

Regrettably, one of our agents was killed at this time defending the mountain during a foothold situation. It was the first time we had actually lost an agent inside the mountain, but it would not be the last. Indeed, of the twenty agents we inserted into the mountain over the years, four were misidentified as NID and ended up either rotting in one of the US Governments many secure holding facilities or having an accident at the hands of the NID, who seemed to just assume another of the cells had gotten lax. Eight were killed, either on or off base by hostile alien forces; three are still listed as Missing, presumed dead by the SGC itself. Only five survived to be retrieved, and only three of those had all their limbs still attached.

For the next few years, it was hurry, hurry, hurry.

We needed to get the technologies developed and prepared for combat operations, we needed to start construction work, we needed to recruit, to train, we needed to do a thousand and one different things and considering the weak state of Earths defences of the yearly breeches of same we had little if any time to waste.

That said, it wasn't until '03 we began to feel we were ready enough and began construction of the main structural members for Thundersdawn station… half of which ended up being dismantled as the station design was revised once more. Such is life when you are dealing with entirely new ventures. Prometheus was operational by this time, albeit a very balky and not entirely reliable type of operational.

Work on the Airheads, Shunters and Paladins followed swiftly but it would be another full year before construction work started on the ill-fated Lancers. Most of this work rested on the heads of Chocky's children, they were the ones providing the technologies, they were the ones showing us the hows and whys of there operation. It was up to us to see to there use, their implementation, and unfortunately whilst sneaking information from the SGC had proven to be possible, such minor items as technical schematics were beyond our few agents capabilities. That did reduce our options and had a major impact on the capabilities of the various stations when they initially launched but it was a gap that ended up being closed very quickly, thanks to Thor forcing the hand of the US Government during the first action the station saw.

But again, I get ahead of myself.

By then, America's idea of a Disclosure, actually just another example of the arrogance the Americans can display on occasion, had occurred. Arrogance doesn't really cover it to be honest, they brought us into a war against a far superior enemy, practically demand our allegiance and support and basically tell us if we wanted any of the technological scraps they were willing to hand out, we had to tow their line.

About two weeks after the report from that incident hit the PMs desk; our budget gained a substantial increase, now we were receiving money direct from HMG and not just sliced of the already small budgets of the standard military. A week after that, I had the… how should I phrase this? Interesting task of briefing Her Majesty.

I walked away from that one with the distinct impression that if it was 'proper' for a Queen to swear like a mustang, she would have.

It wasn't until the beginning of 2004 that the game really began.