Jump Chain 12 - BTVS 4

Part 15

The Phoenix. Halloween Universe.

While sitting in my command throne on the bridge of my Battlestar, I brought up a full 3D hologram of the Space Hulk which seemed to have floated out of the Delphic Expanse sometime recently. The vessels that made up the Space Hulk had been fused together into a total mess that was made up of many different ships all of which were either from different science fiction franchises or at least from other time periods within a franchise that contained space travel.

A few months back some of my companions and I had explored what at first had seemed to be a Space Hulk, but that mess had actually been caused by some failure of the out of control chaos spell that had created this universe. Some of the matter of the original universe, an asteroid, had only been partly converted in a few different vessels, and those ships had become fused to the asteroid.

This was something different, for starters while there was an asteroid involved, there was a lot more going on with this Hulk than just problem with the chaos mafic, and I didn't think it was the Warp that had caused the many vessels to become fused together. After scanning the Hulk I felt certain that the sphere which was at the rough centre of the Space Hulk was the cause of the Hulk's existence.

The Sphere-Builders were a humanoid species native to some trans-dimensional realm. As one of the factions in the Temporal Cold War, they were responsible for the creation of a widespread network of massive spheres within the Delphic Expanse as the first step in their plan to colonize the Milky Way Galaxy, or at least a major part of it, I didn't know all the details.

Somehow the Sphere-Builders created a network of spheres that were designed to generate spatial anomalies that would reconfigure space to suit their needs. If the process was completed this reconfigured space would become inimical to all existing lifeforms. The spheres' activity isolated the surrounding region behind a barrier of thermobaric clouds, creating the hazardous Delphic Expanse.

No one knew why they were doing this, or even if they had anything do with the spheres in this reality as the spheres were a creation of the Halloween Spell just like everything else in this universe, but I wouldn't rule out the sphere builders becoming involved in affairs in this universe at some point. I had to wonder if I'd become a part of those events as well.

"How many Sphere's are there in total?" I wondered.

Even my ship's sensors couldn't tell me that, but perhaps T'pol had that information and this version of her might have even been inside the expanse.

"At one point there were as many as 72" she informed me "But now there are about fifty as we know that at least twenty have been destroyed over the past two years and as far as we know no new spheres have appeared. We are certain what happen to two of the spheres, this Space Hulk might explain the fate of one of the unaccounted for spheres".

A person might think that my Judgement Day Perk would tell me if the Sphere Builders were going to destroy whole worlds, but this universe was a big place and the information changed as events did as such the future was fluid, and the amount of chaos magic involved only further confused things. Even my powerful mind simply couldn't keep track of it all so I didn't bother. I had plenty of other ways to gather information.

"Much of the information gathered by your scans confirms what the Vulcan cruiser sent by to High Command to investigate what you call a Space Bulk already told us" T'Pol was saying as she looked over the hologram "Somehow a sphere from within the Expanse has become mobile".

By the looks of things an asteroid with attached engines had rammed into the sphere and started pushing it around while meeting other craft that ended up becoming part of the Hulk become of the strange effects of the sphere on space in this universe. Starships from within the Expanse had fused into the growing Hulk upon getting too close.

This made next to no sense, as that wasn't how the spheres worked, and in all of my files, there was only once alien race insane enough to even try something like this. The Orks.

"These other vessels have become part of the Hulk as it moved through the Expanse" the Vulcan lady was now saying "and while studying them would have been a boon to the scientists of my world the High Command would not have risked sending a cruiser this close to the Expanse if they were the only ships".

To my disappointment this version of T'Pol, apparently there were a few of her knocking around, was married and had a daughter back home, as such I was not going to attempt seducing her, but I was willing to work with her on this mission as we could all benefit from its success.

"This vessel is what made the High Command risk sending one of our cruisers so far from home," she said as the hologram zoomed in to show one of the ships that made up the Space Hulk "It's technology if properly studied could greatly aid the defence of my world".

Like many worlds in this hostile universe, the planet Vulcan was in danger of being raided or even invaded, by dangerous races and factions. And while they were a pacifist species they'd adapted to this universe by focusing their resources and energies on defending their homeworld. Lucky for them Nero, if he was around in this reality, hadn't blown up the planet as of yet.

Between my files and what T'Pol had told me the Vulcans had upgraded a number of Surak class vessels from a past era. These ships were equipped with powerful tractor beams, decent shields and some deadly beam weapons. Not that this had prevented one of these ships from becoming part of the Hulk. Any vessel that got too close would be joining it due to the strange effects of the Sphere on the space around it.

The ship that we were all most interested in was the Retribution-class Battleship, which was a heavy capital ship of the Imperial Navy. The class is one of the oldest patterns of Imperial Battleship in service in the 40k universe and they built in the Martian orbital shipyards of the Ring of Iron.

In this universe, the Ring of Iron didn't exist, at least not fully, because that version of Mars was a fusion of many versions of the red planet, but one day in the not so distant future the Ad Mech of this universe might build a new Ring of Iron and after that, they could build ships like the Retribution-class Battleship.

The Retribution-class battleship's traditional armoured prow would destroy most vessels that it rammed into and the multiple-tube plasma engines meant that while this ship wasn't very agile when compared to other ships it could move quite fast at sublight once it got going.

Another thing I knew was that the Retribution Battleships along with the Emperor-class are known to have a huge golden monument relating to the Imperium atop its bridge, and this ship did, but it had become warped.

An observation of mine on the appearance of this mighty space-faring vessel were engine fins. Both the Emperor and Retribution-class Battleships have long fins to the port and starboard sides of the main engines sitting vertically with some additional thrusters built into them with a third vertical one sitting in the middle between the engines. I had no idea what they were for.

In any was more interested in the weapons than anything else as this ship had some serious guns. The Retribution-class was able to deliver a devastating broadside assault on any enemy foolish enough to enter weapon's range, and it was also equipped with impressive ordnance capabilities.

The main armament of the Retribution-class were its rows upon rows of mighty weapon batteries lining the sides. These are able to fire a devastating spread over extreme ranges, crippling enemy ships before they even get within range to return fire.

If closing on an enemy vessel, torpedoes fired from the Retribution were equally capable of causing extreme damage. As with many Imperial battle craft, the ship is also equipped with a series of Lance turrets along the dorsal of the ship.

These are more accurate than the flank batteries, but their numbers were fewer. They were normally used for finishing off an enemy ship that the main weapons had already crippled, or they were for providing return fire when the battleship is closing in on its foes.

Ships of this class are considered the backbones of the Imperial Navy and often served as a fleet's flagship, however, the lack of an enhanced sensor suite make the Emperor-class Battleship the preferred choice for this mission type.

Due to poor manoeuvrability, however, these battleships require a large number of Escorts to deal with fast-moving threats. Which might explain how it ended up getting rammed from behind by the sphere that would have been pushed around by the Ork Roc that had rammed into it at some point. Things must be really crazy inside the Expanse.

"This is a Borg Probe" the liaison officer for this mission informed as she pointed at a part of the Space Hulk "and while the Hulk has not been assimilated there could be drones still on board".

The Borg probe was a type of manned probe starship used by the Borg Collective in the 24th century. The craft had an elongated shape. It was armed with beam weapons that made it an equal match to a Starfleet Intrepid-class starship in terms of firepower. In addition to a crew of Borg drones, the ship was also equipped with robotic auto-regeneration units, at least according to a note in my files. The probe even had transwarp drive capability with the use of transwarp coils.

Normally even the idea of some Borg close by would be enough to panic many people, however, I'd dealt with the Borg a few times before and I had tactics to handle them as well as weapons that I knew to be effective against them. At least as long as there weren't too many Borg to deal with.

"If there are Orks onboard they worry me more than Borg drones," I told T'pol "and we don't even know what some of the smaller ships even are".

Due to meteor impacts and other damage done to the hulls of the ships that made up the Space Hulk we could roughly tell how recently a ship had been added to the Hulk. Some Suliban cell ships were a new addition, as were a few Babylon 5 universe raiders that must have tried docking with the Hulk so they could raid it.

"I'm pretty sure that ship there is a Colonial Marines warship" I commented.

The United States Colonial Marine Corps (USCM), commonly known as the Colonial Marines, is the United Americas' primary "force-in-readiness", founded in 2101. They specialize in force projection, being able to operate independently in environments far from home for extended periods thanks to their technological prowess and sizeable space fleet at their disposal.

"Do we have any information on what they are up in this universe?" I asked anyone who could answer me.

Cortana's hologram soon appeared before me.

"According to our database, they are the private military force for the Wayland-Yuntai company," the AI told me "They have a number of outposts on remote planets and a few colonies under their control, but other than that they aren't very important".

Since they existed to make a profit I figured that Wayland-Yuntai must have sent in their soldiers to the Space Hulk to try and collect some advanced tech, and this in part explained why my vessel was here, only we also needed to find any Vulcan who weres still alive.

"I don't we can recover your cruiser given that its become wrapped around the sphere like those other ships," I said to T'Pol "and we can't beam aboard any survivors as we can't detect any life signs".

There were living things with the Space Hulk, I could feel them via the Force, and there was danger here, but that was all I could sense.

"Since there is too much interference for the transporters how do you intend to board the Space Hulk?" T'Pol asked, "We can not even send a shuttle as any ship attempting to dock with the Hulk will become part of it".

That was a good question.

"I have my ways," I told the alien babe.

We would need to send some probes in first so as to find a suitable location to appear and then a portal of some kind would need to be created so that we could send over enough bots to secure an area within the Hulk. Once that was done, we could start looking for people who wanted off the Hulk while stripping it of any useful tech, and if it proved to be a hazard we'd need to find a way to blow it up. Thankfully my group wasn't lacking in things that made big booms.

(Line Break)

The Phoenix. Halloween Universe.

Raven had proven her worth by setting up a portal of sorts between my ship and the Space Hulk that we now had guarded on both ends. Here on my ship the room that had mere hours ago been only for storage had been transformed into a staging area for the long term operation that would involve not only boarding the Hulk so as to look for friendlies to extract, but also securing the Hulk so that it could be stripped of any tech of value and raw materials that we could sell.

For the last few hours, we'd all worked very hard. The magic users sustained the portal and used spells to make both sides of the portal as safe as possible from anyone who tried to make it unstable. I could have opened up a portal myself, but that kind of portal tended to be short-lived, and I wanted to be able to focus all of my powers on any threats within the Hulk. Since even my powers might not be enough if we ran into stuff like genestealers and xenomorphs I was making sure to arm and armour myself in the best stuff we had available.

Also, I'd moved some companions in and out of stasis so that I could take Triss and Veronica with me into the Hulk. While not powerful companions they were well suited for dangerous missions such as this one and they both had experience using the Iron Monger battlesuits.

Within the staging area techs of a few different races and bots of many kinds worked to prepare of the mission. They would be busy for a while as we would need to send over small armies of combat droids for this mission and we'd be sending back lots of technology that would quickly need to be safely stored away for later examination. As for the raw materials, some would need to be correctly stored in order to avoid any health and safety issues.

"Give me your capsules" I requested.

Once I had the small devices I placed them in a special slot and instructed the two women on what to do next.

"These are new" Triss commented as she and her lover climbed into what seemed to be metal booths "What do they do?".

The booths were indeed new, something I'd actually started working on while waiting for the Vulcans between meetings back when sorting out the details of this job. Vulcan High Command had not expected to respond to their offer so quickly so I'd had some time to tinker.

"These booths use a mixture of replicator tech, transporters, virtual construction and particle synthesis to create and equip weapons and armour for you depending on the needs of the mission" I explained as I began to use the machines "With these, you just need to stand in the booths and they do all the work. The booths keep you still while your armour is constructed around your body, or if you want to use existing equipment it can be beamed into the booth".

I'd not had the technology to create these booths until recently, but now that I'd made them it was possible to arm and armour myself for a mission in a fraction of the time it used to take. And the long process of removing arms and amour took seconds, the booths would even replace damaged equipment. Also, if myself or one my companions ever wanted to use weapons and armour we already owned, as we all liked our personal gear, then the capsule the stuff was stored into simply had to be inserted into the slot on the side of the booth.

It was more time consuming to create new armour and weapons for a mission, but this only delayed things a little and mostly the booths were for the organic crews and soldiers that I sometimes employed or even created. They could pop into the booth, get equipped and be deployed without me having to go to the trouble of mass-producing suitable equipment in advance. These would have been great during the Stargate and Star Wars Jumps I'd just not had the tech for them back then.

The booths had limits. It couldn't make magical items, and certain materials simply couldn't be artificially created, and the design for each item that could be made had to be programmed into the booths, but they could still be a big time saver. Once the booths were up and running they took a lot of energy to keep operational, not this was a problem for my group, the booths were part of the ship, which had a ZPM we could upon if extra juice was ever needed.

When the booths opened both Triss and Veronica stepped out and they were wearing their personalised Iron Monger suits. The two women were armed with Stormbolters and while Veronica had her Power Fist her partner would be using a Chainfist.

When I came out of the third booth a few moments later in my version of Grey Knight power armour the two women were impressed by what they saw.

"Nice new tech," said Veronica "What's it for?".

I explained to them that this suit of powered armour had been constructed for combat against supernatural foes

"So what's the staff for?" Triss questioned, "and is that a skull?".

While my armour had wrist-mounted bolters for ranged killing that were fed ammo via the replicator that was built into the power back of the suit, I carried some weapons for close combat, such as two swords on my hip and a big staff in my hand.

This staff was new. I'd made it from a few different metals that were found on the Dragon Age world and within the staff were slivers of psychically tuned crystals that would enhance my mental powers. At the top of the staff was the skull of the ancient vampire known as the Master, I had two of them, the skull had mystical power of its own, and I'd covered the skull with ebony from Morrowind so as to protect it.

Within the skull's empty sockets were two crystals, both of which were blue, one was attuned to the Force and the other one was charged with magical energy. Which made this staff a wonderful tool for enhancing my powers and I'd made it bulky and sturdy enough to be used while in this armour. The staff also needed to be able to handle the energies that were channelled through it when I used my powers, as such normal materials couldn't have been used during its creation.

However, while it could be used in hand to hand combat since it was made from strong materials it would be unlikely that I would employ the staff in such a way as its purpose was to make the use of my powers less of a strain, and I had my swords for close-quarters combat, or I could just crush the life out of people using the sheer strength afforded to me when I wore this armour.

"The armour and outfit will be of great help if we encounter anything demonic or magical, and we might so as Space Hulks are very strange places," I told the two women from the world of Fallout "Stay on your guard".

With that, we headed through the blue and black portal that Raven had created. It was surrounded by combat robots that would gun down anything hostile and the portal was protected by magical means that involved candles and incense sticks all around it, making it all very strange even by my standards.

(Line Break)

Space Hulk. Halloween Universe.

"Keep your disruptors on stun, at least until any clear threats present themselves" Gothic ordered, "Remember we are looking for friendlies".

While Power Fists and Stormbolters didn't have anything other than a kill setting the Iron Monger suits did have disruptors built into their wrists that had a setting that wasn't lethal, and Cortana, the AI that was currently linked between the three suits of power armour, switched the weapon's setting for her so Veronica didn't need to do anything.

The former Brotherhood of Steel Scribe had long since gotten used to being woken from stasis so as to go on a dangerous mission for Gothic and if that was the only time she ever spent out of stasis it might have been a problem, but the Jumper wouldn't just be storing them away again after this mission. They'd have some downtime once they got back to the ship, likely a few days in which Veronica would be able to spend with her lover Triss before they went back into stasis. Not that returning to stasis was a big deal as it wasn't going to sleep, there was no feeling of time passing when you were in a pod.

Veronica wasn't given much chance to think about what she would be getting up to with Triss over the next few days, she'd been planning a nice trip the holodeck when they left the safety of the staging area on this side of the portal, which was guarded by sentry bots and combat droids of different kinds, and they entered the Vulcan cruiser, this required her to focus.

"There are no life sign readings on this ship," T'Pol said over the comm.

As Veronica's HUD began to show an image of the ship she was now on, this Suurok-class was a small ship, relative to Gothic's Battlestars, the Vulcan High Command had built them as science vessels as early as 2136, and they were additionally used as a combat cruiser as needed, but they weren't true warships.

T'Pol, who Veronica had been given a chance to met earlier, seemed to be correct as the scanners in her suit of powered armour were not picking up any life signs either, but she knew that these scans weren't foolproof. For example, the Wraith, the vampiric aliens who dominated the Pegasus Galaxy, didn't show up as life signs when in hibernation. Not that she'd encountered such creatures, she'd just heard stories and read files.

Plus there were other dangers that wouldn't register as life signs, such as automated defences, killer robots, chemical spills, and decompression, her suit would keep her safe from many things, as would the magical items she wore that made her immune to physical harm, but no defence was perfect and if anything could kill her it would likely be on this Space Hulk. Not that she could die as she'd just re-spawn if anything bad enough happened, but that wasn't very comforting right now as this Hulk was a creepy place.

"Place the sensors here" Veronica heard Cortana say.

Gothic reached in a pouch on his belt and took out a couple of devices that the former Brotherhood Scribe knew to be sensors of a kind that would feed information back to the Battlestar. Now that they were within the Hulk they'd gotten passed some of the interference and should be able to get clearer readings.

"Captain Gothic there are a number of humanoid life signs packed together within the Imperial Battleship" T'pol was now saying "However we can not tell if any of them are Vulcan or not, but we do know that they are a variety of species sharing the space".

An optimistic person might think that the humans and human-like aliens had moved inside the battleship so as to find shelter and to work together for mutual defence. However, it was also possible that a variety of monsters waiting for them deeper within the Hulk.

"The asteroid also contains my life signs, but they are hard to read due to extensive interference in that part of the Hulk" T'pol was now saying "I advise caution".

Veronica smirked for a moment upon hearing that. In her experience, it was the hostile people and things they encountered that needed to more cautious. Then she reminded herself not to get cocky as that could lead to someone getting hurt within her group.

"The most direct route to the humanoids will require you to go through part of the Borg probe" the group was informed, "and you will need to make use of one of the tunnels that have been dug into the asteroid".

Veronica's HUD showed her map of the route, and while she had no idea what could be in the tunnel network she knew about the Borg thanks to speaking to some of Gothic's companions in the past. They were cyborgs who would try to get in close so as to inject you with nanoprobes that would turn you into a Borg and while they had personal shields that could quickly render energy weapons useless they had no real defence against weapons like her Storm bolter, and her Power Fist would work as well, but it would best not to get that close.

"First we need to head to the bridge of this ship so that we down the logs" Gothic was now saying "High Command will want them".

As the three of them moved through the cruiser it quickly became apparent that the Vulcan ship had been badly damaged and then looted. Some of the harm to the vessel would have happened when it forced to become part of the Space Hulk, but it was clear that a group of somethings had come into the ship and started looting it with little concern paid to what was actually being taken or in keeping anything in good shape.

Before long they came across the creature that must be responsible for the state of this spacecraft beyond what fusing to the Hulk would have done. It was a green coloured alien with a nasty looking burn in its chest, the creature wore some crude-looking armour and carried an equally crude axe.

"That's an Ork," said Gothic.

The Orks, also called the Greenskins, were a savage, war-loving green-skinned race of humanoids who are spread all across the Milky Way Galaxy of the Warhammer 40k verse and they had a presence in this galaxy as well. While they had strange biology, they were part fungus and part animal, they shared many features with their cousins in fantasy worlds in that they are seen by their enemies (pretty much everyone else in the universe) as savage, warlike, and crude, but they were the most successful species in the whole 40k galaxy, outnumbering possibly every other intelligent race, even Mankind and possibly even the Nids.

No one knew how many of them there were in the Halloween Universe, but they were a real menace in this galaxy according to what Cortana was now telling them all. Thankfully for the Halloween Universe, the Greenskins spent most of their time fighting each other and hadn't united any leader strong enough to command them. If that ever changed then the Halloween Universe would be in big trouble.

"Looks like the Vulcan's put up one hell of a fight" Triss commented.

As they looked around some more it became clear that the pointy-eared aliens had defended their ship with the kind of fierce determination you wouldn't expect from what was supposed to be a race of pacifists. Not that anyone would call the Vulcans a cowardly lot, they were strong and had good reflexes as well as some pretty decent technology.

The group encountered no troubles along the way, in Veronica's mind just meant that all the really bad stuff was waiting for them deeper inside the Hulk, and she was on edge as she had a rather vivid imagination and she worried about what could be waiting further inside this Space Hulk.

"This bridge is a total waste" Veronica stated.

Even when compared to the other parts of this star going vessel the bridge was a mess. Veronica didn't even think the Orks had even tried to loot anything here they'd just smashed up everyone while killing the officers here. By the looks of the area, a few bleeding people had been dragged away. Vulcan blood was green and there were greens stains all over the place.

The good thing about wearing Iron Monger armour was that it kept a strong barrier between the wearer and the horrors they sometimes came into contact with. Because of her helmet, she couldn't smell the decay and her body didn't come into any direct contact with the blood or gore that was all around her.

"How are we going to get any data from the computers?" Triss wondered.

Gothic's motioned with his staff and it lit up with power as the room repaired itself. The spell or power he used did nothing to the bodies, but most of the machines came back online and the bridge became a lot clearer. Despite all the time they'd spent together, the former Brotherhood Scribe never failed to feel amazed when she was shown a demonstration of the Jumper's powers. They didn't seem to be anything he couldn't do, and anything he chose not to do he had good reasons for.

"Cortana download the logs and scans taken by this ship after it lost contact with High Command" Gothic instructed, "and then transfer the data to the workstation T'Pol is using".

The liaison officer could make her own copy of the information, and either attempt to transmit it to her superiors or hand it over in person once she'd returned home. That wasn't really any concern of Veronica's.

"We're moving on" Gothic soon declared "There's nothing for us here".

The group already had a lot of Star Trek technology and the Warhammer tech deeper inside the Space Hulk was of far more value to them. They would have to risk danger in order to find the tech of value, but nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Since there was nothing worth taking here the bots deployed by Cortana into the Vulcan cruiser were already working on salvaging the vessel for its raw materials, the ship was too damaged to be rebuilt and it was fused to the Space Hulk so it couldn't be taken back to Vulcan. However, the raw materials could be recycled and used to speed up the production of new ships. Something the Vulcans understood and they'd pay something or the resources, and if they didn't someone else would.

Also, the bots had another purpose here and that was to recover any Vulcan bodies they were able to. These remains would be placed in coffins of some kind and returned to Vulcan for burial or shot into the nearest star, whichever was preferred by High Command.

Veronica didn't pay much attention to the bots as they didn't require her supervision or attention, instead, she followed Gothic as they made their way deeper into the Hulk knowing that they would find much danger ahead.