Disclaimer - See first chapter
Stargate Command
"Yes, Mr. President, that's all we know so far. The Death Star, for lack of a better term, is still holding steady just on the other side of the Moon and has done nothing but rotate…. Yes, sir, I'm glad that thing isn't pointed our way anymore too. …No, sir, we're still tracking those two signals since Hubble picked them up. We're not sure what they are, but all reports indicate that they are alien in origin…No sir, I think that would be highly inadvisable, they could turn that thing back around and light us up the instant we tried to take the battle station by force, negotiation is our best and possibly our only option….Well, as I'm sure you're aware, Mr. President, I don't give an armadillo's ass what the good Senator thinks; he can take his high-minded notions and shove them someplace where the sun don't shine! Thank you, sir, Stargate Command out."
Hammond put the red phone back on its cradle and let out a loud sigh of relief. Samuels looked at the general with some degree of confusion and nigh-disappointment, waiting for the Texan to acknowledge his presence. At length Hammond looked up at him.
"I just had a conversation with the President that should interest you, Colonel Samuels. He has decided that we will not attempt to take control of the Death Star by force, per my advisement, and he has also decided that your supernukes will instead be retargeted onto the two alien contacts that seem to be on approach to Earth. If they are Goa'uld, then we will see just how powerful they are and whether or not your Goa'uld busters can do the job you say they can do."
Samuels was nonplussed. "The Pentagon maintains, sir, that the Death Star should remain a top-priority threat and that we should treat it as such unless we somehow can take control of the battle station. The Joint Chiefs have also agreed that you should begin evacuating all relevant personnel to the Alpha Site via the Stargate in case our attempt to hold back the Goa'uld and the Death Star fails."
"Have you considered a career in ventriloquism, Colonel?" Hammond suddenly asked, his Texas twang becoming more pronounced with his irritation with Samuels.
"No, sir, why do you ask?"
"Cause you sound like a dummy! There is not one thought in that statement you just made that is your own assessment of the situation; I might even postulate that you are repeating the Joint Chiefs' response to the situation, maybe even verbatim from how it sounds. You are supposed to be their liaison to this command, not their parrot. Now liaise!"
Samuels was visibly humbled by that clear assessment from the General, and he fought the urge to let his head drop in embarrassment. As it was, though, he was still unable to keep from blushing bright red at that. He struggled for an acceptable response.
At length, he said, "Sir, The Secretary of Defense feels that we should take any and all steps to gain advantage in this crisis, including the possibility of taking control of the station either by persuasion or by force. They want us to try to use the Death Star against the Goa'uld, if indeed that is who is coming our way."
"Go on," pressed Hammond.
"Just before I got off the phone with the Joint Chiefs, there was a conversation with Senator Kinsey personally…"
"Now why does that not surprise me?" said Hammond in a huff.
"I understand, sir. Given the Senator's message, he clearly wishes to gain some political leverage from this encounter, and he indicated that in no uncertain terms I was to convey to you the Senate's intentions to procure the Death Star as purely a US defense asset. Senator Kinsey had met in a closed session with the Senate Armed Services Committee, and when it was over he gave me the message to give to you. He also mentioned something about 'dire consequences' if the SGC failed to comply, something to do with cutting off all funding for this operation."
"So basically we take over the Death Star and paint a US flag on it, or the SGC goes bankrupt. Is that the Senator's message, in a nutshell, Colonel Samuels?"
"It is, sir. I wish it wasn't, but I don't have the rank for that."
The conversation was interrupted by an announcement over the PA. "General Hammond to the control room, please. We have a visual on the two alien contacts…"
The two Air Force officers looked at each other then, and each of them could sense the change in the atmosphere, as though the very air had become a battery to power the Stargate. As one they stood and left the Commanding General's office and went next door to the Gate Control Room.
There people and officers scurried to and fro in a nervous buzz. Hammond strode through the lake of people and stood directly next to MSgt Harriman's console. "What do we have, Master Sergeant?"
"General Hammond, Colonel Samuels, a NASA satellite picked this up ten minutes ago near the current location of the Death Star. The image had been magnified and enhanced, but basically…" Harriman then punched up a display of the latest telemetry from that feed, and the image in question appeared on the central monitor.
Two ships were present in the blackness, eclipsing the stars beyond. An outline appeared around them to better delineate their shapes. The outlines each then became a wire-frame model of each alien vessel, describing one shape within another.
The outer shape was roughly ovoid, flat, and clearly designed for space travel, with viewports and access panels inscribing every surface of the vessel, from the recessed, protected viewports to the dark gray outer hull which design was clearly intended to weather the extreme stresses of interstellar travel.
The shape in the center of the ovoid, gleaming like a sinister jewel reflecting the starlight, was a pyramid.
"Summon the Alpha Site teams to the Gate Room," Hammond said, causing everyone to look his way in surprise and fear. "It's time to give them the go."
"Yes, sir," said Harriman, who then began punching in codes to relay Hammond's order.
Just then a telltale flashed on Harriman's console. He punched up the file and read the latest message. "General, another message from NASA; they're tracking a large number of smaller contacts emerging from the two alien vessels, moving toward the Death Star."
"Jaffa Death Gliders, if the reports are accurate," said Samuels, who had read those reports for himself as part of his briefing as liaison officer to the SGC. "I thought they only operated in atmosphere."
"Apparently we were wrong, Colonel," said Hammond. "Those contacts are spreading out in some sort of aggressive reconnaissance posture, attempting to get an assessment of the Death Star's capabilities."
"How can you tell that?" said Samuels.
"And you call yourself an Air Force officer…" said Hammond in disdain with a look of disgust in his eyes for the Pentagon liaison officer. Apparently, in Hammond's eye that was all Samuels was good for, to be the Pentagon's, or perhaps Kinsey's, mouthpiece or puppet. "They're spreading out in a way that allows each individual craft to get a complete visual readout of a preselected sector of the station's surface. You can see that from the equal space between each Glider. Now one might consider that they would do that to interlock fields of fire, but in space it doesn't quite work that way. If the Death Star has its full complement of fighters, by now they would have deployed them against the Gliders as a precaution and to assess their intentions. If a fight were to break out, though, then whatever plane of reference the Goa'uld have set for themselves would become much more important if the Gliders were to stand any chance against a thousand TIEs."
"If the Death Star doesn't decide to ally with the Goa'uld against us…" the ever pessimistic Samuels interjected.
"Wrong again, Samuels. From their response to our initial voice message, I think their mission here is peaceful. From their actions so far, we have no proof that their mission here is hostile, and if there were deception on their part, don't you think we'd have uncovered it in their response by now? They even sent down a shuttle to the surface in the town of Sunnydale.One shuttle, Colonel. They've landed no troops, deployed no surveillance devices, and they've done nothing else since that shuttle came down. So far as we know, they've been honest up to now, and we've seen no indicators that they should behave otherwise."
Harriman then cut in. "Update from NASA; now tracking a single contact leaving the planet for the Death Star station, looks like a shuttlecraft, Lambda class. "
General Hammond then turned to Harriman and said, "Send a message to the Vigilant Watcher." At the confused expressions of both Samuels and Harriman, he replied, "That's what they're calling the Death Star, don't ask me why right now…" Then he turned his attention back to Harriman and said, "Please inform us as to your intentions with the alien craft now moving in your direction. If they decide to open fire, do you intend to disable or destroy them? Also can your scanners pick up life signs on unknown craft and differentiate between human and other? When we arrive, we would like the opportunity to examine any captured craft you may possess after engagement. Message ends, SGC out."
Harriman nodded his head and made ready to send the message he had typed almost at the same time that Hammond had been speaking it. "Yes sir, encoding now…"
"Negative, Master Sergeant, send it in the clear."
"Sir?" Harriman was understandably confused; US military procedure precluded the transmission of un-encoded messages under any circumstances as a matter of OPSEC.
"You heard the order, Master Sergeant; in the clear."
"Yes, sir; sending now…"
The general then looked at Colonel Samuels and said, "Now we wait and see how this plays out…"
********
Vigilant Watcher Overbridge
Buffy stood watch at Tactical; the General's message in no uncertain terms indicated that the alien presence might possibly be hostile and that they wanted the Watcher to help out. Both larger craft had surged forth a large number of smaller two-man ships, possibly some sort of fighter craft, and even now they were moving closer to the station. So far, the fighters had not opened fire, but that was not to say that they wouldn't, or that the motherships behind them wouldn't do the same thing. At the same time, it wouldn't do them any good to pull the trigger before they knew any more about them. That was the thing with unknowns; one had to be prepared for anything and nothing at the same time. It was frustrating.
She went over her console once again, trying to familiarize herself with the various defense systems and types of dedicated weapons platforms that were emplaced on the battle station. So far, the database in the central computer core had told her that this station had been built with more than five thousand heavy turbolaser batteries, and an equal number of standard turbolasers for engaging starfighters, around two thousand, five hundred ion cannons and less than a thousand tractor beam emplacements. That did not include the hundreds upon hundreds of missile batteries and torpedo emplacements nor the hundreds of fighter bays that encompassed the equatorial zone of the battle station. The formation of fighters seemed a cloud of gnats compared to the awesome, terrible might of Vigilant Watcher.
A tone sounded on her console, directing her to see to the communications panel in the crew pit. It took her two seconds at Slayer speed to reach the comm panel and read the notification compelling her to open a channel to Xander on the inbound shuttle. They had just picked up her mother and were on their way back to the station when she received the message from General Hammond requesting their aid. Buffy then pressed a short sequence of keys and made the connection with Xander's shuttle comm.
"Watcher to Harris, do you read?"
Xander's voice came back on the comm, "Harris here, whatcha got, Watcher?"
"Can you get up here swiftly, please? I just received another voice message from General Hammond; he wants help with the two unknown contacts, which according to Tactical just released a number of smaller two-man craft, possibly fighters."
"What are they doing right now, Buffy?" If Xander was channeling Tarkin in any way, then doubtless he would want to know if they were planning on attacking his battle station.
"Well, they appear to be spread out in some sort of screen, covering as much space as they can around the station…"
"A reconnaissance screen. We'll be up there as quickly as we can; I'm pouring as much power into the sublights as I can, so give us about…five minutes to board and another five to get up to the bridge, okay? In the meantime, spin up all heavy turbolasers and ion cannons in your front hemisphere and stand by for further orders."
"Yes, I was going to say something about that as well. It seems Hammond wants us to try and scan for lifeforms on the two larger contacts and identify them. I think they want to find out if their missing squad is on one of those motherships," replied Buffy.
"Do it, then," came back Xander. "We don't want to harm anyone if we can help it. Scan everything and see if you can send the info down to Hammond in a text file or if you have to go with voice."
Buffy was understandably confused, as the entirety of her experience with the Watcher's shipboard sensor systems was nil. "Fascinating…how am I supposed to do that?"
"Hmmm…" growled Xander, his voice sounding like he would have to set aside some time for his fellow Scoobies to familiarize themselves with every aspect of the battle station's systems. "Never mind trying to do it right now. Wait till we get up there with you, and I'll handle it myself. Just tell me if anyone starts shooting, okay?"
"Understood, Xander. I shall keep you informed…Vigilant Watcher out."
Buffy then turned to the main tactical display at the front of the Overbridge and regarded the fighter screen with a degree of stoic curiosity. During her conversation with Xander, the fighters had closed their distance from the station to about half now of what it had been since she last saw them. They were still moving slowly, cautiously. "What are you people playing at?" she whispered aloud.
Lambda-class shuttle en route to Vigilant Watcher
As the shuttle closed the distance between it and the enormous spherical construct in the night sky, Joyce and the others couldn't help but feel a stirring of fear. If this was some sort of hallucination, then somebody had found some way to induce the same hallucination in groups of individuals, which should not be possible due to the diversity of human minds; as there were no two human minds that were identical, there could be no such thing as a shared hallucination. This led Joyce to believe that the battle station that loomed ever closer as they flew was exactly what it looked like.
It was real. And quite soon the vast expanse of the station's surface had eclipsed the starscape beyond, depriving all aboard the shuttle of the illusion of depth perception and compelling Xander, who was piloting the thing, to go to IFR, or Instrument Flight Rules to gauge his distance from the station the rest of the way.
Carlos looked out the side of the shuttle's transparisteel canopy, at the horizon of the Death Star station and the stars beyond, which sight soon filled him with wonder and fear beyond comparison. The looming battle station was so massive, so vast that it couldn't possibly have been built here by human hands. There simply weren't enough raw materials on the planet to build something of this unimaginable size. As for the energy requirements to power something that was meant to shatter a planet with a single shot, such a thing must surely not be possible! Carlos could not even begin to imagine the physics involved in producing hypermatter, if the stories bore out, let alone harnessing such incredible power as what would be produced from a matter-hypermatter reaction. The whole thing was simply mind-staggering, and he looked to Kit for a possible way out of this…this anxiety-inducing moment, for the closer the shuttle approached the station, the more Carlos knew the feeling that the Death Star would swallow them whole and ingest them. The only answer in Kit's eyes reflected his own growing terror and confusion, his own sentiments reflected back at him.
Willow, for her part, felt the whole weight of the moment press itself upon her chest as a palpable tension that soon blended with the euphoria of setting foot on the infamous battle station that inspired so much horror and wonder in the minds of moviegoers planetwide. She knew from the memory of possession by her ghostly self that this was as real to her as her own flesh was real to her. She felt the metal of the shuttle; it was real. She saw the telltales in the cockpit displays, and her eyes told her they were real, just as the sounds of the air recirculators in the shuttle told her they were real. Her mind connected all these senses with the memory of Xander's possession by Moff Tarkin, and it told her that all this was real. Recognizing and accepting the reality of her current circumstances increased her own growing wonder and fear, as if the whole thing could have not inspired so much as an hallucination.
This.
Was.
All.
REAL.
It was physical, enthralling the senses as nothing else real ever could.
A passing glimmer just off the horizon of the massive station caught her eye, drawing her instantly from her wonder and alerting her to a new set of circumstances, for if this battle station and the shuttle they rode ever closer to its unimaginable bulk was real, then so too were the dozens of small fighter craft that had suddenly entered the limit of her visual acuity. Willow then turned to Xander in the cockpit and communicated thus her concerns.
"Xander, we've got company."
From his pilot's console at the helm, Xander turned his eyes to meet the new arrivals to the Sol System.
"I see them, Wills, looks like fighters of some sort in a recon screen, Buffy told me they were here. We're just waiting to see what they do, and so far they haven't done anything."
"Yeah, I know, Xan, and that's what's bothering me. It's like they're waiting for something; whatever it is, it's not going to be good for us."
Xander looked at the formation of alien craft and then looked at the Death Star, judging the distance between them and his battle station to answer a question. "We're still at optimum range for turbolasers. They won't even scratch the paint job, let alone cause us any serious harm." He looked at his instruments again. "Hold on, gotta start docking procedures. Watcher, this is Shuttle 1427 on final approach?"
Buffy's voice came over the comm. "1427, this is Watcher, I have you at twenty kilometers out, cut engines and stand by for tractor beam lock on."
Xander's voice conveyed his final relief at coming back home. "1427 confirms, sublights powering down." The steady drone of the engines that heretofore no one had noticed now wound itself down to nothingness, and now only momentum held their present course in the weightless void. That sensation only lasted a moment until a new sensation made its presence felt, and now the shuttle's passengers felt themselves pulled inexorably toward the station and its waiting hangars in a trench just near the north arc of the superlaser dish. Only when the shuttle had closed to within ten kilometers of the hangar did it become visible, and everyone wondered anew at the unimaginable mass of the construct they were to board. A vast rectangular bay soon became visible at about five kilometers' distance, and as they shuttle drew nearer its passengers began to notice the myriad features within. Massive conduits and fluid hoses appeared to them as fine hairs or strands of pasta, and overhead gantries and gangways looked like Lego blocks from a klick and a half out. Joyce watched in awe as the shuttle rotated under the power of the tractor beam to face the open hangar, and as the outer hull of the station finally blocked out the view of the surrounding space, she marveled at the size of the hangar bay itself, which seemed to quite easily hold at least ten times the volume of her art gallery and the adjacent museum with room to spare, and this was one of the smaller bays. She could not imagine the size of the ones that according to the films must have held the fighters. She couldn't hope to see those anytime soon at any rate, as they were located in the equatorial trench.
The shuttle finally passed through the magnetic containment field and into the atmosphere of the hangar, and it landed on the deck with a feather's touch. No one had felt even the tiniest jarring as the craft made touchdown, and their amazement at the sensation was superlative. The passengers were so enthralled that they had to hear Xander shout three times for them to pay him attention. Startled, they turned finally to the de facto station commander.
"If we are all done making goo goo eyes at everything, I'd like to direct everyone to the coreward hallway, when you pass the double doors, make a right and take the first lift down two decks to the overbridge access deck, and then make your way to the bridge conference room. Okay?" Nodding heads conveyed everyone's agreement. "Good. I have some business on the overbridge itself, after which I'll join you presently. Giles, Cordelia, please come with me…"
Overbridge
Buffy looked over the scanning controls at the adjacent console to the communications station in confusion. She had no idea how to use the instruments shown there; hand weapons were her specialty, not science stuff. She was only glad she was able to figure out how to operate the tractor beam controls that had helped to guide Xander's shuttle to the overbridge hangar bay and to begin the automated landing sequence. She was more than grateful at seeing the doors part to reveal Xander, Dawn, Giles and Cordelia, and at last she could get a grip on the problem of the aliens just outboard.
She approached and curtseyed to Xander when she made her report, a foolish thing to do given the circumstances, but that part of her that was Lady Elizabeth demanded proper courtesy, and since she and the Lady were one and the same now, she felt unashamed in doing so.
"Xander, the alien formation is holding steady at five thousand kilometers from the hull, and there have been no indications of their intentions as yet. Do you wish now to begin scanning them?"
Xander, for his part, had not had the time nor the inclination given more pressing concerns to tell Buffy that she should go find some more appropriate clothes to wear, and the Victorian thing was so out of style, though he admitted a passing fancy that sometime in the near future that it could come back as something of a retro fashion, but now was not the time to be distracted by past fashions.
"Thank you, Buffy, I'll certainly do that; in the meantime, might I suggest that you go find some more appropriate attire for this station? Victorian vogue and the Death Star so do not go together, I'm sorry…" Xander replied with a shake of his head, regretting that now he would no longer have the opportunity to admire said vogue henceforth.
Buffy made a face and emitted a grunt of disapproval before she admitted, "While I deplore the idea of wearing one of those gray uniforms as you suggest, I'll concede that it would be more proper than wearing this restrictive garment here on your command bridge." She curtseyed once more before disappearing through the bridge doors.
Xander moved to the scanning console and started a passive scan of the local space, which he had set to autoupdate every thirty minutes, and then he began scanning each of the craft that the system had noticed as well as the pilots within. The power signatures of the craft themselves, as Xander had figured, were of an unknown type, but what interested him were the two motherships further out that showed the same signature, just larger and more prominent. From the message that they had received from the SGC, Xander had assumed that these craft were hostile, so there was no longer any sense in acting diplomatically. He changed the scan profile from passive to active and sat back to wait, ruminating as he did so.
A thought suddenly occurred to him. There was something about those energy signatures that was familiar to him, something he'd run across that wasn't one of Tarkin's memories. That left only one possibility.
When he and Giles had localized the source of the transmission from the Air Force, he'd identified the closest military installation as the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. But he knew an officer academy wouldn't be the most likely spot for concealing whatever had such an energy signature as what they had found. Whatever it was, it had been deep underground, perhaps even under one of the mountains. And then it had hit him like a blaster bolt to the chest; there was a military installation in Colorado that didn't turn out newly minted officers. The nature of that complex's activities was buried under a shroud of secrecy so thick, its classification so high, that no one outside the military ever knew of its existence other than a location and an acronym.
Cheyenne Mountain, it was called. And the base was known as the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.
Xander then leaned over the scanning console again, bringing up the sensor logs and cross-referencing with the current sensor readouts on the alien craft now shadowing his battle station. The results of the cross-reference alarmed him and gave him cause for concern.
"Giles?" Xander called out.
The British Watcher stepped over to Xander in the crew pit and stopped just over the young man's shoulder. "What is it?"
"You'll recall that when we were trying to pinpoint the source of Hammond's original transmission, we detected a unique energy signature?" When the Watcher nodded Xander continued. "Well, I just cross checked the signatures on each of those big motherships out there with the one for the object buried under that mountain. Something about those vessels struck me as familiar, and I followed up on it. As it turns out, the power signatures from each of the alien vessels were almost an exact match with the power signature of the object buried under Cheyenne Mountain."
"The NORAD facility?"
"That's the one. It's my guess, G-man, that whatever that is down there, this SGC that the good General keeps referring to really doesn't want these beings out here to get their hands on it." Just when he said that, though, a telltale started flashing on the scanning console indicating that the scan was complete. Xander looked it over. "Got something on the life form scan, but it's really weird, Giles."
"Weird as in how?"
Xander squinted as he read the entirety of the scan report, and then he keyed in a holographic layout of the surrounding space, Every dot was accompanied by a brief readout in Aurebesh. "Well, unless I miss my guess, Giles, they're human, but" and here he pointed at one of the lifeforms on the nearest mothership, "there's something else, something within them. I can't say with any assurances, but I'd say they're more like parasitic organisms in control of the host bodies. There are a few life forms on board one of those ships that register as 100% human, though. I'll take a closer look, but…"
"I believe I can save you the trouble, there, Xander," interjected Giles, "as I'd postulate that this is Hammond's missing squad. Call it an old Watcher's instinct," he finished when Xander looked at him askance.
They locked eyes for a moment before Xander proposed, "A rescue mission?"
"We should inform the General," Giles confirmed. "There is one stipulation, however, as to my understanding none of us here aboard has the knowledge or the expertise to perform such a hazardous operation. This is best left to those that have a working knowledge of these aliens and their technology."
Xander shook his head slowly. Only a few hours' possession by one of the most notoriously ruthless Imperial governors in Star Wars history had given him all the knowledge and lifetime experience of the Grand Moff himself. And there had been several aboard who had dressed as Stormtroopers and had been possessed by the characters of those costumes; logic dictated that they also would have experienced a rapid download of those characters' life experiences and personalities.
"Giles. Ooohhhh, G-Man, I have to disagree with you there; you see, we do have several on board that have exactly the expertise we require for this to work, and I believe they're guarding Ethan Rayne right now. We get Buffy and several others back up here, Buffy starts launching TIE drones and opening up on the motherships with the nearest ion batteries. Those things must have some sort of deflector shields, so ion blasts should bring down those shields. Once they're down, a shuttle on standby with the Stormtroopers aboard will board whichever ship has Hammond's missing squad, they snatch and grab and get out of there before the aliens have a chance to get their shields back up, then we blast them some more with ions and voila! Captured vessel for our SGC!"
Giles nodded his head slowly. There had to be a chance that this would work, and Xander's plan as he outlined it was the best one they had. The Air Force could do nothing from the planet surface as they were further away and had not the technology to slow the aliens down, let alone defeat them. It was up to the Vigilant Watcher and her crew to do the job, as they were here with the aliens.
At length he agreed, "Yes, your plan is sound, and it's not only the best one we have, it's the only shot we have to take. I only have one thing to ask…"
"What's that, Giles?"
"You must agree to never again in your lifespan refer to me by that infernal nickname, else I shall say not one word to our beloved General Hammond, nor his SGC, whatever that stands for. Now, Xander, do we have an accord?"
Xander was slightly crestfallen at this requirement, but he felt it was one he could live with. He had to take a shot, though, since to Xander, formalities among friends were something he could do without. "Very well, we do. May I call you Rupert instead?" he finished with something resembling a hopeful grin.
Giles, at his wit's end, merely sighed in defeat and exasperation. "Never on school grounds or in a professional setting, Moff Harris," he conceded.
Xander bowed deeply in a gesture that, were he facing the nobility of Britain or Eriadu, or even Emperor Palpatine himself, Heaven forbid, would resemble grateful supplication. "Rupert, thy will be done."
Giles took off his glasses and began to polish them furiously. At length, once he had composed himself once more, he replaced them on the bridge of his nose and spoke again. "Then bring in the others and alert General Hammond; it is nigh time to brief them on your daring rescue plan."