A/N - Certain facts were brought to light in a recent review in order to preserve continuity, and for that I must thank that reviewer, who shall g ounnamed until I find it...those particular issues have now been corrected...
Shuttle 2432, interior
Boredom certainly wasn't the word to describe Ethan's mood; he had figured out quite quickly how to balance the shields to augment whatever got hit when he saw the first alien fighters take several potshots at the shuttle. The assault team couldn't come back quickly enough with the American Air Force rescuees, and the whole time he felt that they wouldn't get back in time, as the attacks kept coming with ever greater frequency and intensity.
Almost as if they were dead set on peeling the shuttle off their mothership's hull like a particularly nasty leech.
Thus it was to his greatest relief that Warren and his team returned to the shuttle with the members of the beleaguered Air Force team in tow, as well as a bonus. When he saw their hostage, who appeared to be little more than a human youth in a futuristic version of an Egyptian costume, he looked at the boy askance.
"Picking up strays along the way, are we?" he asked impatiently. A response both from Klorel and Warren at once was not what he expected.
"Save the chatter, Ethan; we need to separate from this ship like, yesterday. Get up to the cockpit and get us on our way while we secure our guests belowdecks," Warren replied.
Klorel's reponse, while less verbal, was more unsettling. Ethan heard a sizzling sound which seemed to come from the unearthly glow in the whites of Klorel's eyes as they glared into his own with all every promise of pain and torment he could envision. Without a word, Ethan sealed the cofferdam and hastened to the pilot's station in the cockpit.
Below, in the troop bay, the members of SG-1 were looking around at their new surroundings, more than one of them deciding then and there that things had definitely taken a turn for the surreal. The Stormtroopers (Jack was still trying to wrap his brain around the idea of real Stormtroopers with real blasters and riding in a real Imperial shuttle…hoo boy) were securing Klorel with a set of binders which set his wrists at right angles to each other. Their rigid construction prevented him from working his wrists to free himself, which didn't stop him from trying; in between moments of spouting foul obscenities at them and at SG-1 and particularly Teal'c, he struggled futilely to free himself.
Apparently even the strength given to a host by a Goa'uld symbiote was not enough to free one from Star Wars handcuffs, Jack thought. Looking over at his XO, Jack couldn't help but hide a smirk at Carter's befuddled expression, indicating her equal excitement at the chance to examine in great detail a new technology and confusion as to how, by any means, a variety of craft and technology from the fictions of George Lucas could be produced to such accuracy of form and function. He didn't know whether she was going to faint or wet her underwear. Teal'c, of course, was as inscrutable and laconic as ever, though he and his fellow Jaffa turncoat Bra'Tac were chattering, by turns both amicably and excitedly, or at least Jack assumed they were; he had yet to decipher the nuances of the Goa'uld language. That was more Jackson's field.
His thoughts were interrupted by the pilot's voice over the public address. "I must apologize for the intrusion into your business below, but the sensors have detected a rather large number of enemy fighters headed in our direction. Perhaps someone could man the turrets and hold them off while I get us clear of this ship?"
"How many?" queried the Stormtrooper leader. "And what's the status of our drone fighters?"
The British gentleman's voice returned, "About twenty fighters, and our drones are accounting themselves rather well near the station, with some thirty drones patrolling near us. Perhaps the turrets could give us the edge in defending ourselves the same as they did on our initial approach?"
"Sounds good, Ethan. I'll be up there in a moment. Get us separated from the hull and on our way back to the Watcher," was the Stormtrooper's response. He then turned his masked head toward Jack and asked a simple question.
"How good are your people with large-scale energy weapons?"
To that Jack replied, "Teal'c and Bra'Tac can each fly a Death Glider – "
"Those things out there?"
"Yup. Your people should still man the turrets; we're not exactly qualified to handle Imperial weapons like your turrets, and we're better suited to looking after our guest than three Stormtroopers; we're more experienced with this kind of enemy."
A slight jolt interrupted their conversation briefly as the shuttle, now sealed against the hard vacuum of space, separated from the Ha'Tak and moved under reverse thrusters away from the Goa'uld vessel. "Well, I guess we're clear," said the leader with a chuckle. To his comrades he turned and ordered, "You two get on the turrets and hold off those Death Gliders. We're going home, people!"
Vigilant Watcher, Overbridge
"Xander, Warren's team is reporting in," said Giles. "They have SG-1 and a Goa'uld hostage with them."
Xander smiled to himself. Warren's team was proving more skilled than he had expected if they could take an enemy prisoner of war as well as recover an Air Force SpecOps team. I'll have to figure out more missions for them in that capacity if we're going to work more closely with the SGC in the future. Maybe they can even reciprocate in a certain capacity with our particular difficulties. Share and share alike, after all, as the saying goes….especially if we find Hellmouths on other worlds…or another one on Earth…..
Xander suppressed a sudden chill at the thought of finding another Hellmouth. If both of them opened at the same time, there might not be enough resources to lend towards fighting off the subsequent influx of demonic entities that would be hell-bent on annihilating humanity, even working with the world's military forces as they were bound to do in the foreseeable future. Perhaps he should get together with the world's leaders and develop a planetary evacuation protocol for just such a case as the simultaneous opening of multiple Hellmouths.
Now where had that thought come from? Xander wondered.
No matter; the time for entertaining random thought would come. Turning to Buffy, he ordered, "Assign several flights of TIEs to escort the shuttle back; I think we have enough Death Gliders in our hangar bays for study and whatever else. We can destroy the rest of these vermin. Dawn, signal our shuttle to approach the overbridge hangar bay. And have Cordelia come up here; I have a little job that's right up her alley…"
Overbridge Conference Room
Willow had insisted that Carlos be taken to a medical facility for treatment as soon as they had arrived on the station, and so it was no surprise that she had missed the initial briefing on Earth's new enemies. Of all the aliens she had ever thought she would encounter in her first opportunity to venture out into space, the Goa'uld seemed like things out of a nightmare. A parasitic species that took over the living body of a host and intertwined its own nervous system directly with the host's, effectively supplanting the host's consciousness with its own, was something that Willow clearly did not wish to encounter.
What gave her greater concern, however, was how to access the medical section nearest the Overbridge. None of them, save for those already in the command and control center, had a clue how to access the information, plus everything was written down in the strange Star Wars alphabet that only ubergeeks like Warren Mears and his ilk would devote themselves to memorizing. The only non-geek that Willow knew would have a solid knack for figuring out this system of writing was Dawn, and she was on the Overbridge as well.
Willow looked over at Carlos and suddenly shrank within herself. His face was stretched taut in a rictus of pain, and his whole body shivered at the effort it took to suppress that pain. Not for nothing did Willow wonder why no-one had found a medical facility for him or even a first aid kit; everyone had been overawed by the reality of being on board the actual Death Star battle station, the planet-killer that had made its claim to fame by blowing up Alderaan. Still, Carlos was in terrible pain from the wound in his leg, and there was only one thing to do about it.
Willow was saved from a babble-inducing moment of anxiety by the sudden arrival of Dawn from the Overbridge. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of Dawn's hair color, as it was now possibly a more brilliant red than her own rosy tresses. Willow soon quashed that thought as Dawn was looking pointedly at Cordelia.
"Xander wants to see you on the Overbridge, Cordelia, immediately," she said to the Sunnydale High head cheerleader. This got Cordelia's usual retort along with a raised eyebrow.
"Unless the Head Doofus in Charge has a thing for girls in cat costumes, which, disturbing much? I would like to get a change of clothes that will help me look at least halfway presentable," she responded with the usual venom in her voice.
"'Fraid it's just uniforms for now, Cordy. You ought to fill it out just fine, though…."
"As if!"
"Dawn…" Willow tried to cut in, unsuccessfully as Queen C was going at full tilt.
"I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those sad gray jumpsuits! Especially after seeing how it looks on you, Captain Coupon! Off the rack and the Cordy so do not go together; I get a rash just looking at them! That rag looks like it was made for old men with bad haircuts!"
"That's 'Admiral' Coupon to you, you upper-class scum!"
"DAWN!"
Both turned to Willow, the icy slares from each of them suddenly finding themselves in a close contest with Willow's own furious countenance. "What?!" they each snarled in almost perfect unison.
"We gotta get Carlos to a hospital! There's gotta be one on the station; Tarkin – umm, Xander – Xander said when he was possessed that there was at least one hospital here, so we need to find it, cuz his leg is oozing all sorts of gross, and everyone was all quiet because we were totally gobsmacked, and I really need to stop using Giles-y words now, and we have to get him in Bacta right now and keep it from getting infected, and I'm babbling again, aren't I?"
"Alright, Willow, breathe!" replied an anxious Admiral Dawn Summers; Willow, she knew, could babble a blue streak when she was in a full-on panic mode. "I'll get a ground car over here to get you on the way. Cordy, come with me…"
Medical Station 381-N3, Sector N-Three,
About an hour later, Willow was more relieved than ever she had been since the whole Halloween episode began, having seen the 2-1B medical droids tend to Carlos's injury with greater care than ever she had come to expect from all the doctors and medical professionals she had been familiarized with due to her parents' years of experience in psychiatric medicine. They had gently convinced him to strip down to his underwear, then fitted him with a pair of watertight shorts to wear, and then they had fitted him with a nosepiece and a rebreather, just before they carried him to a waiting raised circular platform and chair, into which he was sat. The droids had encouraged him to remain calm while the tank wall was lowered into place, and then the Bacta fluid began to flow into the tank from the cylinder on which Carlos stood. It felt warm and slightly viscous to his bare feet, not at all like the cold water he expected to feel; still, he started slightly when the fluid rose to his chin, and panic began to set in when it made contact with his nose, and then his eyes. It took a moment to realize nothing was getting into his nose or mouth, and when the fluid rose above his eyes he was surprised to understand that they were not being affected. It was like being in a slightly chlorinated pool; he could see, and the fluid did not hurt his eyes, but the blurring effect was more pronounced than that of being in a pool of water.
Carlos was finally calm when the Bacta rose over his head; in fact, he was enjoying the sensation, especially since the agony in his leg had begun to finally subside. Clearly the Bacta had an anaesthetic quality, which helped greatly when the surgical tools were introduced into the tank with him. When they began to work their craft he was surprised to learn that instead of cutting into the surrounding tissue to remove the charred flesh, they were washing away the carbonized tissue before brushing it off. Then the machines began to work at rebuilding his thigh muscles and skin, moving at a speed that had to be seen to be believed. The By that time, the agony of the blaster wound in his leg had been reduced to a mere tickle.
Willow laughed when Carlos looked at her and nodded his pleasure at the experience, giving her a thumbs-up. She settled in for the wait, content to watch the Bacta and the machines and the 2-1B droids do their respective work; about an hour later, the procedure was complete and the tank began to drain. One of the droids emerged from somewhere with a dressing robe and towels to clean the slightly syrupy fluid from Carlos' skin. Now clean, dry and dressed, Carlos looked at his leg and marveled at the wonder of Star Wars medical technology. He flexed his leg to test the rebuilt muscle's strength and found it good, and then he put his weight on the formerly damaged leg, and it, too, was good. He even hopped once or twice on it, and then he started laughing.
"Willow! Come take a look at this; this is so awesome!" he shouted joyously. She went to him and looked in awe as he lifted the hem of his dressing robe to reveal the site where he had been shot; there was nothing there, nothing at all to indicate that anything had ever happened to his leg that night, not even a scar. It was truly marvelous. She looked up at his face and saw his eyes lit with the greatest feeling he had ever felt; he was buzzed. Then she joined in his laughter, happy for now that they could put that bit of unfortunate business behind them.
Stargate Command, Control Room
"General Hammond? Message coming in from the Vigilant Watcher…"
General Hammond had been tracking the progress of the space battle from the reports and the satellite tracking from NASA, and so far the crew of the gigantic battle station had proven themselves to be valuable allies; the thousand or so TIE fighters, supposedly automated according to Moff Harris, were making mincemeat of the Death Gliders, and the Death Star-class station had taken out the shields of one of the two Ha'Taks and were steadily and swiftly draining the other ship's shields to collapse. The opportunity had presented itself to turn what surely would have been the final defeat of Earth's military forces, and the subsequent enslavement of the human race, into an unprecedented intelligence coup for Earth. The possibility of capturing a Goa'uld attack ship for study and intelligence analysis was just too good now to ignore; even if it meant handing a victory to Kinsey, an idea which Hammond loathed in the extreme given his intense dislike for the man after the Senator's treatment of himself and SG-1, plus his decision to cut all funding to the Stargate Program, the opportunities presented by a thorough analysis of the disabled Ha'Taks would advance human technology by at least a hundred years.
Then again, a thorough analysis of a Death Star would advance human scientific and medical knowledge by at least a thousand years and more…
Hammond cleared his head of these ruminations after hearing MSG Harriman call him over. He walked over to the communications station and looked over Walter's shoulder at the text message displayed on the screen.
"They're rolling out the red carpet for us, Master Sergeant. They're sending down a shuttle to pick us up once they have SG-1. They'll have the details for us when we arrive on board. That what you see?"
"Looks that way, sir. Apparently they managed to send in a team and snatch them out of the Goa'ulds' hands," replied his commo chief. "They even have a surprise for us when we link up on the station."
"I hate surprises…" Hammond groused. He gave it a second's thought, however, taking a long breath in and forcefully exhaling it, taking just as long doing so, and then he spoke. "Still, they say they rescued SG-1, and their invite gives us a chance to look at this battle station up close, and I hope Kinsey and his people never find out about this. Send them a message back, Walter. Tell them we graciously accept their invitation aboard, and we look forward to meeting them face to face at last. Message ends, Walter."
Nodding his assent and his reception of orders, Harriman replied, "Yes, sir, coding now….message sent."
Gary, Indiana, Office of Senator Robert Kinsey
"I understand, Mr. President, but we have an obligation to the people of this country to uphold. We absolutely must lay claim to that Death Star before the Russians or the Chinese can. And those raghead infidels in the Middle East think the Mahdi, the so-called Twelfth Imam, has come already, and the rumor mill over there has been going nonstop like nothing we've ever heard since the Iran/Contra affair!...no, sir, our mandate is clear and this is our opportunity to advance our technological base by centuries! We can make the rest of the world safe for democracy within our lifetime, Mr. President, maybe even before the next election…no, I am not over-reaching…history will remember us for how we respond to the Death Star's presence, and how we use its resources, its benefits…no, the Stargate Program is operating against our orders; my committee ordered their funding cut…how dare I, sir? How dare you?! Hello…Hello? Damn…"
Sean Johnson was such a fool, Robert Kinsey thought. He would have had the United States of America, the leader of the free world, going to the commander of the Death Star on bended knee with their hands out. Kinsey's contact in the NID had discreetly informed him that the SGC was operating on their own, in disregard of the Senate Appropriations Committee's decision to cut funding, and that there had been communications between them and the Death Star. Apparently there was a battle going on in the space above the North American continent, between the Death Star and the SGC's co-called "Goa'uld", or as Colonel O'Neill had called the "barbarians at the gate"; Kinsey could almost admire the elaborate deception. It was a plot worthy of Washington, except for the fact that these Goa'uld could not be proven to exist. As far as Kinsey was concerned, it was another excuse to waste the taxpayers' money on that frivolous program.
There had been no benefit to the Stargate Program; no useful technology brought back, no new science, almost nothing that the US could use, and everything that gave Kinsey every reason to mistrust the program. And now a supposedly fictional battle station from the mind of George Lucas had magically appeared in the sky and had nearly caused a panic among the populace. The media had not stopped speculating about the Death Star and the repercussions caused by its presence. But Kinsey saw an opportunity here; if he could gain control of the obviously real space station then he could bypass the SGC entirely, using the Death Star's primary weapon in an industrial capacity. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contained uncounted thousands of planetoid bodies that could be pulverized in a single blast, the rubble to be collected and ferried back to Earth to be smelted for their mineral wealth. And then it would be on to the stars where untold riches waited to be found….
A phone call to Kinsey's contact in the NID gave the Senator the opening he needed. A shuttle was on its way to collect the SGC commanding general, George Hammond, and his command staff, to take them up to the station. Hopefully the secretive SGC saw the reason why some of the nation's top officials, namely the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee among others, would need to be included in the event. After all, the military was supposed to be under civilian command, and not the other way around, which helped with transparency and accountability to the people they were sworn to serve. Of course, by that logic, if the Stargate Command people, specifically one Air Force Major General and one Air Force Colonel, tried to block his access to the Death Star station, then he, Robert Kinsey, had but to make a few phone calls and convene the Senate in a closed-door session, and then they would begin an inquiry as to why the Stargate Command had continued to operate after all further funding had been revoked.
This all occurred to the Senator in the space of an instant; he hadn't climbed up to the top ranks of the United States Senate by being stupid or thoughtless.
His musings were interrupted by his NID contact, Harry Maybourne.
"Senator? What's your plan?" Maybourne asked from the earpiece of Kinsey's handset.
At length the Senator replied, "Harry, I want to be on that shuttle when it takes off. You send a message to General Hammond telling him to delay the shuttle launch for as long as he can while I get on a plane and get over there as soon as I can. He doesn't do that, then there will be a Senate investigation as to why the SGC has continued to operate without funding from the US Treasury…"
Assault Shuttle 2432, fifty kilometers from Klorel's Ha'Tak
The shuttle turrets were vomiting rivers of plasma at the encroaching Death Gliders, making solid kills every two to three seconds, but for every one, two or more entered the fray. Ethan and Warren were doing their best to keep the shuttle on a generally straight course toward the Vigilant Watcher, but the circumstances of being pursued by alien beings whose every intent was to destroy the shuttle before it could reach the relative safety of the station's inner defense perimeter kept them from flying in a straight line. If they could get close enough, though, then the station's turbolaser and ion batteries would make short work of them. The TIE drones flying close escort for the shuttle were doing their part at whittling away the vast numbers of the Jaffa craft that had broken off their pointless attack on the station to head back to the motherships. Upon seeing a single craft of unknown type flying away from their lord Klorel's ship, and upon seeing the large gaping hole in the ship's hull, they needed no orders from their gods, nor any impetus beyond what had already been provided, and had gone after the shuttle with vengeance in their eyes and utter glee on the part of their respective symbiotes. Jonathan and Andrew had made a good account of themselves, bagging more than fifty Death Glider kills each on the return trip so far, but they weren't out of the proverbial woods yet.
If this kept up, then the Goa'uld would cut them to ribbons before they could cross half the remaining distance to the Watcher's hangar bays. At four hundred kilometers out, it would be an eternity before they would enter the station's gravitational field. At two hundred kilometers from the surface of the massive construct, gravity increased notably the closer one approached the station; all Warren and his team had to do was to cross two hundred more kilometers of hostile space, and then the Watcher's gravity pull would accelerate them beyond the range of the Death Gliders' naqadah cannons…
Then the hard part would come….
Vigilant Watcher, Overbridge
Cordelia was out of her element; at Sunnydale High she was queen of the social scene, the paragon of high fashion and status who suffered no fool easily or gladly. All who would challenge her on campus, be they student or faculty, had but to hear the acid tongue of Queen C and they were put firmly in their place lest they hear the dread words 'Daddy's lawyer', but here on the Death Star, it was clear to her that she was not in the head bitch in charge, and that the self-proclaimed "King of Cretins", the doofus extraordinaire Xander Harris, most certainly was, minus the obvious gender qualification. The fact that she was standing before him, wearing an Imperial officer's uniform now and wondering what he had in mind for her, rather than she sitting in the command seat with that obvious smirk on her face instead of his spoke volumes to that fact.
She stood there, just inside the entryway, for a good minute before she began her latest tirade in true Queen C style.
"Big whoop, doofus. Big whoop. You got this ginormous planet-killing battle station, you dressed as the man who pulled the trigger on Alderaan and its billions of people, and you've got a huge shit-eating grin on your face…"
"Watch your language, Cordelia Chase!" Giles all but shouted suddenly at her use of profanity from over at Comm-Scan, but his voice wasn't the one that sent a shiver up her spine. The glare from Xander more than made up for it as his moment of ironic introspection was well and truly shattered.
"That is not among the more pleasant memories of Moff Tarkin that I have to live with, Cordelia, and I'll thank you to never bring up the subject again," he fired back in an icy calm voice that parleyed his utter disgust with her latest verbal indiscretion. "Yes, I was reflecting on how the tables had indeed turned for the two of us until you decided, and quite rudely in true Queen C style, I might add, to begin our little conversation at a time of your choosing. I hope I don't have to remind you of the consequences of suggesting that this station's primary weapon be used for any reason other than my own and the most dire circumstances?"
That had shut up the teenaged socialite quite handily, judging from her wide eyes and quietly shuddering breath. Her response, clearly, was atypical of her, a single word in the negative.
Cordelia could only manage a subdued whisper as she said, "No."
"I'm relieved you said that, Cordy," Xander replied, nodding his head ever so slightly in his approval. "I was soon to finish my ruminaitons in quite short order had you not expedited that with your brutally honest, um, observation, and I had figured out what qualifications you met to serve as my new Chief of Security, but I think you just gave me another reason to give you the posting." He took a moment to pause and sigh, not for dramatic effect, although it did certainly have that impact. Narrowing his eyes, Xander resumed his speech. "You have a public face, Cordy, and you are, as I indicated, brutally honest with people; it is not in your nature to tell a lie. By that logic, it would seem that politics and the Cordy do not mix. Well, they're about to start making with the mixy…Commander."
"Commander?"
"I trust you heard me correctly? I need a crew, and I need able-bodied, willing officers to serve with me on this station. I have had a vision, a goal in mind, while our retrieval team has been out there rescuing the Air Force guys, and it's going to take everyone working together to make it happen. Which, by the way, Buffy?"
"Xander?" the Slayer replied from the tactical station. "Shuttle 2432 is about two hundred kilometers away from the station, if my reading is accurate. That should give them about two minutes to pass through the magnetic field, another thirty seconds from there to the inner defense perimeter, then we can guide them in freely. They'll still have Death Gliders on their asses, but…"
"Instruct them to come in at full power, don't worry about the range. I have an idea to reel them in safe, and I need you to take the chair for that time, as I'll be going off your cues."
"'Splainy?" queried the redoubtable Slayer.
"You'll have it once Cordelia and I get to the Overbridge Hangar Bay, Buff. In the meantime, tell Warren and his boys to adjust their course so that they cross perpendicular with their previously intended landing path. Those words exactly, milady. Tell them once they adjust to roll so that the station is below their relative horizon, and then stand by for further instruction and we'll have them back in a flash."
"Very good, Xander, sending your message."
Cordy lifted one perfectly sculpted eyebrow in reaction to the exchange as well as to Buffy's presence on the bridge as a key participant to this elaborate operation. "You got Slay Girl working for you too?"
"Let's just go, Cordelia…" said Xander, already heading toward the Overbridge doors as he spoke.
Overbridge Hangar Bay Control Room, one minute later…
Xander seated himself in the tractor beam operator's chair, familiarizing himself with the various control systems inherent to the landing officer's task. Interlacing his fingers and pushing out his palms to loosen his knuckles with the familiar popping sounds not only prepared his hands and fingers for the task of capturing the Imperial Lambda-class assault shuttle with the tractor beam, but cleared his mind to an extent. He needed his mind and body calm and steady to handle the absolute precision this evolution required. First he opened a comm line to the Overbridge.
"Buffy, are you tracking our shuttle now?"
"They're making their prescribed maneuver now, Xander. Twenty seconds until they cross the magnetic field," Buffy's voice replied over the connection.
"Alright, then," Xander responded as he punched controls and looked over his instruments, " I'm powering up the tractor beam system, going through diagnostic checks…tractor beam is green and ready to fire. Magnetic containment fields are in place at one hundred percent strength, atmosphere is clean with no toxins present, ready to be pumped into the storage hold. Buffy, inform the shuttle that when they land they need to stay on board until we have atmosphere for them."
"Message sent," said the Slayer after just a second. "They've got a ton of Death Gliders on their aft section, Xander; I'm intensifying forward turbolaser batteries in that quadrant to compensate," she added with a small measure of concerned curiosity.
"Ok, Buff, stay on it," Xander replied. Must be a Slayer thing… he commented internally. To Cordelia, he said, "Once we have a hard seal and good atmosphere in the bay, I want you to greet them when they get off the shuttle. Part of your job as Security Chief is to be the first face everyone sees who first boards this station; essentially you're a tour guide. Think of it as experience for the whole acting gig, Queen C…"
"You are a doofus of the first order, Xander Harris…" Cordelia fumed.
"But I'm your doofus…" said Xander with a wink….
"The shuttle, dumbass!"
Assault Shuttle 2432, two hundred kilometers from Vigilant Watcher
The last message from the station did not sit well with Warren. Moff Harris's plan to get them back aboard the station was a crazy, half-baked idea from the get-go, but it was the only one anyone could come up with on such short notice, and they were swiftly running out of time for a plan B.
The plan called for the shuttle to describe a perpendicular course across their previously-planned landing path, which would turn into a loop along said perpendicular course. At the moment when their relative orientation placed them nose-on with their assigned hangar bay, they were to put all power into the sublights for a half second as the tractor beam took hold, then cut engine power completely, and let their momentum and the pull of the tractor beam take them into the station without the Death Gliders even knowing what had happened. Warren and Ethan were to stand by with their fingers on the controls ready to throw everything they had into reverse thrusters once they passed through the hangar bay doors; they would only have an instant to kill their momentum if they didn't want to paste themselves and SG-1 all over the inside bulkhead of the hangar bay. They only had one shot at it, though, as the stresses on both the shuttle's hull and the tractor beam systems would be extreme. A second attempt would see either the shuttle or the hangar's tractor beam system torn to pieces from the shear forces endured.
Right now, though, Warren and Ethan were taxing the shuttle's reaction control thrusters to their uttermost in their attempt to avoid being blown out of the stars by a thousand tons of multiple hostile fighter craft. It was preferable to being dead. Dead people couldn't enjoy the finer things in life, both pilot and co-pilot agreed, and once the shuttle was flying on that perpendicular, their path would have to be straight and true, something that the theory of evasive combat action soundly ridiculed. The more likely possibility, of course, was not that of ridicule once they began their suicidal run, but having to rely more on their rear-firing turrets and the hundreds of escort fighters shooting anything that found its way into their firing solution. Flying a straight path over the superstructures on the surface of the battle station meant the shuttle was a sitting duck.
The shuttle's path showed itself on the pilot station's central display as a single curve, arcing away from their current position and describing a gentle semicircle toward the overbridge immediately north of the superlaser dish. At equal intervals along that course, rectangles showed their recommended orientation relative to the station as a lazy half spin that put the Watcher below the shuttle's relative horizon in preparation for the grab-and-yank portion of the landing process.
TIE drones flew all around in groups of three, dealing death to the Jaffa that flew those hostile craft and blasting their ships to smithereens with only one or two shots from their fire-linked laser cannons. The drones had a distinct advantage over the Death Gliders, having no living organic pilots to suffer gravity induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC in the parlance of the surface naval aviators), and so they were flying circles around their targets and pulling off maneuvers that any organic pilot would have to have seen in order to believe. Any drone that found a Death Glider attempting to lock on to its rear quarter simply spun on its vertical axis while still flying forward, and then firing its lasers into the target's hull and obliterating it. This took a great burden off the shoulders of the Stormtroopers manning the shuttle's turrets, but it still wasn't quite enough yet.
One hundred fifty kilometers from the station, the shuttle passed through the outer magnetic field, juking and jerking wildly along their course in order to continue being unshot. Time was drawing short though as the surface of the Vigilant Watcher grew ever nearer; Andrew and Jono were good shots, and during the eternity-long flight back to the station had managed to keep their current conveyance from being hit even once, but five hundred kilometers each way to the Ha'Tak and back was a long trip, and fatigue could still set in while the Jaffa pilots of the Death Gliders dogging their heels and hoping for a good bite were virtual unknowns. At at some point when relying on Lady Luck to work her magic, one learned not to rely on her overmuch, and it was a lesson often learned the hard way.
Lady Luck had a habit of becoming a real bitch to those who kept coming to her with their hands out.
At one hundred twenty kilometers from the station, Lady Luck chose this moment to get picky as a "lucky" shot from one of the Death Gliders struck the shields just in the right spot, and enough of the plasma got through to hit the starboard turret, knocking it out of commission and scorching the armor of Andrew Wells.
"AAAAH! SHIT!" Jono saw Andrew get thrown back across the hold to land squarely in the middle of SG-1, his armor blackened and stinking with melted plastoid. Fortunately none of the damage was deep enough to warrant immediate first aid, but the armor had had it. At Colonel O'Neill's urging, Carter and Teal'c went to work removing the surprisingly cooperative stormtrooper suit. Seeing then that his squadmate was in good hands for the interim, Jonathon Levinson dashed over to the starboard turret and began diagnostic procedures in order to service and repair the weapon system. That left the port turbolaser turret unmanned, so Daniel, with nothing to do at the moment and all the urgency of one who needed to keep his friends alive, jumped up to take over, ignoring the increased pounding of the naqadah cannons against their shields, taking a moment to familiarize himself with the controls and then seizing the control yoke and pressing the firing studs with a vengeance not heretofore known in the mind of the archaeologist.
Barely ten seconds passed before Daniel had scored his first Death Glider kill.
"Way to go, Space Monkey!" crowed Jack.
"Great job down there! Don't get cocky, now!" a pleased Warren Mears added, having felt the urge to channel Han Solo just then.
One hundred kilometers remained of their flight when the Vigilant Watcher's Taim and Bak D-6 turbolaser batteries opened up on the remaining Death Gliders; the shuttle had reached the inner defense perimeter, and Warren and Ethan had their cue to make the first turn.
"Ethan, adjust course to bearing three-zero-zero, mark zero, and begin a slow starboard roll to ninety degrees," said Warren, confident now that the heat was off of them at last. Ethan's nod of assent accompanied his turning of the control yoke to steer the shuttle in the prescribed manner. On the central display, their course began to match the diagram's recommended path, the rectangles along the path rotating to match the shuttle's orientation at each interval.
"Shuttle 2432 to Watcher," Warren signaled, having previously opened a channel to the Overbridge, "we're on final approach, would you kindly open up the barn door for us? We're coming in hot."
"2432, this is Overbridge Hangar Control," said Moff Harris over the communications array, "atmosphere recovered and magnetic field is open, so come on in. Be advised that hangar shall be depressurized at time of landing, how copy?"
"2432 to Control, good copy. Please advise, we are still being pursued by hostile fighters. Starboard rearward gun turret is offline and nonfunctional from enemy weapons fire. Shields are holding, but they won't last long if we catch some more of this heat before we land, how copy, Control?"
"Five by five," said the Moff, "Continue on course and prepare for tractor lock-on. Remember, we're only gonna get one shot at this, even as clichéd as that sounds, guys, so look sharp and keep your hands on the sublights…"
"Will do, Control, 2432 clear…"
Vigilant Watcher, Overbridge Hangar Bay Control Room
On the central display, Xander and Cordelia were tracking the shuttle's approach with quivering breath; at less than one hundred kilometers out, Warren and his boys could quite literally lean out the cockpit window and spit across the distance to the outer hull of the battle station. The pilots of those few Death Gliders that were left, out of the group that initially began their pursuit of the rescue party, had to be a hardy bunch, having survived the shuttle's turret defense and later, the Vigilant Watcher's turbolaser barrage, and it was to their credit and that of the false gods they served that they were so skilled and had lived long enough to gain the experience of veteran pilots. They were currently dogging the stern of the assault shuttle, making multiple passes now to try and cut them off from their destination, but the skill of the shuttle's primary pilot, combined with the reflexes and situational awareness of those individuals manning the laser turrets, were sufficient to make the Jaffa pilots think twice about getting too close to their target. Slow though the Lambda-class variant was, it still had a sufficiently minimal silhouette that was hard to line up for a good kill shot. Plus it seemed that from the ongoing camera footage of the firefight steadily progressing, that the naqadah cannons on the Death Gliders had to be aimed manually by line of sight rather than by instrument; the rear-firing turrets on the Lambda-class had no such limitations…
Xander opened a channel to the Overbridge above. "Buffy, this is Xander; power up the D-Six turbolaser batteries lining the trench to our hangar. "
The voice of the Slayer currently manning the command chair came over the comlink, "I hear you, Xander; there's still quite a few Death Gliders on their back quarter." After a second she added, "Turbos are online, tracking and firing; they just took down two of the enemy ships, and a couple more just slammed into one of the shield deflection towers in the city sprawl northwest of here. Guess Warren and his boys must be pulling off some fancy flying out there. You got that tractor beam powered up? They're about ten kilometers away from entering the trench."
"City sprawls, huh?" piped in Cordelia. "When we get done with this I want to check out what shopping malls this thing has…"
"Gonna have to wait until we have Warren and SG-1 back aboard, Cordy; they're about five clicks out right now, about to enter the trench. Gonna get pretty tight in there…"
Shuttle 2432, approaching trench to Overbridge hangar bay
The shuttle rolled and yawed as it neared the hangar bay; the Jaffa fighters had to corkscrew and reverse in their manic efforts to keep up and acquire a proper firing solution, even as they began to fight the effects of the immense space station's gravity well. As the fight moved closer to the shuttle's destination, the ships edged ever closer to the surface; the shuttle's course drew it towards the surface at a steep angle to the station's hull initially, then began to gently level out until the shuttle was almost skimming the surface at a five-degree gradient approaching the Overbridge hangar bay. At one thousand meters and descending, the shuttle had now to almost totally depend on the turbolaser towers lining the short, twenty-five-kilometer-long trench just north of the superlaser dish. Warren's skill and Ethan's luck and desire to survive allowed them to pull of some clever maneuvering that placed several of those towers directly, fatally, in the path of several of Apophis's veteran warriors.
The shuttle descended into the trench, its tail section lit green from the backscatter of the turbolaser bolts that crisscrossed the space within just microseconds after it passed. The Jaffa craft that sped on after the shuttle weren't so lucky, getting caught frequently in one firing arc or another and turning into flaming scrap that scattered itself along the floor of the trench with almost the same speed as before their sudden demise. Inertia provided a spectacularly grim show for anyone who happened to see, the number of which by the time the Trio and SG-1 approached to within one kilometer of the hangar bay, could now be counted on one human hand.
In the shuttle's cockpit, Ethan was minding his display which showed the exact range and distance to the hangar, calling out every five hundred meters. At seven hundred meters, two things happened. First, Warren cut out the sublight engines and fed full power briefly to the reaction control system, enabling the shuttle to roll backwards on its horizontal axis akin to a racing technique known on Earth as drifting. Secondly, the shuttle's momentum and inertia took it just past the Overbridge Hangar Bay, and Warren then pushed the sublight engines to instant full power for a brief half-second. The thrust carried the shuttle out of the trench and into open space just past the hangar bay, while the first of the three surviving Death Gliders zipped past, free of the tractor beam that had just then been activated. The errant Glider pilot pulled a Tokyo-worthy drifting maneuver that brought the pilot face-on with his fellow warriors, just in time to see the tractor briefly snag one of them. The poor unlucky fool whose ship was briefly influenced by the tractor beam careened out of control, impacting first on one wall of the trench, then the other, before disintegrating completely in a ball of fire and scrap metal.
His colleague in the other Death Glider joined him only a moment after…
Overbridge Hangar Bay Control Room
Cordy had to admit, after seeing Star Wars for the first time, that she got a thrill more from the trench run of the Death Star than from any other point in the course of the film. The speed, the dogfighting between snub fighters, the crashes and explosions nearly got her panting with the adrenaline rush. It paled in comparison with what she was witnessing from the video footage of the cameras lining the hangar trench. The speed of each craft to pass by was blinding, and with each crash Cordy felt the local area of the battle station shudder slightly, just enough to throw her momentarily off balance. From the films one saw and heard; here, in the real thing, one saw, heard, and felt. Nothing did the experience justice. If the atmosphere hadn't been pumped out of the hangar just prior to dropping the magnetic containment field, there would have been a thunderous report accompanying each impact of a fighter on the hull, like no television set or sound system could ever produce.
Over the comlink, Buffy's voice rang out, "Tractor, tractor, tractor!" Xander's hand then zipped over to the activation toggle button and slapped it. The whine of energy being fed into the tractor beam system was comforting to Xander's ears as it was energizing to his spirit, and he looked at the display to notice an alien fighter pass just out of the projection cone.
"SHIT!", cried Xander as he realized his error. Fortunately the beam hadn't had more than a toehold on the craft when it slipped and began to tumble, eventually impacting on the trench wall twice before finally burning up. Collecting his thoughts only moments later, Xander realigned the tractor emitter to catch the shuttle. Timing was essential, after all….
Shuttle 2432
"On my mark, full power to the sublights for one half-second, then shut it down cold! Ready, Ethan?"
As Warren turned the shuttle around to face the hangar opening, Ethan manipulated the engines to give them just what Warren Mears wanted, and his mind and body were now focused for the hard task ahead. The tractor beam from the Watcher had them now; it was just a matter of timing in order to get the job done right, and this task could only be pulled off once else they would end up a smear all over the back wall of the hangar bay.
To say Warren Mears was nervous about their chances of getting this right was the understatement of the standard year. His memories as a Stormtrooper commando told him that TIE pilots did this sort of thing all the time, and every one of them was nervous as shit, every single time. But this was no small fighter craft with a lot of engine and a lot of blaster, this was a big boxy shuttlecraft. As Ethan shut down the engines, Warren would have to fold the wings up and drop the landing struts right before touchdown, which would be a tricky prospect at best. From his memories even the stormtrooper hadn't pulled off something so crazy as this. Not even a carrier landing at night in pitching seas and hurricane winds was this crazy; Warren was not only getting literally yanked into a hangar bay in the fucking Death Star, he was helping to do it by stomping on the gas pedal. If even one person fucked up on this, there would be no Four Wire for him to catch…
"Three…..two….one….MARK!"
Inertial damping be damned; they were slammed into their seats from the push of the sublights and the immense pull of the tractor beam, provided generously by seven Phylon tractor beam generators in the local sector.
Overbridge Hangar Bay Control Room
Xander's hand shot out and covered one of the more important controls in the tractor beam system, one which reversed the poliarity of the beam and turned it into a repulsor. It was very handy in helping heavy ships get off the surface and away from the station when it was still known as the Death Star. It would be most helpful now in arresting the forward momentum of Shuttle 2432 at the instant Warren and the others passed through the atmosphere containment field. Xander's other hand, he suddenly realized, could not quite reach the activation toggle button.
"Cordy? See that button I'm pointing at? When I say, and not an instant later, I want you to press it. I gotta eyeball this…"
"Hey, maybe you can read loser-ese, but I can't," replied the socialite.
"It's a black toggle button just in reach of your arm, the one that's lit up red inside. The instant I say, I want you to press that switch and turn off that red light."
Queen C found the button Herr Doofus described, and her hand poised over it, a panther's paw ready to pounce on its prey. She looked at Xander, then out past the hangar bay, out into space as the Earth slowly became visible beyond. She saw the shuttle streaking toward them, and even as far away as it was, she could tell it was coming in faster than anything she'd ever seen.
For his part, Xander decided to time the beam reversal with the instant the shuttle's wings started to fold upwards. Then it would be a moderate three-count from there to shutdown so as not to throw the shuttle back out into space. If it went right, the shuttle would hover nice and easy over the landing pad with zero momentum.
He watched the shuttle as it approached, and suddenly the wings began to move upward like a hawk-bat preparing to roost. He slapped the polarity reversal and watched the feedback display to ensure there wasn't anything wrong. Xander then counted silently to himself, "One….two….three," and then to Cordelia he shouted "DO IT!"
As she flicked the button and extinguished its inner light, the invisible tractor beam released its hold on the shuttle, which by now had folded its wings up fully and extended its landing struts, and was now settling on repulsorlift thrust to make contact with the floor of the hangar bay…
At the same time, Xander rushed over to another set of controls and pressed a short series of buttons, the end result of which was for them to see a set of heavy doors slam shut, concealing the hangar bay from view and, more likely, from attack. The timing could not have been more perfect, as a pair of hard thumps were suddenly and immediately felt throughout the hangar.
Xander looked at Cordelia then, and he suddenly let out the breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"We got 'em, Cordy. We did it…" he said, in between gasps of relief.