Disclaimer - As before, I own neither Star Wars, Stargate, or Buffy. Bollocks...
Vigilant Watcher, 01 November 1997
Hammond could not believe what he was seeing all around him. It felt surreal to him, like being on the set of a film, if he could ignore the fact that looking behind the shuttle showed him the empty vastness of space, with the Earth glowing brightly in the distance, behind the Moon, which looked so much larger for being so much closer to the Death Star.
It was only the virtue of several decades of Air Force discipline that allowed him to conceal his utter disbelief at the six words that went through his head.
I am aboard the Death Star.
The landing had gone so smoothly, he had never felt a thing. The entire procedure was done automatically from the control booth above the bay, where one of the bridge crew had actually played a part in operating the tractor beam system that locked onto the shuttle and guided it into the hangar bay, then landed the craft, if it could be believed, even more gently than the Lambdahad done in the forest clearing near Cheyenne Mountain. Then they had to wait a moment while air held in hidden reservoirs was pumped into the vast chamber, but then the landing officer had confirmed that they could exit the shuttle and step onto the floor.
The ramp had then lowered, giving all aboard the shuttle the same feeling of a vast predatory animal opening its jaws to disgorge its prey, but the feeling subsided when they were met by another young woman, a brunette this time of slightly greater stature but in general the same age virtually as their pilot. She wore the same uniform, but she carried herself with a different sort of grace. There were some slight differences between the two young Imperial officers aside from what could be seen at first glance; a trained eye could notice the differences in their posture, the confidence of the brunette that said she was used to being seen and admired, and the quiet menace exuding from the shorter blonde, the predator's grace that said she was more accustomed to some unnamed battlefield than to the runways of Paris, New York and Milan's fashion shows. The brunette had killer looks; the blonde was a killing machine, period. Hammond had taken this all in with naught but a sideways glance between the one-woman welcoming committee and the pilot, and none were the wiser for it.
When the brunette officer spoke, it was the voice of self-assuredness laced with honey. "Welcome on board the Vigilant Watcher. I am Commander Cordelia Chase, the station's Chief of Security, and I'll be your liaison officer while you're onboard. And while I'd love to show you around the place, the station itself is quite large, and also the station commander has expressed his desire to see you all as soon as your craft touched down, so if you'll follow me, please, we can get to where we're going with less of a fuss."
"Thank you, Commander Chase," replied Hammond, "It's a unique pleasure to be aboard your space station." To himself, he mused, Now where have I heard that name before? Might be nothing, but still, better to find out than not "Much as I would enjoy the grand tour, though, I do have a job to do, debriefing SG-1 and your own people who took part in the operation to retrieve them. Naturally that means the debriefing must be conducted here on the station."
Doctor Frasier, after a brief introduction, added, "I will also be evaluating the post-operational fitness of each team member—"
"No problem, Doctor Frasier, I'm sure the Moff would gratefully allow the use of the station's medical facilities," interjected Chase. This provoked a widening of the eyes in the diminutive Air Force Captain; surprise and gratitude were not her more frequently-experienced emotions.
"That's…that's very generous, Commander. Thank you," was all Frasier could manage.
"It's our pleasure. Now if you'll all follow me to the security station, I can get you all processed in, and then we'll proceed to the Overbridge where Moff Harris will be waiting for us as we speak. Please..." Commander Chase indicated a set of double doors with a suggestive wave of her hand. As they began to walk in the proffered direction, Senator Kinsey audibly cleared his throat.
"How long will the security check take, precisely, Commander? The Moff and I particularly have much to discuss concerning the initial appearance of the station over American airspace…"
"Then you should direct those questions to Moff Harris and not to me, Senator…Kinsey, is that right?"
"It is, Commander." Chase nodded her head at his affirmation and said no more to him.
Right off the bat, she did not like the man. Greasy, slimy politicians…her daddy had, as a perk of being a distant relative of the famous Chases that ran the banking system in America's glory days along with J. P. Morgan and the Rockefellers, he had been deeply involved in financing defense contractors for the last five Presidential administrations, and had made rather a large number of political acquaintances through that time, not the least of which were certain Senators and Congressmen that sat on the House and Senate Appropriations and Select Armed Services Committees, among others. It was her father who had taught her to view those around her as tools to be used, to evaluate them for their potential to aid her advancement in society, especially the more affluent and powerful ones. Yet for all her brusqueness, she was nowhere near the cold, calculating, Machiavellian bastard her father was; she might not tolerate foolishness or tact, but she was as honest in thought and deed as she was with her words. She had caught the look in Kinsey's eye, and it sent a faint shiver up her spine, as though she had been placed under a microscope for close scrutiny. She would, Cordelia swore to herself, follow up on that sense later, but at the present, she had a job to do for the self-proclaimed King of Cretins.
Like Hammond, Robert Kinsey was vaguely familiar with the name of Gregory Chase, but unlike Hammond, he was also vaguely aware that Gregory had a little daughter, though he had since forgotten the little darling's first name. The Chief of Station Security had the same long brown hair, though, and the same face as that tiny little bundle carried around by Gregory's wife Virginia. Why she resembled nothing of the man, he never could quite figure out, but it wasn't the rarest thing in the world for a child to look next to nothing like one parent or the other, so the notion took up a little space in a back corner of his mind, where he could deal with it at his leisure. The priority was the station itself, and what he could come up with to facilitate its confiscation by US authorities.
With the Death Star, the enemies of democracy, and indeed all that stood in its path, could be annihilated on a whim. There still had to be due and just cause to do so, though, as a pre-emptive strike with the Death Star's powerful superlaser, even powered down, would cause a greater outrage across the globe than Hitler's "Final Solution" ever did. The political and tactical situation had to be such that nothing else could be justified as an appropriate response, and it was Kinsey's job to create just such a situation. By one of his colleagues in the Senate Intelligence Committee, he had access to the Senate Daily Intelligence Brief, and from several of those reports, he had made a conclusion that a little-known terrorist organization, which called itself "Al-Qaeda" meaning "the base" in Arabic, was gearing up for a major operation. The identity of their targets carried little weight with him, because the important moment to gather the appropriate intelligence on this group would come afterwards, when search and recovery teams would sift through the detritus and uncover clues as to the attackers' origin and subsequent destination.
It would all be tracked to a country or group of countries that was sponsoring terrorism, and then suddenly an unexplained firestorm would scour the land clean of that country and its terrible misdeeds. He could pass that off as a modern-day miracle, but more credibly it would be called God's holy retribution, galvanizing the evangelical communities across America, the majority of which supported Kinsey and those like him. The more radical amongst those wished to do away with the US Constitution entirely and replace it with the King James Bible as the new theocracy's charter. To them, rule by law required first rule by God, and there could be no deviation from that standpoint.
Kinsey would ride the wave of Christian radicalism to the Oval Office, where he would institute his own reforms and cement his position, using the laws of the country to make it more difficult to dislodge him.
He had little time left for ruminations, however, as the group neared the Security booth for in-processing. Instead, as he submitted to various scans done by the very sophisticated robots there, he limited his focus to two facts that he had thus far realized. The first was that by the sound of their voices, mainly Commander Cordelia Chase's, whose first name Kinsey had realized was somehow familiar, they were Americans. Second, it took no great intellect to surmise that a vessel or outpost of this titanic size and dimension would need a proportionally vast crew complement, somewhere in the figure of close to one hundred thousand, give or take, yet this Death Star was strangely vacant, save for the few crew he had seen so far. What stood out about them, though, was not merely their accents, but also their appearance. Someone so youthful should not be permitted to set foot on a military installation such as this, yet these children seemed to be in charge of the station's day-to-day operation. He had even heard a rumor upon arriving at Cheyenne Mountain that they were involved in the rescue of SG-1, as unlikely as that seemed, and he would soon either put paid to that rumor, or Hammond's debriefing would verify it.
The whole process took only a few short minutes, during which he had to say his name and his position within the US government, the n submit to voiceprint, retinal and palmprint scans, after which a DNA sample was taken and entered into the registry with everything else. When the last to go through was fully processed in, then Commander Chase looked everything over and, satisfied that things were in order, led everyone to the Overbridge.
Overbridge
While Cordelia was busy with her new security chief duties, which she had learned rather quickly and taken to like a duck to the water, Xander was busy discussing a thing with Giles and with the SG-1 CO that had occurred to him during the delegation's shuttle ride up from Earth. This Senator Kinsey, from what Colonel O'Neill had told them, was as slimy as any politician with ambitions and designs on the Presidency could get, and Xander surmised that he would try to get them to turn over the Vigilant Watcher to US central authority by any and all means within his power.
"So…what you're saying is, he's another Tarkin, isn't he?" Xander had replied after hearing O'Neill's lengthy and detailed description of the man. At Giles' nod, he nodded his head thoughtfully and decided, "We have to declare this station sovereign territory."
"Xander, I don't know how that will go over with the other nations of the Earth; this station was designed by its creators to be a weapon of mass destruction. One does not normally turn that into a sovereign nation-state, especially without some sort of sufficient crew."
"Yeah," the teenage Moff agreed, "I've been thinking about that also. Why don't we see how many people in Sunnydale want to move up here? If we can manage it, then we might possibly starve the Hellmouth of victims inside of a year. And with the pull and the resources of the Watchers' Council, we might just manage to do it in even less time." Xander thought further, then added, "So here's an idea I want to throw at you, Rupert: while it's still the weekend, let's take a shuttle down to London and see what the tweed club can do for us. First thing is we find whatever's on the station that we can use to trade for goods and services. A nation's nothing without an economy, right? We negotiate some sort of agreement with the nations of Earth for military, economic and humanitarian aid. This station's no longer a weapon of mass destruction as long as I'm around, but it still serves another purpose. While those Goa'uld are out there, the Vigilant Watcher can act as a force projection platform. We have thousands of fighters and landing craft; as long as we can get the pilots and troops to use them we can field a small army onto any planetary surface and defeat the enemy with overwhelming force and numbers. Earth already knows about the Watcher's existence, so we break the news to them that we stand ready to receive those troops that volunteer for service across the galaxy, and they can help out with any sort of mission, including humanitarian and disaster relief. Those worlds faced with natural disasters can get a ferry ride up to the station to wait out the crisis with food and shelter aplenty. We can actively trade with those people at the same time, so we eventually develop a working galactic-scale economy. More trade partners means more allies against the Goa'uld and other enemies out there, so we can win this thing much sooner than the SGC probably imagined they could with just a few people."
Just then a chime sounded at the door, followed by Cordelia's voice. "Stargate Command and US Senate delegation to meet with the Grand Moff."
"Well, at least we now know what SGC stands for," Giles smiled, with an aside to the SGC Colonel.
"Let them in," replied Xander. The door opened, and Cordelia stepped in and sideways to permit the guests to enter the Overbridge. The first to enter was obviously the SGC Commander, General Hammond. He was a slightly portly, balding older gentleman with two stars on each of his shoulder boards, signifying the rank of an Air Force Major General. The stern, paternal countenance and the crispness of his uniform belied the physical condition of the man, and as he strode over to SG-1, which members formed into a small line and mirrored his greeting, that countenance evinced a merry, relieved twinkle at seeing his flagship team members alive and unharmed. Their full physical assessment Hammond left to the pixie-sized redheaded doctor who had walked onto the Overbridge with him. The others entered as a single group, four other soldiers and a white-haired man in what appeared to be an expensive suit and tie with a pin in the shape of the US flag positioned on the right lapel of his jacket; this, presumably, was the aforementioned Senator Kinsey.
Addressing all, Xander greeted them, "I thank you for accepting my invitation aboard this space station, and I expect and hope that we can pass the time here amicably," looking pointedly at the 'good' Senator. Kinsey returned the Grand Moff's gaze with one of his own, which said in no uncertain terms that he was not fooled by the expression one bit. Nonplussed, Xander gestured for the party to follow him. "If you'll come with me, next door there's a conference room usually used for the station's command staff, but it'll do for our purposes. The double doors parted with a hydraulic hiss at his approach, and he turned to the right at another set of double doors, which opened to reveal a circular table with a glossy black hemisphere in the center. At each seat there was a panel and a screen that was normally used by department heads to compartmentalize and arrange their information in a more presentable fashion, as well as being used for communications with their various departments. The SGC delegation regarded these panels with some degree of confusion, but Xander allayed their suspicions with a wave of his hand at their skeptical glances.
"Let's not bother ourselves with the panels at each seat, since we won't need them. If you will all please sit down, we can begin," he stated. As each member of the delegation lowered themselves into their seats, which they found, to a man or woman, surprisingly comfortable despite their Spartan appearance, they turned their gazes then to the young man who had veritably given them back SG-1 on a silver platter. For his part, Xander was glad he had Dawn take the civilians, including Joyce Summers, on a brief tour of the station, whatever brief meant in this case; it would give them all time to hash out whatever needed to be hashed out in what was turning out to be the first summit meeting between his crew and the US government. Nobody in the Sunnydale group had anything useful to contribute to the discussion as it stood, aside from the Changed (as Xander privately put it) that now served as the station's crew.
"Once again, thank you for having us aboard, Moff Harris," said Hammond as everyone began to take their seats.
"Please, I never liked that particular title; I prefer Xander or, if you must insist, Grand Admiral Harris. I hear "Mr. Harris" and I look around for my old man…" the newly self-appointed Grand Admiral with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Grand Admiral?" asked Kinsey with undisguised skepticism. There had never been such a title of rank in the entire history of the United States Navy or Coast Guard, the closest to such a title being Admiral of the Navy. "Of what fleet?"
"I'm glad you asked, Senator," responded Xander with the faintest of smiles; "That was one of the things I wanted to discuss. First things first, though. I trust our cooperation in this rescue operation was to everyone's satisfaction?" He looked at the assembled faces sitting across from him; none that dared to glance back showed the slightest inclination towards resentment or ill favor of any sort.
As if reading the young Moff's mind, Colonel O'Neill spoke out, his eyebrows slightly raised. "I believe I speak for all of us when I say that as one of the rescuees I am maybe ninety-nine point nine nine nine…ah, what the hell; it's close enough to one hundred nobody's gonna care much. Ok? My XO's the one who's big on significant figures, anyway. I just tend to say where to shoot and where to move."
"Don't downplay your own talents, Colonel," said Hammond, "you've done a hell of a job so far." Turning to Harris, he added, "The Colonel's sarcasm aside, I am one hundred percent in agreement with his assessment of our feelings towards your efforts on our behalf. Plus now we have two inert Goa'uld ships plus a Goa'uld prisoner to go over and analyze for further intelligence collection and general study. I'm convinced this will give us more knowledge about their military mindset than anything else we've come across in the past twelve months.". Turning to O'Neill he added, "We're still going to try and do everything we can to get Klorel safely out of Skaara..." The glare that O'Neill gave him was immediately softened by those words.
Harris nodded at the General's appreciation. Until today he had been convinced that most high-ranking officers in the military service were swaggering warmongers who gladly took Uncle Sam's dime and were thoroughly convinced that the US would be better served by living under a military dictatorship. He hadn't given it much thought as to how much of his own sentiment was due to Tarkin's influence in his own mind or whether he was simply disillusioned with the current state of the government and the economy, but he hadn't entirely disagreed with the stereotype. Hammond cut a different figure than the rest, though. Though he was a highly competent officer, his personality suggested that he viewed the people under his command as something close to family, like children, perhaps. That degree of professionalism combined with the sheer determination to defend the Earth convinced Xander that perhaps it was time to up the ante, as it were.
"I also have on board several hundred captured Jaffa and their…'Death Gliders', I believe the term is?" Xander added.
"Teal'C and I should speak to the captured Jaffa and let them know they can count themselves among friends, if they choose to throw off the shackles of the false gods," an elderly man with an odd, gleaming skullcap decided to interject. "We can show them the way to freedom, if they will follow."
"Excuse me, sir," said Giles suddenly, unaware like the others until this point of this new wrinkle in the developing situation, "but are you implying that these people are slaves?"
The old man with the skullcap nodded. "As were the Tau'ri thousands of years ago, in the service of Ra and the other System Lords. Thankfully your people learned long ago how to fan the spark of resentment into the flames of rebellion. Freedom is a right to be enjoyed by all, regardless of the circumstances of one's birth, though it comes at a cost. The slave must ever strive to free himself, Admiral Harris, and the cost is usually blood."
"I'm sorry, but…who were the Tau'ri?" Xander asked, curious of the unknown appellation.
"We are, Admiral," said Jack O'Neill. "Teal'c would enjoy telling you where the word comes from. Wouldn't you, buddy?"
The big black man with the gold tattoo on his forehead nodded slightly at the recognition. "The Tau'ri are the people of what we call the First World, what the humans call Earth. If not for the uniforms of the Galactic Empire that you wear, I would have recognized you also as Tau'ri, as humans of this world."
Jack suddenly looked askance at the former First Prime of Apophis. Normally stoic and inscrutable, his visage had registered an uncommon glee upon recognizing his surroundings as the infamous Death Star of Star Wars legend. O'Neill noticed that Teal'c's perceptions had been altered by the once-in-a-lifetime experience of walking the corridors of the battle station. In truth, all had found themselves slightly awed by the unique and totally surreal twist that reality had taken, yet most had tempered their feelings of insignificance with the determination to accomplish their mission. However much, though, that the Jaffa possessed the same determination, he was tonight unusually expressive of his jovial mood.
In contrast, however, the crew of the Vigilant Watcherfound themselves feeling unnaturally exposed. They were unusually young aside from the middle-aged gentleman with them, and surrounded by a dozen military service-members plus one incumbent US Senator, they were doubtless feeling very self-conscious of it. In the specific case of the older gentleman, that self-consciousness was manifesting itself in his mind as a mental struggle between telling a rather difficult lie and going with total disclosure. Whichever way he finally chose, though, he recognized that the military people needed to know something soon, here at this table. Unfortunately, Kinsey's next words reduced that window for action by a significant margin.
"Excuse me, people. 'Humans of this world'? Are you suggesting that these aliens we're speaking to are in fact not aliens at all, but our own people? If this proves to be true, or if these people claim to be from Earth, as you suggest, then I believe the Senate of the United States has some jurisdictional claim to this space station. Since it did appear in space over the continental United States, gentlemen and ladies, it would give the Senate some claim over the Death Star Vigilant Watcher and everything aboard it, and as a member of the United States Senate, I hereby order you people to surrender this station and your claim to it to us, as the prevailing governmental authority on site."
"I beg your pardon, Senator," challenged Giles, suddenly standing and looking for all the world like a father who had just been told to offer up his children as a sacrifice to a pagan deity, "but these Earthlings took over this station almost as soon as it appeared and waged a battle in space, with, I might add, no prior training nor preparation for their individual roles in the conflict, against a foe that your premier exploration team had encountered numerous times and can vouch for the reputation of the foe we now face. During the struggle, one of their objectives, which they accomplished rather splendidly, in my view, was the location and rescue of your SG-1 team, who would not at this moment be standing here otherwise, as well as capturing and incarcerating a key individual among the enemy leadership for future intelligence assessment and collection, and disabling both capital ships that arrived in this solar system to invade and conquer Earth en masse, and well over two hundred of their smaller attack craft, with their pilots. Do not presume to imply that you can force your authority upon this station or its crew, who I will stand with even at the cost of my life. They may be Americans, and I might not be, but that does not give you carte blanche to bully us into handing over the Watcher."
"We never said we were aliens, Senator," Xander, after listening to Kinsey's blustering and Giles's subsequent retort, decided to add his own statement to the mix. "This station will stand in defense of humanity as a whole species, and we will not pledge ourselves to the allegiance of any one particular nation. To that end, we are prepared to discuss terms with your delegation, which I hope we can accept on a mutual basis. This will involve an exchange of information and technology in good faith on both our parts, yours as well as ours. We can help you bolster your military capability against the Goa'uld and other races that may pose a potential threat to the safety of Earth and humanity in general, and in return, you can help us bolster our crew complement with multinational candidates who would of course, volunteer for service aboard this station – I will not accept conscripts or draftees, nor any other sort that is less than fully inclined to be here and to serve faithfully in their assigned duties. There will be, of course, a screening program to select the most qualified personnel, military and civilian, to serve aboard my battle station. I expect any governments who volunteer to send people to serve and live here to do their own screening of potential candidates, and I also expect them to bear in mind," looking pointedly at the Senator as he said this, "that those screening programs must comply with my standards. This is not an American battle station, nor British, nor Japanese or Chinese; this is an Earth battle station and will be identified and respected as such. If necessary, I will petition before the United Nations that the Vigilant Watcher be recognized as a separate, sovereign entity, equal to and independent of any one nation's or organization's control."
As Xander spoke, everyone closely regarded Senator Kinsey's countenance, concluding that Kinsey clearly did not wish to countenance what he considered to be a great betrayal of his and his country's confidence in these wayward citizens. To him, this battle station was more than a threat to his country; it was an abomination. Although it could not be destroyed by conventional means, and Kinsey imagined that not even a nuclear strike would be sufficient to sufficiently damage the battle station and cripple it, Kinsey swore that no American would set foot on it nor subject themselves to the rule of a military administrator like Moff Harris.
General Hammond, however, saw the wisdom in Xander's suggestion. He had a few questions to ask about the subjects he commented more lightly upon. "Mr. Harris, you mentioned something about an exchange of technology and information. What sorts of information and technology are you offering?"
Xander nodded his head at this. "Medical technology and equipment, first and foremost, or at least the means to produce it, shall be given freely and openly to any nation that asks for it. I offer the design schematics for the production of surgical and rehabilitation equipment, as well as the means to synthesize a bacta derivative. Bacta, at least the genuine stuff, cannot itself be synthesized; it must be harvested and collected, but with the proper analysis, that vital chemical which makes bacta what it is can be synthesized and then produced in mass quantities for use in treating all those that suffer such injuries as burns and the like."
"That's great in theory," said Dr. Frasier, speaking at last, "but we will need to validate the means to synthesize and produce the vital components of the bacta formula that you plan to gift to us. When ordinary people first start getting wind of this, don't you think they're going to want to know how it was produced and whether or not it's safe to use?"
"I'm not about to give something to ordinary people that wouldn't be safe for them to use," Xander readily replied, "and I promise as much transparency as I can afford to permit given the circumstances at present. This doesn't mean, however, that those circumstances could never change; they always do, and I will of course keep myself and my crew abreast of current events whenever possible. The end goal here is free and open trade with the nations of Earth to the limits of our ability, and to that end I am willing to go before the United Nations and petition the representatives of the leading nations for volunteers to fill in vital crew positions aboard this station. This will of course, naturally include civilian as well as military roles. This station is vast and complex, and it requires a substantial crew to function, and I can't keep running the Watcher forever on nothing more than a skeleton crew. Since you're here, I suppose I could start by asking you to take my request for volunteers to come serve aboard the station to your President."
"Just a minute," Kinsey started, "I don't think the President can just unilaterally approve assignment orders for US military personnel to transfer to a foreign asset…."
"Senator, with all due respect," interrupted Xander Harris with an icy glare directed at the senior lawmaker, "you are not the commander in chief of US armed forces; that duty belongs exclusively to the President as per the Constitution of the United States, so the decision is his to make. General Hammond can convey my request to the President better than you can, sir, so that is what I shall expect, and I shall expect the President's decision to go through General Hammond as well. The Congress need not be involved unless to approve funds for such operations to commence, which brings me to another subject."
"That being, since I see no way to afford the required financial compensation for the troops stationed here?" retorted Kinsey with a pleased look about him. The trap had been sprung, and the game was caught; there was nothing left to do but to put the prey out of its misery and begin to flay it..
"Our molecular furnace can produce a wide variety of items by recombination at the subatomic level. Anything we want, we program into the system, and then just wait for it to finish what it does. It can synthesize most anything from replacement parts for components here on the station to durable currency, which will be tradeable for US dollars or whatever nation's currency can be brought up here; I intend to run this station's economy on a gold standard, people, so whatever dollars I receive from your people when they get here, upon the President's approval, will be backed by the gold and silver we shall produce in our molecular furnace."
Not bothering to pay attention to the looks of astonishment on everyone's faces at his sudden declaration, he went on. "Doubtless you understand the primary purpose for which this battle station was built; do not doubt for a second my understanding of your reasonable anxiety. There will be no belligerent use of this battle station beyond the protection of this solar system. And there are, of course, peaceful uses for this station's primary weapon. Our scanners can confirm the lifelessness of certain space bodies in this system. In fact I seem to recall a whole belt of those between Mars and Jupiter orbits, so I don't think a few smashed asteroids for their raw materials would be sorely missed."
It was then he paused to allow everyone to express their thoughts. For the space of about a minute there were no words, just astonished glances to Moff Harris now and again, then the hushed whispers began.
At length General Hammond concluded their little strategy session, and as a group all turned to Xander. "The sudden appearance of the Watcher over this planet has proven nothing but a great boon to the human race as a whole, Admiral Harris," the CG of Stargate Command began. "You've already helped us out greatly in our moment of need by winning the previous engagement with the Goa'uld. Now with this offer of your station as a protection asset as well as a trade outpost and exploration platform, you've enabled humanity to take a great leap forward. I'm pleased to call you a friend, and I hope we can look forward to more visits aboard your station."
The young Moff inclined his head in acknowledgment and gratitude. "I am honored, General. When we're finished here, I would invite your Chief Medical Officer to visit our medical facilities and peruse them at her leisure. If she wishes to use them, I will be glad to explain their function and assist her in using them to evaluate your team's fitness before your return trip to the SGC."
Hearing all this, Doctor Frasier blushed like a schoolgirl on prom night. "Why th-thank you, Admiral! I'm speechless…"
"Nonsense, my dear Doctor Frasier," replied Xander, "I wouldn't hear it. The best technology available to modern medicine should be a basic right of all medical practitioners, the ability to provide the best health care second to none…"
As good as his word, Admiral Harris had given them the grand tour of the station, so to speak anyway. The tour was really nothing more than a quick briefing and orientation to the various sections of the Vigilant Watcher and their equally varied facilities, as the entire station would have taken at least a year for one to familiarize oneself with the unimaginably vast structure.
One such facility was the medical wing in Medical Station 381-N3, Sector N-Three, which meant Medcenter number 381, in City Sprawl number three, zone Three-North. It was there that the young station commandant offered the use of the equipment for Doctor Frasier's evaluation of SG-1 and SG-2, as well as the Command staff and Senator Kinsey. It was difficult for Frasier to read at first, having had no experience with reading Aurebesh, but with the help of Teal'C, who amazingly understood it like a second language, the process of determining the function of each tool and instrument became intuitive, and before she had finished scanning and treating Captain Carter she had found herself asking if Harris could loan some of the medical equipment to the medical wing in the Cheyenne Mountain complex, as well as to the hospital wing at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
That he had so easily and readily agreed to both was a shock to the Air Force Captain, and she began to wonder if in fact she was not beginning to fall for him. She was somewhat distracted by this data, unable to process it as yet, as she began to evaluate the civilians aboard. One of them, a Joyce Summers, brought her back to reality, fully focused on what had appeared to be a small shadow on her cerebral cortex. It was surprising, really; more commonplace medical equipment would not have detected it until well into an advanced stage, almost until it would have fully metastasized and become malignant. But Janet Frasier knew a tumor when she saw one.
She swore that as soon as the SGC acquired the new Imperial medical equipment and tech, that she would see Joyce Summers transferred to the Colorado Springs facility and treated there without delay.
The most essential component of any user interface is the means to comprehend the language used in the same. Knowing this, Xander Harris, commander of the Death Star-class battle station Vigilant Watcherunderstood there were some vital changes to be made to the processing software. The primary interface language was Galactic Basic, which was still English, and the processing fonts included a wide range of galactic languages such as Huttese, Ubese, Toydarian, Naboo, and the like, but unless one understood and read the Aurebesh alphabet, one would not know if they were heading to the superlaser maintenance sections or the local toilet, any debate on which was the more immediately important task notwithstanding.
Xander knew he had to take inventory of his battle station's resources. He had to find that molecular furnace and learn how to operate it. An idea had already formed in his mind as to how to regulate trade with others who would do commerce on his station, and that was to coin money, about which Xander was feeling rather anxious. He didn't want to get into trouble with his own country's government for counterfeiting, though really it wasn't counterfeiting per se; only a minute's thought reassured him as to the validity of his enterprise, and the potential political clout it would generate with the nations of the world. He was reluctant to do so, but he knew this was a case in which Tarkin's advice would help him tremendously. As a politician and an aristocrat, Wilhuff Tarkin was an accomplished economist. With his help, Xander Harris would go much farther than the mere boy that he had been with only five dollars to his name and a decent ability to make a bargain. Five Gold Imperials…
That was it. Xander had at last the currency he needed to trade independently with the other countries. He would have to assume the title of Governor and then declare the sovereignty of the Vigilant Watcher to the rest of the world. All he needed then was to begin production of the currency with which he would trade, and the wheels would begin to spin.
While he regarded all these thoughts, he allowed the main party to advance forward somewhat, until he was nearly shoulder to shoulder with Willow, and then with a nudge to that same shoulder and a slight toss of his head, he indicated that they should hang back a bit for some privacy.
"I have an issue I need your help with, Willow, and it's an important one," he began as soon as the rest were satisfyingly out of earshot.
"What's that?" she asked sotto voce. By his expression, it was something he couldn't handle without her assistance, her expertise or both. She nodded her head slightly, smiling at her childhood friend as her eyes widened, suggesting that he should come out with it.
"I need to teach you how to read Aurebesh," he concluded. "The operating system for the station's computer core uses Aurebesh as the default font for reading and understanding Galactic Basic. That's English, by the way, so learning another language won't be necessary, but it doesn't have any of the fonts required for reading the English language as we know it. Think you can spare some time after class when we finally get back to Earth?"
Willow noticed mentally that he didn't say "Sunnydale". It worried her, that did, but she chose at that time not to express that particular concern. "Yeah, Xander, I think I can swing that. Can I get Dawn to help out too?"
"Anyone you need, Wills. I'll set you up with a comlink, and you just hit me up on mine sometime tomorrow. We really do need to get back into town sometime before morning so as not to raise suspicions." As an aside, he reflected, "I'm not going back to my 'parents'' place, though, and eventually I plan to put down roots here on the station. You know, find some personal quarters and all that?"
Her eyes widened with glee at this latest confession from her Xander-shaped friend. Move out of his abusive parents' house and make a new home here on the Watcher? It was the best news she had heard lately, and she hoped privately that she could find some way to convince her own excuses for parents to emancipate her. Then she, too, would get a place up here on the station. Perhaps then he'd finally notice her for the woman she was and get her to move in with him, or he with her. She didn't much care; either way it went, she would be happy as long as she and Xander could finally be together.
She kept those innermost feelings to herself, though. Best to break him in slowly, she mused. "I don't blame you one bit for not wanting to stay there, Xan," she said aloud, still in sotto voce. "I had parents like that too, I'd want to move out as soon as I could. I can sympathize, really. Tony and Jessica are like, the worst. You know?"
"All too well, Wills," Xander ruminated. 'Makes you wanna move out of the country at times, just to get away from them…"
Willow allowed her eyebrow to rise ever so slightly at that comment, only less than what would have been noticed. Thankfully Xander's face was turned away from her, else Tarkin's skill at noticing body language, as necessary as it was for the sector governor for effective divining of a person's emotional state, would have allowed him to pick up on it. Her only response apart from that was, "Not my problem…"
Xander halted in his tracks as he queried in surprise, "How do you mean, Wills?" Another gift of Tarkin to Xander's psyche allowed him to minimize any emotional pain he might have incurred from such comments, and to simply follow up on them with a natural curiosity.
To his relief, Willow did explain. "I meant that my problem with my parents is not quite the same as yours, Xander. While you suffer from physical and verbal abuse on the part of your parents, mine arises from neglect. I'm a psychological experiment to my parents, not their child as they should have considered me. I would leave too, Xander, to show them just how their experiment has failed."
This sudden insight in Willow must be another of Rayne's "gifts"…, Xander mused. As the thought occurred to him, however, another suddenly willed itself into consciousness. As Tarkin, he would have found such sentiments as Willow's and his own to be entirely agreeable. The Eriadu-born aristocrat had been thoroughly versed in manipulating the feelings and sentiments of fellow sentients, particularly the human variety. Despite his speciesism, however, he knew that to rule effectively meant he must understand the psychology of all the subjects under his domain, and so he had studied xenopsychology as intently as he did the psychology of humankind. Yet he still followed his own law, the law of the Empire and the Emperor whom he served.
As Xander Harris, however, he knew the constraints, both ethical and legal, to which he was bound. Despite all that had changed within him, he was still underage according to California state law, which mandated the age of responsibility, and therefore of adulthood, as eighteen years of age. Therefore he was bound by law until the age of eighteen to remain with his parents, in their house, as was Willow with hers, in their house, unless they could demonstrate to the appropriate authorities the extent of the abuses they had heretofore suffered. But now he heard the voice of Tarkin within him, suggesting that he seek out those same authorities and make the appropriate claims in that regard, giving him strength for the fight that must surely come.
Perhaps, though, he could find the strength to leave his old home behind. He would have to find another place to remain for the interim, though; he could not very well just inform anyone that he had relocated to the Death Star. That way led to much controversy and not a small measure of ridicule, rendering his forthcoming argument meaningless. More questions than answers would be found, not the least among which would be how come a young boy, barely seventeen years of age, had come by the means to travel to that dreaded space station, let alone taken up residence there. No, it had to be somewhere else on terra firma, and a local one at that, so as to raise the least suspicion possible aside from what was to surely arise as a result of his claim of abuse. There would be enough suspicion to abound just from that.
He would have to raise those concerns with Willow soon, but first he had a job to do…
Somewhere else on the Vigilant Watcher
He had indeed found the molecular furnace, and set about to producing a small number of tradeable goods which he could use to acquire funds. Creating the gold, silver, and copper for his Imperial currency would come later, but at the moment he was in need of something more familiar. He also needed a way to reason away their sudden appearance; no way in hell was he about to let his abomination of a father see them, when the very idea for his having them was to get together the money to get out of there.
Xander considered himself very fortunate, lucky even, that there was one in every city sprawl on board the station, else he would have a much longer and harder time trying to go all over the station trying to find it. So when he decided that he had had enough items made for himself, he resolved to having them placed aboard a shuttle of his own selection, which would home in on a preselected set of coordinates in a place where he could hide the shuttle. Eventually he would be discovered, but until then he had to have everything in place and ready for when he'd have to come clean with his situation. At least with the Scoobies he didn't have to hide; they were not only his crew aboard the station, but anywhere else and at all times they were his best friends and allies the world over. He could probably get Giles to find him someplace to hide his shuttle and the items he planned to sell for his getaway money, at least until he could have Tony sign the papers to emancipate him.
Were it not for Tarkin coming into Xander's life he might have found himself going to Giles and asking him to adopt him as soon as he could have declared Tony and Jessica unfit to raise him, given their very boorish and embarrassing tendencies toward drunkenness and abuse. But Tarkin, ever the calculating pragmatist and aristocrat, would have none of it. Xander smirked inwardly at the idea of the Imperial Moff complaining inside his mind, almost as though the butcher of Alderaan still lived. He could almost imagine himself having a conversation with the man, his views versus Wilhuff's, his thoughts and ideas pitted against the man's…