Chapter 3
Bad Moon Rising
John was tired, he was sore, and above all, he was feeling depressed. These facts all combined to make him a very cranky man, so he prayed Woolsey would forgive him if his impatience slipped into his tone. The confrontation with the Twins hadn't done anything to help his mood either; if anything, it had made it worse.
"So what exactly were you planning to tell us?" He asked. Woolsey reflexively straightened his tie before nodding to himself.
"Right, sorry." He said, before looking around as if checking to see if anyone was paying attention. At the moment, it seemed everyone was doing their best to avoid noticing the group, probably as an aftereffect of the tense standoff from moments ago. Finally the politician fixed his gaze on John with a somewhat grim look.
"I came to tell you that as of tomorrow, Stargate operations will be suspended for...well, the foreseeable future."
There was no response, not at first anyway. Then Lennox blurted out "WHAT!?", causing Woolsey to flinch. He recovered quickly though, clearly having expected the reaction.
"It's not intended to be permanent by any means." He said, in an attempt to mollify his audience.
"How is an indefinite suspension not permanent?!" John asked angrily. Woolsey waved his hands.
"Look, let me explain." he said hurriedly, "You know about the present galactic political situation, yes?" John nodded slowly, pushing back his anger. Woolsey wouldn't spring something like this on them unless there was a damn good reason. Of course, it was unlikely he had a large hand in it. If anything, if the purpose behind it was as selfish as John had come to expect of the Alliance Oversight Association, the reformed version of the I.O.A. born shortly after the Alliance itself, then Woolsey would have fought it tooth and nail. There was no point in blaming him...yet, anyway. He nodded, slowly, folding his arms over his chest. Woolsey sucked in a breath and continued.
"Since the collapse of the System Lords, the galaxy has been in turmoil. The Ori invasion didn't help much either. The fracturing of the Jaffa Nation into its present divided state has left us with a situation somewhere between the end of the Cold War and the early colonial era after the discovery of the Americas. One of the former largest political powers in the galaxy is in shambles, and we now have vast tracts of the Milky Way ruled by warlords hostile to us and most everyone else, not to mention pockets of Ori followers who weren't neutralized by the Ark. Also, we have the Lucian Alliance, the Hybrids and Megatron, all bearing down on us and our allies. Everyone wants to expand, but they're too afraid to do it alone because of the huge number of threats out there."
"Which is why we're forming the Galactic Defense Pact, right?" John said. He knew everything Woolsey had said already, and felt his impatience getting stronger. He really wanted a decent meal, a shower and a nap.
"Correct. The GDP is made up of chiefly the most developed and advanced societies we've encountered so far, as well as the Jaffa splinter factions friendly or at least neutral towards us. A lot of our oldest allies have already agreed to sign on; the Langarans, the Reetou, the Orbanians, etcetera."
"Get to the point." Lennox snapped, "What does this have to do with us?" Woolsey sighed, looking downcast.
"Last week, talks with the chief representatives from the largest planned members reached a sticking point. They had a unanimous demand that they wanted us to meet before becoming signatories." John was suddenly baffled.
"Wait, last week? And we're just hearing now?"
"The AOA has spent the past few weeks trying to come to an agreement on whether or not to accept the proposed demand."
"What did they ask for?" Optimus inquired, looking more curious than his human companions. John braced himself, expecting the worst, like a demand for technology. That was always a popular one. At present, Earth had the fastest, most powerful warships apart from what was left of the Ori invasion forces and their less hostile counterparts, the Republic of Origin, who last he had heard were also applying for membership.
"They want us to go public." Woolsey said.
Dead silence fell. John felt those two words, so full of terrible connotations, reverberating around in his skull.
"Go public?" He said, then realized he'd uttered the words aloud, "Seriously?"
"They were very firm about it. Of all the potential members of the GDP, only Earth and a few other planets still keep the Stargate a secret from the general population. All of those other planets have already drafted plans to go public at urging from their neighbors. The popular consensus seems to be that if a planet cannot give its all to its allies, then it is not ready to expand out into the stars."
"But that's insane!" Lennox blurted out, his eyes looking like they were going to bug out of their skull. Clearly he was as floored by the proposal as John was feeling, "It'd be mass panic! We'd end up destroying ourselves before Megatron ever gets the chance!" Woolsey raised a hand before he could go on.
"This has been pointed out, and given that Earth is in a rather unique situation when it comes to coming clean about the Stargate, the representatives who forwarded the demand have agreed at our counter-condition to provide assistance with the creation a seven year plan to 'ease Earth into greater awareness', as it were." Horrible suspicion gripped John as his brain began overclocking in an attempt to link this new reality to Woolsey's earlier words about suspending operations.
"Wait...does that mean the Alliance is going to get disbanded?" He asked, eyes narrowing. Woolsey shook his head.
"Disbanded? No. Reformed? Very likely. We'll be keeping a lot of the same personnel in. Your experience makes you invaluable. But the plan will likely call for a major reordering of how things are run."
"So we're shutting down the gate while we plan for this?" Lennox asked, still looking very uneasy. John didn't blame him. He'd always known that the secret of the Stargate couldn't stay secret forever, but in his heart, he'd thought he'd be long dead before the day came that the world found out. Now it was looking far more likely he'd either become famous, or extremely infamous, in the suddenly not-distant-enough future.
"Precisely. A lot of the details are up in the air. We won't be abandoning our pre-established investments. The off-world sites will remain active for the foreseeable future. The General Hammond is still cleared for its deep-range, long-term survey mission to the Ida galaxy. The same goes for the Aeneid and its mission to survey the more local dwarf galaxies. But at present, plans are for Earth to reduce its galactic presence until we've got things sorted out at home."
"And if Megatron attacks again?" Lennox growled, "Or the Hybrids? Or the dozen other enemies we're facing right now?" Woolsey nodded in acknowledgement of the man's concerns.
"The AOA is willing to make exceptions for such events, but they made it clear that until further notice, Earth's assistance to her extraterrestrial allies will be...limited."
"I do not believe pursuing isolationist policies is an effective negotiating tactic." Optimus interjected. Woolsey shook his head.
"It's not us, Optimus. It's actually part of the terms of the agreement. We agreed to go public if they help us plan how, and while the plan is being made, Earth takes a more limited stance on military intervention. Humanitarian aid will remain a priority, but the general feeling among the signatories who proposed this is that Earth needs to stop being the galaxy's sole policeman and shield if this is to be an equal relationship."
"So they want us to stop being their crutch?" Sheppard snorted, rolling his eyes. He knew that without his help, Kelowna's capital city would be in flames at this very moment. While the planned members of the GDP were all well-developed civilizations, roughly speaking, not all of them stood on the same tactical or technological level as most of the enemies they'd end up facing if they joined.
"Pardon me, but how is this a good thing?" Asked Teyla from her spot next to Rodney.
"The biggest potential members of the Pact say that reducing Earth's military involvement will prompt other potential members to start relying more on each other than just us. As it stands, Earth commands the most advanced warships in the known universe apart from the Republic of Origin, and has the best technology since the Asgard, bar-none. To put it simply, our planet is like the United States at the height of the Cold War, only with a sea of less martially powerful, but far larger potential opponents and allies to contend with." Our force-projection is off the charts. Everyone wants to be our friend, and calls on us before exerting themselves when it comes to external threats. This means that we hold more political power than any of the potential signatories combined, most of whom have been out there for longer."
"Ok, you lost me." Sheppard said, squinting as if trying to see Woolsey's point.
"Suffice to say, by making us go public while reducing our ability to intervene elsewhere, our friends are hoping to both knock us down a peg for better or worse and help us stay relevant. They want the galaxy to pull together and make itself stronger to dilute the massive advantage we possess, while helping us eliminate one of our biggest weaknesses, which is the veil of secrecy we have to maintain. It's a win-win situation."
"So they want us to stop playing babysitter?" Lennox asked, looking baffled, "I wasn't aware that was where we were…" Woolsey winced at the over-simplification.
"It's a bit more complex, but yes, more or less, that's what they're hoping for." He said cautiously. John shook his head, deciding he'd work out the whole thing later and refocused on what was to him the main point of the argument.
"So we're being grounded?" He remarked glumly. Woolsey gave him that apologetic look again.
"I'm afraid so." He said. Rodney snorted.
"This is nuts. We've been working for years to come up with a way to bring the public into the loop, and we still don't have anything. Hell, it was a miracle that Giza didn't start WWIII!"
"Nevertheless, the AOA intends to make the effort." Woolsey responded. John allowed himself a weak grin.
"I always wondered what it'd take for them to start thinking about going public." He remarked, "Never thought it'd be like this..." Suddenly Optimus spoke.
"Mr. Woolsey, I admit I am pleased to see Earth taking steps to push itself forward. However, I feel it is unwise for Earth to recede from the galactic stage so...suddenly."
"And what about Pegasus?" Rodney interjected, "Are we going to just leave them alone for another seven years?"
Even Sheppard winced at that. It was another deep hole of guilt he always felt perilously close to tumbling down. Nearly a year before the Alliance had been formed, Atlantis had abandoned the Pegasus Galaxy, its home for nearly ten-thousand years, in an effort to stop an advanced Wraith Hive Ship from attacking Earth. The result had been the city becoming stranded on Earth, not because it lacked the power to leave, but because a giant flying city-sized space-ship trying to take off was going to draw more attention than could be handled by even the best misinformation campaign.
Ever since, travel to Pegasus, even by ship, had been sparse. The Pegasus Alpha Site was the sole remaining outpost Earth had in that region of the Local Cluster, and they dialed home once a month for supplies and new information. Rodney had made a hobby of trying to think of ways to safely get the city off-planet without being noticed, but actual results were yet to come of his efforts. Beyond that, the galaxy that John himself had helped plunge into chaos and civil war had been ignored. Oh, the AOA always had a valid excuse, a reason to divert attention from the matter, what with the growing threats in the Milky Way, but the fact remained that Earth had all but abandoned the people of Pegasus to their fates.
Woolsey looked particularly guilty at the physicist's words, but sighed and nodded.
"Pegasus, as ever, remains a secondary concern for the AOA. They feel that only when the situation has settled here in the Milky Way will it be a priority again." Sheppard frowned. He could see Woolsey didn't agree with his peers' outlook, but then he had always been outvoted on the issue. Most of the AOA were concerned only with what was best for Earth. As far as they cared, Pegasus could burn. Earth finally had Atlantis, and hadn't that been the goal of the original Atlantis Expedition? He sighed in annoyance.
"So where does this leave us?" He asked, "Apart from sitting on our hands until Megs tries another terror attack on one of our friends?" Woolsey shrugged.
"Until the plan is sorted out, it's likely you'll be granted a certain amount of leave. Projections put it at taking about six months to draw up, but then, it's being drawn up by a committee…" he admitted, looking a little embarrassed. His pocket buzzed and he pulled out a smartphone, glancing at it.
"I'm sorry. I'll be going into more detail when I make my speech later. I trust you can have everyone there on time? I was planning on around three o'clock."
"Sure." Sheppard said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, "But couldn't you just send an email around?" Woolsey shook his head, turning with smartphone in hand towards the main door.
"I'm afraid the AOA wants me to make an issue of it. They sent me a script." Sheppard sighed in selfish annoyance. He'd really been hoping he'd have time for a nap. Now though he'd have barely enough time to scarf down a snack at the mess hall before being forced to shower and change into his hated dress uniform. This wasn't the first time he'd had a speech sprung on him by his superiors, but he yet to learn to enjoy it. This was a bit out of the blue even for them though...then again, the whole situation was wholly unexpected. The two little words were still rattling around in his head, 'going public'. He sighed, staring at Woolsey's hurriedly retreating back, watching as he flagged down one of the electric transport carts used as taxis on the base and hopped in, headed back towards the base's administrative center.
"I need some coffee." He groaned.
-O-
From his seat on the edge of the sea, the Autobot called Drift watched waves roll in, crashing slowly and steadily on the beach. He sat cross-legged, swords imbedded in the sand beside him like ancient monoliths from a bygone era, alone except for the crabs, which steered clear of him, The sound of the waves crashing on the coast was soothing, and allowed him a sensation of peace he had not often experienced since departing Cybertron. His optics scanned the horizon, skimming over the shimmering collection of spires that made up Atlantis in favor of the empty blue distance.
Drift was relatively new to Earth, having only landed about five months prior. During that short time, he had come to appreciate the similarities between his own world and this alien one. One might think there was very little of Cybertron that could be seen in this soft, bizarre planet he now called home, but it was not so. As the latest wave crested and crashed against the beach, in his mind, he could see the red shores of the Sea of Rust, an ocean not of water, but similar enough in composition for them to behave the same, and replete in iron oxide, giving it a rich, deep crimson hue, somewhere between wine and blood. For a human, the sight might've been unnerving, but for Drift, it was home. Kalis, the great city-state where he had once lived, had been set on the coast of the Sea of Rust, and even from the highest towers, he had always been able to hear it. Many times in his youth, its steady rhythm had lulled him into recharge, almost as though its sound was an eternal promise of protection.
If Drift had been human, he would've sighed. How often he had wished that promise were real. But the Sea had not defended Kalis when the armies of Megatron had rained fire on his home, like they had on Metroplex, Polyhex, Median, Thetacon and so many others. No, his home was gone, and no matter how he tried to relate to it, Earth was but an alien shadow of its beauty. Still, he would take peace where he could find it. Anything to drown out the whispers.
In the depths of his 'meditation', Drift's eyes narrowed. They were never far from his thoughts, those voices. They were made of the cries of those he had betrayed, both before and after his change of allegiance. Once, he had fought for Megatron, believed in his cause, spied for him, lied for him, even killed for him. His service to his former master stretched back even before the official start of the war, when he had been the head
[Drift?] The voice came over his internal comms, possessed of a certain elderly, impatient tone that allowed the Autobot warrior to immediately identify its owner.
[Yes, Ratchet?] he inquired, annoyed at the interruption of his meditation, but intrigued all the same, since normally Ratchet almost never spoke to him. Truth be told, almost none of the other Autobots spoke to him when given the option. It was a sign of how his time and deeds as a Decepticon, though they were now thousands of years behind him, lingered in their memories, inspiring mistrust for him in their Sparks even now.
[I need your immediate assistance. Could you please come to the medbay? We have something that needs your...expertise.] Ratchet responded. Drift nodded to himself and rose from his seat by the shore. He was impressed that Ratchet had used the word 'please', rather than simply making a gruff demand, as he was wont to. Whatever he needed help with must be quite unique to warrant such a shift in tone. He strode up the sand and transformed, abandoning his pseudo-ronin inspired humanoid protoform and taking on his ground-vehicle mode, so as not to disturb the beach patrols. Normally for the purposes of expediency, he would've taken on his flying form, which resembled a vehicle humans called a 'helicopter', but they disliked it when he took off without providing them with prior notification. It was another feature that set Drift apart from his Autobot brethren, being a 'Triple-Changer'. Most members of his race could only assume two forms: the basic humanoid protoform and whatever shape they had selected as their alternate state. There were other limitations of course. Cybertronian morphology was by no means a simple matter. But the fact remained that there were few like Drift who could take two shapes, land or air, when they so desired. The fact that Megatron was one of their number had done nothing to improve their reputation.
It took him roughly five minutes at moderate speed to reach the medbay where Ratchet normally could be found. Drift found himself mildly surprised to see that Ironhide was also present, sporting signs of recent repairs. The weapons specialist glowered at him with a special kind of dislike. In addition to his disapproval of Drift's past, he was also not a fan of the fact that Drift was probably the only Autobot on Earth who could defeat him in a sparring match without using any sort of ranged weapon whatsoever.
"Took you long enough." He grunted. Drift ignored the verbal jab and approached Ratchet as he stood over...Drift had to check his optics to make sure they were providing accurate data. When he confirmed they were, he looked up at the medic.
"How did you acquire this?" He asked. He had seen Decepticon military comm units only a few times during his tenure as an Autobot. Each time had been just prior to a major offensive on the part of either side. For one to be here now was a bad, bad omen as far as he was concerned. Ratchet nodded to the pile of junk sitting on one of the nearby medical 'beds'.
"A lucky find from our engagement with Megatron's forces on Langara earlier today. I need you to connect yourself to it and see if there's anything you can tease from it before the thing shorts out."
"What help do you expect of me? I sincerely doubt that even with Soundwave out of the picture, Megatron would resort to using old codes from my time."
"Regardless, you are our resident expert at the moment. Prowl is offworld, and were we to take the time to summon him, by the time he arrived, the device's usefulness will have expired. So please, take this-" the medic commanded, holding up a long transparent fiber-optic wire connected by small clamps to the device, "-and help me before we lose our one chance to gain some kind of major intelligence advantage since we arrived on this mudball."
Drift couldn't really argue. Besides, all he really needed to do was generate a recording for Prowl to pore over. He felt annoyed that Ratchet had decided to heap the responsibility on him, but then, it was a Decepticon device. Who better to interface with it than a former Decepticon? He rolled his optics and took the wire, plugging it into a small port in his audials. Immediately, static backwash filled his processors, and he winced.
"Anything?" Asked the medic. Drift returned his look of impatience with a glower like the one Ironhide had given him before calling up skills he had largely left unused since his defection. To an untrained monitor, the information Drift was receiving would have been unintelligible garbage, mostly echoes of distant civilizations, or indeed the everlasting, energetic chaos of subspace itself. He had been trained to edit those out however. Once, he had possessed one of these devices himself, back when the Decepticon cause had still held meaning for him, when their goal had not been conquest, but order and equality.
Recalling that time, he siphoned out the background noise, the echoes from the birth of the universe, and some said, from the war between Primus and Unicron, waged in the days when galaxies were new, cutting through it like a wall of heavy fog, until the familiar sound of what could only be a Decepticon comms expert's finest work filled his consciousness. It was a mess of coded jargon of which Drift only understood a thimbleful, and he did not trust even that, since Soundwave had a habit of placing misinformation in the most lightly coded layers of his messages. It took him a moment to sift through this second layer of informational detritus to the signals beneath. Just when he thought he had isolated a few useful active links, his mind reeled under the power of a new signal, one so powerful it blotted out every channel the device had access to. He staggered, causing Ratchet to move forwards in alarm, in case he damaged the delicate machine he was linked to. Drift recovered though, and steadied himself with the bed.
"What is it?" Ratchet asked. Drift raised a hand to where the cable linked him to the device.
"A signal. Far more powerful than everything else. It might be a general directive."
"From Megatron?" The medic pressed. Drift shook his head.
"I cannot say, though if so, wherever he is transmitting from is outside this galaxy. The level of power contained within indicates-" he explained, before he realized that the terrible sound was gone and the other channels were active again, a cacophony of many voices rather than one overriding all others. He waited. Ten seconds, then twenty passed. At thirty-five exactly, the thunderous transmission returned, though it found him prepared. He recorded it, segmented it, tried to identify specific wave patterns that might give a clue as to what it meant or who was sending it.
"Indicates what?" Ironhide growled, bringing Drift back. He shook his head.
"It's odd. This code is clearly one of Shockwaves...but far older."
"Can you crack it?" Asked Ratchet.
"No, but the waveform clearly marks it as one of his more complex ciphers. If I had to put a date on it, I would say it dates back to prior to the fall of Cybertron, even before the Battle of Metroplex. I'm no expert, but there's a certain...finesse to it that I recognize from that period."
"But what about its source?" Ratchet asked, "You said extra-galactic. How far out?"
"At least three-million light years." Drift said after taking a moment to check the frequency strength as the message repeated itself. It lasted roughly five seconds, a hyper-compressed burst according to overall wave-form, then paused for thirty-five before again repeating. Drift pondered the meaning of the distance involved. For the past few years, since the death of the Fallen at Giza, what minute amounts of intelligence the Alliance had been able to gather pointed to Megatron having retreated to a distant planet code-named Chaar by the Decepticons, which did not appear in any known astronomical charts known to either humans or Autobots. This was an impressive feat, since the latter possessed maps dating back tens of thousands of years and which reached far beyond what humans thought of as the 'Local Cluster' of galaxies. If the signal was indeed coming from Megatron, then it meant that he was actually very close by, galactically speaking.
Even so, something bothered Drift. Megatron, no matter how mad the centuries he'd spent buried in ice had driven him, was not totally insane. He would never betray the location of his center of operations, even on a system as secure as the Decepticon military network, especially since given that Soundwave was supposedly dead at the hands of Colonel Sheppard, who had blown him up in orbit over Earth four years prior, that system was probably far less secure than it had once been. Of course this presumed that Soundwave was actually dead. He'd been reported as such more times than Drift could count back on Cybertron, but he always seemed to pop back up. He frowned. In truth, this whole situation felt a bit like one of his infamous plots. Communications had not been Soundwave's sole skill. As Megatron's master of espionage, he'd cost the Autobots more lives than Starscream ever would.
Drift put aside the suspicion for now. It would not help him find what he was looking for. He instead refocused on the signal itself, generating a mental buffer against its power, while trying to work out a means of triangulating its source. He frowned. Given that he had but one point of reference, it would be next to impossible to work out a precise location...but then, maybe he didn't need to. He concentrated, doing some rough astro-cartographical gymnastics that would've taken a room full of human graduate students about a week, and came up with a solution.
"I can't pinpoint the precise source of the signal. All I can say is that it is coming from a region of space roughly three million light years away from the Milky Way, from roughly the same direction as the Andromeda Galaxy." Drift said apologetically. He watched Ratchet mull over that information.
"The Andromeda Galaxy is too near to be the source...the only major stellar collective in that rough area would be the Pegasus Galaxy." He said, before clearly realizing the implications of his own words. His optics went wide. Drift acted first, saving what he had recorded of the signal to his drives before disconnecting himself and opening an internal comm channel of his own to Optimus.
[Prime, I have bad news.] he said.
o
A/N: So I'm not totally sure about the integrity of this chapter (after all, it's kinda short), but I think that's a good place to cut it. Next up, the excrement hits the windmill, and the IOA (or AOA as they now are) feverishly attempt to obfuscate matters. My hope is that by Chapter 5, we'll be heading back to that lovely place we all know and love: Pegasus.