Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 40
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G'Kar looked over the impressive skyline of Moskow and the large domes of the Kremlin. He smiled a little, unconcerned about the masses of snow covering the entire capital of the Russian Repiblic. In the few month he had been here he had grown to like the Russians. They were a people that had gone through a number of similar hardships as the Narn.
He had had time to look through Russian history and he was impressed. About a century ago they had thrown of the absolutist government of the last of the Tzars in a revolution not unlike the Narns revolution against the Centauri. Than they had tried to govern themselves with a type of government that was unknown in the galaxy, Communism.
The first few decades under their leader of Lenin, it had worked great, but under Lenin's successor, Stalin, the Communism had been perverted into a dictatorship for the lack of a better term. Even while the Nation largely remained communistic, Stalin had become an absolutist leader. Millions of Russians had died during his reign and the large scale war they had fought in that time.
After Stalin, it had only gotten slightly better until there was another change. But even the change to the 'democracy' hadn't stopped most of the problems.
But those last century had made the people like they were today and G'Kar was beginning to like. Not to mention that the Russian language was made to curse or that their Vodka was one of the most potent alcoholic drinks in the entire galaxy, if not THE most potent one. And the Russians were able to take so much more of that drink than any Narn in the Narn Embassy.
He sighed and turned around to look at Gennady Vassilyevich Bisyarin, the Russian aide of the Embassy and the one who had managed to drink every Narn under the table. Than he looked over at Scott Adler, the American Secretary of State.
"I know that you can't send many spaceships," G'Kar said," but why do you think that you can offer us an Alliance against the Doranians? What can you offer to us in this?"
G'Kar was a bit troubled about the whole situation. He knew from his longer presence on Earth that they had fought back several Doranian invasion attempts and even helped another race, they haven't even really known at that time. And than there was also the Dilgar situation.
"Well," Adler started and looked at Bisyarin for a moment," We are willing to send two ships as well as a number of military advisors."
G'Kar raised an eyeridge as he chuckled slightly.
"I believe that we have enough knowledge about the Doranians and military action to fight the invaders."
"But you have to keep in mind," Bisyarin noted," that the Narn Regime doesn't have as many naval assets like as you would like to have. Much of the goods and money your nation makes is going straight into the rebuilding of your nation. Even after close to forty years. I think that you could need every piece of help you can get."
G'Kar frowned slightly. He knew that it was true. The Regime hadn't enough money to send a ship to get him of Novak Station. And the ship they had send to Earth, was just a small one, and they had only send it not to be outsmarted by the Centauti, who could manage to get their hands on this new world. Through G'Kar doubted that the Centauri could get the humans into joining their Republic.
The Centauri had nothing the humans could need. Mostly because of their youth and the newness to the galactic theater, they were completely independent when came to foodstuffs, raw materials or industrial goods. Hell, they had enough to send some of it to the Dilgar. And if they needed CV Embinium, or Quantum-40 as the humans called it, they could get it from their sole allies, the Ferrons.
G'Kar also knew that the human ships had faired very good against the Doranians. The had beaten then three times now and played with them at the Ferrons home system. And even if G'Kar didn't really like it, the humans had more experience in fighting wars, through as far as he knew the last large wet naval battles had been fought about sixty years ago.
"I see your point," G'Kar said." But I can't do much more than talking to my government in this case. In the end its not my decision."
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Washuu sighed as she leaned back in the park of the CERN, sure the TIT project was coming along nicely, but it would still be month if not years until the campus of the Terran Institute of Technology was completed. At the moment there were only a few building build at the TIT campus, one of them housing a Ferron gravitic fusion reactors that was also feeding the CERN and a part of Geneva.
At the moment the fledging TIT was residing in some of the CERN buildings and the administration was currently busy to pull themselves together to get the TIT working as fast as possible, even before the campus was ready for the TIT to be opened.
She chuckled a little as she looked over to one of the other already finished buildings. After she had finished with the project of advancing the Ferron Transmitter, one of her aids had gone and with the help of colleagues he had build several of the Portal Transmitters. Two of them were situated in the building she was looking at, a not really small dome of steel and glass, designed by several students of the Architectural Faculty of the University Zürich. Surrounded by a small square and rows of young trees, she had to say that it was anesthetically pleasing and would get several nods by people from other worlds.
Even with the human credo of 'form follows function', it didn't meant that they were unable to build beautiful architecture. The whole TIT would be like the Transmitter Portal, as the students had called it a conglomerate of buildings that wouldn't look out of place on other worlds, even if they would keep up with Earthern style elements.
One of the transmitters was directly connected to Edwards AFB, while the other was connected to the MIT.
A faint buzzing in the back of her head notified her that her computer was finished with that analysis she had ordered it to do. She had acquired some of the DNA of one of the talking 'mooncats' that were constantly around the Senshi.
She rolled her eyes at the thought of Luna. That girl was always complaining. 'We didn't do this, we didn't do that back in the days...'
She was too much back in the past, not in the present and, the gods be aware, thinking of the future. Artemis on the other hand was a pretty laid back guy and he too shook his head about Luna's antics.
Washuu sighed and called up her holographic desktop.
As she looked at the screen she blinked a few times. At the first glance the genetic material of the Mau, as they called themselves, showed all signs of being genetically manipulated beings, based on Earthern cats of all things. More to the point of the species caracal caracal, with genetic material of humans and several others spliced into them. Well, it certainly explained their intelligence and their ability to speak.
Than she blinked as she looked down at the datafile, and found a small message 'Match Found'.
She called up the match and the computer told her that it had a race in its datafiles that matched the genetic profile of the Mau with about 99.99 percent, a match that could be explained by genetic drift over several thousand years, especially with the active mutagens that were part of the genetic material of the Mau.
But still, she needed a real explanation how something like that could have happened, how the Mau could have developed that way. She called up the files she had on the sun of the Mau's adopted homeworld. It wasn't all that surprising to see that it was emitting large doses of a mutagenic radiation. In combination with the active mutagens it could explain the changes the original Maus had gone through.
She ran a short simulation on the DNA of Artemis, using the same strength of the mutagenic radiation and the active mutagens. The result was the same. But also interesting besides that. The complete accelerated evolution of the Mau had lasted about ten thousand years before the active mutagen in their genetic structure had changed the Mau to a new race.
A race that could have been a Great One, as far as Washuu remembered from datafiles on them. A bit xenophobic maybe, but the had had the potential to be one of the Great Races of the galaxy. But they had wasted their potential, their sun went nova and their remains were pitiful.
In a sense it was ironic that the Maus descendants were once again dependent on the humans. But this time she knew that the humans would manage to get their trust.
She looked over to Luna and Artemis, who were arguing about the something, while the Senshi were doing other stuff.
She wondered if she should tell the two Mau that the descendants of their race were known as Dilgar these days.
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"Those sick bastards," Jack called out and looked down on the still blue armored and unconscious form of the black Shin'bi he had beaten about two hours ago and than carried back to the camp.
"You got that right," Lieutenant Janet Frasier, the resident doctor of the Rustoner Expedition said with a frown on her face.
For a moment she looked over to the advanced Earth Alliance Medical Equipment Dark Knight had given to the Expedition. It included a very portable CAT scanner the size of a medics bag that worked an pretty much every living and unliving object and could even be used to find people underneath collapsed buildings.
The large, foldable organic display showed a three dimensional representation of the black Shin'bis body and his Doranian build heavy armor. It also showed several cavities in his body where some of his organs should be, like his digestive tract, and several thick tendrils that were sneaking through his body, linked to neural clusters that were part of the Shin'bi anatomy as well as several parts of his brain.
The Doranians had literally fused the humanoid dragon with the Heavy Armor in a way that he wouldn't survive without the life support systems in the armor.
"It gets better," they could hear Daniel say from the external speakers of Jack's Mjolnir suit." They managed to override his personality with a rudimentary AI using parts of his brain and consciousness. He was essentially forced to fight for them. Even if he would have wanted to kill himself, the AI wouldn't let him."
Around him they could hear several of the Marines growling and cursing. Daniel had managed to connect to the Doranian armors computer systems after Carter had helped him. She had been part of the team that had worked on similar armors after the Battle of LA, so she and Daniel knew what they were working with.
"Can you do something?"
"Well..."
Daniel hesitated for a few moments.
"I can delete parts of the AI, but a number of its systems run his life support systems. Without them, he will die. Very slowly at that. I figure if the Doranians wanted to, they could have stretched his dying over several month and making it very painful."
Jack frowned again and stood up. He tried to imagine how the unnamed Shin'bi felt and thought while the Doranians used his body as fighting machine. It also showed him what everyone would have to endure when the Doranians managed to take Earth or the Vega system. Slavery and experiments like the one with the Shin'bi.
"Can we do anything?" he heard Carter ask.
He hadn't heard her coming into the command LAV that was used as mobile medical station for injured before they were transferred off-moon via transmitter. She had left after she had understood just what the Doranians had done to their 'slave'. He was pretty sure that she had thrown up somewhere outside.
"We can't remove the armor without killing him," Daniel noted." And we certainly can't remove all of the AI without killing him."
"Maybe we should kill him?" a Marine said." That isn't a life..."
Jack closed his eyes, remembering the quip he had thrown after carrying him in the camp.
'He followed me home. Can I keep him?'
But even the Jack O'Neill sarcasm was running dry. The situation was too much out there. Okay sure he could make a 'Darth Vader' comment, but he didn't think that it was right to do it.
"We should ask him," Colonel Martin said." Its his life. Daniel, delete what you can of the AI. But make sure that he can survive with as less as possible of it."
"I'm on it, Sir."
Jack looked back at the Doranian. He didn't know him, nor did he know much about his race. But from what he knew from TV, CNN footage on the Shin'bi mostly, they were a proud race. He doubted that he would chose death, but rather kick the Doranians asses. If he was still sane that was. Jack doubted that he could stay same if he was in the same situation.
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"Narn space..." Ramsey noted as he looked at Admiral Macuso.
Nautilus had arrived a day ago from her last assignment, scouting Doranian space and disrupting Doranian transports. Macuso had called them back, previous the GDI talk as he seemed to have thought that something like this would happen. The two stealthed Monsoons would continue to drop satellites and do recon.
Nautilus had scouted more than a hundred Doranian systems in the last month and dropped sensory satellties the a quarter size of a Starfury in each of them. Hell, they had even gone back to the Doranian homes ystem to drop a sat. The sats had been build by Nathan, but were EFNI designes from the Earth Force universe. The sats were stored were the sensory drones would be stored on attack and other missions. For the new mission they would get half a load out on sensory drones and half of sats, making it six drones and twenty five sats.
While they were in Doranian space, they had increased the data bank on Doranian ships to more than a hundred thousand military and civilian ships. The kill list had also gone up to about a hundred Doranian Claw-class Cruisers, thirty Pride Leader-class Dreadnoughts and about twenty Shell class landing ships. Not to mention about two hundred million tons worth of supply capacity. Of cause the missile stock needed to be refilled.
"Yes," Macuso said with a nod," GDI is going to be allied with the Narn against the Doranians and we are going to help them with the invasion."
"We don't have enough ships for something like that."
Macuso grinned.
"Why do you think we send Nautilus?"
Ramsey shook his head. Macuso was right on this. Nautilus had shown that she was very effective in disrupting supply lines and if they could do the same in Narn space, they could manage to hold of the Doranian invasion sowhat. Supplies would be needed by the Doranians to keep going. That was a simple truth of war.
"True," Ramsey said after a while." But do we get those Marines? My spooks would like to get my hands on a Doranian ship and its datacores."
Macuso chuckled.
"You will get your Marines. And you will need to carry some military advisors to Narn space."
Ramsey raised an eyebrow.
"CIA?"
"Amoung others. Also Mossad, FSB and some real military men, Marines, Navy and the like."
Ramsey flinched a little at the mentioning if the Russian Foreign Security Service. He hoped that their military advisors, most likely KGB agents, wouldn't see through his masquerade as his younger self. Well, not really masquerade, but he hoped they wouldn't know him for who he used to be.
"I take it that there will be a few Narn observers when we loaded of the Advisors."
"Most likely."
"And the other ship?"
Macuso grinned.
"Might be interesting for you, but the Germans volunteered one of their ships, the Bismark, an Ancient, is coming with you. She's going to be under the command of Kapitän zur See Karl-Heinz Gruber."
Ramsey raised an eyebrow. The Bismark used to be called Graf Zeppelin, but after he had brought back Joachim von Bismark, the Germans had renamed the ship.
"What became of Fürst von Bismark," he than asked.
"He is working at GDI HQ as advisor on the Doranians."
"And the Shin'bi?"
"Most of them are in Brussels as well. We are currently debating whether or not to send a ship to their homeworld. We had already radio contact with the race of some of the other former slaves, the Nomads. They said that they would come to get them."
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'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.'
That human saying was running through Len'dars head for quite some time now, ever since he had read about some of the things the humans had done to their own race in several wars. He shook his head.
The humans had had more wars in the last century of their own time table than local space had in the last millennium, simple invasions of far less advanced races not included. He had to wonder how the humans had made it through that many wars without being changed from being as idealistic as they were.
Maybe it was because the humans hadn't as long lives as most of the other races, much like the Dilgar or some other races in local space.
But as idealistic as the humans were, they were as vicious. He had read something that had been called 'Endlösung' in a war that had ended sixty human years ago. The industrial, more personal genocide of an ethnic group by another. More than six million of these 'jews' had been killed by those 'Nazis'. Those 'Nazis' had even kept logistic lists of the people they had killed, documents kept even after the end of the war with the 'Nazis' loosing it.
It was far more personal than anything War Leader Jha'dur had done in the sectors she had invaded. But at the same time even more impersonal. Len'dar had thought that Deathwalker had made the way of genocide into something akin to an art form, but those Nazis had gone a step further. He had to shudder at the mere thought of it.
But it wasn't only those long dead Nazis. It was the reasons they had fought wars. Ideological reasons, religious reasons and many others. And this 'Cold War' between the United States and the Sovietunion was looked very much like the current situation between the Union and the Federation. Only that no side would collapse in the end from economic overexertion.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"Armis give me strength," he muttered under his breath." Serity give me guidance."
He shook his head for a moment. It had been a long time since he had called onto the Old Gods like this.
He breathed in deep and opened his eyes again.
He hadn't only found things like the 'Endlösung' in the documents, but also other things that showed him the strange dual nature of the humans. One of them was the 'Geneva Convention', a document that regulated how the humans would treat any prisoners of war or wounded, or how they expected their wounded and prisoners of war to be treated. It even prohibited a number of weapons, such as chemical weapons. The direct result of the 'Geneva Convention' was the foundation of an organization called the Red Cross, one of their humanitarian organization that specialized in helping the wounded and ill. And it was deeply rooted in many of the human nations and ethnic groups.
Than there was their large ethnic diversity. There were a huge number of ethnic groups on Earth, groups that had stayed apart from each other for centuries and hadn't had the time to mix or annihilate each other like it had happened on so many other worlds, Omelos included.
He shook his head again.
Even if he could understand the humans partly, the documents started many more questions for him.
He breathed in deep. He didn't exactly know why, but something in him said that he should trust the humans.