Disclaimer: You all know what I do and do not own by now, so I won't go through it all again.
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3 Parsecs from Knossos System
Deep Recon/Early Warning System Patrol, Darden-Class Destroyer Prometheus
Captain Michael Jankowski Commanding
For two standard days, they had just sat there, doing nothing. Well, that wasn't entirely true; there were now three more of the weird angelfish-like ships holding station with the one the Prometheus had accidentally engaged.
The heavy cruiser Minnesota, two light cruisers and two more destroyers had arrived as well, but there had been no communications between the two task forces, although there had been unusually high amounts of tachyon particle radiation being dispersed between the angelfish ships.
Jankowksi was in his quarters, and he was in trouble. Again.
"You fired on a completely unknown ship, for no reason other than it failed to communicate with you," Commodore Hafezi Feridoun Al-Asad stated bluntly as he seated himself behind Jankowksi's desk. "You realise, of course, that had they been a SOCOM cruiser on a Black Ops assignment, not only would you have lost your job, you would also have cost me mine."
"Sir, I-"
"I am not finished yet, Captain," Al-Asad said, voice low with barely concealed rage. "And surely you must know that they could have - and may very well have - construed it as an act of war, whomever they are."
"I'm afraid you leave me with no choice, Captain," Al-Asad continued, tenting his long, bony fingers in front of him and letting out a sigh. "You are hereby relieved of duty until further notice, and command of the Prometheus will be passed on to your XO. Is there anything you wish to add, Captain Jankowski?"
Jankowski grit his teeth and glared at Al-Asad ; he had done what was right, and he was being punished for it! Again!
"Sir," Jankowski ground out, struggling with his own rage and not hiding it as well as the Commodore had. "If they'd had peaceful intentions, they should have dropped their ECM and let me have a gander at them, at the very least. And I gave them plenty of time to respond to my hails."
Al-Asad leaned back in the chair, shaking his head. "You say they should have lowered their ECM, yet in response to their arrival, you increased your ECM to max, raised shields and powered weapons. And I hardly think that sixty seconds is enough time for anyone to learn enough about Standard English to possibly be able to respond to your hails. Captain, understand me, I am a fair man, but I will not suffer incompetence or insubordination. These past weeks, you have shown a proficiency for both."
Jankowski seethed behind a face that was outwardly calm and collected as Al-Asad continued to speak.
"I am giving you a chance to explain your actions in detail, an opportunity for you to redeem yourself of this. Fail to impress me, however," Al-Asad warned. "And not even that ass of an uncle of yours will be able to save your Fleet career."
Jankowski allowed the vaguest hint of indignation to flare at the mention of his uncle, the one man in all of the Senate that was despised by not only Fleet personnel, but also other Senators: Andrew Warren.
If Jankowski were to be brutally honest with himself, which he rarely was, he would have acknowledged long ago the fact that the only reason he had passed Officer Candidacy School back on Bastion was because his uncle had pulled quite a few strings called in some favours. Even if he had managed to pass OCS by himself, he would probably have never made captain.
But the fact was, he had made captain. He had a crew and a ship to look after, and despite everything, he had learned a great deal from other Fleet officers. Granted, most of them were REMF political officers, but they had still had plenty to teach, and had found a willing student in then-Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Michael Jankowski.
The captain drew on all the experiences he'd had in the past, all the lessons he'd learned from those officers, and visibly cringed, albeit only slightly, when he came up blank. He could think of no logical excuse for what he'd done, other than his own ambition, and indeed, recklessness.
He looked at the Commodore, suddenly calm, without anger, disgust for the cautious ways of Fleet officers, or the faint hatred he usually felt for someone the same age or younger than him in a higher position of command authority; Al-Asad was only one year his senior, which had been close enough to Jankowski's own thirty-eight years for him still hold resentment for the other man.
"I have nothing further to say, sir," Jankowski said in an emotionless monotone, as befitted an officer of the Fleet when speaking formally to a senior officer. "In this case, you are correct in assuming incompetence on my part, and you were also correct that no one could possibly have translation software for a language they've never heard."
Jankowski felt a faint pride as he took in the stunned look on Al-Asad's face; the other man had clearly expected the usual bout of threats or poor excuses that came whenever a true Fleet officer dressed-down an REMF officer.
"Therefore, I see that the best course of action is the one you've laid out; I hereby accept duty-relief and officially hand over command of the UNS Prometheus to Lieutenant-Colonel Xing. Is there anything further you wish to address, Commodore Al-Asad ?," Jankowski asked, managing not to feel in the least bit smug over the fact that the commodore had yet to fully recover from his shock.
"No…No, Captain Jankowski, there will be nothing further. Dismiss," Al-Asad replied, shaking his head slightly. And as Captain Jankowski about faced and exited the room, he couldn't help think that just maybe, the other man had just taken his first steps toward becoming the officer he fancied himself as.
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Minbari Sharlin-class Warcruiser The Grey Sharlin (AKA Valen'tha)
26 light-years from Minbar, unexplored space
Were it not for the presence of the Grey Council, Shai Alyt Kadaan of the Warrior Caste would surely have blown the smaller vessel that had dared fire on the Valen'tha to smithereens. But the Worker and Religious Caste members of the Council had overruled the more…vigilant Warrior Caste members.
Now Kadaan stared at the holographic representation of the starscape that surrounded the Valen'tha, at the three other Sharlin Warcruisers that had assembled from the system the Valen'tha had been dispatched from in an attempt to hide the ship and its passengers from the damnable cats who had been probing said system of late.
True, the Dilgar were quickly losing their ill-conceived war against the Minbari, their lesser technologies only just barely offset by sheer numbers, but they had been known to pull victory from the jaws of defeat on several occasions, and on those occasions, the morale of the Religious and Worker Castes had been crushed, and the vigour with which the Warriors pursued the war slackened.
It was the war, he'd been told, that signalled the opening stages of the Shadows return to this galaxy. When the Minbari won, and the Shadows made their return, they would face battle-hardened Warriors and the powerful fleets of Minbar while the Vorlons struck them from behind as the Minbari fleets held the line, as they had done in the days of Valen.
Now, though, there were these new ships. The one which had fired on them - an incident which, he had been assured by the Workers who had deciphered the message and what was evidently a First Contact package, was originally meant as a warning shot, which had fouled up thanks to the Minbari stealth fields - had been reinforced quite heavily.
Kadaan was more than confident that the four Sharlins would be able to defeat them if it came to a fight, but the Worker and Religious leaders were determined to open channels and speak with the aliens.
"Shai Alyt, we are ready to begin transmitting to the aliens if you wish to be present," a voice broke Kadaan out of his reverie, and he turned to face the Religious Caste Council Member, Satai Berenn, who had pushed much harder than anyone else to attempt peaceful contact with the aliens.
"Of course, Satai," Kadaan answered graciously, and began to follow the Satai to the Valen'tha's command centre.
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Heavy Cruiser Minnesota, Bridge
The Minnesota was one of the new Halberdier-class heavy cruisers, a Seventh Generation starship class, much like the Darden destroyers which had entered mass-production just over eight months ago and were already replacing the majority of the older Sultan-class Sixth Generation destroyers.
Viewed from the outside, the Minnesota looked very much like the Sixth Gen Kodiak-class heavy cruisers, but the similarities ended with the blocky, malformed hull. Powered by two Helium-3 fusion reactors with three Deuterium/Tritium fusion reactors as backup power sources, the Halberdiers were able to produce nearly three times as much power as the older hydro-fusion reactors, at the cost of radiation emissions.
The more powerful, albeit 'dirty' reactors allowed for enhanced shield strength and energy weapons power, as well as better ECM and point-defences, and could also allow for an eight percent higher hyper speed than previous models of heavy cruisers and nearly thirty percent greater maintainable sub-light speeds.
Right now, the hull, made from a classified form of composite alloy construction, was being bombarded with Tachyon particles.
"Is it an attack?," Al-Asad asked his Sensor crew, looking at his own displays. Tachyons, Al-Asad knew, were a highly advanced form of communications and scanning systems, but could also, theoretically, make devastating weapons.
The only reason the Allies hadn't pursued the technology was that subspace communications arrays and scanners were more effective, albeit more energy intensive. And given the plethora of advanced weapons technology already at their disposal, Allied scientists sought to improve upon their current designs more often than pursuing new ones.
"If it is, it isn't very effective, sir," one of the ensigns answered, the younger mans hawk-like nose twitching as he examined his readouts. "My best guess would be either an intensive scan or an attempt on the aliens part to communicate with us."
"Any way we can compensate our arrays to accept tachyon-based communiqués?," Al-Asad asked. The UNSC ships had attempted to communicate several times with the aliens, to no apparent avail, which meant that either the aliens weren't able to receive subspace comms or that they were still translating Standard English. Or that they just didn't want to talk, or even that they used a different form of communication. Or a number of any other things, the possibilities were more numerous than Al-Asad cared for.
"Yes sir, although we never pursued the technology, we did make it possible for us to accept communicates based on tachyons in the event that we might run across an advanced alien race that had pursued the tech," Commander Alison Dumont answered, in her usual incessantly matter-of-fact way. Were it not for the fact that she made an excellent XO, Al-Asad would have lost his patience with her long ago.
"It won't take but a moment, sir," the ensign said, tapping diligently away at his console. After a short while, a hologram flickered to life in the centre of the room, with the flickering, grainy image of what looked vaguely human, but was clearly not, taking prominence.
"Greet in name Weyland," the distorted voice of the equally distorted image stated, and Al-Asad frowned as he wondered who the hell 'Weyland' was.
"That the best their translators could do?," the commodore asked no one in particular, only to have Dumont answer his rhetoric as the image continued to flicker.
"Now that they're speaking to us, our translators can start compiling data. With enough of it, we can have a decent translation program within the next couple of days. Hours, if we still had an AI," she said, and forced Al-Asad to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose as the XO reminded him of the 'death' of his previous AI, a poor program, that while not blessed with true sentience, had been a close almost-friend of Al-Asad's for nearly five years. Her data breakdown had been most regrettable, and Al-Asad was still waiting on his replacement.
"We Minbar, who you?," the hologram sputtered out, and Hafezi Feridoun Al-Asad sighed at the realisation that any way he looked at this situation, it was going to be a long day.
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Orbit of Eden Prime
Apophis' Flagship
Ry'ac stood before a great window, looking upon the beautiful world which had caused so much trouble for the Union's armies. Apophis' goal here had been simple in theory; invade the world, capture humans for questioning, wait for Anubis to decide whether or not the world was worth keeping.
In practice, it was proving to be a much more formidable goal, which served only to irritate Apophis and raised Ry'ac's hopes of freeing his people Goa'uld. Causalities for the Jaffa warriors down on the surface had been nearly three times greater than expected thus far, and the Udajeet had been completely recalled when it had become apparent that the human anti-aircraft defences could shoot them down in their droves, while the gliders themselves had no appreciable affect on the fighting.
The humans were deploying weapons that Ry'ac had never even imagined before; great guns that could lob explosive ordnance over enormous distances, automated machines that were small enough to easily ambush Jaffa teams, moving ground vehicles that alone could take on dozens of Jaffa and the demoralizing ranks of massive humanoid machines that were so heavily armed as to make an Al'kesh disappear in a cloud of plasma in moments.
Worse still for the Jaffa was the fact that where the humans had dug into a defensive position, any and all attempts to force them out were ineffectual and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. All this made it inevitable that Anubis would send more ships to reinforce the fleet, and each of those ships had carried over a hundred of the Kull warriors first used by Apophis in the war against the Wraith.
Even as Ry'ac watched, massed ranks of these near-invincible super-soldiers were being deployed to the sole city that had been invaded in force, the other cities only receiving minor attention from the Union's armies.
"First Prime?," an underling broke Ry'ac's reverie, and he turned to face the one who spoke.
"What is it?"
"Our sensors have detected hyperspace windows some distance from the fleet, and there are no further reinforcements scheduled," the underling answered as the two men began heading for the flagships bridge.
"Human ships?," Ry'ac questioned, restraining the sliver of hope that threatened to enter his voice. He had been waiting, indeed nearly praying for the humans to launch their counter-attack. Even if he should perish in the fighting, it would serve to reassure him that his people might someday be free, and that the humans were the ones to give them the final push in the right direction that was necessary.
"Undoubtedly," the underling answered immediately. "We have also detected a large force of human vehicles moving toward the staging area outside the largest city."
It can't be a coincidence that the humans on the ground would launch a counter-attack at the same time as the one up here, Ry'ac thought. They must have been in communication with each other.
Finally reaching the pel'tac of the flagship, Ry'ac moved immediately to the nearest sensor console and stared hard at the readouts. Eight contacts, marked as unknown. He watched, stupefied, as the readings cleared up somewhat, and the computer system gave an estimate to size and tonnage of the vessels.
"That cannot be right," Ry'ac whispered to himself. "No ship is that big."
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Superdreadnoughts, as a general rule, remained in mothball yards during peace-time, as the sheer volume of firepower they could lay down had them tagged as 'weapons of planetary destruction'. That connotation had been proven during the Alkaid War, when one of the captured planets in the Mercon system, revealing no human life but more than a billion of the dog-like aliens, had been bombarded from orbit by a lone SD. The planet, and its population, had been reduced to molten slag in less than three hours.
That incident had also led to limitations on the SDs missile armament; although their massed missile salvoes were enormous, no SD was permitted to carry the monstrously powerful 'anti-shield' nukes that carried a 600 megaton warhead. Instead, they carried fifty megaton warheads, which, while significantly less powerful, took up thirty-five percent less magazine space per missile than the AS nukes, allowing for more of them to be launched at once, as well as a faster reload time.
Naturally, all those missiles needed storage space, which explained the mass of super-strong alloys that was four-thousand-eight-hundred-and-ninety-eight metres long, seventeen-hundred-and-fifty metres wide and fifteen hundred metres from ventral to dorsal.
Superdreadnoughts were generally used as massive space based artillery platforms, thanks to the sixteen light-second range of their missiles and the simple fact that they were able to launch so many in such a short time - three-hundred-and-twelve in their opening salvo - but they could also be used as main combatants as well, given their smaller-but-still-formidable energy weapon batteries and immensely powerful shields.
Rear Admiral Edward Shrote, running his lights from the UNS Indestructible, was more than willing to begin the opening stages of Vice-Admiral Porcini's 'shock and awe' oriented operation, but Porcini himself had been ordered by bureaucrats from Camden to give the Goa'uld an ultimatum, which amounted to 'leave or die'.
"We're set up and good to go, sir," the lieutenant at Communications said, swivelling in her seat to face Shrote. "It's ready to broadcast when you are, sir."
"Excellent. Have we identified the flagship?," Shrote asked Sensors. The ensign there shook his head.
"Not yet, sir, but we have identified over thirty ships of unknown classification in orbit around the planet. Computer has tagged them as battleship analogues, sir," the younger man replied, before projecting his display up onto the main holo-display.
A large planetary body appeared, surrounded by hundreds of tiny yellow dots; hostile ships all. The areas on the planet with confirmed enemy activity were also marked yellow, with Allied areas marked a vibrant green. The unknown ships, all surrounded by hordes of light and heavy cruiser analogues and scores of gunboats, flashed red.
"Get a targeting solution that plots best paths to those ships; they're an unknown so I want them taken out as early as possible. I don't want to risk engaging them up close until we find out what they're capable of in a less critical mission," Shrote ordered Fire Control. "Send the recorded message to all enemy ships, then prepare to fire immediately following when they don't listen."
Rounds of 'yes-sirs' answered him; no one was under any illusions that the enemy fleet would just retreat at the sight of the eight SDs that would be the first phase of Operation Redemption.
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"First Prime, a transmission from the enemy ships," a Jaffa underling called out to Ry'ac. Ry'ac turned towards the small screen that flickered briefly before playing the message from the humans on those mammoth ships.
"Ships of the Goa'uld Union," the voice of a human male erupted from the speakers. "I am giving you one chance to leave this world and never return. Comply and you will live. Do not, and we will show you the meaning of the word 'war'."
The screen blacked out, and as Ry'ac contemplated the words of the human and the numbers of Jaffa that were likely to die at the behest of false gods, he began to feel sick.
"Fools," Apophis said from behind him. "They dare threaten a God? Destroy them!"
"At once, My Lord," Ry'ac said, not believing what he was about to order even as he connect to the other Goa'uld ships. "All ships, attack now."
And may the True Gods forgive us…
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Pandemonium. That was the first word to come to Vice-Admiral Artemis Porcini's mind as the Relentless jolted out of hyperspace in time to see nearly twenty-five hundred nuclear missiles streak away from the eight superdreadnoughts under his command.
Given the range, of course, it would be nearly thirty seconds by the time the missiles reached their targets, and another fifteen before the light of those detonations would reach Porcini's fleet.
Although Porcini's command included more than seven hundred ships, most of those had been left behind with the ammunition colliers and mobile repair yards in the void between star systems, for the simple fact that they were too small to be of any real use in this engagement. Nothing smaller than a light cruiser was actually in-system, and they were tasked to stay back with the SDs and provide close support.
The ships that would be leading the charge, so to speak, were the nine dreadnoughts, seventeen battleships, twenty-three battle cruisers and fifty-six heavy cruisers, a pitifully small force considering the enemy was fielding over one thousand ships.
The ships of Porcini's under strength battleline formed up into a sphere, with the dreadnoughts in the centre and the heavy cruisers on the outside, then began adding their own, smaller missile salvoes to the weight of fire the SDs had put down.
Porcini stood on his flag bridge, hands clasped behind his back, and a ghost of a smile flickered across his face as the first missiles began impacting on their targets.
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Eden Prime, Surface
Aleggra Mountain Range
"We've received the Go codes, sir," Lieutenant (J.G) Ally Matheson said, turning to face the Colonel in charge.
"Very good, begin loading the bay and prepare to fire on designated orbital targets," Colonel Ketsuo Makahasi Tashimi, 'Mack' to his friends, ordered, never looking away from the display even as the Instacrete walls around him rumbled and dust fell from the ceiling as the enormous anti-orbit cannon rose up out of the ground, the five hundred foot barrel swivelling on its gimble ever-so-slightly to point up into the heavens.
Hundreds of feet below, at the massive 'breach' of the great gun, auto-loading systems hefted a bulldozer-size nuclear warhead into the chamber. As the auto-loader arms retreated through a side entry, the entryway closed over and incredibly powerful magnetic and plasma containment fields sprang up around the cavernous chamber, while focussing crystals lining the interior of the barrel arranged themselves just-so, ensuring the successful firing of the powerful but notoriously delicate weapon system.
"Everybody, brace yourselves!," Mack shouted, slapping an alarm button. "Firing sequence begins in five seconds!"
Back in the chamber, the one point eight gigaton warhead detonated, its titanic energies compressing against the containment fields and shaking the entire mountain range. Those energies continued compressing themselves, building enormous pressure, before a small opening in the fields appeared and all that energy raced up the length of the barrel, the focussing crystals doing their job and further intensifying the energy of the weapon.
An invisible spear of energy, moving at light-speed, shot up from the surface of the planet and pierced a single standard Ha'tak, annihilating it's shields while still in their start-up sequence and obliterating its hull in a single stroke. The line of energy continued on, battering against the shields of an upgraded Ha'tak before expending itself entirely.
"Confirmed hit, sir, we got a kill," the lieutenant cried out exultantly, beaming first at her screen, then at her commanding officer.
"Good work, people," Mack answered, letting a thin-lipped smile grace his features. "Set the weapon to auto-fire and pack it up, we need to move on."
The orders were carried out in a hurry; no one wanted to stick around long enough to find out if the enemy had the same qualms about firing into the mountains that they seemed to have for the cities.
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"Magnificent weapons, those anti-orbit lasers," Porcini observed as the light of the destroyed Ha'tak reached his eyes thirty-two seconds after the ships actual demise. The sensors were running in real time, so the destruction of that ship and the three score or so others was old news, but Porcini rather preferred watching the events unfold with his own eyes. When the range closed, all of his attention would be focussed on the tactical displays.
It was true that Porcini, and indeed most Naval officers, admired the power of the anti-orbit lasers. Bomb-pumped X-Ray lasers were just a little to unstable for shipboard duty; after all, no one wanted to risk the destruction of his ship every time he fired its weapons. The chance of the containment fields failing was low, but still high enough that no ship had ever mounted bomb-pumped weapons.
"What's the status on Phase Two?," he asked his shipboard AI, Catalina, whose avatar depicted a Spanish woman of obviously well-off descent, in a regal gown and wearing a tiara. An odd AI, but one that the crew all loved like one of the family despite her quirks.
"The carriers should be making transit in…three, two, one," Catalina answered, a smug look crossing her features as, right on cue, three super carriers, eleven assault carriers, eight fleet carriers and twenty-two light carriers exited hyperspace simultaneously just over a light second away, sixteen degrees below the plane of the ecliptic at the Relentless' eleven o'clock.
Those forty-four carriers launched a combined total of more than eleven-hundred and fifty fighter and bomber craft before returning to the swirling subspace 'layer' known as hyperspace.
"Phase Two complete, carriers returning for in eighty minutes," Catalina reported, informing the Admiral as to when Phase Four could begin. After eighty minutes of combat flying, the pilots of all those birds would be tired, but those carriers wouldn't be returning just for collection. The ammunition colliers three parsecs distant also carried over six hundred more fighters and their pilots, so when the carriers returned they would be bringing fresh crews to the fight. After that, the pilots would be rotating, always with at least one third of the total fighter strength in the air. All this was assuming, of course, Porcini's fleet was able to last eight minutes.
"Excellent, please inform me when we are ready for Phase Three," Porcini answered distractedly, his eyes turning to the tactical display as the first enemy ships entered the Allied energy weapon envelope.
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Elder M'Iktah watched impassively as blood red streams of light-energy stabbed and probed at the writhing mass of enemy ships that bore down on his superdreadnought, the Sian'pah, named for the greatest Elder ever to live, the one who brought peace to all Tia'n'vau.
Beams of light erupted from the SDs surrounding Sian'pah, and the smaller dreadnoughts and battleships spoke as well. His eyes watered as he stared out at the monstrously bright explosions of photonic energy meetingplasmatic energy in cataclysmic eruptions of soundless carnage. Shields wore down, ships were destroyed as missile fire continued to roar in, laser beams tore apart superstructures, but not once did the enemy falter. For that, M'Iktah was grateful.
The Elder's youngest daughter had settled on Eden Prime some twenty years ago, and as far as he knew, was still on the planet at the time of the invasion. Great Elder himself only knew what had become of her and her family.
Finally, the Elder blinked his large eyes, and to the outside observer it appeared as though he were crying. The outside observer would have been very wrong; he rejoiced at every destroyed enemy ship, at every life snuffed out as the power to destroy entire worlds was brought to bear on those ships.
"Elder, the enemy is sending fighters and gunboats ahead to challenge us," a youngling spoke to M'Iktah with due reverence for one of his age.
"Fire our forward AFM batteries in conjunction with the other ships, then let the fighters deal with them," M'Iktah ordered, his gaze never wavering from his tactical display. After several seconds, uncountable new icons appeared momentarily on the display; the anti-fighter missiles the superdreadnoughts had launched to meet their opposition raced ahead in their legions, tearing hundreds of fighters and scores of gunboats from existence in explosions so small they only made the ones amongst the larger ships seem bigger.
Finally, the enemy ships entered their own range, and golden bolts of plasma began to answer the Allied ships fire. Only one ship was lost In the opening salvoes of the enemy. The Tau battle cruiser Cirian was destroyed with all hands as it was targeted by more than two dozen Ha'tak. But the enemy had bled for that kill, and now that they were in range for their own weapons, the were also in range for devastating broadsides from ships several times the tonnage of any Goa'uld ship yet seen, barring perhaps the new battleship analogues.
The Sian'pah shuddered mightily as her shields repelled a dozen hits from the inaccurate but powerful energy weapons that the enemy relied upon solely for fleet engagements, then shuddered again as she answered her assailants with a broadside that swiped four Ha'tak down in one fell stroke.
You are bloodthirsty today, Great Elder, M'Iktah spoke to his both the spirit of Sian'pah and the ship that bore his name. There is plenty more, drink your fill.
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Eden Prime, Surface
Twenty-Nine point Four kilometres beneath Aleggra Mountains
Michael Cortez sat, stupefied, staring at the enormous real-time holographic depiction of what was going on in space. He had asked all he could of the Monitor, learning of the great, ancient race that had actually built this world, this artificial planet that equalled Terra in size.
He had learned of the other great races, the arrogant-but-benevolent Lanteans, the infant Asgard and the curious Talahyn, whom the Monitor had surmised as being the beings humans had long known as the 'Progenitors'. And despite the incredible things he had been told, it all paled in comparison to what he was seeing now.
With each blink of light that marked a destroyed ship, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people died. True, most of the destroyed ships thus far had been Goa'uld vessels, but more and more Allied ships were blinking away, the emotionless hologram doing nothing to quell the torrent of emotion Cortez felt.
K'Ton sat beside him, equally silent, his large eyes taking it all in. Randy Peters shuffled at the edge of Cortez's vision, the bulky power armour clunking quietly against the metallic surfaces of the floor. This place, they had been told, was part of the vast catacombs of underground bunkers in which the majority of Eden Prime's residents now huddled.
"Can we do something?," Cortez asked the gently humming orb behind him. "Something to help them?"
"Perhaps. Originally, this installation was armed only lightly, as it was assumed that fleets of warships and attack drones would orbit it while my creators took shelter from the firings," Reticent Observer answered. Several times now, it had made references to 'firings', but Cortez had never found out what it was that had been fired, and why an entire planet was necessary to act as a shield against such a weapon. "When the Lanteans settled here approximately twelve thousand eight hundred and ninety for revolutions ago, however, they installed weapons platforms all across the installation."
"What kind of weapons?," Peters asked, suddenly animated. "Anything we can use to help the fleet?"
"Unfortunately, no. The range of the Lantean weapons systems is too short to assist your fellows," the Monitor answered. "But there are still ships in orbit. The main problem will be whether or not we will actually be able to fire the weapons."
"What do you mean?," Cortez asked. "Why wouldn't we be able to fire them? I thought you had control over all of the systems of this place."
"All of the original systems, yes. But the Lantean systems require a living Lantean to operate, or at least a descendant of them," the Monitor replied. "Although you humans bear a striking physical resemblance to both my creators and the Lanteans, I hesitate to calculate the odds that either of you would be descendants of either race."
Cortez nodded, knowing what the Monitor was saying. It would be an astronomical stroke of good luck that either he or Peters carried the necessary genetic material to operate the Lantean weapons. They had been told that not only the mysterious 'creators' but also the Lanteans had, at one point or another, settled in small numbers on Earth and interbred with the natives, sapient beings who were close enough genetic matches to both races to allow for successful coupling.
"No matter the odds," K'Ton spoke for the first time, his voice quiet and his gaze still levelled at the hologram. "We must at least try. Take us to the nearest Lantean weapons systems."
The Monitor hesitated, looking to both Cortez and Peters for confirmation. Both men looked at each other briefly, nodded and were immediately whisked away in a flash of golden light.
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Seventeen Infantry Fighting Vehicles, five medium tanks, nine battle suits and two Main Battle Tanks. In a conventional fight in which both sides had access to vehicles of similar quality, it would have been unwise for the PDF and Marines to launch an attack with just twenty four vehicles and nine battle suits.
Unfortunately for the Jaffa, they did not have anything even remotely resembling the war machines arrayed against them, and now that they were cut off from constant replenishment of lost warriors, they were quickly beginning to feel the strain.
Youngling B'Nat, piloting his own XBS-87 battle suit, felt no such strain. The quad barrelled rotary plasma cannon attached to the right forearm of the battle suit whined constantly, spitting aquamarine super-heated death into the onrushing hordes. The flamethrower attached to the left forearm had yet to be used, as the close-quarters fighting that B'Nat had taken part in so far had not allowed for the use of area-of-effect weaponry.
The buildings around B'Nat shuddered and crumbled under artillery shelling, shoulder launched missiles and tank-fired rail spikes, and the thick choking dust had forced the humans to switched to infra-red just to see where they were going. B'Nat swivelled the bulky top half of the battle suit on its stabilisers, fired a pair of anti-personnel fragmentation missiles down the narrow street and smiled grimly in satisfaction as a small group of Jaffa were torn to shreds by hundreds of tiny ball bearings.
The monstrous sonic boom of a rail spike being fired from one of the Reaper Main Battle Tanks dual 120mm rail cannons forced B'Nat to instinctively duck, the mass of the battle suit following his movements, even though the shot had not come anywhere near hitting him. The fourth floor of a building roughly two hundred metres down the street erupted in a cloud of dust, debris and body parts as the Jaffa that had taken refuge there were annihilated.
B'Nat couldn't help but wonder what such a mighty weapon would be capable of should its inherent limitations ever be overcome. All Allied soldiers knew that rail weapons were limited to fifty eight hundred metres per second in atmosphere similar to Earths, as any object moving at speeds greater than sixty five hundred to seven thousand metres per second would start to burn up from atmospheric friction, thus losing effectiveness over long distances.
"Enemy infantry, moving out in the open!," a nearby Marine shouted, and B'Nat again swivelled around, spraying an intersection behind the advancing force with plasma as a dozen or so Jaffa sprinted across the street. Four of them made it past the battle suits fire, only to have a pair of Razorback IFVs fire a stream of 10mm rail spikes and 7.62mm machinegun rounds down the street after them and cut them down before they could make it to safety.
As he swung his battle suit back around, the war machine stumbled on its lower stabilisers and the shield alarm began blaring painfully loud in his ears. The suit turned just far enough to see what looked like some kind of stationary turret fire a large plasma bolt at it.
The remainder of the shields were stripped away and the thick, variable density armour plating was blasted open, splitting the battle suit and leaving B'Nat entirely exposed for the next shot.
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Lance Corporal Benjamin Ellis turned his helmeted head away from the destruction of the battle suit some twenty feet to his right.
"Arty command, Lance Corporal Ellis," he spoke into his radio. "Have sighted enemy entrenched position, backed by static defences. Requesting thermo-baric and white phosphorous bombardment. Have your UAVs look for the IR strobe. How copy?"
"Good copy, thermos and phosphor rounds on standby, UAVs awaiting strobe," came the static laden reply.
"Popping strobe now, can't wait for the fireworks," Ellis said back, then nodded to one of the privates under his command. The younger man pressed a button on a small, grenade-like device, then tossed it to the Jaffa entrenchments.
"UAVs have spied your strobe, incoming ordnance. I'd keep my head down, if I were you," Artillery Command replied a few seconds later, and Ellis immediately ducked his head.
Had he kept on watching he would have seen a cloud of finely powdered reactive organics disperse over the Jaffa entrenchment, followed by a brief spark that ignited the cloud. Immediately, the organics reacted with the oxygen in the air and the electrical spark provided by the slow-falling ignition pods and sent out an enormous pressure and heat wave that scoured the Jaffa position in a firestorm the likes of which no Jaffa had ever seen before.
After the flames consumed all the fuel and oxygen in the area, the second stage of a thermo-baric weapon became evident; they weren't called 'vacuum bombs' for nothing. In the absence of so much air in one area, the void 'sucked' in all the oxygen from the surrounding area, creating a brief but very intense vacuum that dragged bodies and debris toward the centre of the vacuum, as well as sucking all the air out of the lungs of anyone who happened to be too close to the explosion.
A short while later, the few remaining Jaffa stood shakily from the debris, and began firing once again. It didn't last long, as another cloud erupted into existence over their heads; the chemical compound white phosphorous had been banned before because of what it did to human bodies. Unfortunately for the Jaffa, they were close enough to human to experience the same effects.
White phosphorous was essentially a chemical form of napalm; it created no flames other than the brief, very painful, and often fatal bursts they caused on organic matter, and Jaffa fell to the ground screaming, clawing at their flesh as the phosphorous did its job.
"Good hits, arty command," Ellis spoke quietly into his transmitter, watching horrified as the Jaffa continued struggling against the chemical.
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A/N: There you go, part one of a two part 'chapter'. Sorry for the long wait, but I've been somewhat distracted of late (looking for a new place to rent) and on top of that, my computer has been mostly turned off for the past couple of weeks thanks to thunder and electrical storms in the area. Anyways, hope you enjoyed and please leave a review.
