Smite +1701
Chapter 7: Looming in the night
"The cold and overreaching fingers of the dark can be found everywhere, and only the light of dawn can bring hope to the night."
/Fort Avalon, Hanger 51/
Captain Sheridan looked at the giant beaming smiles on the guards for Hanger 51, which had been picked for the R&D hanger as what the American hosts for the 1701st called an ironic and had to be done joke. He swore to himself that the instant he understood their humor that he would shoot himself as having committed a crime against the universe. He didn't know how they got away with their oddities, possibly this whole nonsense with Anubis, the Enterprise, and everything else was caused as their punishment.
"So, what has summoned- ooooooooohhh..." Sheridan was about to start interrogating the engineers who were waiting for him in the cavernous prefab hanger, before they parted from the massive gaggle they had been standing in to show their masterpiece that had been 2 months in hasty and slapdash development. The sleek black fighter looked like the specter of death as it stood on the pavement, glossy black Carbonat plating gleaming menacingly in the bright overhead lights, sucking in the light like a spectral omen of death.
"I told you we'd break him."
Sheridan stepped over to the spectral looking craft, running his hand along the sleek glossy paneling of it's fuselage. A dark, intimidating craft, but beautiful. The angular structure was rounded ever so slightly, comprimises between the TIE engineers and those of the 302. He squatted down, looking at the small-sized twin gatling mounts that dissappeared into the the underside of it's nose.
"Slugthrowers?" The engineers looked at each other over the hesitant question, the captain beginning to look at them suspiciously.
"We took the best of both craft when the F-302 beat several TIE Interceptor squads with one of their own. For a primitive craft,-"
"HEY!" One of the 302 engineers looked over annoyedly at counterpart.
"It is extremely capible. So, they suggested that we combine the best of both worlds. And... they started scaring us when we showed them how TIE technology works. And, the result stands before you. The F-302/B prototype, the TIE Spitfire." The Engineer calmly stepped up over the annoyed exclamation of his collegue, standing proudly beside his captain over the best thing that had happened since TIEs themselves. Everyone agreed, no-one was going to enjoy having this on the other side.
"You didn't answer my question." Sheridan looked over to the engineer annoyedly, wanting a few straight answers about this.
"No, no I didn't. She has twin .3 caliber gatling pulse blasters, courtesy of these 'Lockheed Martin' people who have so graciously provided us with a few bits and pieces that they have improved upon. They were originally supposed to be standard chin blasters, but they brought us these instead. We didn't really understand how they were supposed to be put together or work until our friends showed us the principles behind gatling technology. They are downright sneaky, inventive, and firepower obseessed individuals." The TIE engineer shuddered at the thoughts of some of the ideas the American and British engineers had come up with, and wanted nothing to do with whatever had caused them to start thinking in those terms. Madness!
"Thanks. We've been working at it for millenium. Call us primitive if you want, we still know how to build stuff that can make nearly anyone else weep. She is designed to be able to turn 180 degrees at 5000 kps in under 3 seconds, along with pulling manuvers that would leave nearly any other starfighter in pieces, if they could musted the sheer engine power needed to perform them." The American engineer looked smug as he walked around the fighter, showing off the far more massive than standard Ion drivers. American overengineering at it's finest was easily applicable to the little monster of a starfighter.
Sheridan followed, able to look straight into a drive exaust port big enough to fit himself down. "Hells, do you think you have a big enough exaust port?" The good captain looked up along the dorsal surface of the craft, the two sets of RCS thrusters outset of the stabilizer tails.
The American engineers and British engineers looked at each other, before laughing hysterically. The flight engineers of the Enterprise looked at each other oddly, still not sure what exactly had gotten loose in their counterpart's heads. Sheridan edged over to his batch of engineers, keeping away from the crazy Earth ones. "Are they always like this?"
"Usually. We're not really sure what is wrong with them. One of the medical staffers thinks it's something in the water. We've been living off of the ship's recycling plants ever since." The engineers looked nervous, as they gingerly patted their mad creation. They found it fascinating, but treated it gingerly. The way that their counterparts designed it had them wondering if it could sustain normal combat operations.
"Ooohh, that was a good one. Got another? But, seriously, ya'll take too much effort into overthinking your craft. Granted, we've been doing that ourselves lately, but this stuff let's us go back a bit to the old days..." The engineers looked nostalgic for a moment, before shaking it off.
"But, anyways, this puppy has been put into the ring with a full squadron of TIE Interceptors and knocked all of them silly. Especially with her missile loadout, and other wonderful little features." The American spokesperson ducked under the wing of the fighter, patting the side of the fusalage lightly, the hatch under there open and ready to load. "She can load 8 Sidewinders in the expanded missile bays, has lockon range out to 6000 miles, which we're working on expanding, and whole bunch of nifty features that are nearly too numerous to list."
"Why would you waste perfectly good ordinance on another fighter?"
"Why would you waste a perfectly good life in an ansine close-range dogfght when you can kill 'em all from long range and save the cannons for something that has a hard time moving? Waste stuff, not lives. Easier to make a missile than a life, after all." The engineers inspected the missile brackets inside the mounting bay, checking them motherly for damage from the test series. "Plus it's a bit easier to be sneaky when your opponents are all dead before you even get into visual range and your craft leaves almost no sensor signature."
Sheridan blinked as he tried to understand why the strange cultures of this world had taken up ordinance loving over proper fighter techniques... He was getting frustrated with the strange ways of this backwards and upcoming planet. Every time he thought he had grabbed ahold of how their culture worked, it slipped out of his grasp like a rock slug...
/Alpha Site/
The Alpha Site was calm, quiet, wasn't expecting any havoc. No organization besides the SGC and it's allies knew where it was, and they had shifted it from their old Alpha site due to the Rebel Jaffa and Tok'ra knowing the old site, which was still being mantained as the Beta Site. The Imperials had advocated that course of action, wanting to protect the research being developed there.
It didn't help much. After all, Anubis was a semi-ascended being, capible of reaching out with his mind to search the cosmos. Then all it took was telling a Ha'tak to patrol nearby, and wait for it to find his prey...
Carter and her father, as how it was supposed to have been, were working on their new weapon when the fight began. The sound of quad cannons lighting up the skies against death gliders sent chills though staffer's hearts, and stormtroopers rushed from guard positions to do battle with landing troops.
"We've got to go!" A trooper leaned through the door, wildly gesturing with his blaster towards the door. The alarms began ringing as the AA guns outside continued to blast away on their long-range scanner control, trying to stop as many of the incoming Death Gliders and Alkesh as they could.
"Come on, Sam!" Jacob Carter started grabbing as much of the equipment as he could, taking one of the prototype modified blasters to save it, as his daughter took the other. The ground shook heavily as the orbital shockwave of a Mrk 8 detonating in close orbit reached the surface, the Prometheus joining the battle above with it's heavy new arments.
"We'll make for the Galleo, she's got the new model Hyperdrive aboard, we can get out on her!" Sam ran for the door, the prototype blaster in one hand, and a DC-12 carbine in the other. It was make or break time for the defenses of the Alpha site. She hoped the Prometheus could hold against whatever forces the Goa'uld or whoever it was had sent against them.
Outside the prefab Quioset hut, the base was in pandemonium as a contingent of Jaffa was doing battle with Stormtroopers. Plasma crossed paths as the Jaffa did battle with their new counterparts, green and brown camo'd Stormtroopers ripping into their less competent new rivals. A quartet of troopers broke off from guarding the lab, taking up flanking positions around the Carters as a light flashed overhead, brilliant and blinding.
SGC personelle who were taking up arms, and the gunners of the defensive positions all hoped that the flash wasn't the death knell of the Prometheus, that she was still alive and fighting for their survival. If she was gone, what chance did the Enterprise stand?
/Bridge of the USS Prometheus, now SCC-1/
The flash of a Ha'tak going up brought a cheer to the crew of the Prometheus, as the HAT fireteams shifted to the second Ha'tak that had dropped out over the Alpha site. The very interferance that had made it so hard to find the planet also had meant that they couldn't see their attackers until they were right atop of them. It had been a lucky look out the window that had saved her from being crippled in the first volley, and the new firepower given to her by the Enterprise's donated and rebuilt heavy batteries had given her the power to smite back.
The newly promoted Col. Pendergast smiled savagely as his ship swung about, the forward HAT battery on her bow ripping into the Anubis uprate Ha'tak with savage fury as the port and starboard batteries came to bear, the light computer controlled batteries ripping new ones from their various mounts on the defiling ship. The little frigate rocked from a nearby blast, as the Ha'tak desperately manuvered to remove the minature daemon from it's tail.
It flew across the atmosphere of the unnamed planet, bright flashes going up between it and the Taur'i frigate as it savagely pursued it larger but now more primitive foe. The Prometheus screamed overhead in close pursuit, her newly doublelayered shields straining only slightly under the suistained barrage of the rapidly fleeing Ha'tak, which was attempting to pull out of the comm jamming of the planet.
"Fire for her engines when the batteries come to bear." Pendergast held onto his chair as the Prometheus rocked slightly, a trio of Mrk 8's leaving the tubes and streaking across space, rocking the Ha'tak. He frowned ever so slightly, as it came clear of the nuclear maelstrome, and he wished once again that the Hellfyre Torpedoes that the SGC was developing would hurry up and come out of the development cycle that had sprung up.
The flash of brilliant blue light as the altered heavy batteries fired again filled both sides of the forward windows, before the Ha'tak's shields flared and failed, the impacts of the main guns spinning it around, trailing atmosphere from the gravitic drive arrays, the ship drifting as it lost all momentum. The Prometheus closed, before her own drives cycled to a halt, drifting in close, before picking off the Ha'tak's guns carefully and methodically. This time, they wanted prisoners.
"It's adrift, sir. Deathgliders and Al'kesh still flying, though."
"Clear the skies."
The light guns and point defense of the Prometheus opened up at full capacity, Terran penchant for overgunning a ship once again playing into the Prometheus's favor in the fight, as 5 Al'kesh bore down on the now confident little ship, which was tractoring the Ha'tak into a more stable orbit as it fought on, intending to have a talk with whoever thought to try and take on the Alpha Site.
/Alpha Site/
Sam ducked under a staff blast, the whump of plasma slamming into duracrete fortifications continuing as Jaffa and a few Kull swarmed out of the still active gate. The E-Webs on the main control center were holding them back, though, a massive array of bodies lining the main courtyard, which was ringed by various defensive positions with hundreds of blasters. An unbroken rain of plasma bolts was slowly glassing the ground before the stargate, as the sizzling smell of burning flesh filled the air.
It took all of Sam's fortitude to keep from spewing her guts from it. She had been in hellish situations before, hell, she had visited the literal representation of hell on Netu, but nothing had prepared her for this. Occasional screams could be heard from behind, as a Kull Warrior occasionally caught an unlucky stormtrooper, pulling spines from bodies and heads from necks, blasting holes in the unwary as the troopers continued to rain death from above.
The Snawphoooom of a lightsaber igniting convinced her to finally turn around, to see one of the crack troopers holding a prize lightsaber he had captured in the early purges, standing against a Kull Warrior, screaming defiance as he prepared to do battle. She kept going, intending to let his sacrifice mean something. The small landing pad which housed the Galleo was just in sight.
The ship, a freshbuild YT-1300, which had been built from the specs of an old manual in the engineering spaces of the Enterprise, a bit of back engineering, some of the rather infamously handy Asgard tech, and some guesses from the two parties of Engineering personelle. Her sleek white hull was still unmarred by impacts and weapon scoring, a testiment to her having just been finished the week before.
"I hope this thing works, or else we'll be in for a very painful time." Jacob ran around the landing gears, running up the boarding ramp with many of the SGC researchers, all carrying various projects of theirs that they had been working on, along with a few stormtroopers as his daughter caught up, ducking into the ship as the whine of the sublight drives started up.
The clanking of a Kull warrior's boots sent chills into the Galleo's passengers, as Sam charged her anti-Kull weapon, the strange whine reminding her of the Zats as she took aim, and blasted the being off the boarding ramp. "Dad, we've got to go NOW!" Carter dropped into a firing stance, continuing to fire down the boarding ramp as the engines powered up, the whine going into a full-out roar as the intertial dampeners of the custom-built transport lurched.
Carter hung onto the internal braces as the boarding ramp closed, the dizzying view of the ground below swirling as the ship pulled up and away from the continuing battle with it's precious cargo aboard. As the ramp thunked home, she made for the cockpit, the lurching of occasional evasive manuvers bobbing her in the corridor. The grating on the floor rattled as the little ship floored it to take advantage of a shield drop for her launch, the sky turning from blue to black rapidly as SGC and Imperial antigravs lined up together, rapidly shoving the small freighter up and out of the gravity well.
Sam ducked through the cockpit door, sitting down beside her father, her stomach still lurching from the leftover unrecycled air. That smell would haunt her for the rest of her days. She looked up to the SGC pilot and Echo flight copilot, who were busy making checks on the various systems they didn't have time to preflight on the ground. The SGC pilot reached over, charging the shields as the ship continued on. A few lances of bright light burned across the sky, sending relief into the various personelle.
"Oh, thank goodness, they didn't send much against- is that a Ha'tak?" The Echo flight pilot chuckled at the sudden shock of his counterpart, pressing the signal for the gunnery crews to take their stations. It was going to be an interesting battle. He loved these Americans and the way they designed cockpits. A nice HUD, multiple multi-display reprogrammable touchscreen panels, easy to use and intuitive controls, very very nice...
The multiple guns of the Galleo came into play as she closed against the Deathgliders and Al'kesh desperately trying to play a game of keep away with the Prometheus, doing their dammdest to keep out of her 1000 mile range on her main guns, which continued to practice their small-target aqquisition skills and work on their gunnery.
Packing a total of 10 emplacements, the tough little craft began by simply flying into the midst of the deathgliders, supporting the F-302's and TIE-Interceptors flying about with her primary set, the Repeater Quad Cannons mounted along her central core, while the smaller blaster emplacements manned by four individuals in the small compartment next to the core worked on discouraging the deathgliders from coming too close.
/Somewhere else/
Anubis frowned as the felt the presence of his invasion force end. That wasn't supposed to happen... he had sent two Ha'tak against the forces of the so-called 'Alpha Site'. Nothing the humans had should have defeated them. Well, he would have frowned, and did a reasonable approximation given his energy-being status. The jaffa on his bridge shrunk away from their lord, who began growling annoyedly as he plotted what he would do to Earth when he was ready. 30 Ha'tak and his own flagship ought to be enough, though if they already had ancient weapons, things could be problematic...
Damm that Q... FWHO-SNAP!
"You rang?" The smug interdimensional part-time Lord of Chaos looked over to the dark ascended, who was attempting with all of his will to keep from using his powers to try and strangle the self-righteous popous ass. "Now now, that's not a very nice description of me, surely you aren't feeling mad because my Queen is putting your great plan in check, now is it?"
"The Enterprise will not stand before me, and your veiling of the Tau'ri forces will not protect them for much longer. I will see what you have done soon enough." Anubis's low and hate-filled voice sent chills into his servants, who began fleeing to avoid the coming storm. He stood up, looking down at the uniformed higher meddler. What Q saw in allowing the humans their 'free will' he would never understand. He didn't want to understand. He knew of what the Ori could do, he wanted that power for himself, to strike down the Ancients who currently restricted his own power.
"Oh, give it a few months, sure, but the grand strategy is already in place. It's rather hilarious to watch the little hairless monkeys go, they have such a way with weaponry. Oh, wait, that's right, you don't like them and want to do away with all of them. Aww, now that's too bad." Q mocked the dark ascended, pretending to give him pitying looks, before shining his fingernails and looking up to him with a mischevious grin. "Oh, and Lorien says hi, check your board."
FWHO-SNAP!
"Q!!" The bellow of Anubis's rage could be heard echoing throughout the Mothership, sending Jaffa scurrying to avoid their lord's wrath.