Robotech: The Stargate Saga

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own demented author amusement – sadly all Robotech and Stargate characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold and MGM respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.

Author's Note: This is a short interlude chapter to both flesh out some of the events in the background – that don't fit in a main chapter – as well as to set up some events for the future. I will occasionally do these interludes I hope nobody minds. A reminder conversation in bold represents the distorted 'god' voice of a Goa'uld speaking through their host.

Interlude One

Hidden Base

Dolomite Mountains

Vosegus allowed himself a small smile as he gazed upon the contents of the tank sitting in the main laboratory of the base that he had painstakingly built over the last few decades. Slowly, carefully expanding an ancient, long forgotten mine into a series of chambers and levels that now housed many followers – far more than the small Alpine-style villa he had on the surface could have ever comfortably managed – and everything they and he needed. Everything from barracks to armouries, training rooms to hydroponic and aquaponic facilities allowing them to be completely self-sufficient food production wise. There was also a motor bay housing various vehicles including some of the admittedly quite impressive destroids that the humans of this world had created to battle the Zentraedi – he'd just had to modify a few things and install shielding as unlike his starfaring brethren, Anubis curse them, he didn't have a limitless army to throw at his opponents – as well as laboratories like this one and.

Calmly he glanced at the readings on the clone floating in its tank. It was almost ready; another few days and the clone would be ready to be decanted from his tank and be ready for him to transfer into. He honestly couldn't wait as this body was really beginning to show and feel its age, even Goa'uld healing abilities had their limits when it came to sustaining a host – especially if like him you didn't have a sarcophagus to help you, when the Goa'uld had ruled here he had not been high-ranked enough to have one – and he had been inhabiting this body for a few centuries now having acquired this host during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars. Excellent, he thought with a smile of pure pleasure, especially as he had been able to tailor make the new body to suit his specifications.

Something that until a few short years ago would have been impossible. Now though, with the alien cloning technology that he had covertly acquired through both highly placed agents and your average useful idiot, from the SDF-1, it was fully possible. And he had taken full advantage of it to create a host that would be ideally suited to house him for the next couple of centuries at the very least. He looked over at where one of his more scientifically inclined minions was waiting patiently to be noticed.

"How long until the clone is ready," he asked.

"The clone will be ready to be decanted within the next two days my lord," the scientist answered, keeping their eyes aimed at the floor. "Once decanted we will need to run some minor but necessary functionality tests but if all those go as they should it will be ready for your august presence within three days."

"Very good keep me appraised of your progress."

"Yes, my lord."

Vosegus took one last look at his soon-to-be host before turning and left the laboratory. Calmly he walked through the corridors of the subterranean base. It took him only a few moments to make his way to his throne room where he made himself comfortable on the throne where he planned to wait for news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. He had sent his best warriors in two waves, with the first wave being personally commanded by the first of their kind – the Jaftari - he had made, to attack the base, seize the Stargate before the UEDF could figure out what it was that had landed in their lap and bring it back here to his current base. While he fully expected them to be victorious he was aware that the attack on the base was a risk, a very big risk as he harboured no illusions about just how powerful the UEDF were and thus how formidable a for they would be. However it was a risk that he felt that he had to take as getting the gate under his control would mean he could finally begin to plan a long delayed, long thought impossible revenge upon Ra and the other System Lords for abandoning him here to die all those millennia ago.

While he waited for news, be it of success or defeat, he decided to indulge in one of his guilty pleasures. "Elena," he called out.

Immediately his current lotaur appeared before him. "Yes my lord?" she asked.

"Bring me a latte you know how I like it."

"As you wish my lord."

Vosegus watched with a pleased smile as the very plain looking slave, whose bland looks were completely opposite to her competence, left the throne room to fix him the drink he had requested. He had to admit that he had become quite fond of coffee especially in the last hundred years or so. When he had the chappa'ai in his possession, and was at last able to escape this planet, it was honestly one of the things about Earth that he would miss the most.

While he waited for Elena to return with his drink, he entertained himself with thoughts of what he would do to the System Lords when he was ready to make his move. It would take awhile to get ready, even though his troops had much better weapons than your average Jaffa – assuming something hadn't changed in that area over his long exile – and would make use of armoured vehicles not to mention battle mecha like the destroids – the one upside of having spent six millennia on this wretched planet was he had learned a great deal about how to properly wage a war – he knew the System Lords would not be defeated and made to bow to him easily. It would therefore be all the sweeter when he finally deposed them and took all their power – and with it control of the Goa'uld Empire – for himself.

Maybe he would even let them live to serve him as new under lords, much as he had been to Camulus before the great uprising. It would be a fitting punishment for those who had left him here to die.

The sound of approaching footsteps caught his attention and he looked up. To see that Elena was returning with a tray on top of which sat a glass mug filled with the mixture of espresso coffee and steamed milk that was a latte. It had been thoroughly mixed, indicating that the slave had put in the amount of sugar he preferred and had mixed it for him.

"Your latte my lord," Elena said.

"Thank you, Elena," he replied taking the glass from her, feeling the familiar warmth of the liquid through the glass. Elena nodded back and moved to stand off to one side, to await his next command or to take the mug away when he was finished. Leaning back against the padding of his throne – making a mental note to get the back cushion replaced as he was starting to feel the springs – Vosegus enjoyed the simple pleasure of drinking his latte.

He had just finished and handed the mug back to Elena when someone knocked on his throne room door. "Enter," he called, hoping that this was at last news of the attack on Fort Minotaur. The large doors to the throne room opened and the head of his praetorian guard came in.

"My lord I have news of the attack on Fort Minotaur."

"Have we been victorious?"

The guard grimaced, which immediately set alarm bells ringing in Vosegus' head. "I am afraid not my lord," the guard replied at last. "The first attack wave was defeated within minutes; they barely breached the perimeter and entered the base before being overpowered and destroyed."

Vosegus shot to his feet. "WHAT!" he thundered making both the guard and Elena shake as they could feel their god's anger. "How did this happen?"

"My lord the bases perimeter defences were far more powerful than we believed including the presence of ion pulse cannons. At least two of our destroids were destroyed before Prime was able to take out the turret that was firing upon them. They then entered the base only for their problems to multiply drastically as they were immediately engaged by some of the bases own destroids, a squadron of Zentraedi battlepods as well as a flight of Valkyrie's."

Well, that would explain it, Vosegus thought with a mental grimace. While the upgrades he'd made to the destroids whose designs he'd acquired were formidable they were far from invulnerable. He had already come to understand that when the sheer power of robotech weaponry was involved there was nothing that was truly invincible. "I see. And the second wave?"

"My lord they were forced to turn back and will reach their staging area soon," the guard answered, "no doubt as a response to the initial attack the base had gone to full alert. There was an aggressive combat air patrol of Valkyrie's in place in the airspace around the base, in addition long range scans showed that all the bases surface to air missile and energy batteries had been fully charged. If our transports had attempted to approach the base they would have been shot out of the sky in moments."

"I see. Make sure those pilots are punished I do not tolerate cowardice in the face of the enemy."

"But my lord…" the guard started to say only for Vosegus to raise his kara'kesh and fire a low level repulsor blast at the guard, prompting him to scream as he was picked up by the rippling wave of distorted air and slammed hard into the wall next to the door.

"Do not argue with me again or I will not be so merciful with you next time," Vosegus warned as the guard groaned and picked himself up, wincing indicating that he had gathered a number of bruises.

"Forgive me my lord."

"I will this time but if you argue with me again."

"I understand my lord."

"Is there anything else?"

The guard hesitated; he really didn't want to be on the receiving end of his god's wrath again. "I'm afraid so my lord," he said at last. "Our contact in the support staff of the Defence Council has reported that Prime wasn't killed during the attack. Instead, his destroid was disabled, resulting in him both sustaining a massive electric shock due to the main power bus being damaged and being taken unconscious to the base medical facilities. A subsequent examination has revealed the presence of the personality you created for him my lord, there are plans being put into place to remove it."

"I see," Vosegus replied, inwardly frowning at this news. It was not good news; the electric shock would have certainly killed the variant of the nish'ta organism he used to gather his followers and ensure their initial loyalty. The fact that they had also detected the neural imprint, and were planning to remove it, was also not good and he didn't doubt that they would be able to do so as he knew that there were more neuro-somatic imprinters out there than the two he had acquired via mafia contacts from the storage facility in Naples – well before it was destroyed by the massive eruption of the volcano Vesuvius that had occurred only a few weeks after the Rain of Death. No this was not good news…

…in fact, it was downright disastrous.

"Is our contact on the base still uncompromised?" he asked.

"I believe so my lord."

"Get in contact with him. He is to infiltrate the medical section of the base once there he is to go to Prime and kill him."

"As you wish my lord."

"Now leave me both of you."

The guard bowed and left, moving quickly sensing the great wrath that was building up inside his lord. Elena did the same leaving Vosegus alone in the throne room. For a few moments the Goa'uld stood there, feeling his rage at this defeat grow stronger and stronger, especially given how it potentially could undo everything that he had worked so hard to build. Oh there was hope that his agent on the base would be able to kill Prime before they removed the personality imprint – allowing the original personality to resurface, a personality that would no longer have any loyalty to him due to the death of the nish'ta and would certainly want revenge for what he had been for the last few years – but he also had to prepare for the possibility that the agent would fail and be either captured or killed, especially as the base was now certainly on a full security alert.

Just thinking about it made his rage reach a climax and with a roar of pure fury Vosegus raised his kara'kesh and fired a full strength repulsor blast at the far wall. The blast impacted with an explosive crack and triggered an explosion of dust and small stones as part of the wall was pulverized. He fired twice more, carving out a deep crater in the wall before his rage – and a sizeable chunk of his energy as using a kara'kesh so rapidly at such a high setting was extremely draining – was finally spent. On slightly staggering legs he walked back to his throne, sat down, and began to both brood and plan…

…plan how to deal with this setback and possibly eventually turn it to his advantage.

Ascended Planes

That Same Time

Staring at what would, to a human if they'd seen it, appear to be a pool of water in a stone font the ascended being watched the Goa'uld as, his temper tantrum over, he/it sat down on its throne and began to brood. The being was almost amused by what he could sense – even from this place that had been his home for a few years now ever since Oma had helped him ascend – compared to some of the those he had dealt with in his mortal life the Goa'uld was an amateur at creating plans for domination and turning setbacks to his advantage.

Running a hand through the pool he dismissed the image of the Goa'uld and brought up a new image. One of a familiar – but now badly beat up – ship floating in the middle of a lake. He had honestly been surprised to find that the ship had survived, he had thought it would have been lost forever in the endless void of intergalactic space. But it seemed fate had had other ideas and a race had paid a terrible price in blood for its survival, as had the Zentraedi in point of fact.

It now fell to him to decide what he should do about it. On one hand he could destroy it, especially what was still hidden deep within it hermetically sealed off from normal space-time by a phase displacement field powered by the very device it was concealing, but on the other hand he could show the people of Earth how to access it and the secrets concealed within that section. Though he had been so far impressed by what he had seen of them, they appeared to be a generally level-headed people and far more forgiving of the Zentraedi for Dolza's attack than any other race he'd ever encountered in his long life would have been, he knew that nobody was truly above temptation. Did he really want to unleash protoculture on this galaxy as he had on the one, he had once called home?

Given that they would soon certainly unlock the secrets of the Stargate he also had to factor in the fact that the Goa'uld might learn of protoculture, learn of it, and try to take it for themselves. And he shuddered to think what they would do with it if they got their parasitic, eternally power-hungry hands on it. What they could do would make the evil perpetuated from his discovery by Nimuul and the other self-proclaimed Robotech Masters pale into insignificance. Thus, revealing it to the people of Earth would be a terrible risk, but on the other hand the matrix, the flowers, and the other secrets he had hidden in that part of his former flagship would give the Terran race the means to defend themselves properly against any who threatened them be they the Goa'uld, the Robotech Masters or even the Invid who he knew were still endlessly searching for the flowers.

"Why do I do this to myself," Zor Derelda asked himself with a sigh.

"Maybe because you are a glutton for punishment," a familiar amused male voice said from behind him.

"Or it is just the universes way of testing you," an equally familiar female voice added.

Rolling his eyes slightly Zor turned to see two other ascended beings standing there. Two very familiar ascended beings. "What are you two doing here," he asked gazing at both Oma and Janus.

"Can't someone just drop in on a friend," Janus asked only to get slapped on the arm by Oma. It naturally didn't hurt him as while they saw each other as physical beings none of them were.

"Yeah, right pull the other one Janus," Zor replied sarcastically causing the other male ascended being to laugh.

"Alright, alright I'm just trying to inject a little levity here," Janus complained. "But really we're here for you."

"You have decision to make Zor," Oma added. "We both thought it would be helpful if you talked it over with us first. Maybe we'll help you find a path that otherwise you would not be able to see."

"I'd like that. But first let's take this somewhere a bit more comfortable," Zor replied before he waved a hand and suddenly everything around them changed from an ornamental stone font in a garden into a recreation of the living room of the house in Tiresia that he had lived in with his late father Zol, before he'd travelled to Optera, discovered protoculture and inadvertently started something that had set his native galaxy on fire. Silently the three ascended beings found seats and made themselves comfortable…

…then they began to talk.