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.
Authors Note: Here's another short interlude chapter, its essentially the scene with the Asgard that I was originally going to put at the end of the last chapter but couldn't get it to work so it was left out. I have since reworked it and I think it works quite well now and hopefully set's some of the tone for how the Asgard are going to interact with Earth in coming chapters.
Interlude Four
Asgard High Council
Halla, Ida Galaxy
A Short Time Later
Silence reigned in the Great Hall that had for many millennia – from their earliest beginnings to their modern spacefaring society - served as the home and meeting place of the leadership of the Asgard race. It was a truly vast space, capable of housing over a thousand Asgardians at a time, though rarely was their instance where the full council had to gather. Nor had it gathered now. Instead to hear the report from Commander Audun on what the Skuld had discovered – first over the planet of Linkotis and then Earth – only the members of the Inner Council – the Asgardian equivalent of a human cabinet of ministers – had assembled for the report.
To say that they were surprised by the commander's testimony would have been an understatement. In fact, they were both astonished and horrified which, considering the generally calm and level-headed nature of their species which completely belied their fierceness in combat, was quite the statement to make. Though in this instance, for the situation that was being revealed to them, all the Asgard present considered the response to be completely understandable.
The surprise came from the fact that Commander Audun had discovered the reason for the Tirolians odd behaviour over the last couple of years. For over a decade the ruling body of the Tirolian Empire - Robotech Masters – had been behaving in away that was very atypical of them. They had been sending fleets of Zentraedi warships – by their estimates most of the entire armada commanded by the bioengineered giants – far beyond the borders of the empire. Indeed, they had sent them venturing farther than they ever had before even across the great eternal void of intergalactic space to galaxies farther from Andromeda and its attendant dwarf galaxies than the Tirolians had ever attempted to travel before now. After all, while the space folding technology they used for interstellar travel was capable of such voyages it generally wasn't done.
At first the Asgard had assumed that the Tirolians were looking to expand their already vast – even by Asgardian standards – empire. They had done such things in the past after all when they'd annexed almost all of Andromeda's satellite dwarf galaxies as much like the Goa'uld System Lords the Robotech Masters had a voracious appetite for power not to mention a very unhealthy obsession with controlling anything and everything they could get their hands on.
Yet it had soon become apparent that that was not the case this time.
No reinforcement expeditions had been detected leaving Tirol – if anything the amount of traffic travelling to Tirol had diminished significantly – and the Zentraedi had never hung around long enough to be realistically engaged in any kind of protracted battle campaign. And not on the kind of scale that would be required to conquer and subdue an entire galaxy – even with their vast numbers and advanced particle and laser weaponry such battles would have been very costly and time consuming for the Zentraedi. The only logical conclusion that the Asgard had been able to draw was that they were looking for something.
Until now however they had not known what that something was.
According to Audun's report the Zentraedi had been looking for the flagship of the Tirolian scientist and reluctant Robotech Master Zor – a man that the Asgard people honestly admired and pitied in equal measure. Admired for his scientific and technological achievements, he had been one of most prolific inventors to grace the universe since the end of the age of the Ancients. Pitied for how the other Robotech Masters had perverted his incredible discoveries transforming them into tools of war, conquest and oppression across a sizeable chunk of the known universe.
As far as the Asgard were aware Zor had seemingly died many years ago. Decryption of some intercepted Tirolian communications had reported his apparent death in an Invid attack upon one of the numerous automated outposts and supply stations that littered the outer edges of Tirolian space. However other than that the Asgard had known nothing about what had taken place and they had naturally assumed that indeed Zor was dead and that his ship – despite the immense firepower possessed by a Sian Macross-class battlefortress – had been destroyed in the battle that had seen his demise.
They had been wrong.
Instead as the outpost came under attack from Invid hiveships Zor had deliberately sent his ship away with no crew aboard. Sending the vessel far, far away into and beyond intergalactic space in the hope that the ship – and something he had concealed aboard it – would never be found by the other Robotech Masters and just become lost forever in the eternal void.
But that had not transpired.
Instead, Audun reported that the vessel had someone ended up in the galaxy that the Ancients had called Avalon. Thankfully it had not been encountered or captured by any of the Goa'uld – the small group of Asgard shuddered at the mere thought of the kind of chaos and terror those megalomaniacal parasites would have wrecked across the universe if they had gotten their grubby little hands on robotechnology they were bad enough with the technology they already had – instead the vessel had crash landed on Earth. Where it had inevitably been discovered by that world human inhabitants who had rapidly begun reverse engineering the vessels technology while also repairing and refitting it.
They had needed it as ten years after the vessel crashed the Zentraedi had arrived in Sol. Inevitably a battle had begun between the humans – who according to Audun now referred to themselves as Terrans - and the Zentraedi with the former wanting to keep the ship and the latter wanting to take it from them. Somehow during this conflict something unexpected happened and the Terrans somehow began undoing the conditioning used by the Robotech Masters to bind the Zentraedi to their will. Two and a half years after the battle began over a million Zentraedi warships – an entire Imperial-class fleet, a force powerful enough to subdue an entire quadrant of space on its own – defected to their side along with Breetai one of the oldest, most experienced and most capable commanders in the entire Zentraedi armada.
The Zentraedi supreme commander, Dolza, had naturally not liked this seeing it both as a threat and a challenge to his authority and his response was utterly horrifying.
Dolza had folded almost the entire Zentraedi armada – and his command base – into orbit above Earth. He had then proceeded to bombard the planet with both reflex and conventional particle beam weaponry to wipe the 'threat' from existence. While he had come close to succeeding, he had failed as the Terrans and the allied Zentraedi fought back, fought back and ultimately defeated Dolza and in the process destroyed most of his forces. Since then, they had been slowly but steadily trying to rebuild a planet that had been virtually glassed and, in the process, had uncovered their worlds long buried Stargate.
"How did we not know this had taken place," Supreme Commander Thor asked from his seat, sounding confused and concerned. "Surely the sensors we have monitoring that galaxy would have detected the arrival of Zor's ship or at very least the arrival of the first Zentraedi force."
"They should have indeed we will have to check them," First Councillor Penegal replied with a subtle Asgardian frown. "Thor will you dispatch a ship to the site of the monitoring station to investigate?"
"I will see to it as soon as we are finished here," Thor answered, already mentally working out which ship to send assuming he didn't decide to go himself. "Commander Audun what is the state of the Earth? And what is your reading on the people?"
Audun looked uncomfortable as he replied. "The planet is very badly wounded," he admitted sounding both sad and angry. "While he did not have chance to completely obliterate it Dolza's assault – which the native Terrans apparently refer to as the Rain of Death – has caused massive ecological and climatic damage to the planet with vast areas reduced to wastelands some still having dangerously high levels of the hyper phasic radiation left behind by reflex weaponry. The atmosphere is also heavily contaminated with dust and debris from the bombardment, though it has begun to slowly clear assisted by the fact that the survivors – with assistance from the Zentraedi allied to them – have begun building atmospheric filtration towers to assist with stabilization and eventual regeneration of the atmosphere. According to our scans they are setting up similar devices to clean and regenerate the land however given the extent of the damage sustained we estimate that it will take them at least a hundred years if not longer to make even a partial recovery and complete recovery maybe impossible with the technology that they have available to them.
"As for the people while I cannot be certain given, I have only had one conversation with them I believe that they are quite a level-headed and rational people," Audun continued, "they are certainly a very impressive and resourceful people and clearly have many hidden depths if they were able to undermine and even begin to completely remove the neuro-somatic conditioning used on the Zentraedi by the Robotech Masters. I have another meeting scheduled with them in another few hours. They have asked me if I am willing to dock the Skuld aboard the factory satellite that they have captured for a face-to-face meeting."
Surprise rippled through the members of the Inner Council.
"They have a Robotech Factory Satellite?" Heimdall questioned just beating Thor to the punch. It was understandable as the Asgard had long been fascinated by the massive factory satellites that the Tirolians employed. Unfortunately, they had never been able to learn very much about them as not only were the stations usually well defended by fleets of Zentraedi – and sometimes even Tirolian – warships, both of whom were powerful and dangerous opponents even for their newest and most powerful warships, but the Tirolians had long ago developed the means to both deflect their sensors and prevent them simply transporting an investigation team aboard from a cloaked ship.
"They do," Audun confirmed, "I do not know how they acquired it, though judging from the residual phased graviton traces around it we estimate they have only had it for a few months at the most. While our sensors naturally cannot penetrate the outer hull due to the built in Tirolian countermeasures, we can tell that the station is damaged though it is also clearly repairing itself. Of course, we cannot tell if the damage the station sustained occurred in a battle to take control of it of it is historical damage that for some reason wasn't repaired until now. What are your orders on this matter councillors?"
The council members looked at one another as they considered how to respond and what to do about this most unexpected of developments. The anti-scanning countermeasures used by the Tirolians were mostly based in the outer hull sections of the factory satellites, it had long been believed that if they could get inside, they could learn a great deal more about the stations and how they worked. Now there was an opportunity to do just that.
"Agree to the docking request," Penegal said at last, "however make sure that any scans run of the station's interior are as discreet as possible. While I will leave the final decision to you Commander Audun in your meeting, I would like you to be prepared to offer the Terrans our assistance in repairing the damage inflicted upon their planet by Dolza. Also, I would like you to inform them about the existence and extent of the Goa'uld Empire and some of the other spacefaring civilizations present in that galaxy. If they plan to make use of their Stargate, we cannot in good conscience not warn them of the danger presented especially by the Goa'uld."
"I understand Penegal."
"Good. Contact us again once your next meeting with the Terrans is concluded."
Audun nodded in acquiescence before, sensing the dismissal, closing the communications link down from his end making his hologram evaporate into nothingness. For a few moments the great hall was quiet, then the members of the Inner Council began discussing these revelations and developments among themselves. Working out how not only their species could benefit from them, especially as the change that the Terrans had wrought on the Zentraedi had serious implications of the intergalactic balance of power between themselves and the Tirolians but help the people of Earth recover from the effects of Dolza's attack and prepare them as much as possible for the threats and dangers that lurked amidst Avalon's stars.
The discussions would go on well into the night.
Authors Notes: Well, that's this interlude done. I hope you all enjoyed it, I know it is a bit shorter than normal but it couldn't be helped. Now before anyone says anything I know that the Asgard might come across as being a bit more Machiavellian here than they would in normal Stargate however there is a good reason for it as they have been in a state of hot/cold/hot/cold war with the Tirolian Empire for centuries as the Asgard do not – and never have – approved of the imperialistic nature of the Robotech Masters and their empire however the Tirolian Empire is much larger than the Asgard Federation – one galaxy against many more since the Masters control all of Andromeda and most of its thirteen major satellite galaxies, really all but the Pegasus Irregular Galaxy where Atlantis is as the Masters avoid that like the plague due to ancient legends of a creature they call the Tosh Valat or life thief/stealer of life aka the Wraith – so the Asgard have always had to be very careful when confronting them especially as technologically while the Asgard are still more advanced the Tirolians technology is worryingly powerful even by their standards.
Finally in this reality the Asgard haven't really encountered the Replicators as – while they do worry about the Goa'uld and protect some planets from them as sanctuaries for developing species as in Stargate canon – most of their focus and concern has been on the Tirolians who are capable of intergalactic travel using their space folding technology, they just don't like doing it very much at least the Masters don't they're quite happy to have the Zentraedi do it instead of them, making them a larger and more immediate threat to their race than the Goa'uld.
On a final note, my updates on all fic's might become fewer for awhile as my own laptop has died and as such I am having to share one with my mother so I don't have as much free writing time as I am used to. Until next time.