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: Another short interlude chapter to finally wrap up the Elysium arc.

Interlude Six

Zentraedi Battlecruiser XL-17401

A Short Time Later

"Commander the first of the very large debris chunks is about to impact Elysium."

Still standing in the command blister, though no longer surrounded by tactical holograms as both the ship and the remains of her fleet had stood down from battle stations, Commander Neleya flinched slightly at the report from the sensor section of the bridge. For the last fifteen minutes they had been watching debris from the now completely broken apart second moon – a catastrophe caused apparently by the Goa'uld insanely experimenting with antimatter, something no sane race in the universe would touch given how volatile antimatter was and how difficult containing it safely for any length of time could be. Even the likes of the Invid tended to leave antimatter alone for that same reason- hit Elysium.

So far the vast majority of the debris had been small and had burned up harmlessly in the planet's atmosphere. No doubt creating a very spectacular celestial light show for the doomed people on said planet. The few fragments that hadn't burned up immediately had only caused local damage especially as they tended to explode creating the phenomenon known as an air burst before hitting the ground. The few ground hits so far had only caused regional damage to Elysium. But that was about to change considering that the far larger more slowly moving chunks of rock were about to hit the planet. Elysium and everything on it were about to be destroyed.

"Show me and make sure all stations and sections observe as well," she ordered somewhat sadly at all the innocents on the planet who were about to die. Just a few short years ago she wouldn't have thought about the deaths of humans and other beings there size, instead she'd have just seen them as mere micronians insects to be stepped on and crushed if they dared to stand in the way of the Zentraedi. Now though the fact that so many were about to die, and that she had no means of stopping this disaster as her ships weren't carrying reflex weapons which were the only things powerful enough in both the Zentraedi and Terran arsenals to vaporise such large chunks of falling rock, made her feel sick to her stomach.

Really all she, all any of them on her entire fleet, could do was observe their passing and somehow ensure that it was not in vain. Silently she vowed that, no matter how long it took, she would find the long since escaped Goa'uld Hades. Find him and make him pay for the horror he had unleashed by being stupid enough to fool around with one of the most volatile substances in the entire universe.

A hand touching her shoulder prompted her to look over to see that Tashka had come to stand beside her. Neleya could see her own horrified, angry sadness – and determination to find Hades and make him answer for this crime – reflected in her advisor's eyes. She gave her a slight smile and touched her hand with one of her own, silently acknowledging and thanking the other Zentraedi for her support. Then they both turned to watch as a projector field activated and a new holoscreen pixeled into existence showing an image of the asteroid that was about to impact Elysium.

It was a very large piece of the former moon, easily half again as big as a Tirolian mothership. It was falling with a very deceptive slowness towards the atmosphere, the slowness that really only came when a disaster was inevitable. As they watched the rock entered the exosphere – the outermost layer of any habitable worlds atmosphere – of Elysium and seemed to speed up somewhat as the planets gravity well completely captured it. As it descended deeper, first to the thermosphere then the mesosphere, the edges of the rock began to glow an ominous red as atmospheric gasses impacting the rock began to heat up rapidly. As it breached the stratosphere the asteroid transformed into a fireball of searing plasma as the atmosphere compacting against it caught fire. Behind it the rock left a trail of burning gas and smoke as it reached the troposphere or the final layer of Elysium's atmosphere…

…then it struck.

The moment the asteroid hit the surface a brilliant flash of light blinded their optical pickups. Neleya winced at the sheer brightness but forced herself to keep watching. When the initial impact flash cleared she could see an enormous fireball bursting up through the planets atmospheric layers to the edge of space itself before it flattened out and what looked like small dots – but which would actually be chunks of the planets crust – spreading out and beginning their own fall back to the surface. A wall of fire, that on the surface would be kilometres high and utterly inescapable, could be seen spreading outwards from the point of impact. Clouds in the path of the blazing maelstrom were simply torn apart or sucked into the advancing blast wave. As the wave passed behind it there was nothing but darkness rent through with the glow of flames that looked more like the embers of a dying fire than the surface of a once living, breathing world. In what seemed like seconds the blast wave reached and disappeared over the planet's horizon leaving nothing in its wake but darkness and utter devastation.

Elysium, and everyone on its surface, was gone.

"Commander sensors confirm no more life signs on the planet's surface," the chief sensor operator reported, anger and grief at the senseless loss of life clear to hear in her voice. Though in it Neleya also heard guilt as it hadn't really been that long ago that they had visited this kind of absolute destruction and devastation upon the Terran homeworld at the direction of Dolza. "The next large chunk will impact the planet in another five minutes."

"Do we need to stay and watch more of this," Tashka asked, concerned for the mental health and wellbeing of their crew. Since their encounter with the Terrans they had become more aware and thoughtful about such things, especially as more and more of the neuro-somatic conditioning used upon them for generations by the Robotech Masters came undone.

"No, no we can leave now," Neleya said. "Communications send to all ships, commence preparations for the hyperspace fold sequence to take us back to Earth. It's time to go home. Make sure all disabled Goa'uld ships are within the perimeter of our fold spheres, I don't want to leave any of them behind."

"Yes commander."

For a few minutes the twenty-nine Zentraedi warships that had survived the Battle of Elysium remained where they were, some only manoeuvring slightly to be sure to include the disabled Goa'uld ships including the crippled flagship of the now dead Goa'uld Charon within their fold perimeters, while navigation officers and computers made the complex calculations needed to execute the sequence of space folds that would take them to their current home.

Then their fold drives came to life and one by one gyroscopic rings of light flickered around them before turning into what to an untrained observer would seem to be a whirling ball of frosted yellow glass. The outlines of the warships, and the vessels in the subspace energy bubbles with them, blurred, and turned indistinct before vanishing entirely as each sphere contracted down into a tiny ball of eldritch light no larger than a tennis ball. Spheres which then shot away vanishing into the subspace domain referred to by the Zentraedi – and their former masters – as fold space with scarcely a ripple in the barrier between normal space and the infinite realms of subspace to mark their passing.

The thirteen Asgard warships that had come to aid them against Hades forces watched them leave. They took a few moments to run one final scan of the system themselves, to ensure no Goa'uld craft were hiding somewhere, before opening hyperspace windows and leaving themselves. Most would return to the endless void between galaxies to wait before returning home to Ida while two of them, a battlecruiser the Snekke and the flagship Gungnir, assumed completely different courses. The former heading across the galaxy to the planet Gaia and a reunion with an ancient friend of the Asgard people while the latter set course for the Terran homeworld to both negotiate the terms of Asgard assistance in repairing as much as possible the damage done to the world by the Rain of Death and to lay the groundwork of a new alliance…

…one that would change the universe forever.

Ascended Planes

That Same Time

Once more standing before his viewing font Zor observed sadly the end of the once lush world of Elysium. During his former peoples long on-again, off-again, on-again war with the Invid he had seen many worlds be destroyed – either glassed by the quantum energies of reflex weaponry or in some cases be reduced to scattered asteroids – and it never got any easier to see. Though what was making seeing the end of Elysium especially difficult was the knowledge that it didn't have to happen indeed would not have happened if the Goa'uld scientist Thanatos had not started playing around with antimatter weaponry.

"What in Haydon's name was that Goa'uld thinking messing about with that stuff," he wondered aloud knowing that nobody in their right minds would usually go anywhere near large amounts of antimatter. Let alone seek to use the material as the explosive in weapons.

"Given there ego he probably assumed that he would be able to control and contain the antimatter for however long he needed to," a somewhat familiar, though not to the same level as Oma and Janus, female voice answered and he looked up to see that Ganos Lal had joined him. "You know as well as I do Zor that one of the greatest flaws and weaknesses of the Goa'uld – one exasperated by the overuse of a deeply flawed copy of an old technology of ours – is their arrogance and ego. Far too many of them have come to believe in their own hype about being gods."

Zor snorted. "Probably like they would know what god-like power really is," he said, "hell even we don't know that and even the weakest of us has more power than any of them – except the abomination – can even begin to conceive of."

"Indeed," Ganos agreed, a flicker of distaste flashing across her face at the mention of Anubis, or the abomination as he was more commonly called by their kind given, he was essentially stuck between a corporeal and non-corporeal existence. She had never understood why their leadership hadn't destroyed him, they had the ability to do so, but instead let him linger with access to a great deal of their knowledge and their powers though he was forbidden to use them. In her view, and the view of some others, there leaders were only storing up trouble for themselves down the line as it probably wouldn't take Anubis more than a couple more centuries to learn what the Ori had learned. That true devotion and faith of mortal beings could be an incredibly potent, and addictive, source of power for ascended beings. How he would go about exploiting that knowledge when he eventually learned it… well it didn't bear thinking about.

"Is there something I can do for you Ganos," Zor asked giving his visitor his full attention.

"I came to tell you something."

"Oh?"

"Yes, the Others have voted on the proposal you made a few weeks ago. They have agreed to give it a try, provided there is no sign of our involvement afterwards. The vote was close, but Moros was able to swing it our way."

"You mean…"

"Yes, we are going to start saving what innocents we can on the lower planes without giving ourselves away and possibly leading to the rise of the same problem that ultimately corrupted our Ori brothers and sisters. We have begun with all the human inhabitants of Elysium. We waited until the last seconds before the blast front from the asteroid impact enveloped them to take them."

"Are we going to keep them here with us," Zor asked, shocked that an impassioned plea of his to help the lower planes of existence – and his assertion that they could do it without giving themselves away if they were careful and possibly leading to the less evolved species seeing and worshipping them as gods – had actually been agreed upon by The Others.

"No, we have already moved them to a new planet in another part of the universe where they will be safe from threats such as the Goa'uld," Ganos answered, "they'll be waking up soon. If they remember anything of us at all – which I very much doubt – all they will remember is being saved from death by beings of light. We will watch them of course for a while, just to make sure. I admit it feels good to be helping those less evolved than us again, much as we would have done long ago when we were still mortal."

Zor smiled. "Good," he said then he sighed. "The only thing that could make it better now would be if we could tell Commander Neleya about it. As it is she is primed to search all of Avalon to find Hades to punish him for his part in the events that led to Elysium's destruction."

"Would she really do that? Finding one particular Goa'uld amid a sea of a hundred billion stars is a very tall order."

"She's a Zentraedi of course she would do it," Zor replied with a sigh. "When I along with Cabell made them centuries ago two of the behavioural traits, we bioengineered into them was extreme stubbornness along with extreme determination. Traits that only got amplified when Nimuul had some of the science triumvirates repurpose them from labourers on Fantoma into the warriors they are today."

"Oh dear."

"Thankfully she will first have to get the idea past Breetai and unlike someone like Azonia he won't allow it."

Ganos blinked. "How can you be sure?"

"Because like Exedore Breetai was one of the first Zentraedi ever made. Deep down, buried beneath layers of neuro-somatic conditioning, he certainly remembers what the Zentraedi were before Nimuul repurposed them into tools of war and conquest. As more of his conditioning is worn away he will begin to remember that more and more."

"That pleases you?"

"Yes, it does because it means that he, Exedore and the other survivors of those first generations will start to remember and rediscover the vibrant culture that they had begun to make for themselves on Fantoma before Nimuul took it all from them. They could then teach the others of their kind who have no such buried knowledge and maybe finally become what Nimuul and the other Robotech Masters would never have let them be."

"That would be very nice, they have had a very hard existence for centuries. It would be nice to see them become a true civilization."

"Yes, it would."

Authors Note: Well another interlude chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. Next chapter there is going to be something of a short time jump as we move into the events of the Mars arc as well as having the arrival of another of the four great races. I hope you all liked the little glimpse of the changes that Zor is slowly working on the ascended planes by getting them to quietly, carefully interfere, due to the fact that for a non-ancient he has a lot of soft power influence among many ascended beings who consider him something of a breath of fresh air compared to the prim and proper stuffiness of The Others. Until next time.