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: This is just a short interlude chapter before we crack on with the arcs started in the last main chapter. Mostly this is just to show some of what is going on in the wider universe and set the scene for a couple of future arcs.

Interlude Eight

Robotech Elders Palace

Tirol, Tirolian Empire

Sitting the there three elaborately gilded thrones the three ultimate leaders – and the founders – of the Tirolian Empire listened with both incredulity and growing concern to the report being relayed to them by one of the Master triumvirates from one of the orbiting motherships. Several days ago a heavily distorted and degraded transmission had been received on the frequency band used exclusively by Dolza to contact them. It had taken them this long to piece together and clean up the badly garbled signal and what it had revealed was as shocking and unprecedented in their entire history as it was potentially utterly disastrous.

Dolza was dead and his entire fleet, over four million robotech warships, had been destroyed.

The three Robotech Elders would have accused the Master triumvirate reporting this news to them of lying if the cloned trio hadn't had more evidence to back up the seemingly impossible report. Shortly after the signal would have been sent from Dolza's Command Base – the automated signal would have been triggered as the base began to explode – long range sensor platforms at the edges of their claimed territories had detected a massive energy discharge in the large galaxy they knew as Valinar. Specifically a protoculture energy discharge on a scale that utterly dwarfed anything they had ever used against the ever-troublesome Asgard. The top science triumvirates had crunched the numbers and rechecked the results numerous times and had concluded that a protoculture energy burst of that magnitude – one strong enough for them to detect even across the vast gulf of intergalactic space – could only have been caused by the destruction of Dolza's entire fleet all at once. Further they had concluded that the blast was amplified by the deliberate inversion of a defence barrier, something that could only have been done with Zor's battlefortress – since like most of their current technology Zor had created the defence barrier shields – which had to be in the hands of the late genius's heretic disciples.

Which meant they also had the protoculture matrix.

While the Disciples of Zor having the protoculture matrix in their possession was not an ideal situation it was not one that couldn't be dealt with. They had enough protoculture stored away, as well as enough sekitan to provide a supplementary power supply, to deal with any assault against the Empire that they might dare to mount and were drawing ever closer to finding their last great staging area. Once that was found the blasphemous traitors would be eliminated, the matrix at last reclaimed, while the disciples woefully inferior genetics were cleansed from the Tirolian gene pool for all eternity.

No the bigger issue was the loss of Dolza's fleet. Without the option of being able to recall some or all of those ships if the need arose they would have to redeploy the Guardian Fleet under Commander Korval as well as their own Legionnaire forces dangerously thin to maintain control over all their territories. That would leave them dangerously vulnerable to attack from their enemies like the opportunistic Invid, who would and had raided vulnerable outer systems in the past in search of protoculture, and as well as – far more worryingly given that they were dangerously powerful even by their standards – the Asgard. Without the matrix to produce the sufficient quantities of the right protoculture grade the loss of the fleet was not something that could be countered easily if at all.

"This is most concerning," Nimuul said from his position at the centre of the triumvirate formed by himself and his two brothers Saruul and Daluul. "What is being done to remedy this situation?"

"We are still attempting to formulate a proper course of action to deal with this situation my lord," the head of the Master triumvirate, Shaizan, replied. "At the moment our best option is to increase counterintelligence operations against the Disciples of Zor in the hopes of learning exactly where they are keeping the protoculture matrix. We might also have to consider abandoning some of the less productive outer territories until such time as the loss of the Zentraedi Main Fleet can be made up."

The three Robotech Elders exchanged a look. While they didn't have the quasi-psychic link of the clone triumvirates they'd created they didn't need it to know that none of them really liked that option. For hundreds of years they had watched their empire grow and grow, expanding across entire galaxies building a vast power not seen since the near mythical Ancients vanished. The very idea of having to abandon even a part of it, even for a short time, was thus not something that any of them wanted to readily contemplate.

"Is there no alternative?" Saruul asked.

"Perhaps. Our science triumvirates are convinced that they have no reconstructed enough of the database recovered from the remains of Zor's lab in the Imperial Science Institute to attempt to create a lesser version of the protoculture matrix," Dag, one of the other members of the Masters triumvirate answered. "However we only have enough spore pods of the Flower of Life left in storage to do this once. If we do this and we fail then…"

Dag's voice trailed off as he couldn't bring himself to say what it meant. Not that any of them needed to know that anyway as it would push them and their empire over the precipice from a current slow decline, without the matrix, into complete collapse. Something that was utterly unthinkable, still it was the position Zor had put them in when he had stolen that matrix and the rest of the Flowers of Life from them. If only we had been able to recover Zor's body, Nimuul thought knowing if that had happened after Zor's death they would have been able to take the information they wanted straight out of his brain's memory centres. But Zor had left no body to recover, indeed there was that report from the Zentraedi that after he died Zor's body turned into energy and vanished. Something that to this day they could not explain and generations of science triumvirates had studied the record of the event.

"It might also be prudent to increase the resources being allocated to investigating and reverse engineering technology from The Artefact," Bowkaz, the last member of the triumvirate, added. "The science triumvirates assigned to the task believe that with a few more resources they will be able to reverse engineer and integrate more of the technology into our own including the number of crystal energy modules found aboard."

Nimuul frowned thoughtfully. The Artefact that Bowkaz was referring to was an extremely advanced alien vessel that had been discovered crashed on a planet in a remote system at the edge of the empire thirty years ago. The vessel did not match anything in their databases and even searches of the oldest achieves had failed to identify it, all they knew was that it had been there for a very long time. A million years at least. That and its technology, which like Spherisian technology was entirely crystalline though far more advanced, was even more advanced than their own. What they had already learned from the vessel had advanced their own technology significantly and reduced the severity of the effects of the loss of the protoculture matrix. Had they not found it then they would have been in a far more precarious predicament than they already were right now.

After a few minutes of thinking about it he made his decision. "We will adopt both strategies," he decided at last prompting the hologram of the three Masters to bow respectfully. "Keep us informed. Dismissed."

The hologram disappeared as the Masters went back to attending to their duties leaving the three elders alone. The three brothers exchanged a long look, each trying to determine just what the others were thinking about this situation. Then they leaned forward on their thrones and began to talk none aware that there entire conversation had been watched by another.

Ascended Planes

Standing before his viewing font Zor frowned as he observed the meeting between Nimuul and his siblings and the triumvirate of Masters aboard the Azashar in orbit of Tirol. He was honestly confused and curious as to what this Artefact that Bowkaz had mentioned was, especially the reference to energy crystals. He had never heard of this before and now that he looked closely some of the technology in the audience chamber of Nimuul and his siblings, a place he had been many times when he'd still been mortal and bound to the service of that malevolent trio, was very different to what had been there before.

Thankfully as an Ascended Being he had no difficulty finding out what he wanted to know. He focused his will and ran a hand through the surface of the viewing font causing the image to change. Instead of being in the audience chamber of the palace that sat on top of the colossal ziggurat in the centre of Tiresia he was now looking at the barren, inhospitable surface of a desert world on the outer fridges of the Empire, right where their galaxy gave way to the great eternal void of intergalactic space. The encampment was easy to spot, standing on the edge of a deep excavation in the surface of the planet and in a sign of how important the Robotech Masters considered this place to be several warships – including two battlecruisers – floated in the air at all times above the site with bioroids constantly patrolling the ground perimeter.

It was an array of power that would stop anyone who stumbled across the planet from investigating further. Not that it was any hinderance to him, the ships and bioroids could do nothing to him here on the ascended planes though even if he had been physically on the planet they would have been no threat. As an Ascended he could have wiped them all from existence with a single thought if he had so desired. Instead he directed the font over the heart of the excavation…

…and blinked in surprise at what he saw.

Sitting there in the centre of the excavation was an enormous wedge-shaped mass of greenish-blue crystal. A mass that was clearly a ship as he could see a number of open compartments on its surface, which had been ripped open when it crashed as two smaller crystal shapes nearby showed where parts of it had broken off on impact. It was also something that he didn't recognise. Thankfully finding out what kind of ship this shouldn't be difficult, he thought as he gave a slight command to the font asking it to identify the vessels origins and what its capabilities were.

Immediately the information was relayed into his mind from the collective knowledge of the Ascended. Knowledge that he knew would take him a few million years at least to fully explore and understand but then he had the time as time as mortals understood the concept had no meaning for energy beings like himself. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he became aware of just who had built – or rather grown – the vessel and what its capabilities were. It had been built by one of the Ancients closest allies, one of the members of the Alliance of Four Great Races in this part of the universe.

It was a Furling war-shard.

From the information suddenly available to him he knew that while Furling technology was inferior to that of the Ancients it was still immensely powerful. The most worrying for him right now was the vessels power source, the energy crystals. Furling energy crystals acted as a bridge between normal space and subspace domain that they drew energy out of in much the same way as an Ancient portentia module drew power out of a miniature universe. While the amount of power that could be drawn was inferior to the output of a portentia it was still an extremely potent source of power with two or three of them able to match the output of a reflex furnace. Even more concerningly the Furling crystals were actually not that to make and indeed the Ancients had made and used them themselves before they'd developed portentia modules. It certainly wouldn't take the science triumvirates long to figure out the secret of growing them, especially with the Masters increasing the resources assigned to the project. From there interfacing Furling bio-crystalline technology with robotechnology wouldn't be that hard.

"Well that's worrying," he muttered.

"What is," Janus asked abruptly making him jump and spin around and give the other Ascended a glare for trying to give him the Ascended Being equivalent of a heart attack. Naturally his friend ignored the glare and just gave him a look inviting him to explain what was worrying him. Rather than explain Zor merely sighed and gestured for Janus to come over.

"Oh dear," Janus commented when he saw what it was that he was looking at and who was investigating the technology of the crashed ship. "I can see why your worried. Furling tech can be quite powerful, not as powerful as ours was at the time of the war with the Wraith but still dangerous. Unfortunately there is nothing that either of us can do about it."

"I know damn those Others."

"Indeed. How long do you think it would take your former people to adapt the technology into their own?"

"Not that long," Zor admitted, "the science and engineering triumvirates are regrettably very, very good at their job. They're engineered to be. I wish there was a way we could slow them down without tipping out hand."

"Fate is already intervening there. Given who is about to arrive in some of the outer territories of the Tirolian Empire they might not get enough time to properly integrate the Furling technology into their own," Oma said as she appeared nearby with Ganos in tow.

Zor frowned. "Whatever do you mean," he asked.

"May I?" Oma asked gesturing to the font.

"Sure."

Zor stepped back and watched as Oma approached and manipulated the font to bring in an image of another part of Tirolian space. Then she stepped back and gestured for him to come back over and look, which he promptly did to find the font was now focused on a region of space dominated by a vast blue, green and brown nebula that he recognised as the Talen'kala Expanse, which generally marked the outermost border of the Empire in the largest of the Andromeda Galaxies satellite galaxies.

For a few moments he saw nothing but the nebula then a series of fold spheres burst into normal space and began to expand. The moment he saw them Zor knew that there was something different with these fold spheres, the colour was all wrong being a purple-blue colour and being almost completely opaque instead of being a translucent golden colour. As he watched the fold spheres evaporated and four groups of ships hung there in space, ships that sent a shiver of terror down the spines of all four Ascended beings as they knew who those ships belonged to and the horror that was soon going to stalk the worlds of the Tirolian Empire slaughtering and killing anyone they encountered in one of the most terrifying ways possible.

Zor grimaced as he saw the ships. As much as he might hate the Robotech Masters for how they had perverted his discoveries, especially protoculture, and used it to conquer a sizeable chunk of the known universe he wouldn't have wished for them to encounter these people. The innocents who were going to die horribly now didn't deserve it, hell he wouldn't even want Nimuul to encounter and be killed by one of these beings. Beings that Tirolian myth referred to as the Tosh Valat, or Life Thief, but which every other race who knew of them knew by another name. A far more ominous and far more hated and feared one.

The name…

…Wraith.

Authors Notes: Well another interlude bites the dust. I hope you all enjoyed it, I know some of you will be wondering how the Wraith have gotten their vampiric hands on space folding technology the answer is quite simple they shot down a Zentraedi ship that was searching their galaxy as part of the effort to find Zor's battlefortress. The Zentraedi crew were killed in the crash but their ships survived and from its databanks the Wraith not only learned of the existence of new feeding grounds that would be bountiful beyond belief but inside the vessel they discovered the fold drive and learned that fold drives don't have the deleterious effect on their biomechanical ships that conventional hyperspace technology does. The first group of hiveships and cruisers to arrive is an advanced force sent by the Wraith to chart these new feeding grounds and assess the strengths and capabilities of the spacefaring species present within the boundaries of the Empire.

Finally next chapter we will get back to what's going on with the ship hidden on Mars, the Ancient space station formerly hidden inside Phobos and everything else that's there on the red planet. I just wanted to do this interlude to fill you in on what's happening elsewhere and provide the background for some future chapters as the appearance of the Wraith in the Tirolian Empire is going to make for some very strange bedfellows uniting against them to say the least.