Robotech: The Stargate Saga Version 2.1
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.
Chapter Thirteen
United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City, North American Quadrant
A Short Time Later
Silence reigned in the meeting chamber of the United Earth Defence Council as the council members listened intently to the report being presented to them by General O'Neill – who thanks to the miracle of foldspace comms was able to talk in real time from the newly established Base Erebor – as he revealed everything that had happened in the system in the day and a half that had passed since they had first stepped through the Stargate. To say it was a lot would have been an understatement.
When they'd first sent them through the gate - and dispatched three Zentraedi ships with additional supplies, equipment and personnel – to survey the planet. They had not only discovered that there was a second habitable world in the system = one that was much closer to the star and was an oceanic world with a predominantly tropical climate – but they had encountered the surviving crew of a ship that had four years earlier crashed down on said planet. A crew that was composed of a mixture of humans and humanoid reptilian aliens called Serrakin. A crew that Jack had, due to being the highest ranking officer in the system, given the order to rescue.
"Where are the survivors now," Secretary Anderson asked calmly.
"I allowed them to go through the Stargate to return to their homeworld or at least a planet in the territory claimed by the Serrakin sir," Jack answered, "our medical facilities are still being set up as are our guest quarters, so we had nowhere else to put them."
"Letting them go might not have been a good idea," Colonel Matthews said with a scowl.
"And what would you have me do Matthews throw them in the stockade like prisoners," Jack demanded glaring at the former member of the National Intelligence Directorate which like most of the other US military and intelligence services had been integrated into the UEDF as well as UEG intelligence sections when the US joined the United Earth Government. He had periodically clashed with Matthews and other members of the NID – especially a particularly slimy bastard called Harry Maybourne – in the past and it always left a particularly sour taste in his mouth.
"If necessary, they could have told us a lot," Matthews answered glaring at the hologram of the other man. For a former special forces' operator – who'd inexplicably turned his back on serving his country in that way, instead becoming an instructor at the Air Force Academy both before and after the US Air Force turned it over to UEDF control – he could be far too moral and squeamish about things like this.
"That's enough," Gloval said giving Matthews a firm look, well aware of his background and some of the practices that the NID, CIA and groups like them in America had gotten up to in the years before the creation of the UEG. They behaved far too much like the KGB and others back in his homeland for his comfort.
"But..."
"Enough Colonel," Secretary Anderson added firmly his glare, along with one that Admiral Gloval was now also sporting, telling the other man to drop it or else, from the way he winced Matthews got the message. Still, he decided to hammer the point home.
"As the senior officer and UEG official on site General O'Neill was well within his rights and power to make that call," he continued "and we are not people who will imprison others unjustly just to get information or technology from them. EBSIS might do that, the United Islamic Republics might do that, but we will not. Is that clear Colonel?"
"Crystal," Matthews answered looking like he had bitten on a particularly sour lemon
"Good," Anderson replied making a mental note to see if it was possible to replace Colonel Matthews on the defence council. Regardless of his political connections the man's blatant xenophobia and general surly attitude to anyone and everyone who disagreed with his politics was becoming quite tiresome to deal with. "General O'Neill did the Serrakin commander give any indication that they will contact us again? And what are you doing about the crashed ship?"
"He did indeed sir though obviously he couldn't give any timeframe. It will no doubt depend on how his and his surviving crews' debriefings go. "As for the crashed ship, the Clarion, I ordered Captain Elixan to deploy a squad of Regult to secure the area around the ship. I doubt anyone is going to come and try to take it as not only has it been crashed on that planet for over four years, but scan results forwarded to me confirm that the vessel is almost completely flooded with only the forward section being anywhere near dry."
"I see. Is there anything else to report on this issue?"
"Not on this issue no sir. However, I must report that the last of the satellites carried aboard Captain Serval's cruiser have fully deployed in orbit and that initial scans of the surface have been completed."
"And?" Anderson questioned knowing that there was a point to this.
"We believe we have located a suitable site for the construction of a colony, especially if we land one of the Angels when the first is built," Jack answered before manipulating controls on his end. Immediately another holographic screen pixeled into existence showing a topographical scan of part of the surface of the planet that was clearly taken from one of the satellites. It zoomed in and showed a long lake that stretched a length of over four hundred miles and was nearly a hundred miles wide at its widest point.
"This lake is located several hundred kilometres north-west of the location of Base Erebor," Jack explains. "Scans confirm that it is a vast body of fresh water even bigger than Lake Baikal. I will be putting together some teams to travel to the area and investigate it in more depth, but we've detected a number of shallow bays that should provide suitable landing sites for colony ships. I have forwarded our findings so far to Fort Minotaur for more in depth analysis."
"I see thank you general," Anderson answered pleased by this development. "Is there anything else you wish to report?"
"Not at this time. I will inform you as soon as we know more about the geology around the lake and if it is indeed suitable for our use."
"I see thank you general. You may go," Anderson said prompting Jack to nod and close down the communications link from his end causing the holographic screens to pixel out of existence as the photonic projection fields maintaining them powered down. He looked at the rest of the council. "Opinions?"
"The finding of a potential colonisation site so soon is very promising," Gloval pointed out, "hopefully everything will turn out to be favourable in the location General O'Neill just revealed to us."
"It is good news," Matthews admitted, still quietly smarting from the slap down he'd been given. He also cursed himself for letting the years of bad blood that there were between him and O'Neill – the other man had wrecked far too many of the NID projects he'd been involved in before the incident with his son saw him leave spec ops work – get the better of him. "Though are we in a position to build colony ships yet?"
"Not for another few days," Gloval admitted, "the repairs to the main shipyard section on the Factory Satellite are nearly complete. Once they're complete we will be able to commence construction of our first colony ship and some warships to escort and protect it."
"Once repairs are done how long will construction take?" Anderson asked.
"Given the size and complexity of the Angel-class colony ships we estimate ten days from the beginning of construction to the end," Exedore answered from the screen where his image was as he was attending virtually since he was still at Fort Minotaur at this time. "Which is incidentally the amount of time that would normally be taken building a Quiltra Queleuel-class ship in standard supercarrier configuration."
"Standard configuration?" General Markwell asked curious.
"The Quiltra Queleuel-class ships are the most modular vessels in our entire armada," Exedore told him, "there are three main configurations used. The standard configuration is a supercarrier as despite being smaller the Quiltra Queleuel can in this configuration carry as many fighters and battle mecha as a Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class command dreadnought like Lord Breetai's vessel. They can also be configured as landing ships which more than doubles the battle mecha compliment and finally as support vessels. In that configuration one can carry enough supplies and equipment to support a standard combat fleet for several months even in the event of heavy combat. Of the four that were with the Imperial-class fleet me and Commander Breetai brought back with us to Sol three were in supercarrier configuration with one in support configuration. The other four support ships remained with Dolza and were destroyed with his base."
"Yikes," Markwell breathed with an inward shiver at the reminder of just how terrifyingly powerful the Zentraedi actually were, how incomprehensively vast their fleets were or had been. It was good that the majority of the Zentraedi people were now on their side.
"Indeed," Gloval agreed. "With the council's permission I will put some people to work assessing and assembling prospective colonists."
"I think we can all agree to that admiral proceed."
Gloval nodded. "I will set someone to work on it as soon as we are done here," he replied getting a nod and a smile for permission from Secretary Anderson.
"Is there anything else?" Anderson asked.
"There is one thing sir," Markwell said.
"Go on."
"Sir are you know when we reconstructed the coordinates found on the central Stargate cover stone it yielded a number of different potential coordinates. One of which was the coordinates of the planet we are now planning to begin colonising."
"I know that. What are you getting at general?"
"Sir there are still several possibly gate addresses that we have not dialled yet," Markwell answered, "General Richards is asking for permission to dial some of them and, if we can connect with another Stargate, send drones through to find out what is on the other side."
"That could be quite dangerous," Matthews pointed out, "still we do need to know what is out there. Are more of this Goa'uld race Vosegus belongs to still out there? If so, how powerful are they? Are they a threat to us?"
"All of those are good questions," Gloval agreed with a nod, even as he recalled reading the initial debriefing that Colonel Davies had done of Nathan Hunter which had included information, provided by Nathan, on what Vosegus actually was. That he was a member of a race of sentient alien parasites called the Goa'uld, parasites who invaded the bodies of other beings and took them over like something out of a bad science fiction show or horror movie. The prospect of such beings being out there amidst the sea of stars, doing who knew what kind of things with the bodies of the poor souls they'd infested, was terrifying and all too real. Especially as these Goa'uld seemed to have a frightening level of knowledge of bioengineering considering what they had done to Nathan Hunter and others, transforming them into beings who while closely related were strictly speaking no longer human.
"Still, we must be cautious how we approach getting answers to those questions," he said grimly, "if the Goa'uld are indeed still out there – after all we know from Nathan Hunter's debrief that Vosegus has been trapped here on Earth for over six thousand years ever since our distant ancestors rebelled against the Goa'uld and buried the Stargate - then we need to know."
"Six thousand years would be a long time for an empire to survive," Matthews pointed out knowing that in their own history even the greatest of historical empires like the Roman Empire and the British Empire had only lasted a few centuries before collapsing.
"Not really colonel," Exedore answered, "while our records of them are incomplete due to the ravages of time it is known that the Old Ones – the creators of the star portals or Stargates – ruled multiple galaxies for tens of millions of years, only vanishing ten thousand years ago. And then there are the Asgard an extremely advanced and powerful race that my own has clashed with numerous times in the past and we've always come off the worst for such battles. The Asgard have been a spacefaring society capable of intergalactic travel for thirty thousand years. The point I am trying to make is empires can survive for such lengths of time with relative ease."
"Unbelievable," Matthews muttered staring at the hologram of Exedore in shock. As much as he wanted to deny what he was saying, he was an alien and thus immediately untrustworthy in his mind something made worse by the fact that he was a damned Zentraedi, he knew he couldn't. Something in the way Exedore had spoken said he was telling the truth, that it was possible for space empires to survive far longer than anyone on Earth had even been counting time.
"So, the Goa'uld Empire could still exist?" Anderson asked.
"It is a very real possibility," Exedore confirmed.
"We have to find out, but we need to be very careful how we do it as Admiral Gloval points out," Markwell admitted, "which is why I suggest that we try one or more of these created addresses and see what's there. Our soldier's armour doesn't have any markings or anything on it that could lead a hostile force back here so while it is a risk it's a manageable one."
Anderson frowned thoughtfully. "I will have to clear this with the UEG Secretary General," he said at last, "though I cannot see there being many objections as long as we are careful. Minister Exedore would the Zentraedi be able to provide any ships for support purposes should this be authorised?"
"We can indeed," Exedore replied, "if the mission is approved, I will speak with Lord Breetai and arrange for a ship, or multiple ships be made ready to fold to any target planet."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Is there anything else gentlemen?" Anderson asked looking around at the council members both those present in person and those who like Exedore were attending via hologram to see if anyone had any other business they wanted to address. Thankfully nobody spoke. "Then this meeting of the United Earth Defence Council is adjourned."
Somewhere in the Ural Mountains
EBSIS, That Same Time
Vosegus smiled as he relaxed in a comfortable chair in his new living quarters and took a sip of the latte that Elena had carefully prepared for him. The journey to get here had been long and difficult and hadn't been helped by the fact that the once very comprehensive European road network – which had made crossing the European part of the vast Eurasian continent easy – was still something of a shambles due to the Rain of Death. Though it had been two years since that day when Dolza had bombarded the planet with quantum energy weapons – unleashing an orgy of destruction that even the likes of Sokar or Anubis would have probably found excessive -large areas of the planet still had a very long way to go to recover from both the attack and the climatic and geological chaos that had followed it.
While he had taken considerable advantage of the chaos that had followed – it had let him really expand his forces in a way that he hadn't been able to since the Second World War, getting some of his people slipped into the guard details of some of the worst of the Nazi concentration camps had been a work of genius if he did say so himself as it had let him cheery pick people he wanted from prisoners and guards alike – there were times like now when it was quite vexing. It didn't help that he absolutely hated spending long periods of time on the road, even in the air conditioned comfort and luxury of a limo and preferred to fly whenever possible.
Taking another sip of his coffee Vosegus glanced around the room that were part of his new personal chambers. They were somewhat spartan to say the very least, especially as unlike his last base where he had had a surface villa – with some absolutely gorgeous views across the Dolomites – to sleep in and live in when he wanted to this entire base was deep underground. Thus, the only thing he saw was bare painted walls, which prompted him to make a mental note to speak to Elena and get his lotaur to organise getting some of his art collection set up in here to give the place a bit of colour as well as a sense of grandeur appropriate to a living god.
The sound of a gentle, polite knock on the door caught his attention.
"Enter," he called out putting the latte down on a nice mahogany side table. The door opened and Elena came in.
"Forgive me for disturbing you my lord," she said with a bow to him after she closed the door. "I know you wanted a bit of quiet time to settle in."
Vosegus waved it off. "It is of no concern," he replied genuinely touched by his lotaur's concern. Elena was the best servant he had had for a long time, not really since his days sitting in a villa on the Bays of Naples – or Sinus Cumanus as it had been known at the time – during the height of the Roman Empire inhabiting the body of an influential senator had he had such a good servant. He would really have to get around to keeping a copy of her DNA and neural patterns that way if she died – as she inevitably would being human and not a living god – he would be able to create another just like her. "What is it?"
"My lord the people you were expecting have arrived," Elena replied pleasing Vosegus greatly, "I had the new Prime escort them to your audience chamber. However, my lord there is a complication."
"What kind of complication?"
"My lord three of them are armed with concealed firearms and are not infected with nish'ta or so any sign on our sensors of previous infection," Elena answered, "perimeter sensors have also shown two a van with more armed people inside parked two minutes away from our perimeter."
Hmm seems someone has twigged that I have control over some of their highest ranking officers and want to stop me, Vosegus thought not angry or anything merely amused. He had dealt with things like this before, many times over the millennia he'd been stuck here on this planet. Thus, he easily recognised this both for what it was and the opportunity that it was.
"It is of little concern," he said at last smiling at the somewhat surprised Elena. "I have dealt with this kind of ambushes and counteractions against me before, many times in fact. Have Prime and the Jafftari armed with shock grenades and zat'nik'atels disable and detain everyone in the van. We will infect them."
"As you wish my lord. What of the three that are with the delegation?"
"Leave them to me. I assume that the nish'ta emitters are set in the statues in the audience chamber?"
"Of course, my lord."
"We will strike simultaneously. Let me know when Prime and the Jafftari are in position."
"Yes, my lord."
Audience Chamber
Ten Minutes Later
Agent Dimitri Karinov was nervous as he stood behind Generals Maysak and Vasnetsov in a quite ornate room in a bunker that nobody had any idea was here before today. He could tell that something was wrong, wasn't right that they were being left waiting for far too long though the two generals didn't seem to mind. While he waited for the person, they had come to see to show himself, someone called Vosegus thought that was obviously a code name for some UEG stooge albeit a quite inventive one since Vosegus was a very obscure Celtic god of hunting and forestry, so they could arrest him. Arrest him and making him pay for infecting two of the most senior generals with some kind of organism. Though what said organisms' purpose was they weren't certain.
The organism had been noticed a few days ago when the local office of the EBSIS Internal Security Agency – the modern descendant of the old KGB – had noticed that Vasnetsov had reduced the number of troops at a specific and obscure border crossing. When they'd queried it, they'd merely been told it was for an exercise, but discrete queries had shown no exercise was scheduled, so they'd dug a little bit deeper. Finding the fact that the general had been having a routine blood test had been a stroke of luck and one of their agents had infiltrated the medical practice and discovered everyone there behaving somewhat oddly. Almost like they were all waiting for something.
Deeper investigation had revealed the presence of an unknown biological organism in all of them. An organism that while systemic was especially focused on the neurological system especially the brain. Checks of the blood of several officers who used the clinic confirmed that they were all infected as well though there was no information on how it had happened or how far It went. Not knowing this had prompted the regional office to decide to deal with this themselves rather than report it to higher ups who might be compromised.
The chance came when their operative had overheard Vasnetsov and Maysak talking. Talking about how excited they were to finally meet their god and how they would do anything he asked to support his agenda now that he had arrived. From there replacing their security detail – something neither could question – at the last minute had been easy. It had certainly gotten the three of them into the compound with their backup waiting a few minutes away.
The sound of a door opening on the far side of the room caught his attention. He looked over to see a tall muscular man dressed in very expensive silk and satin clothing came into the room. Dimitri immediately felt the hairs on the back of neck stand up as there was something in the way he looked, something that wasn't quite right. He didn't feel right in a way that he couldn't put his finger on. There was a strange metallic device wrapped around one of his hands but no obvious weapons.
Calmly he went to the large gold Egyptian-style throne standing on a dais with a large obelisk on each side and sat down. As he did so Dimitri was startled when both Vasnetsov and Maysak stepped forward and went down on one knee, heads bowed with looks of profound reverence on their faces.
"My lord you honour us with your presence," Oleg Vasnetsov said.
"It is good to see you my children," Vosegus said the distorted inhuman voice, and the glow that suddenly appeared in his eyes sending a wave of shock, horror and understanding through Dimitri. This being wasn't a man at all, but some type of alien he had to be as humans didn't have such distorted booming voices nor did their eyes glow. "And I see you have brought me some new disciples."
"I think not whoever you are," Dmitri said drawing his concealed gun and pointing it at this 'Vosegus' character. Around him his fellow agents did the same. "You're under arrest."
Vosegus chuckled. "Such amusing insolence," he said, "do you think I did not know you had those and that you were non-believers? I am a god we know such things."
"Enough you're coming with us, and you will tell us about this organism you've infected our people with and how to cure it. As we speak our people are coming."
"They are not. Your little party of agents has already been dealt with, they will soon serve me… as will you," Vosegus replied as he raised his kara'kesh not at all concerned about the guns. The agent he was speaking to immediately fired only for the bullet to impact a previously invisible force field in front of the dais making it glow a pale blue and ripple slightly but otherwise doing nothing. "Amusing but not enough."
As he spoke Vosegus used the neural interface in the kara'kesh to not only activate another force field to contain the intruders but gave the command for the nish'ta emitters in that section of the room to activate. Immediately multiple small, concealed hatches in the floor opened and a shimmering green mist began to spray up at them.
Dimitri's eyes widened and he opened fire again only for an energy field to block his shots with ease. Looking around he could see the mist rising rapidly filling a cell around him and his fellow agents made of the energy fields that glowed softly as the mist encountered them. With a jolt of horror, he realized how badly they had misjudged this situation, they had thought it would be an easy problem to solve as they had dealt with UEG intelligence ops before. They had not expected this to be an incursion by an alien who was obviously not a Zentraedi.
It was at that moment that the mist reached his mouth and nose. He tried to hold his breath and not let it in, but it was futile as there was something in it that made him numb and made the needed muscles relax. The mist surged into him through his mouth, nose and even through his ears. It strangely didn't hurt at all there was just a feeling of something cool and fussy sweeping over his thoughts bringing with it a strange euphoria and then grippling weakness. He could feel himself falling, slumping to the floor with more of the gas entering his body. The fuzzy feeling got stronger as did a new feeling of suddenly wanting, needing to sleep he tried to fight it, but it was too strong and second later he knew no more as darkness enveloped him.
Vosegus watched amused, this had been an entertaining diversion, as the three agents succumbed to the initial effects of the modified nish'ta organism. It was admirable that they were trying to fight against the effect, as futile as it was, and spoke well of how good a servant they would be once appropriately conditioned. Who knew he might even honour them with conversion into Jafftari.
After a few moments the cloud of nish'ta filling the force field cell he'd erect disappeared, absorbed into the bodies of the now unconscious agents. He closed the nish'ta emitters down and deactivated the force field before tapping a concealed control on the arm of his throne. Immediately the main doors opened, and Elena came in along with six of his more burly, non-Jafftari worshippers/slave soldiers.
"Take them to prepare them for service to our lord," Elena ordered the followers who obeyed without question. While they did so Elena went up to her lord and master and bowed to him. "My lord I have news from Prime the operation was a complete success using a combination of surprise – they did not expect our forces to appear behind them via transport rings – and shock grenades the non-believers were all subdued in seconds. There was no chance for them to raise any alarm."
"Excellent are they being taken for processing?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Very good. Now what shall I do with you two?" Vosegus asked looking at the two shaking disciples. "Which one of you was lapse in your preparations for my arrival and allowed non-believers to get close?"
"It's my fault my lord," Oleg admitted, "I was so excited at your coming and concerned with getting you across the border quickly that I got careless and tipped off the local branch of the ISA that something was wrong. They must have investigated and attempted to deal with the security breach themselves rather than report it up the ranks. I would have known immediately if they did, especially since the head of the ISA Colonel Kadtsyn is a believer. I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit."
"As you should but there will be none this time."
"I thank you for your mercy my lord."
"Now tell me about the local ISA office. How many agents are there?"
"There will be another tactical assault team at their base along with several more agents as well as analysts."
"You know where they are?"
"Yes, my lord. Do you plan to eliminate them?"
"No that will raise too much attention. No, we will take them as we have taken these here now. Then we will plan our next move against the unbelievers who dared to thwart my will."
"My lord I believe that there is something kept at a nearby base that will help you in that goal," Sergey Maysak answered. "I know because I was in charge of the base during the Cold War."
"Please explain."
Maysak smiled and nodded before explaining to his lord and master what he knew. It was something that had been discovered during the nineteen sixties and had been quietly studied by first the old Soviet Union then EBSIS ever since. On top of some items recovered by the Red Army from the Nazi's during the Second World War it had led to a number of technological advancements though they currently lacked the knowledge to use what they had to their greatest advantage.
As his disciple explained what they had, what they had found and been studying for decades, Vosegus began to laugh as he realised just what they had, and which now was about to fall into his lap.
Finally, things were looking up.
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. This chapter marks the end of part two of this particular story – the next part New Friends, New Foes – will begin with the next chapter and might involve a slight time jump. I haven't exactly decided yet. With Vosegus things are looking up for him – anyone care to speculate what it is the Soviets found in the sixties and started to learn things from and which is still under EBSIS control – and will in the medium to long term make him a serious headache for everyone concerned. Hopefully the next chapter won't be too long in coming. We will have to see. Until next time.