Robotech: The Stargate Saga: Otherworld
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement – sadly all Stargate and Robotech characters and concepts remain the property of MGM, Amazon and Harmony Gold 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 profit to give to anyone.
Author Notes: This story is kind of an AU spin-off/side-story of my currently ongoing fic Robotech: The Stargate Saga. I was just getting started on the next chapter of that story when this particular plot bunny struck and refused point blank to leave me alone. It this case the plot bunny was how would the course and events of the First Robotech War play out if Earth had had access to the Stargate and had for quite some time. In this reality the UEG, eager to prove its detractors wrong about only being interested in using the technology of The Visitor/SDF-1 for military purposes, was building a network of pipes and desalinisation plants with robotech components to turn the Sahara from a desert into a fertile grassland when they stumbled across and retrieved the gate.
This story begins at the start of the First Robotech War, at this point Earth has been using the Stargate for five years and has acquired and reverse engineered some useful technology though they have gone out of their way to avoid antagonising the Goa'uld mindful of the fact that the SDF-1's builders would be coming for their ship. There will periodically be flashbacks to earlier events but only where appropriate. Whew that was a longer author note than I expected but it's done so let's get cracking shall we.
Chapter One
UEG Government Jet
T-4 Hours to Zentraedi Arrival
"Are we there yet?"
Sitting in one of the comfortable synthetic leather seats of the government jet – one of the many that had been making this journey over the last few days, all preparing for this afternoon's festivities on Macross Island – Brigadier General Jack O'Neill, current commandant of the UEDF Academy in Colorado Springs, resisted the impulse to groan in annoyance at the whinging, whining tone that came from one of his two youngest children. It wasn't the first time since they'd left the family home earlier this morning that either Alice or Amelia had used that tone and said those exact same words. It was frankly starting to get on his nerves a bit how sulky the two fourteen year olds were being.
Sitting next to him his beloved wife Sarah O'Neill scowled and threw a stern look at Alice and Amelia but especially Amelia who was the biggest architect of their behaviour. Alice and Amelia might be identical twins, but Amelia was the more dominant personality wise of the two with Alice just following along as her chief minion/cheerleader. She knew why Amelia was behaving in the way she was, she was sulking about being away from her latest boyfriend – who like the other two she'd had in the last eighteen months she was convinced was her forever love – and couldn't wait to get back home to him. Never mind that this excursion was to perhaps the biggest event on the planet.
"We're almost their little sis," Charlie said from where he was sitting in another seat, gently nursing a coffee and to his mother's eyes looking incredibly handsome in his UEDF uniform though it was different to Jack's as Charlie was wearing the distinctive grey uniform, with the distinctive insignia, of the STORM Commandoes. "You're only going to be away from your boyfriend, Brett for at most forty-eight hours."
"Forever more like," Amelia said pouting while glaring somewhat at her big brother, still somewhat miffed over whatever it was he had said to Brett at the O'Neill family barbeque yesterday. Brett Evencoe, the star quarterback of their high school football team, had attended at her request and at one point Charlie had taken him off to the side. What they had talked about she didn't know but Brett had been as white as a sheet when they'd come back and been even more kind to her than he normally was ever since. "What did you say to him anyway? He's been uber-nice ever since?"
"Sorry sis. Guy talk, you wouldn't understand," Charlie answered sharing a quick glance with Jack who smirked back slightly in approval. He knew of course what his first born had said to the latest boy to want to date one of his little sisters. Knew and approved. Indeed, if Charlie hadn't done it, he would have, putting on his best intimidating general air in the process. Especially as they were both aware of Brett Evencoe's reputation as a serial womaniser. Though it was more effective coming from Charlie especially as Charlie had been wearing jeans and a tank top at the barbeque meaning Brett had been under no illusions of just how big and strong Charlie was. The STORM commando insignia – a storm cloud generating a lightning bolt on a black and silver version of the UEDF kite – tattooed on his right shoulder certainly helped as well.
"You threatened him!" Amelia exclaimed with an angry glare.
"I wouldn't say I threatened him. Merely…."
"…made him aware of the consequences of hurting you," Jack finished for him.
"You knew about it, daddy!" Alice exclaimed.
"Of course. If Charlie hadn't done it, I would have."
"Daddy!" the twins exclaimed together before looking over at Sarah. "MOM."
"Leave me out of it," Sarah said firmly, though she made a mental note to speak to Jack and Charlie about it later. Not that it would do much good as she knew both had a stubborn streak as big as a planet. Plus, she didn't entirely disapprove as she well remembered what teenage boys, with their hormone overloaded brains, could be like especially when they were on a football team that was doing well in the high school sports leagues.
"But mom…"
"No buts you two," Sarah said firmly in a tone of voice that she would allow no argument from the twins on this particular issue. Knowing better than to argue with their mother when she used that tone of voice the twins subsided and just glared at their big – quite literally since he weighed 225 lbs - brother for what they saw as unwarranted interference in one of their love lives by overly macho males. Silently they decided to get together later to begin plotting some appropriate revenge on Charlie.
A ping caught everyone's attention and they all looked up to see that the fasten seatbelts sign had come on. Immediately they all carried out the instruction and buckled up a few moments before the plane began its descent to Macross island.
As they descended Jack looked out the window wanting to see how much the place had changed since the last time he had been here. Naturally the first thing he saw was the SDF-1 her hull gleaming in the bright South Pacific sunshine no longer covered by the scaffolding that had surrounded her for so long. He still sometimes found it hard to believe how much the appearance of that ship; appearing and crashing to Earth had changed the world.
A decade ago, the world had been on the verge of tearing itself apart. The conflict had really begun with all the sphere of influence power games that the old United States and the old Soviet Union had engaged in during the Cold War. The proxy wars they had fought with one another using other smaller nations and paramilitary groups as their weapons. When the Cold War ended with a partial collapse of the Soviet Union – not a total collapse despite what some people in the US had wanted to believe as the Soviets only fell back to their pre-1939 borders – things had gone from bad to worse as in the chaos of that time a lot of weapons and equipment had fallen into the hands of nations and groups who really, really shouldn't have had those things.
With said weapons they had begun fighting one another over various grudges and slights real or imagined. Many of the various paramilitaries – no longer having support from either side of the former Cold War as the US had seen no reason to continue funding/training and equipping them – had come together into the Anti-Unification League and begun disrupting things further. All the permanent members of the UN Security Council had been literally run ragged trying to keep a lid on things and stop the slide towards the nuclear nightmare that would have been a Third World War. They had been failing as despite everyone's best efforts humanity seemed to have given itself over to madness.
Until that was the ship arrived. Falling out of the sky in June a decade ago, levelling cities as it did and causing devastation globally as the violence of its passage through the atmosphere had sent the climate into chaos. The tsunami triggered by it impacting the surface had been even worse levelling cities all around the Pacific Rim, hell whole low lying island chains had been swamped their populations virtually annihilated, but it had done something nobody had thought possible. It had knocked sense into humanity.
Of course, then they'd found out that the vessel was a warship bristling with advanced and deadly weapons – from particle cannons and lasers to missiles and quantum energy weapons – whose power made the strongest nuke ever detonated the Tsar Bomba look like a firecracker. If the revelation of that previously unfathomable level of firepower hadn't been bad enough there had been the discovery that the vessels crew had been literal giants. While that part had been kept from the public the fact that the visitor was a warship hadn't and that the aliens who built it might well come for their ship.
That revelation had changed everything and brought peace to the world. A peace that was more precarious than most people realised. Especially given what had been found four years later, half a world away underneath the sandstone of the Giza Plateau. The Stargate, a device from an unimaginably ancient alien race that allowed interstellar travel via artificial wormholes, had changed the world again. It had brought new friends, new opportunities and unfortunately new dangers and threats beyond the visitor now the SDF-1 and its giant builders.
A jolt through the plane as its wheels touched the hypercrete runway brought Jack out of his thoughts and memories. He blinked and looked around, blushing slightly in embarrassment as he realised how lost in thought he had gotten. The twins, still sulking and being poster girls for teenage angst, hadn't noticed but from the smirks on their faces Sarah and Charlie both had. He glared at them, daring them to say anything, as the plane taxied to a stop.
"Alright we're here," he said undoing his belt and standing up before looking firmly at his daughters who had that look that said they were plotting. "Alice, Amelia stop sulking and revenge plotting right now."
"How did you…" Amelia started to say.
"Amelia I'm your father. There is very little about all three of you," with a glance he included Charlie, "that I don't know. Now come on we have a few things to do before we join today's launch festivities."
"Do we have to go daddy," Amelia asked.
"Yes," Jack, Sarah and Charlie all said at the same time. The twins exchanged a look, shrugged as they knew further resistance would be beyond useless, unbelted themselves stood up and followed the rest of the O'Neill clan…
…out into the tropical heat of Macross Island.
UES Dauntless
Earth Orbit
T-2 Hours to Zentraedi Arrival
"Admiral."
At the sound of someone calling him Admiral Christopher Chase looked up from the report he was reading. To see the yeoman who served as his chief aide had come into his office and was now standing on the opposite side of his desk. "Yes?" he asked.
"Sir I am pleased to report that we have received the last of our supplies and fresh personnel," Yeoman Kathrine Young reported, offering him a tablet which he took with a nod of thanks. "The rest of the task force reports the same. We'll be able to leave for our mission on time."
"Excellent," Chase replied with a smile as he quickly scanned the information on the tablet. It confirmed what Yeoman Young had just reported but with more details such as the fact that among the personnel who had just come aboard via spaceplane was a full squad of STORM Commandoes as well as a posse of agricultural and mining support specialists. All of whom were bound for the colony on Mara which the Dauntless and a dozen other ships were scheduled to take their rotation defending. Especially as intelligence reports, from both the Tok'ra and the Serrakin, indicated that the civil war raging in the Goa'uld Empire was moving out of its latest stalemate phase into yet another more active combat phase. Which meant things could be about to get both interesting and hectic as the Goa'uld didn't really care if anyone was unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire between the two main factions. Collateral damage was very much a foreign concept to the posturing egomaniacal and megalomaniacal parasites.
Alongside the information on the passengers there was a full manifest of their cargo. Several tons of high grade ammonium nitrate fertilizer – thankfully stored in vacuum sealed drums given how volatile it could be – six several hundred gallon tanks of fusion fuel, gravitic fusion reactor components and four defence satellites with associated weapons. He checked to make sure that all was in order before he signed off on the report and handed it back.
"Tell me yeoman are the crew looking forward to observing the launch of the SDF-1 later today," he asked.
"Yes, sir they are," Young replied enthusiastically before a rueful smile appeared on her face, "granted it won't be quite as monumental as it would have been if we hadn't discovered the Stargate a few years ago but given what it made happen… everyone is looking forward to seeing her fly again."
Chase nodded in both understanding and agreement. If the project to green the Sahara using technology reverse engineered from the battlefortress environmental control systems hadn't been launched, they would never have discovered the long-buried Stargate. The SDF-1 would have been their solo vessel capable of interstellar travel, especially as her FTL technology was difficult to understand and heavily reliant on a material that they had no natural source of.
The discovery of the Stargate had changed all of that. Now they had multiple vessels that like the Dauntless that were capable of interstellar travel via a hyperspace drive. A technology that among others had been shared with them by their allies in the Serrakin Commonwealth. Technologies that alongside those they'd been reverse engineering from the SDF-1 had let them become a true spacefaring society. Of course, opening – or rather reopening after six or seven millennia there was still some debate among the Egyptologists, who had had some major egg on their face when it was discovered and they had to admit that a man they had ridiculed was right all along, on when exactly the rebellion that had ultimately buried it had taken place – the Stargate had brought its own unique sets of problems, challenges and threats especially the Goa'uld.
"Good," he said at last, "make everyone aware that we will leave orbit for Mara after the SDF-1's commissioning ceremony is completed."
"Aye sir."
Chase was about to dismiss the young woman to return to her regular duties when alarms abruptly rang throughout the whole nine hundred meter length of the Dauntless. It was a general alert, one level below a full blown combat alert, and immediately had the whole of the Intrepid-class battlecruisers twelve hundred crew scrambling to man their regular duty stations. What the hell? Chase thought looking up in surprise before reaching out and tapping a button on his comm panel.
"Bridge report?" he ordered.
"Admiral long range sensors indicate that a vessel just came out of hyperspace near Saturn," his flag captain Jason Haywood responded immediately. "The vessel is heavily damaged we're reading minimal power and heavy atmospheric and plasma venting."
"Can you identify it?" Chase asked mental alarm bells beginning to sound as that kind of damage to a vessel pointed to only one of two possible conclusions there had been an accident aboard her while in hyperspace that had ultimately caused the drive to shut down violently dumping the ship back into normal space. Alternatively, she could have been attacked and made a blind jump into hyperspace to escape her assailants.
Which meant they could be following.
"We are attempting to do so n… sir we have identification. It's a Serrakin Ras'han-class frigate a long range scouting and patrol vessel. Admiral we are now picking up a distress beacon from her. It's automated."
"Lay in a course to intercept. Prepare for a precision hyperspace jump to her location," Chase ordered, "and advise Alaska Base that we are moving out to assist an allied vessel in distress. I'll be right there."
"Aye sir."
Chase signed off and stood up from behind his desk. He walked around the desk and began making his way towards the door and from there the short journey to the bridge. Yeoman Young falling into step behind him ready to carry out whatever task he assigned her. As they walked Chase found his thoughts dominated by thoughts of the state of the Serrakin vessel. Personally, he hoped that her state was the result of some catastrophic accident or malfunction and not the result of combat.
The former while it would be bad was not as bad as the damage being from a battle. While designed primarily for scouting and patrol duties the Ras'han-class frigate was a surprisingly powerful little combat vessel. Anything that could overpower one of them and force it to flee would have to at least be comparable in power to a Goa'uld Cheops-class cruiser and while he didn't fear one of those flying pyramids – or even its bigger brother the Ha'tak – it would surely be following the Serrakin vessel and would soon show up here.
Which was the last thing anyone wanted as they had worked very hard to conceal who they were from the Goa'uld.
He didn't have much time to think about the consequences of the Goa'uld potentially showing up here as it was at that moment that he walked onto the bridge. To find that it was a beehive of activity with crew members working diligently at their stations as they not only prepared the battlecruiser for a precision hyperspace jump – a very tricky manoeuvre given how exact the timing had to be and you had to factor in things like hyperspace inertia – but to begin rendering aid to any survivors on the Serrakin vessel.
"Status?" he asked as he moved to the commander's chair and sat down.
"Admiral, we have finished calculating the jump to the location of the damaged vessel," Captain Haywood reported, "Alaska Base and orbital traffic control have given us permission to leave orbit as soon as you give the order."
"Consider it given captain. Are all rescue stations manned and ready?"
"Yes, sir they are," Lieutenant Commander Pauline Chaffin, the senior operations officer, reported even as Captain Haywood relayed the order to move out of orbit and make the hyperspace jump – while they could do it from orbit orbital control tended to frown on such things – to the location of the disabled ship to the helmsman. Immediately the battlecruisers powerful gravitic ion sublight engines came to life and the great warship moved out of orbit and began accelerating towards open space.
"Excellent," Chase replied a moment before a thrum of power ran through the ship a moment before, through the bridge viewports, a hyperspace window a crackling whirlpool of blue-white-green light appeared ahead of them. In seconds they entered it and for a moment the shimmering multi-toned blue tunnel of a hyperspace conduit filled the viewports shining its oddly ethereal light into the deliberately darkly lit bridge. It was only there for at most a second before evaporating and Saturn came into view rapidly before stopping as they decelerated to safe normal space cruising speed.
"Admiral we are secure from hyperspace. Sensors are detecting the Serrakin vessel drifting near Titan," Chaffin reported from operations. "We're reading life signs on board though far fewer than is normal for a Ras'han-class ship. Sensors confirm massive damage to the vessel."
"Show me," Chase ordered.
"Aye sir."
Immediately the holographic HUD powered up and brought in an image of the Serrakin vessel. To say it was massively damaged was an understatement. Huge gashes had been ripped in its trinium-titanium hull and a sizeable chunk of its port wing – and the dual light plasma pulse turrets and energy torpedo launcher that would have been there – was simply gone sliced clean off the ship. The sight of the damage sent a real shiver down Chase's spine as it didn't look right for damage inflicted by Goa'uld weapons which, like Serrakin weapons, were plasma based. It looked like the metal had been sliced through, literally disintegrated as the edges of the slice on the wing were smooth with none of the melted or burned look that you got from plasma weapons.
It looked more like what their own weapons, based as they were on those of the SDF-1, could do.
"Admiral we are being hailed by the Serrakin vessel," communications reported.
"Put it through," Chase ordered.
"Aye sir."
Immediately a new window opened on the holographic HUD showing the image of a Serrakin/Human hybrid in one of their red military uniforms and wearing the rank insignia of a captain. The bridge behind him was in shambles with numerous consoles burned out, a broken girder hung down as did some severed cables. Smoke filled the air and technicians could be seen running back and forth in the background attempting to do what repairs they could.
"UES Dauntless this is Captain Barros Keymar of the Serrakin Commonwealth vessel Solios can you hear me?" the hybrid on the screen said pain and desperation in his voice. "We are losing our life support systems please respond."
"Can you establish comms fully," Chase asked looking over at comms.
"I am trying sir their main communications array is destroyed I am attempting to link to the secondary array… ah that's got it try now sir," the senior communications officer replied.
"Captain Keymar this is Admiral Christopher Chase aboard the Dauntless we hear you," Chase replied, "we have search and rescue personnel and shuttles ready to dock with you immediately."
"Thank the maker you can hear me, admiral," Captain Keymar answered sounding relieved, "I will have all my surviving crew head to the airlocks so you can begin evacuating them immediately."
"Understood we will send the ships now," Chase answered looking over at flight ops and nodding. Prompting the other, younger man to turn to his console and give the order. After a second he nodded back at the admiral prompting Chase to turn back to the hybrid man. "They're on their way now. I know this might be hard to answer but can you tell me what happened? Who attacked you? Was it the Goa'uld."
"It wasn't them," Keymar answered, "they might be arrogant but with their ongoing civil war the Goa'uld wouldn't risk attacking the Solios. To do so would invite war with the Commonwealth something that they will not want given what happened the last time we fought one another."
Chase felt cold. "If it wasn't the Goa'uld then who attacked you," he asked. Please, please tell me it's not the Zentraedi, he thought thinking about the giant aliens who would have originally crewed the SDF-1. They had discovered their name from data files found aboard the battlefortress. Not now. Yeah, we're in a better position than we probably would have been before we found the Stargate, but I don't think we're ready for them… not yet.
"It's the ones you warned us about and asked us to keep an eye open for," Keymar answered looking horrified as it had been one thing to hear about the Zentraedi but to actually encounter them was downright terrifying. "We were carrying supplies and equipment to the joint colony on Poseidos when we encountered a massive force of Zentraedi vessels. I attempted to get more information on the composition of the fleet, but they found and fired on us."
"How far away are they?" Chase asked after a few moments of horrified silence.
"Barely seven hundred light years. They were taking on supplies from some kind of mobile station but those that had finished their supply operation were angling for a fold in his direction."
"That's not good. I thank you for telling me. Can you forward us your sensor data on their fleet?"
"I can try but no promises as one of their beams took out the main computer processor. But I can tell you how many ships there were."
"How many?"
"Seven hundred and fifty four."
"Jesus," Chase breathed. "I'll alert my superiors in the meantime my flag captain, Captain Haywood will contact you to coordinate the rescue operation."
Keymar nodded, his expression still grim, before he closed the communications link down from his end. For a few moments everyone on the bridge was silent, all conscious of the fact that they war they had been preparing for, the war they had been dreading for the last decade was about to be unleashed upon them.
"Communications get me Admiral Hayes at Alaska Base now. I don't care what he's doing but I need to speak with him right now."
"Aye sir."
Authors Note: Well here's the first chapter of this AU done. Let me know what you all think.