"Well..." A familiar voice spoke into his head, "This turned out... Stranger than I expected. John? You alright?"
The voice was familiar. Very familiar. He hadn't died, thankfully. He slowly opened his eyes, only to be greeted by the Heads-Up Display on his helmet flaring as the shields powered on. He felt the pinpricks of electricity coursing through his armor. Standing up, the soldier shrugged off the recent 'development' as he scanned the surrounding area, finding nothing but trees and green in his vision.
"Thank God..." That same voice, a female one, whispered right into his ears "John, I'm here..."
Wait...
"Cortana?" He paused, his voice filled with disbelief. A slight, sad chuckle escaped the AI's voice and a screen with her face appeared on his HUD. She was smiling, beaming even, before offering a nod to the Chief. He felt for his weapons, finding his M6G attached to his thigh via mag-lock, as well as his MA5C on his back. Drawing the latter, he looked around, letting his suit's systems power on.
"Happy to see you too. I know you have a ton of questions right now, too, John, as do I, but we have to move... I've amped up the suit's motion tracking system and sensor suite a bit while you were out. We've got 4 bogeys incoming at 500 meters, directly North of us. No IFFs to tag them by." The woman explained. Chief nodded, thumbing the safety off of his AR, before scanning for cover. The treeline to his left would serve the purpose well enough.
He took a knee behind a rather large shrub just as Cortana said "Wait, I'm getting radio transmissions."
The Spartan tensed, watching his Motion Tracker switch from the 1km range to the 500m one and then down to the 250. The grey dots representing their bogeys approached rather rapidly, with several dozen more having just popped up from the woodwork. The closer their bogeys got, the closer the sounds of gunfire and plasma bursts echoed to them. Chief wrapped his finger 'round the trigger of his rifle, before squinting. The visor polarized, zooming into the edge of the treeline across from him.
A ball of golden heat flew into a tree close to him, scorching it. Ahead, he saw the four contacts appear out of the treeline, hosing the targets down with human firearms. They all wore a green BDU with black armor vests, no helmets and several more weapons on their personages. One of them, a tall, dark-skinned man, turned about and fired from what looked like a staff into the trees.
The four jumped into a hole in the center of the clearing, ducking as more gold plasma burned the air around them. Trailing the soldiers and coming out of the woodwork, what looked like troops clad in medieval plate and mail armor emerged, using those same staves as the fourth of the group. The Chief hummed as he watched the exchange of fire. Cortana piped in "John, we should help them."
"Humans fighting humans." The Chief murmured.
"Can I suggest we help the side that has guns, not plasma?" The AI quipped, "Because I'm getting major Deja-Vu from the ones in plate armor."
Fair enough. John wasn't sure if he should intervene at all, but it would be better to pick a side. And the folks ducking in a hole for cover were wearing standard military BDUs, although lacking camouflage and pure green like his armor. He sighed, leaving the moral qualms he had of shooting other humans for later consideration. He stood up, raising his assault rifle and squeezing. Three-round bursts, separated by half a second to maintain accuracy.
The first rounds punched through the leading plate-armor soldier, sending him toppling to the floor. The four in the ditch turned around toward him and all seemed shocked to see him standing up. He waved them toward him, squeezing off continuous bursts to provide cover fire. First one to rush in was a guy with glasses and a boonie hat. He stared up at the Chief, awed, before taking cover behind him and firing his 9mm Sidearm.
The second following in was a woman with blonde, short hair and blue eyes, toting what looked like one of the early special forces weapons. She stopped dead in her tracks, on Chief's right, staring at him and whispering "My God..." before turning toward the last two. The next one in was a man with grey hair, a baseball cap and another MP5, followed by the last one who was toting the staff and... A strange symbol on his forehead.
"Alright, I gotta know who the hell you are..." The grey-haired man said, taking a knee beside the Chief and firing at the enemy with his SMG, "But right now we need to get the hell out of here! We poked a hornet's nest full of'em!" and he pointed at the extra troops arriving through the treeline, replacing those they gunned down faster than they could kill them.
"I'll go dial us out!" The guy in glasses said.
"I will accompany him, O'Neill." The tall man with the staff said as the Chief and the other two fired away. He looked to the Chief, however, before he left, and placed a hand on his shoulder, nodding to him.
"That thing on his forehead..." Cortana murmured, "Give me a few."
"We should start pulling back!" The man said to Chief, changing his mag out for a fresh one. The Chief nodded, before showing them to go ahead. He slowly moved back, firing as the plasma blasts became more and more accurate. One blast actually struck the Chief's shielding, lowering them to about 13% and nearly knocking him on his ass. He continued firing as Cortana piped up again.
"Woah! Okay, that is definitely more energy per shot than any Covenant Plasma weapon I've ever had the displeasure of reading! John, may I suggest something? Run and fire!"
He nodded, slinging his rifle onto his back and drawing his M6 as more plasma scored hits on the trees around him. He followed the path down which the woman and the man ran, only for Cortana to start again "Okay, this is getting insane! I'm detecting a massive energy surge, dead ahead of us! It's like someone just powered on a D-T Fusion Reactor and set it to overdrive!"
The Spartan burst through the treeline on the other side, finding himself face to face with a giant, circular object on a pedestal. The massive ring had a flickering center of what looked to be water. Chief ignored more of Cortana's lines, watching as the four people jumped into the thing's center one by one, with the last ones being him and the staff-wielder.
"Chief! That's a WORMHOLE!" Cortana sounded more giddy than she had any right to be as the Chief turned about and gunned down two more bastards coming out of the treeline. He motioned to the staff-wielder to jump in, which he did. John only followed moments later, bursting through the peculiar field and into deep, blue tunnel that shimmered and shone as bright as the sun, feeling his entire body seemingly disassemble at a molecular level, only to reintegrate itself moments later.
He tumbled down a metal platform, feeling it bend under the weight of his armor before he came to a less-than-pleasant stop square onto a floor made of concrete. He heard the click of firearms being loaded as he stood up, his stomach almost turned inside-out by the sudden, not to mention insane travel through that ring. He heard a loud, harsh noise, like a hiss and roar combined into one, as the device shut itself behind them.
"Woah, woah, woah!" The older man called out as Chief's eyes opened again, "General, tell everyone to stand down! The big guy just helped us get the hell away from Goa'uld troops with the package in tow!"
The Chief pushed himself to his feet again, looking around at the troopers. He was basically a head and a half above everyone else in the massive bunker area they were in. Lowering their firearms at the call out of "Stand down!" from a more authoritative voice, the solders took a step back each, allowing a team comprised of officers and medical staff to enter the bulkhead-shielded room. One of the officers, a more rotund, elderly man, wore the stripes of a Lieutenant General.
Chief restrained himself from saluting for the moment as the man approached. He greeted the Chief, his Texan accent coming out strong "Hello. I am General Hammond, of the SGC. What's your name, son?"
"Alright... I'm back..." Cortana sighed, smiling, "I'll brief you on the things I understood as we go, Chief, but... Right now, I think you know what to do best."
"... Classified, sir." The Chief responded bluntly.
Raising a brow, Hammond nodded "I see... Do you at least have a rank? Going by your armor and weapons, you must be military..."
"Sir... Master Chief Petty Officer." John was reluctant to even say that, but the people here were military. Going by the flags on their shoulders, they were from the United States, which brought several more questions forward. He tried to remain calm as his mind processed the events. He needed to give them just enough information for them to at least not try and arrest him, since he'd have hated fighting his way out of a bunker that seemed to be active duty military.
The General nodded, "A pleasure, then, Master Chief... Didn't know our Navy sent one of their own through the Gate."
Chief shook his head.
"... What, you aren't US Navy?" The man beside the General asked. John nodded to him, to which he spoke, part sarcastic, part careful, "Well... No offense and don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way, big guy, we do appreciate you getting us the hell outta dodge back there, but... Who and what are you exactly? Because that looks and acts like the kind of armor we would make... If we knew how... And your weapons? They're guns."
"It's a long story." He responded.
The man sighed, rolling his eyes, then nodded "Always is... By the way, we forgot introductions while you were saving our behinds from the Goa'uld. I'm Jack O'Neill, colonel, US Air Force. Those back there are major Sam Carter,' He pointed to the blonde woman, who waved, smiling, "doctor Daniel Jackson, our resident archaeologist," And the guy with the Boonie hat stared at the Chief, dumbfound, followed up by:"and finally, Teal'c."
The tall man bowed his head respectfully to the Chief.
"Well, general..." the colonel looked to Hammond and spoke calmly "We'll... Go get changed and wait for debrief. Do let us know what Chief says, would ya?"
"I'll see if I can get him to participate in the debrief himself, after a medical checkup." Hammond returned, "SG-1, you're dismissed. Chief, if you'd follow me and the good doctor to Medical..."
"Play along." Cortana noted, "I need to get a few more readings through your suit."
He nodded his approval to the general and his staff. Under escort, the Spartan marched down the tight concrete hallways of the massive underground complex while Cortana ran information through the suit's central database. Soldiers, scientists and other staff alike eyed the Supersoldier with confusion and a slight tinge of fear in their eyes. He marched on regardless, watching the troops of the United States Air Force about as well as they watched him.
He was flanked by two soldiers carrying assault rifles chambered in 5,56 by 45 NATO rounds, with two more at the front, escorting the general and the female doctor of the staff. Chief had seen her name tag on her white labcoat. Fraser. Stopping in front of a door, the general said "One more thing, Master Chief. Your firearms, if you don't mind... We aren't sure of your exact goals, so, for me, the safety of my staff is paramount."
"I understand." The Chief nodded. He disliked the idea, but went along with it for the sake of keeping a peaceful interaction with fellow humans. He handed the firearms over to one of the soldiers escorting him, before following the doctor and general inside the medical bay of the base. He caught glimpses of a few wounded soldiers hidden behind curtains, but nothing too severe.
The Spartan was shown to a bed in the medbay, where he stood there, on his feet.
"Uhm... Son, we may need you to sit down." Hammond explained.
"Sir, the armor I'm wearing weighs four and a half metric tonnes." The Spartan responded bluntly, "I'd break it." and he tilted his head to the bed. Hammond hummed, while doc Fraser seemed a bit concerned. The general and her exchanged glances, before Hammond nodded understandingly.
"Well... Can you at least take it off?" Fraser raised a brow, getting a strange look from him, one she couldn't figure out due to the polarized visor. A shake of the head was a prompt answer, to which the doctor sighed. She added, "Chief, with all due respect, I'm gonna need to run blood tests, samples, data, information about your biology, all to ensure you aren't a biological threat to the rest of us while you're staying here."
"Huh... Chief, listen... I'm not sure what you think about this, but I'm thinking we still play along as best as we can. This place's atmosphere, its systems, its EM signature... I think we're on a base on Earth. I'd just need confirmation from one of these people to remove one equation out of the thousands of them I just got from us travelling through a stable wormhole into here. You can give them data from my chip if you have to, for blood tests and analyses... Don't worry, I'll 'conveniently' leave out myself and the gene mods."
He shut off his external microphone, then said "You sure?"
"Safest bet, honestly. And one that doesn't involve us shooting our way out of an operations base that resembles UNSC ones... Plus, I can pluck some data out of one of the computers." She said cheekily, "Give a girl a chance."
"Mhm..." He murmured, then switched on his microphone and said "I can give you all the data you want." and he tapped the back of his helmet, "Just transferred all of it to a chip in the helmet that I can give you."
"Huh... Well..." Fraser hummed, "Understood, armor stays on, then..." She said. The Chief nodded and, once Cortana gave the quick go-ahead, he removed the chip from the slot in the back of the helmet and handed it over. Fraser and the general looked over the shining crystalline data system with muted awe, before the good doctor approached the computer and, thankfully, found a port that seemed to fit. The computer itself looked like one of the late 1990s systems that you'd find in the 2500s at some antique stores back on every planet.
... Cortana smiled. The system was godawful. IT was much, much simpler than anything she had ascertained these people would have. If they were Innies, the UNSC must've royally screwed them in the past 5 years for their tech to be so easily broken into. If they weren't... Which Cortana was now discovering was the case, then their cyber-defense mechanisms were...
"Oh..." Cortana murmured, pulling up various bits of Data she could muster from the base's mainframe. She seemed dumbfound at what she read, focusing on both reading out the data and sending up the information needed by doc Fraser, minus armor specs, gene-mods and her, of course. This place. It was Earth. It was Earth near the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st.
They were in the United States of America, at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Inside a very secretive sublevel of the place, as well. Stargate Command. So much raw data to read through in such small packages made her job easier. She downloaded what she could out of it before 'retreating' back to the storage space of the chip. Fraser had finished the examination of the data and ejected the chip, before handing it back to the Spartan.
"Clean bill of health, sir. He looks as human as the rest of us, minus the... Power armor, I'm guessing." Fraser looked to Hammond, "I'll read through a bit more of the data while you introduce him to the place."
"Good to hear, doctor." The man gave a nod, "Chief, you wouldn't mind participating in a quick debrief with SG-1, would you?"
"Say yes. I've got enough data to read through here that we've got the time for a debriefing." Cortana voiced, "I can tell you a few things as we go, if you want."
He nodded to Hammond, who then led the way as Cortana briefed him on what little bits of data she managed to read. The Cheyenne Mountain Complex was one of the major UNSC operational bases in North Americaduring the early time of the invasion in 2552, if Chief recalled his briefings correctly. What worried him, however, wasn't the complex, its secretive programs or anything of the sort. What worried the Chief honestly was the fact that they were on Earth at the end of the 20th Century, when mankind had barely begun properly exploring space. That and they were inside the base of a Human national military whose nation had turned into something different long ago in their world.
Hammond entered the briefing room above the Stargate's command center, 'SG-1' immediately standing up. They greeted the general with a salute and he said "At ease, everyone. Please, be seated..." And he watched the Chief halt at the end of the table, near one of the windows presenting exoplanets worth exploring through the gate. Hammond shrugged, then started "Major Carter, I understand that you recovered an artifact off of P3X-991 that the Goa'uld were scrambling over each-other to take back."
"Yes, sir." Carter nodded, "Going by what we saw, that being a battalion-sized unit assigned to guarding this device, we can safely assume it is quite important to their plans."
"Anyone have any idea to what System Lord this force belonged? Teal'c?" Hammond looked around, then stopped at Teal'c.
With a calm nod, the gentle giant started, "They were Jaffa loyal to Apophis, of the newly-rebuilt Serpent Guard. I can only assume the punishment they must have been threatened with to so fiercely fight for the device."
"I see. Any theories as to what it is?" Hammond inquired, looking to Carter again. She nodded.
"I think it's a refiner of some kind, or at least a part of one. Initial scans detected really minor radiation, commonly found in Naquadah ore and a relatively deeper analysis found almost microscopic chunks of impure Naquadah stuck to the walls of the device. Perhaps it is part of some massive refinery that they lost on P3X-991, or perhaps it is the refinery itself." Carter continued, "I'd need to analyze it properly to get a good answer."
"Understood, major. You may continue your studies after we're done with the debriefing. Thank you. Now, onto the elephant in the room..." The Air Force general looked toward the Chief, his gaze followed by just about everyone. The Spartan was used to being scrutinized by officers at this point, having lived through basic with XOs and COs like Chief Mendez. The general arranged a file on the table in front of him and spoke, "Master Chief, forgive me for being so blunt, but I must ask, how did you come to be on P3X-991?"
"I don't know, sir. Something must've occurred during my mission to send me there." The Spartan responded, his voice dull, calm.
"I see. And your mission was what exactly?" The man raised a brow, leaning onto the table.
Chief hummed, considering what to say very carefully as he recalled his operation aboard the Mantle's Approach. Every little detail, from the boarding to the nuke going off and Cortana's... Everything played back in his mind, but he felt that, if he were to say anything right now, it'd either get him 'arrested'(meaning it'd force him to fight his way out) or they'd call him insane.
Sighing, the Spartan responded "Sir, I was defending Earth." simple as that.
"And you'd appreciate if we didn't press the matter of this further?" The General raised a brow while the team seemed in disbelief at what they'd just heard, with Carter's wheels already spinning to put out some theory. Chief nodded calmly, to which Hammond sighed and said "I understand, Chief, though my Superiors may push for me to send you over to them... I'll do my best to keep you here, if you wish."
"Sir." The Spartan nodded... Better somewhere safe than having a single nation-state prodding at him and his armor... And at Cortana. The General looked around and after a few more basic questions regarding the planet, aimed at his troops, he told them all they were dismissed. The Chief stayed behind, however, letting SG-1 leave the room. Hammond stood up, then walked up to him.
"Master Chief, I must thank you personally for ensuring that my team returned safely through the Stargate. I know you must have a lot of questions, but I'm afraid I'm not currently at liberty to tell you all that much." The man stated, standing face-to-visor with him and looking up, "The program here is of utmost secrecy, so the public, be it of the United States alone, or the rest of the world, cannot know of us."
"I understand, sir." The Spartan nodded.
"Good... Good... I'll send a security team and a group of engineers to escort you to the VIP rooms and..." He smiled awkwardly, "Provide you with furniture that can hopefully hold the armor's weight."
"Well, that's nice." Cortana quipped, "I'm... Gonna be honest with you, John. Half the data here is nearly unbelievable, but here we are. Sublevel-22, Cheyenne Mountain. Stargate Command... If we can hang around a little bit and not be shipped off to have the folks over at Area-51 poking at us, I'd say we do it. We may even find a way home if they feel like helping."
John hummed, then nodded to Hammond and said "Thank you, sir."
"No worries, son. One more thing..." He sighed, "If I am to have you stay with us... I'll probably have to induct you into an SG team for the duration of your 'visit'. Now, I understand how that must look and feel to you, considering the fact you've got your own military loyalties and your own Earth... Which, to be fair, I am no longer surprised by... But..."
Cortana's guesswork was amazing... "A calculated risk, sir... I understand." The Spartan nodded as Cortana smiled on his HUD. She gave a nod as if saying 'it's okay, they're also humans'. "All I have on me is top-secret, sir... I'm not going to let it in the hands of any national government. Not just yet." He mused, "If you have to, sir, assign me to one of your teams." He'd sworn an oath to defend mankind, no matter the cost.
Hammond smiled, "Thank you. I think SG-1 still has a spot open... And they'll be more than glad to have the extra brawn."
Ah, yes, the team he rescued...
"They seemed nice." Cortana chuckled.