Robotech 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.
Chapter Seven
Macross Island
A Few Minutes Earlier
Sitting in the cockpit of the Spartan destroid he'd been assigned to after getting his mother and sisters to a shelter Lieutenant Charlie O'Neill frowned as he gazed upon a scene of devastation. He'd been sent to stand guard over some firemen – with Zentraedi troops and battle mecha assembling on the beaches command, especially his father, weren't taking any chances - as they tackled a blaze set off by what he could see before him. Where there had once been a city block – part of a mixed commercial/residential area according to city plans – there was now nothing but a large crater. A crater that was softly smoking due to its glassed sides and the smallish puddle of sluggish lava in its base. A crater created by the impact of a particle beam from one of the orbiting Zentraedi warships. A crater whose creation had created a momentary plasma pulse that had set fire to several surrounding buildings though with the aid of new equipment, including specialist drones, the firefighters were steadily extinguishing said fires
It never gets easier, he thought gazing at the devastation. Over the course of his military career, especially since he'd become a STORM commando, he had been involved in a few off-world operations. Being deployed either from a starship – usually a Monsoon-class corvette as they were the only class of ship, they had that was currently capable of true Star Trek style cloaking – or via the Stargate. Thus, he'd seen the devastating destructive power of starship weapons a few times. It was always a very sobering thing to see especially when you knew what was there before the particle beam or plasma bolt struck and obliterated everything. Seeing what their newest weapons could do to a planet, the utter devastation that even standard beams could cause, was always a very sobering experience. And that was just conventional plasma and particle weapons he had never actually seen what quantum reflex weapons could do to a planet and frankly he hoped he never did as from what he'd heard even without naquada enhancement a reflex missile made the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated – the Russian Tsar Bomb – look like a firecracker. When you added naquada to the mix? He couldn't help but shudder at the mere thought of it.
A bleep brought him out of his thoughts. An icon and a small arrow on the screen – which was the Spartans AI equivalent of tapping him on the shoulder and pointing – drew his attention. Huh what's this, he thought as he turned his attention to what the AI had detected. Mentally chiding himself for getting distracted in the first place.
Standing there on a street corner, and looking both shocked and horrified, was a young woman of Asian descent. She was dressed in a simple red dress in the style that was currently popular among teenage girls and appeared to be no older than Alice and Amelia. What on Earth? She should be in the shelters, he thought before manipulating the Spartans controls causing the great multi-ton walking tank to turn and face the young woman. To any observer unfamiliar with robotechnology the organic fluidity that the Spartan moved with would have seemed impossible if they were still present to see it and not a cloud of dust on the horizon. Which had happened a few times with Jaffa they tended to run away, screaming in mortal terror, at the sight of battle mecha especially as there plasma firing staffs, while a formidable antipersonnel weapon indeed he had seen hits knock a two hundred pound man flying like a toy, lacked the firepower to even scratch a Spartans shields let alone breach the heavy layered armour.
The girl, however, showed no reaction. Maybe it was the big brother in him but the way that she was behaving set alarm bells ringing in Charlie's head. He quickly flicked a switch to turn on the external speakers. "Excuse me miss but are you alright," he asked gently, there was no reply, but he could see her mouthing something and beginning to constantly shake her head. "Miss?"
The young girl didn't respond instead she still kept mouthing something and shaking her head as if in desperate denial about some reality that she didn't want to face. Maybe her home was on the destroyed block, he thought, though nobody should have been there when the beam hit as the city was evacuated before the attack began. His concern growing he quickly undid his restraints, popped open the Spartan's crew hatch and deployed a ladder allowing him to climb down the side. Oh, since he was wearing the latest model of Tristan power armour, he could have jumped it if he'd wanted – the fall easily within the capabilities of the nano-muscle servos that gave Tristan wearers downright superhuman strength and speed to withstand – but he didn't like doing such displays. Well not unless he wanted to scare the crap out of an enemy be they an AUL terrorist or a Jaffa. For some reason both always seemed to freak out when a guy who even outside of armour was six foot one and two hundred and twenty five pounds landed right in their midst. When you added the additional mass of the armour and its intimidating as hell default black finish it could be quite intimidating.
Which was frankly the last thing this clearly shellshocked girl needed right now.
His boots touched the floor, and he stepped off the ladder. Then he was careful to ensure that his helmet was retracted down into the neckpiece – molecular compression which was used to make and retract modern military helmets was something they had quickly developed from studying Goa'uld helmets – before walking up to the teenage girl who up close was positively tiny barely five foot two and was definitely about the same age as Alice and Amelia. Though she was shorter than either of his baby sisters and lighter in build.
"Miss, are you okay," he asked her gently reaching out and putting a gloved hand on her arm. That finally seemed to finally get a reaction out of her, and she turned to look at him revealing distinctly Asian – likely Chinese or Korean – features and large eyes that were shining with unshed tears. "Miss?"
"It's gone," she said speaking with a Chinese accent though it was watered down a bit, more like the more neutral accent that people here on Macross used.
"What's gone?" he asked her gently.
"My diary, my letter. They were on my desk in my room in our flat above our Chinese restaurant," she answered, "it was on this block. What am I going to do? Everything depended on that, everything."
Oh, for crying out loud, Charlie thought instantly irritated by the blatant teenage girl angst. Though he would think he would be used to it since Alice and Amelia were both at that specific age now, where they got fixated on things that were frankly inconsequential to adults. "What about your family?"
"They're back at the shelters I left to come back and put my diary away. I didn't want anyone to find and read it. Now nobody will again, and my future's gone."
"Your future isn't gone," Charlie replied gently resisting, with the practice of someone who was used to such childish teenage nonsense, the impulse to roll his eyes in annoyance.
"But my letter, my acceptance to the school…"
"They'll have a copy," Charlie assured her, "you will be fine."
The girl sniffed, showing how close she was to crying over this whole thing. What is it with teenagers and turning everything into a drama, he thought, I sure hope I wasn't that bad when I was this age. I owe mom and dad an apology if I was. "Do you really think so?" she asked studying the man before her for the first time. Immediately noting that he appeared to be in his twenties and was both tall and well built. Hmm nice, a part of her thought.
"I know so," Charlie answered reassuringly. "What's your name?"
"Minmei. Lynn Minmei."
"Well Miss Lynn my name's Charlie, Charlie O'Neill."
"Pleased to meet you," Minmei replied smiling slightly bouncing back a bit from her despair over her diary and acceptance letter – attending the music and acting school here on Macross, which was due to start its first semester soon, was the whole reason her parents had let her come to live here with her aunt and uncle instead of staying with them in Yokohama – having been destroyed in that rapid way teenagers had when they found out things weren't as bad as they thought.
"Now then we need to get you to the shelters," Charlie said even as a faint thrum caught both their attention. They looked up to see the shield over the city and the military base be restored. Which meant the Zentraedi were certain to start firing on them again soon to knock it back down so their ground forces, if they'd landed any, could attack.
"I can't walk back to them."
"Your right it is a long way, and they'll locked down by now," Charlie answered knowing the civilian shelters, buried deep as they were in the bedrock of the island would be completely sealed up now both by heavy blast doors and protected by their own localised shields. "Come on I'll take you to base. There are shelters there you can wait in, you can even spend some time with my mother and sisters they're waiting out the attack in one of them."
"How far is that?"
"Not very far, come on there's a spare jump seat in the Spartan you can ride in. Don't worry about climbing up the ladder I'll help you if you need it."
Minmei smiled and nodded in understanding. Charlie gave a reassuring smile back and led the way back to the Spartan.
Before they had gotten more than a few steps a loud roaring sound, like the sound of an angry dragon, came from above them prompting both of them to look up in surprise. To see, past the faint optical distortion of the defence shield, the SDF-1 firing an absolutely massive beam of yellow-white energy into space.
"What are they firing at?" Minmei wondered looking away more than a little shaken seeing the battlefortress – which had been such a dominant fixture of this island metropolis, indeed was the only reason it was here in the first place, since before she'd come here unleashing her might on someone.
"Certainly, Zentraedi warships in orbit," Charlie replied as they reached the Spartan. So that's the reflex cannon, he thought a quick glance up showing the ship still generating that impossibly huge energy beam. A beam that from the scuttlebutt about quantum energy weapons like it would destroy absolutely anything and everything in its path, breaking down the fundamental forces that held all matter together reducing its target to a massive of superheated elementary particles. Like many he didn't really like thinking about just how powerful, how devastating, a weapon that thing – and its missile/torpedo warhead cousins – was.
He put it out of his thoughts for now and concentrated on helping Minmei climb up the somewhat flimsy ladder into the cockpit of the Spartan destroid. He then helped her into the spare jump seat – it wasn't easy to move around with the two of them in here as the cockpit was rather cramped especially as he wasn't a small bloke by any stretch of the imagination and hadn't been since he was a teenager and the star of the high school football team much like Amelia's current boyfriend, Brett Evencoe, was – before retracting the ladder and closing the cockpit.
"You ready back there," he asked as he sat back in the pilot's chair, bringing all the cockpit controls back to life.
"Yes," Minmei replied even as she looked around curiously at the cockpit of the destroid having never seen such a thing in her life before. It looked intimidatingly high tech to her, especially as the highest tech thing she had herself was the smart phone in her right jeans pocket. She couldn't make heads or tails of the various screens that she could see over Charlie's shoulder only one made any sense to her and that was the one that showed the Spartan surrounded by a barrier which she guessed represented an energy shield.
"Alright then," Charlie said sending quick messages to both the fire chief and dad in island operations, so they knew what he was doing and why. Then he got the Spartan moving heading to the nearest entrance to the military base.
It didn't take long to reach the part of the base that Charlie had wanted to access. After stopping the Spartan and deploying the ladder again he helped Minmei to climb down.
"Thank you," Minmei said as he helped her off the ladder.
"You're welcome. This way," Charlie answered, prompting the teenager to nod and following him to the surface entrance of the same emergency shelter that Charlie had earlier led his mother and sisters to. As he had before he opened the heavy metal door and began leading Minmei down a staircase into the deep layers beneath the island.
"How far down does this go?" Minmei asked as they made their way down flights of stairs, their footsteps – especially he heavy sound of Charlie's combat boots – echoed oddly off the hypercrete walls.
"About thirty feet," Charlie answered, "there is a short passage beyond the stairwell and then we'll be at the shelter itself."
"Okay," Minmei answered even as she felt a bit of sweat begin to appear on her brow as they descended the steep metal steps. Not to self, spend a bit more time in the gym, she thought though she supposed she shouldn't be surprised to be so tired now as she had walked all the way back into the city from the shelters, dodging some police and military authorities as she did so as they would have stopped her and escorted her back to the shelter. Thus, her muscles were already tired, still she should be a bit fitter than this.
In no time at all they reached the bottom of the stairwell and entered the connecting corridor that Charlie had mentioned. At the end of which was a large heavy door that looked like it had to use some hydraulic system to open – all the shelter doors did – and between it and them a glowing line all around the wall and floor that indicated the presence of a force field. Something that she had gotten used to seeing since coming to live here in Macross City as this place was a bastion of high technology in the world. Showing what was possible, and what the UEG was trying to bring to everyone, through robotechnology.
Charlie paused before the force field and entered a code into a small control panel on the wall. With an electrostatic snap and a ripple of bluish light the force field vanished. A moment later there came a series of whirring clicks came from the door before with the humming of powerful hydraulic motors the door slowly opened. As soon as it was open enough Charlie gestured for Minmei to follow him which she promptly did to find three people one a middle-aged woman and twin girls who looked to be her age, or near it, inside. The two girls immediately stood up as they entered.
"Can we leave yet Charlie," Amelia asked, "it's boring sitting here. We haven't even got a basic phone signal down here let alone wi-fi internet."
"Sorry sis you can't," Charlie replied not at all surprised that Amelia was complaining about not having any internet access. She was completely addicted to her social media accounts spending hours on things like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. Being unable to access any of them would thus be absolute torture for her. Unlike Alice who would simply read a book on her Kindle app. "The battle isn't over yet."
Amelia scowled and started to open her mouth to complain, and no doubt emphasise how bored she was and how important her social media presence was, only for her mother to step in. "Amelia enough," Sarah O'Neill said firmly.
"But mom…"
"No buts if your brother says it's not safe to go up yet then it isn't safe," Sarah said firmly, her expression broking no argument from her wannabe social media queen daughter, before looking back at Charlie and seeing the young woman, no older than her own daughters, who had come in with him. "Hello there," she added warmly before looking at her son expression inviting an explanation.
"Mom, Amelia, Alice this is Lynn Minmei," Charlie said in explanation, "I found her on the surface heading for a city block that has been obliterated by a particle beam when the shield went down. It's too far for her to get back to the normal civilian shelters and they'll be fully locked down by now anyway. So, I brought her here."
"I see. Well, hello there Miss Lynn," Sarah said in greeting, "I'm Sarah O'Neill and these two – including the one who is pouting so much she could be used as a digger – are my daughters Alice and Amelia."
"Hello," Minmei said somewhat timidly even as she quietly shot a wary look at the pouting Amelia O'Neill. She had encountered her kind in school enough to be wary of her as she didn't doubt that the other girl had a superiority complex a mile wide due to being at or near the top of her high school's social hierarchy.
Exactly the kind of person she didn't enjoy hanging around with.
Before anyone could say anything more a strange sensation suddenly filled the air, as though everything was suddenly coming under some subtle but undeniable tension. What in the world, Charlie thought a second before there was an almost earthquake like shudder through the ground and his vision began to swim with strange colours. Colours that were both ethereal and eldritch and which constantly phased in and out of existence in a seemingly random pattern.
"Ugh what's going on," Amelia wondered aloud as her head seemed to pulse in sequence to the phasing colours. This was worse than that time Emma Peterson had deliberately whacked her in the face with a netball. Something that she had made her pay dearly for afterwards by ensuring that her popularity tanked for the rest of the semester. "Mom? Charlie?"
"I don't know what it is sis," Charlie replied as the disorientating phasing peaked and the whole room shook violently, shook with enough force that they were all slammed to the hard hypercrete floor. A moment later the gravity suddenly inverted, and they were all yanked towards the ceiling before it reverted and slammed them back to the floor again...
…with enough force that they were all instantly deprived of consciousness.
Zentraedi Command Dreadnought
Earth-Luna Orbit
That Same Time
Commander Breetai, High Warlord of the Zentraedi, was for one of the few times in his long life stunned at the brilliant flash of light that erupted from the planet below. Specifically, from the location of the battlefortress and the heavily fortified island that it had been protecting. It was a light he had seen before, seen many times in point of fact as it was very much a part of daily life for the Zentraedi, though never in a situation such as this.
"A fold I don't believe it," he said incredulity in his tone. What in Zor's name would possess the micronians on this world to even consider, let alone executing, such a low altitude space fold. Did they not understand how potentially incredibly dangerous that was? Something that would be odd considering their observed level of technology and the fact that they had faster than light travel capabilities in the form of hyperdrives.
"Impossible at that altitude," Exedore exclaimed as shocked as Breetai was by this development. "The amount of energy that would have to be expended to stabilise the fold field would be astronomical. I don't think it would be possible even with naquada assistance."
"It might be impossible, but they've done it," Breetai commented even as he noticed a huge grey and white cloud rising to the edge of space from the point where the battlefortress had been. "Sensors what is the nature of that cloud?"
"Commander the cloud consists of a mixture of water vapour, tephra, pumice and large amounts of both hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide."
"A volcanic eruption? They must have taken a sizeable chunk of the crust into foldspace with them for that to occur," Exedore commented. "What do we do now commander?"
"The only thing that we can do Exedore," Breetai replied, "we find them. Navigation move the fleet away from the planet, take us out into deep space. Begin scanning for the battlefortress foldspace wake with the finder beam."
"Yes commander."
"Finding them will not be easy commander," Exedore said softly feeling compelled to inform his commanding officer, and long term friend, just how difficult this was actually going to be. "The graviton particle interference patterns created by folding space so deep inside the gravity well will have completely randomised the battlefortress foldspace vectors. Coupled with whatever unknowable amount of mass they've dragged in with them it will make tracking down their exit coordinates extremely difficult and time consuming."
"I am well aware of that Exedore," Breetai replied with a sigh knowing from past experience just how difficult tracking a ship through foldspace was at the best of times the natural difficulties and the fact that it had crossed the great void between galaxies were the reason it had taken them a decade to track down the battlefortress. Now they would have to do it all over again, hopefully without the added complication of intergalactic travel – and having to play dodge ums with Asgard patrols as the Asgard would intercept and either drive back or destroy any Zentraedi fleet that they detected leaving the Empire's borders – being present this time. "But we have no other choice."
"Unfortunately, very true commander."
Elsewhere
That Same Time
The system had no name.
It was an uninhabited system at the very edge of the galaxy that Terran humanity had always called home. Several rocky planets, including one in the so called Goldilocks zone where liquid water could exist on its surface, and two gas giants each far more massive than even Jupiter orbited two bright G-type stars. A few scattered asteroid belts completed the ensemble of the remote system that was barely a light year from the great eternal void of intergalactic space.
High above the innermost of the two gas giants a section of space suddenly shivered with a heat haze like distortion as the barrier between normal space and one of the infinite domains of subspace suddenly came under attack from within. The warp intensified until a tiny point of eldritch light – no bigger than a common tennis ball – appeared in normal space.
In seconds it expanded into a glowing sphere of unstable energy kilometres in diameter. In the centre of which two shapes appeared blurry and skeletal at first but rapidly filling in and solidifying as they were integrated back into the normal strata of space-time. Then with a flash of blue Cherenkov radiation – caused by the rapid breakdown of beta-phase tachyons and other particles that could not exist outside of foldspace – the sphere vanished leaving the two objects floating seemingly dead.
After quite a tumultuous journey he SDF-1 and Macross Island were back in normal space…
…and a long way from home.
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. I know not a huge amount happened in this chapter, it was mainly to set things up for what could be a very interesting – if in an old Chinese curse kind of way – not to mention potentially very embarrassing and amusing for everyone relationship between Charlie and Minmei as in this version of the story he's her knight in shining armour not Rick. As for the SDF-1 they are still in our galaxy though are still a very long way from home as while I was tempted, very tempted I will admit, to send them further away I ultimately decided against it. Hopefully things will get a bit more interesting in the next chapter though given I have three special craft fairs between now and Christmas I cannot guarantee to have it ready before the end of the year I will do my best but can make no promises. Until next time.