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 Eight
Skull Two
Rick Hunter groaned softly as consciousness returned bringing with it an absolute monster of a headache and a strange, very unnerving lightness. Ugh what the hell was that, he thought as he opened his eyes to find that he was still sitting, strapped into the pilot's seat, of the veritech fighter designated Skull Two. Most of the controls were dark and lifeless, indicating that the machine had for some reason powered down and he was only able to see due to pale emergency lighting and the glow of the central console screen.
Why on Earth is it so dark, he thought even as his training kicked in and he began going through the steps needed to both restart the boosted protoculture energizer module that provided the veritech with power and the aerospace engines. For a few seconds nothing happened then with a whirr - that was felt more than heard - the power plant came back online, the various controls and screens lighting up immediately and beginning to go through the boot up sequence. Simultaneously his flight suits medical system administered pain killing drugs to banish his headache.
Weight suddenly returned pulling him into the seat and an indicator lit up. An indicator that made his eyes widen in surprise as it was the indicator for artificial gravity on at full capacity and not just enough to cancel out inertial forces. Why would that come on? He thought before looking up and his lungs tightened into a shocked gasp as what was beyond the permaglass canopy of the veritech.
Stars he could see stars. Thousands at least all unblinking points of light against a darkness that was darker than anything he had ever seen before, darker than the night sky ever got on Earth that was for damned sure. Nearby he could see the SDF-1 drifting, seemingly almost completely powerless though her running lights were still on meaning that whatever it was that had happened, whatever the light and distortions had been it had caused her power plants to scram. Beyond her he could see another planet, specifically a green and white gas giant.
"Holy shit we're in space," he exclaimed a moment before a beeping from the comm system caught his attention. He pressed the command to receive the message and wasn't surprised to see a concerned looking Roy appear on the screen.
"You okay little brother," Roy asked immediately, "I imagine this is a shock suddenly finding yourself in space like this."
"You could say that Roy," Rick answered, giving the older man a reassuring smile, his headache fading away as the drug worked its biochemical magic, "I wasn't supposed to start space training for another month. What the hell happened? What was that light?"
"Space fold," Roy explained before frowning. "It's supposed to be similar to travelling through hyperspace but obviously it wasn't. Do you think you'll be able to maneuver and fly out here?"
"I think so. Just have to remember that there's no air resistance to worry about, or use to my advantage, out here. Just don't ask me to fight yet as I would have no idea what I'm doing as I haven't had space combat training yet."
"Hopefully there won't be any more fighting for a while," Roy replied, "if I'm reading my instruments right, we're nowhere near Earth. Still when the ship gets their systems back up I'll get Lisa to give you a landing bay."
"Thanks Roy."
"You're welcome. Now sit tight Rick I've got a few other pilots to check up on."
"Understood. Take care of the others Roy, I'll be fine."
Roy nodded and signed off leaving Rick once again alone in his cockpit. Rick checked all his instruments and saw that everything was back online, his shield was back up and engines were online as well though currently sitting in idle mode. A very large mass was floating a few thousand feet below him, some type of asteroid though it was giving off IFF. IFF that indicated that it was actually Macross Island somehow transported here, wherever here was, along with them. Thankfully the shield over the city seemed to still be in place and was keeping the atmosphere and with it some heat inside. Though he knew it would only be a matter of time before said heat leaked out into space.
A change on his scanners caught his attention a second before light flared, and Skull Two shook violently, as charged particle bolts slammed into his shield. Thankfully the force field withstood the blasts, though the shield indicator panel showed that it wasn't without cost. The blasts had dropped shield matrix coherence to sixty percent.
"What the fuck," he yelled instinctively snapping into action banking away from the barrage before it could deplete the shield and arcing around to see just who the hell was firing at him now. To see a small swarm of those strange Zentraedi battle mecha coming at him and the others from where they had been on the island's beaches, unable to get past the energy shield protecting the city. Seems like I'm going to have to fight after all, he thought as he dodged another blast of charged particles, before lining up his plasma gunpod and returning fire. Bolts of yellow death instantly blasting into space from his main energy weapon, taking the closest Zentraedi Regult battlepod dead centre and punching right through the surprisingly lightly armoured, especially for something that was supposed to be a combat craft, alien machine and hitting something vital as the battlepod exploded into a momentary fireball that died almost instantly in the vacuum of space.
Around him other veritech pilots also opened fire, unleashing a wall of plasma, laser and missile fire upon their giant alien foes. Dozens of the alien machines went up immediately under their retaliatory barrage.
Battle was once again joined.
Bridge
SDF-1, A Few Moments Earlier
Captain Henry Gloval groaned softly as he picked himself up from where he had been lying in a most undignified heap next to his command chair. He wasn't the only one as various grunts and groans told him that the rest of the bridge crew were picking themselves up from where they had all been thrown – like flotsam in a tornado – by the violent convulsions of the ship as it went through the space fold. Which was something that should not have happened, certainly it hadn't happened the handful of times he'd travelled through hyperspace. Such transits – aside from an initial jolt of acceleration/deceleration that inertial dampeners were never quite able to fully compensate for despite the engineers best efforts as just like when they were under fire the forces created a sympathetic oscillation in the artificial gravity field that couldn't be fully compensated for – had always been very smooth, very comfortable rides.
"Status report," he ordered as he finished getting his wits back together. He made his way back to the command chair and sat down.
"Main power is down sir," Sammie Porter reported from her station making Gloval frown knowing that if main power was down then the SDF-1 was defenceless as not only were her shields down but all of her many weapons systems as well. If the Zentraedi showed up now there would be little that they could do to stop the giant humanoids from taking the ship. Not that it would do them much good considering what their masters no doubt want back is no longer on the ship, he thought, remembering just what they had discovered in a previously hidden section of the ship. A section that had become visible when they removed the ships original ion fusion sublight engines to replace them with the far superior Serrakin designed gravitic ion drives.
An event that had deactivated the phase displacement field that had been concealing them, isolating them from normal space-time. The resulting search of the previously hidden sections had been extremely revealing. Not only had it revealed to them the existence of the protoculture matrix and the alien plants that fuelled it – both of which were now being both studied and used at a UEDF research base buried deep beneath the Ruwenzori Mountains in Africa -bur had revealed a lab with a separate computer core attached. A computer that had contained information that had catapulted their understanding of the sciences behind robotechnology forward by decades at the least if not centuries. As he understood it some of their best minds were still studying its contents, attempting to understand and replicate the incredibly advanced – to the point that it made quantum mechanics look like high school mathematics – sciences and technologies that the core spoke of.
"Engineering reports that both main and backup reactors scrammed towards the end of the space fold. They report that they should have them restarted momentarily," Sammie continued.
"Once the reactors are restarted, how long until we're back to full power?"
Sammie checked her readings. "Approximately five minutes sir," she reported even as a faint whirr of power ran through the ship and the overhead lights flickered back to life as power began flowing through their circuits again. " Sir engineering reports a successful restart of the gravitic fusion reactors though the reflex furnaces are going to take a bit longer they're getting an error message in the primary control matrix. They need to investigate and clear it before they can restart the furnaces."
"Keep me informed," Gloval replied with a nod of understanding as he was well aware that the forces at work within the reaction chambers of the reflex furnaces were enormous. The quantum level energy extracted from protoculture and the antimatter produced as a by-product of said reaction – which itself was then used as a secondary energy source - required very complex monitoring to keep it under control. Thus the engineers were doing the right thing by not attempting to restart the furnaces until the fault was checked out and cleared – even if it was something simple like a faulty sensor – as these things were not something anyone took chances with – not anybody who was sane anyway.
"Aye sir."
"Vanessa, what's our current position?" Gloval asked, knowing that they were not where they were supposed to be, Admiral Chase would have contacted them from the Dauntless by now if they had been anywhere near their planned destination of Mars. Or if unable to contact them would have ringed some of his people over to find out their status.
"Stand by sir I am having to reset the sensors," Vanessa Leeds replied, her hands dancing over her console as she reset the complex array of sensors that the battlefortress used to see who and what was near her. After a few moments the reset was complete and she ran a scan.
And frowned at the result.
"This can't be right," she exclaimed, drawing surprised and concerned looks from everyone else on the bridge.
"What is it?" Gloval asked.
"Sir, according to our sensors and astro positioning system we've been transported over seventy thousand light years from our previous location. We're in a binary system at the very edge of our galaxy."
Shocked, horrified silence greeted that announcement, the entire crew dumbstruck by just how spectacularly pear shaped the space fold had gone. Unfortunately Vanessa was not done with delivering bad news.
"Sensors indicate a large object five thousand feet directly beneath us," she continued. "Sir it's Macross Island. Sensors confirm that the shield over the city is still active and is keeping the air in but..."
"...but there is no telling how long it will last," Gloval finished for her. Not to mention that there will be little to no gravity down there. Bozhe moi what a mess, he thought. "Life signs?"
"All shelters reveal full life signs sir."
Gloval nodded, mentally already working out just how they were going to get all those people out of there as there was no way they could stay where they were for any real length of time. They would all have to be transported here to the SDF-1 – thankfully they had more than enough life support capacity to handle such numbers – until they could be transported safely back to either Earth or one of the colonies like Mara, Poseidos or Odessa.
"Captain," Lisa called out, breaking out of his thoughts and planning. "Our veritech squadrons report that they are under attack from Zentraedi battle mecha, specifically Regult and Gluuhaug Regult-class battlepods."
"What! Where did they come from?"
"They appear to be the survivors of the Zentraedi ground forces that were massing on the beaches of Macross Island. They must have been dragged here along with the island."
"Can our forces hold them?" Gloval asked, remembering that their air wing was currently understrength which was one of the reasons why Cadet Hunter was asked to help out. Something that he had done surprisingly well. Though what had also helped was they had the islands defences to assist as well, especially the interceptor missile and anti-aircraft plasma cannon batteries.
"They're doing their best sir – including Cadet Hunter – but I doubt it," Lisa admitted, somewhat reluctantly . "The enemy has them outnumbered and outgunned."
Gloval cursed softly under his breath. "Claudia, can we use any of our weapon's systems to assist," he asked.
Claudia Grant quickly checked her readings and the reports both from the gunnery control rooms and those turrets that were physically manned. With the reflex furnaces still down most of the battlefortresses weapons systems were offline However some of them were online and thankfully they were the systems best suited to taking the pressure off their beleaguered pilots.
"Yes, sir we can," she reported, "particle cannons are offline but our defensive missiles and close-in defensive laser and plasma batteries are operational."
"Good instruct our defensive batteries and interceptors to open fire."
"Aye, sir."
From numerous points along her hull the SDF-1 once again began to roar with anger. Foxfire defensive missiles roared away from the battlefortress forty pop-out defensive missile launchers while simultaneously every defensive cannon battery that could be brought to bear opened fire unleashing a hail of pulsed laser and pulsed plasma fire upon the attacking Zentraedi.
The Zentraedi warriors, so focused on their duel with the frighteningly powerful and infuriatingly durable due to having energy shields Valkyries, were caught by complete surprise by the barrage from Zor's battlefortress. A vessel that according to their scanners was currently only operating on a fraction of her normal power due to the effects of the space fold and thus had been dismissed as an immediate threat by the giant's squadron commanders as she was clearly in no state to fight.
It was a decision the squadron commanders quickly regretted as dozens of battlepods instantly flashed out of existence in momentary fireballs. Some being impacted by the hypervelocity Foxfires and consumed as much by the sheer kinetic force of said missiles as by their plasma warheads, others being speared by laser and plasma bolts.
The Zentraedi reeled in surprise, allowing the Valkyrie squadrons to turn the tables on them, Whipping around, sometimes by banking as though still in atmosphere though more often than not simply shifting modes to the slower but far more manoeuvrable techno-knight form known as a battloid, and engaging them with their remaining missiles and energy weapons.
Another barrage from the battlefortress tore into the Zentraedi formations as the mighty warship slowly, ponderously due to her relative low power state, came around bringing additional weapons banks to bear upon them. Foxfire's followed as missile crews finished a reloading/recharge cycle and sent more of the deadly missiles flying into space.
Between them, the veritech fighters and a third massive barrage of laser and plasma fire the battle ended swiftly. The last battlepod embracing fiery oblivion as the result of a Stiletto missile from Skull One.
Skull Two
Rick sighed in relief as the last hostile contact vanished from his screens, the victim of Roy's last missile. This sudden, very unexpected, battle had been intense, certainly far more intense than the fight in Earth's skies had been. Of course what had made it that little bit worse for him was the fact that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing as he wasn't trained in space combat yet and as such everything he had done had been instinct more than anything else. Well that and a great deal of sheer dumb luck.
It had still meant he got another four kills added to his tally. Though it was not without cost. Skull Two's shield was down to barely ten percent capacity and the centimetre of trinium-hypercarbon alloy armour covering the fuselage was scorched and pitted in several areas where energy from the Zentraedi weapons had bled through the weakening force field. If the battle had gone on much longer, he was sure that one of the giants would have eventually gotten him due in no small part to his lack of knowledge or training in space combat.
As the adrenaline of the battle faded away Rick felt the burning in his muscles from the gee forces of all the manoeuvres. While inertial dampeners could counteract most of them, they couldn't screen out everything. Something that he knew was by design, along with the presence of audio simulators in the cockpit, as pilots needed to feel some gees. Though naturally it wasn't the full force of their movements as those would kind of flatten them against the side of the cockpit at best or turn them into puddles of goo at worst
A bleep from the comm caught his attention. He pressed the button to accept it and wasn't surprised when Roy, who looked as tired as he felt himself as they'd just done a lot of fighting in a very short time, appeared on the screen.
"Hey Roy," he said in greeting, not even trying to hide the exhaustion he felt after the battles. He knew better than to try as Roy – in the way of all elder siblings, biological or not – would just see right through any bravado he put up.
"How are you doing Rick, you're looking tired," Roy asked.
"I am tired Roy," Rick admitted, "that was damned intense."
"It was. Space combat can be like that," Roy agreed, "you did well though little brother. I'm proud of you, Pops would be as well."
"Thanks Roy."
"You're welcome."
"So what happens now," Rick asked.
"We're going back to the ship," Roy answered, "once we land I'll get you a uniform as Captain Gloval wants to see you on the bridge."
Rick's eyes widened. "Captain Gloval?" he asked. "Why would he want to talk to me? I'm just a cadet."
"A cadet who stepped in to help even though you didn't need to and nobody would have thought anything bad about you if you had refused," Roy answered with a smile, "no doubt the captain wants to talk to you about that. Don't worry you won't be in any trouble."
"If you say so Roy."
"I know I am right," Roy answered as he brought his plane alongside Rick's. "Come on little brother, let's get back to the ship."
"Right with you Roy."
Roy smiled back then cut the comm link before gunning his engines and heading back towards the blue and white form of the SDF-1. Rick grinned at the typical Roy move before gunning his own engines and heading to the ship himself. It was time to land and hopefully get both a well earned shower and a cup of coffee.
Elsewhere
That Same Time
"My lord."
Sitting on his stone throne in the private audience chamber of his flagship Cronus looked up from the data tablet he'd been reading. It wasn't the best of news as traitors loyal to that madman – well as much as you could call a Goa'uld a man since really, they had no gender and only took on the gender of the species they were using as a host – had taken control of one of his most productive agricultural worlds. He was going to have to organise a campaign to take it back – Jaffa armies couldn't march on empty stomachs after all – which was going to be a major pain in the backside to arrange with his fleet so spread out keeping his domain secure.
Thus he welcomed any chance to put off getting started on the planning at least for a little while. He wasn't surprised to see his First Prime Har'taad standing there patiently waiting for his god's attention. Cronus inwardly smiled at the appropriate difference and respect being shown to him, it spoke well of him as he was still very new to the rank having replaced his previous first prime who had been killed in combat with Sokar's forces.
"Yes," Cronus asked quietly, hoping for some good news for once. It had been something in very short supply since the current civil war – ignited when Sokar had launched a surprise lightning assault on the empire – had begun.
"My lord we have just received a report from one of your listening posts, specifically the post on Ta'kora."
"What is the nature of the message?" Cronus asked his curiosity more than a little piqued. Ta'kora was a very remote world and was located quite a long way from his core territories as well as far from the front lines of the war between the System Lords – led as always by Ra – and Sokar. The only reason he kept an outpost there, well beyond the fact that the planet was quite rich in a number of raw materials especially trinium, was to make sure that nobody – especially Sokar – tried to pull a fast one and come at his domain from a completely new direction. Such things had happened before after all. Indeed he himself had done such things in the past in battle against rival Goa'uld.
In fact now that he thought about it there had been a number of odd reports from Ta'kora over the last few months. Reports of odd subspace distortions unlike anything ever encountered by the Goa'uld before. Distortions that were always accompanied by bursts of phased gravitons and beta-phase tachyons. Unfortunately the bursts were always at the very edge of the outposts sensor range and thus they had never been able to determine what they were or what was causing them.
"My lord, they report that they have picked up another signal like the others," Har'taad replied, "however this one was far larger and in a different location. They have also been able to determine the exact coordinates of the disturbance."
"Interesting. Dispatch a Ha'tak to investigate. How long will it take them to arrive?"
"Yes, my lord. If they leave right now it will take the closest Ha'tak eight hours to reach the system if they travel at maximum speed."
"Very well keep me informed of their findings," Cronus answered inwardly, cursing, not for the first time, the artificial limits on hyperdrive speeds that Ra had long ago imposed on the other System Lords. If his ships had been able to go as fast as Ra's could then the ship would have reached the system in less than an hour. Unfortunately Ra was no fool – he wouldn't have been Supreme System Lord for the last eight millennia if he hadn't been more cunning than any other Goa'uld by a huge margin – and didn't let anyone have those more advanced drives. Not even his direct progeny and heir apparent Heru'ur was allowed them. It ensured that Ra could respond quicker than any other System Lord to any violations of his territory and not only that but retaliate against whoever was foolish enough to test his patience, and usually with utterly brutal force.
"Yes, my lord."
"Dismissed."
"My lord," Har'taad replied with a bow of profound reverence before turning and leaving the audience room. Cronus watched him go, leaning back thoughtfully on his throne as he considered the odd subspace distortions once again. Maybe this time they would finally find out just what was causing them and if it was anything he could mould to his purposes. Then he put the matter out of his thoughts for now and turned back to the data tablet and the campaign he had to organise among other things.
Honestly the job of being a System Lord, and a member of the High Council itself, was one that never ended.
Author Note: Well another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. This is definitely my last fic update for this year, I look forward to seeing you all again in the new year. Until next time.