John was sat on the bio-bed in the Tsunami-II's main sickbay as the EMH finished giving him a full physical, so that he could discover exactly what Minerva had done to him by comparing it against base line human normal readings. After his meeting with commander Foxworth where he had gave them the story, plus both visual and sensor data made by the Asgard-Alteran-Starfleet core, he had come up with to explain both his origins and ship along with a list of minerals and technology he was offering to exchange for access to Earth's trading markets, before claiming he needed to return to his ship to gather the samples of items he was willing to trade, but since he had snapped in the docking bay he had a slight nagging feeling, which had left him worried. After the EMH had finished its exam he discovered why. It seems that in addition to changing him into a Zentradi with Spartan-II augments Minerva had also implanted him with an artificial Goa'uld symbiote.
After accessing the core to see how it had been created, he discovered that she had taken a sample of an infant symbiote and mixed it with that of Breetai, and while neither of their personalities had been transferred over, he found that the combined DNA in the symbiote had a collection of memories.
'That would explain why I talked of past battles and Invid home world as if I'd been there.' He thought, those memories, coupled with the Spartan-II augments where what John figured had allowed the thing to momentarily take control, but since it hadn't been able to take full control, he prayed that it had been a fluke, but he planned to use kelno'reem to help keep his anger in check. He briefly considered having it removed, but he would lose all the benefits it gave him, also his body was now dependant on the little 'gift' which Minerva had conveniently forgotten to mention.
Figuring he had listened to the EMH long enough, he politely asked it to submit it as a report in his medical file, before he walked out of sickbay and towards the turbo lift at the end of the corridor. "Lounge Port-one." He ordered as walked into it.
When he arrived a few moments later, he walked over to the transparent neutronium/ trinium window to look at the view out over the portside launch deck towards Io station, the moon it was named after off to the left looking like a scene from Donta's Inferno with Jupiter behind both casting a soft red glow reflected from the distant Sol. There was also several Earth Force ships, mostly older ones like the Torelan Star and something that might have been a Donnager class, if John was in the universe of the Expanse, but also the odd Hyperion and Olympus class with a small fleet of Tiger and Nova class starfuries nearby just in-case he tried something. All of this was on top of the various civilian, both human and alien, ships trying to get a better look at his ship, 'Thank Sajuuk for the passive ECM auto-modulation system' he thought as he approached the replicator for a drink before relaxing for a bit as he waited for the politicians' from Earth Dome to arrive in the morning.
-{[Dimensional Castaway]}-
John was not amused, he had expected to be deep in the work of equipping an old decommissioned Olympus class corvette with Enterprise and Ra era technologies as a test bed to demonstrate their viability in payment for the various minerals he had mined on Kharak, but after the politicians' had agreed, even buying his fake story, two months ago, but before the ink was even dry the spooks had gotten involved leading to him to be currently standing reception area of Earth Force command in the modified version of the UNSC ODST officers battledress.
The building was within the campus which housed not only Earth Force command, but also Psi Corps and EarthGov headquarters which was collectively called Earth Dome, on the shore of lake Geneva, and built in the typical style of military buildings that militaries though-out the multiverse love. The doors behind the steal and wood desk opened to allow access from the building to allow a rather attractive brunette, who looked in her mid to late twenties, to step out dressed in the standard navy and poopy red uniform of Earth Force's navy which seemed to accent her athletic figure.
"Colonel S'Jet." She asked her voice soft yet commanding at the same time, which seemed strange given how young she looked, when she spotted him.
"Yes." He answered as he turned from examining an oil painting of a Hyperion class exiting a jump point over earth, as the young officer ignored his examination of her without a care having gotten used to this sort of attention from other officers.
"The Joint Chiefs will see you know sir." She said passing him a visitor pass as she opened the door wider to allow him entry. The corridor she led John down was lined with both relics and reproductions of paintings depicting wars from Earths past, even a full set of Japanese samurai armour with the Imperial Family crest, armoured suits of various European nations such as England, Germany, France and Spain which had all been faithfully reproduced by historians and artists.
As they walked, he noticed various styles of Roman gladiator weapons, helmets and shields on historically accurate mannequins, uniforms from every era of history from 21st century USA digital camouflage next to British Redcoats of the Napoleonic wars, as well as the most controversial of them all Nazi German Schutzstaffel black uniforms, although they did not hold the swastika as following the second world war that insignia was not allowed anywhere on the planet. These decorations were meant to highlight to the various visitors and alien dignitaries how far humans had come from their earlier warlike nature to their current enlightened state.
He also noticed the two security officers standing outside the conference room he was being escorted to, one male and one female. The man looked to be of Asian or pacific descent and while broad shouldered he looked as if he was disinterested in what was going on but also that could handle himself in a fight, while the woman was a head taller and looked as if she was a modern day Amazonian warrior. They were both wearing the standard grey uniform of Earth Force security with the standard issue Aurican PPG, as he came to the door, the female officer held out her hand while raising the other to knock before opening it while the man had moved his hand to the grip of his weapon in its holster on his hip.
The room was you standard upper level military briefing and conference room painted in an off white with black wood work around the rooms windows, the floor was highly polished while between the deep red curtains around the windows was a masterpiece reproduction of the 'Battle of Waterloo'. In front of him was a large wooden conference table, identical to the one from stargate command John noticed ideally, with five people sat along the side opposite the door he had entered wearing the uniforms of for the different sections of Earth Force, two men and a woman in the blue and poppy red of the navy who from his research John knew to be general Sergio Balleseros of the unified south and central Americas confederation, who always takes a hard line conservative stance for the navy, general Christophe Picard of the European Union and the definition of a proud traditionalist and Frenchman the head of the Alliances research and development with general Katrina Carter from the American State rounding out the navy's group, a bear of a woman who didn't care if you were an enlisted man or officer if you fracked up you would learn to regret it, and a strong advocate for the progressives.
The other two members where dressed in the olive green and dark brown of the marines. The first was a man of African descent who hailed from the American State like Carter with the same no nonsense air to him, General Richard Franklin, while the final member was an English man, which at first glance could be mistaken for Sean Bean, named general Mike Wigston head of the marine air assets. All of the collective medals shining brightly, and weighing as much as John in his ODST style armour, under the light from the overhead chandler.
On John's side of the table was standard plain black office swivel chair, which wouldn't have looked out of place in any office of the mega-skyscrapers belonging to the mega-corporations around Earth and Mars, which was placed about one meter from the table as if to isolate him. He simply walked, each pace measured with parade ground precision, before halting and snapping off a perfect UNSC style salute to the gathered officers, their little tactic to unsettle him before the meeting began failing. They had watched his every move as he made his way closer to the chair, analysing him from his uniform to his actions as if he was some highly codded communication, with each pace revealing a new line in the transmission towards his undoing. He maintained the salute for several seconds before receiving a nod to relax and take a seat.
The chair creaked slightly as he sat down, fixing his uniform in a move that he subconsciously mirrored that of another Picard, in it and he knew that he somehow needed to appear more relaxed as if this whole thing was more of an annoyance, somehow he needed to make the tense atmosphere more relaxed.
"Good afternoon generals." He said nodding to each in turn, before getting a mischievous glint in his eyes that only generals Franklin, Picard and Wigtson noticed. "I have called you here this afternoon to revel the killer of J.F.K."
"Mr S'Jet!" Snapped Carter her voice sharp and controlled almost as if she should be a singer rather than an officer in alliance naval intelligence. "Would you please take this seriously!" She insisted as she glared at him as if trying to vaporise him.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage." He said, keeping his level and controlled to keep the artificial Goa'uld tendencies' at bay due to the meditation he had been doing since he snapped on station Io. "Seeing how you know who I am but have not had the decency of an enlightened society to use manners and introduce yourselves," he said keeping calm and a calling on his memories he had of dealing with ONI section three, "also I am unimpressed by the extra jewellery that is on display, no matter how shiny it is."
That caught them off guard, used to impressing the various alien ambassadors, occasional military officer or making lower ranked officers cower, as this alien officer fired a full broadside at their collective egos.
"If you would have gave us a moment we would have introduced ourselves." Came the distinct aristocratic voice with a slight French accent of General Picard. John nodded politely while inside he was doing a happy dance having scored a direct hit and knocked them off balance giving him the advantage.
"I already knew who you are generals." He said, "I am however curious as to the reason I have been 'requested' to come here?" He asked as he made himself slightly more relaxed. "The state department agreed to allow me to buy a decommissioned ship, the vessel in question has been sitting in the mothball yards for the last two years and was scheduled to be moved to the shipbreakers within the year." He said using his omni-tool to interface with the small tablets which was in front of the officers showing them both the bill of sale and the vessels registration number, "Furthermore all classified military, equipment and computer files should have, under current Alliance laws, been removed within six weeks while the computers were wiped and reformatted that it would take the great Sajuuk himself to recover anything."
"The sale is not the reason, it was all legal with everything removed or erased, however that is the reason we asked you here, colonel." Franklin said, unconsciously crushing the grip on the swagger stick he was holding so hard his knuckles had gone white.
"Respectfully then, general, why have I been asked here?" John asked politely while raising an eyebrow questioningly.
"We, as a group, have some concerns over what you plan to use the ship for." General Balleseros said and despite looking as if he was Latino he spoke with a condescending manner of a 17th century English lord, which grated on John's own sense of British pride.
"Oh, and what business is it of Earth Force if, I as an independent foreign national, wish to provide advanced technologies to aid in the defence of a world that is still rather young to interstellar travel." He was perhaps being a little harder with them than he should have, due in part to the artificial symbiote which meant he would need to do more meditating.
"We have over the last couple of years had an increase in the amount of raider and pirate attacks using ex-military grade hardware, ships and fighters, mostly older Zephyr-104 fighters." Said Picard, who it appeared to be actually reading the documents from the state department.
"Are you accusing me of arming raiders and mercenary groups general?" John asked, his voice cold as he fixed the man with a laser like glare.
"No, but obviously we would like to enquire as to your intentions for a twenty year old decommissioned corvette" Picard asked, having noticed that was planning to use it as a technology demonstrator.
"It is my intention to give Earth some second generation Zentradi technology."
"What sort of 'technology' would that be?" Carter asked as she folded her hands together tenting them.
'Bingo!' Thought John realising somehow that Earth Force intelligence had either hacked the state and patents departments or as was more likely someone was working with those blood bigots in Psi Corps. "Why don't we stop chasing the sand generals." John said again breaching their defences. "Somehow, somebody has told you of the designs I recently patented with both the state department and patterns office." John continued, adjusting his seating position to give them a full 'Alpha' strike, "Either Alliance intelligence has somehow hacked my ship without tripping the defence and attack programs, or as is more than likely, Alliance intelligence have worm programs within the pattern department's servers to alert you when key words are logged such as 'gravity' and 'anti-gravity'." He finished, pulling his jacket down again hiding his nervous twitch.
"Something like that colonel." Admitted the Canadian with a sneer.
"Well then, what is it that you would like to know?" He asked, pretending to have no clue as to what they were asking.
"We would like to know why?" Said Picard, "I admit me and several members of Earth Force research and development don't believe how this system can work." John nodded slightly, somehow understanding his disbelief since he knew it was the fact they would use less power than those on the NX-class or even Goa'uld style fusion reactors.
"Really." It was bait, and he knew it, but he wasn't above taking it, if it would end this meeting. "Simply put, the designs work by creating an interlocking gravity field with each plate and is able to be compartmentalised, which allows for its use on both ships and stations, and can be set to generate anything from minus one-hundred percent up to twenty times standard planetary force." There was no need to tell them that it was in fact a design used on a ship one-hundred year's earlier in another reality, as they all looked at each other trying and failing to hide their excitement. Artificial ship based gravity was a goal that seemed to be currently out of their reach. None of the other spacefaring races would sell it to them no matter how much earth offered to pay to gain it, leaving those races who had it, namely the older spacefaring races, lording it over them both militarily and scientifically as they snubbed the so called younger races who didn't have access to it.
"Really you are giving us this." Wigston, who was the fastest to recover, showing that the resolute British stoicism was alive and well in him, but John could see the excitement in the man's eyes.
"Yes, this ship is for compatibility testing of the system on an Earth vessel, although I may have to switch the main power plant out for something with more productivity." This statement raised more than one eyebrow.
"You have proof this system will be compatible?" Asked Carter her caution waring with the joy at no more zero-g trips between Earth, the colonies and various deep-space outposts.
"General," He said, as he turned slightly to face her and look directly in her eyes, "not only does this technology work, and very well, but I plan to use it to test the compatibility of several other older technologies as well. This lady and gentleman is the reason that I requested, via the Earth Alliance state department, an Olympus class corvette, as it is the closest to a Zentradi Glruimal class patrol ship, to allow for the refinement of the designs needed to be made allowing for mass production."
"Very well then, we agree to it however, we would like to send a military observer along with you to observe the test of the gravity system." Carter said turning to her British counterpart before turning to face S'Jet, "And when it is completed, we would like to sit down to discuss a possible formal contract, if it works."
John could see the writing on the wall, and how they wanted a full contract with him to either refit the fleet or even exclusive rights to use the older Starfleet technologies, leaving him unable to sell it to any other races, which was something he couldn't allow as he had plans based off the basic technologies he was planning to demonstrate where one of the main pillars to his overall plan to defend Earth.
"Agreed, however I will be the one to select the officer and finalize the contract personally." They all nodded their agreement to the idea.
"Very well colonel," Carter said, already thinking of which agents she could use, "I'll have a list of officer service records sent to you to select from for the post."
"Thank-you that would be appreciated." John said as his omni-tool beeped, drawing everyone's attention and making him curse in Klingon under his breath, "Forgive me generals, but I will have to cut this short due to a meeting that I have scheduled between both the Narn and Centauri ambassadors."
"Nothing untoward I hope?" Picard enquired, afraid that Earth might not get the advanced personal and ship based weapons in the agreement with the state department before they could see them in use.
"Oh no general, it is just I have agreed to allow an colony to be set up on the planet I'm based at, however since the planet is on the far edge of Alliance space and near to both boarders of the Centauri and Narn, the region is often in dispute." He said as he pulled his jacket back down after standing, "In fact it might be the reason the colonial administration agreed to allow the colony to be setup so cheaply." He said, before pausing as he realised something to gain favour with the various generals. "You know, I could use someone to help me with this meeting, do you mind loaning me somebody, preferable somebody known to both parties." He could see the generals have a quiet conversation as he stood a pace or two from the door, "I would see it as a personal favour and classed as a boon towards Earth in the contract negotiations later."
With that the meeting was concluded, and John was escorted back to the entrance before he headed to his next appointment, with one David Sheridan acting as a mediator, which would probably cost him in the long run, and an independent commercial member of Psi-corps rated at P4. He didn't know the headaches that this decision would later cause him.
-{[Dimensional Castaway]}-
Johns meeting with the Narn and Centauri, who it just happened to be G'Kar and Londo Mollari respectively, had gone as well as he knew it would with them acting like a recently devoiced couple at a custardy hearing, but after nearly two weeks of talks they agreed to relinquish their claims on the system in exchange for a sizeable amount of raw Quantium 40. They both claimed it was better to have an 'neutral' party control it than in the hands of the other, John and his group waited a polite amount of time before leaving, now that he owed both the telepath he had hired and Sheridan two cases of what he called Zentradi ale, but was really replicated copies of Romulan ale, as an additional payment for the aid they had provided over the last fortnight, plus a bonus of nearly triple what he had agreed to pay for the telepath since the man had been in their minds for almost eight hours a day most of that time.
That was a thing he was certainly planning to work out how to block them from poking around in his head, even it was only the surface thoughts, the technology and knowledge he had in his head could turn even a race like the Pak'ma'ra or Gaim ,who were basically third world nations in terms of the local powers, into super powers, and he didn't want any fascist Bosh'tet group like psi-corps or even the xenophobes' of the Home Guard, to get a hold of any of it, he just knew that the results would be even worse than what he could think of.
Almost as soon as he had returned to the Tsunami-II he had set course back to Kharak and began searching through the Alteran and Asgard sections of the core for ways to prevent telepathic intrusions into his mind, since both races had been around a long time, long enough for the locals to class them as 'First Ones', not to mention the Alterans interactions and war with the Wraith. He also realised he was working on a tight timeframe, with only twelve years to prepare for a war on an interstellar scale let alone effectively technologically uplift Earth, meant he would need to either have to break it down the most basic forms he could or give serious thought of opening a company to supply the Alliance, hell perhaps he could create his own path which would prevent much of the troubles coming.
-{[Dimensional Castaway]}-
Two weeks after returning to Kharak, having cheated and used the full power of the hyper-drive rather than limiting it to the speed of a Goa'uld style one, John decided to commission a crew for the base and orbital stations of 35,000 human form replicants to fill the various military and worker caste positions, even if he did have to break his own pledge not to make them, this way he wouldn't be so alone and would have help should he need it, at least until he could find the time to jump to the various universes to make come clones of the key people from those realities. The replicants didn't possess true awareness' like a full AI, no need for the Cylons or Geth after all, but where more along the lines of a UNSC dumb AI, which was slaved to both the Tsunami-II's own core and the base, with simulated personalities so as to appear as real as possible, but would always be loyal to John. It took nearly three days to complete the construction of the replicants while John began designing a city class colony ship based off the overall design of Atlantis that he called a Tiir class but with most of the basic bells and whistles changed to those of the Tsunami-II, minus the drone weapons, and able to comfortably support a population of 500,000 people, yet he figured he would need to increase the number he built a few time, but not for a fair number of years.
-{[Dimensional Castaway]}-
It was now six weeks after John had returned, and two since he had built his crew and he had received the former Alliance ship Dauntless and the first human workers for his new company, and the Alliance had recently signed a contract with him for their personal weapons to replace the older 'tube runner' pistols and riffle's rather than give them the older model weapons as he had planned when he had seen the PPGs used by the Alliance, and in two days he would finish his final testing phase of recreating a version of Starfleet's plasma rifle but in the body of a MA5-D and EM-33 plasma pistol while using materials that the Alliance had easy access to, after having switched it out from a phaser to a plasma variant, and had the basic Destiny style drones begin the construction of his colony, although he also modified to have several surface to orbit firing plasma cannons, an Atlantis style bunker shield should the Vorlons or Shadows not like him playing with their toys, and started on his plans for the future, but at the moment he had a corvette to upgrade into something that wasn't just a mobile gun battery.
Once he had gotten the ship into the docking cradle by his ODP, he had spent the next two days crawling all over the Dauntless with a fine tooth comb using both the advanced scanners on the cradle and his hybrid tricorder omni-tool taking note of every dent, scratch, burnt out wiring and piece of carbon scoring, and fed it into his tablet that was connected to the Tsunami-II in the other dock since he hadn't finished the construction of his Goa'uld style computer using local materials due to a few problems with the crystal matrix circuity. John knew that he was going to have a gut a fair amount of the internal deck structure, maybe even right back to the space-frame of the ship, since it was designed and built with zero-gravity in mind, so by the time he had finished there would be a total of ten to twelve decks with the main command being in a reinforced citadel housed on top that would also act as a mid-range escape craft due to its modular design while a secondary 'battle bridge' would be housed deeper with the ship and inactive without power unless activated by a two person command access bio-metric code or the destruction of the main bridge.
He replaced the access hatches and ladder system that was the old travel system between the decks with the same lift system used on UNSC Charon class light frigates with a secure armoured airlock between the command bridge and the rest of the ship. The engineering section would have to be totally rebuilt with the original alliance fusion reactors, due to their incompatibility and low power, meaning that before he could begin any of his planed upgrades. The main propulsion system was a joke since it used chemical propellants', granted they were more advanced than the 20th century engines used by NASA that he knew of, they were physically unfit for purpose since they could only produce an average two point seven-five time gravity or 66mph/s for a total of two seconds, the Al'kesh sub-light engines he was changing them to would make it seem like the old ones where a house and cart compared to an SR-71 'Blackbird', but with that thrust increase he would also need to make sure to install both a low-level navigational deflector from an 22nd century Intrepid class and dampener system so that the crew didn't that the crew didn't become grease stains on the bulkheads and deck-plating.
The pair of external docking booms that were fixed a mid-ship were removed, creating a much more streamlined profile, in their place he created a more centralised version housed between the sensor and communication pylons, but under the main cargo hold. The original weapons array, though powerful for its size, was also not fit for purpose and even though he had resolved to give the Alliance weapons, he was not going to go above the Apophis grade weapons thus limiting them to the same base technology that SG-1 would have first encountered. The pulse lasers' were pulled as their power and range limited to a role of a GARDIAN system than for ship-to-ship combat, and that was being kind, as they had a decent range of just under four hundred thousand kilometres but he replaced them with the staff-cannons of an Al'kesh effectively tripling the range.
The main weapons, the twin duel turreted rail-cannons would have to be fixed however, as while they had decent range and kinetic energy transference, their housing was as slow as world war two era battleship with their turning and loading time, taking almost two minutes to turn ninety degrees and gain an elevation of 45 degrees from the ships line of travel, which was unacceptable even in the twentieth century let alone in the twenty-third. John resolved to take a look at the fire control system as that just seem wrong to the augmented man. He left the missile system alone as he refused point blank to give them even basic photonic torpedoes let alone the more advanced reflex enhanced fucus that was on the Tsunami-II, he might give them Archer class weapons later since it was around a third the size of the current weapons but four times as effective, which he actually found appealing since it would allow a Macross Missile attack.
Next he took a look at the main, secondary and targeting systems and found that both the active and passive systems where completely blind, they had no range, couldn't tell the difference between a ship drifting and an asteroid and were able to be jammed by something as simple as several dozen different forms of electromagnetic radiation that most main sequence stars gave off, had this design been presented to the UNSC the fool who had designed it would laughed out of the room before vanishing as a test subject for ONI section III, all of that after being stripped of their rank and or title. John was shocked at how they had to have spent a small fortune on designing the weapons systems, but had forgotten to have created a system to even see their target. It was as simple as placing a set of iron sights on a handgun, in fact the current targeting system was so ineffective he couldn't even hit the side of a barn that was nine kilometres wide from ten meters away.
The defence grid though did impress him, even with his new memories, he had never seen the like, though the majority of it had been removed, there was enough left over hardware and computer data for the stations and his scans to impress him. How had this type of system not been used by the Tau'ri or UNSC, he recalled something from the early days of the Rainforest Wars but it was later removed when the speed of missile type weapons had increased to make the system surplus to requirement. Yet this system was something else, it was both ingenious in its simplicity but complex as well, he might be able to recreate it with the knowledge of UNSC and Federation point defence grids, but it would take some time as he didn't plan to brute force his way through this.
The armour had to be replaced as well, as it was good as it could be for its purpose, but hybridizing it with Romulan war-era polarized hull plating and e-web system it would be able to scatter most of the energy from beam and pulse weapons, increasing the survivability by 50-75% depending on the type of engagement.
John exhaled tiredly, before dragging his hand down his face tiredly, the final report he had compiled was ten pages long making him realise what a momently challenge he had in front of him, but he knew it was necessary since this technology would allow Earth to defend itself more effectively against the Minbari, but also prevent the Shadows from growing so long that they could have their fun with Earth.
It was a very exhausted but more hopeful man that went to bed that night, his dreams may have been filled with death and destruction of a terrible war sparked by a misunderstanding, but he also saw a bright future rising like a phoenix from the ashes afterwards.
-{[Dimensional Castaway]}-