(Colony One – Control Room – 19 January 2017, 0910)
Three weeks ago, this room had been a warehouse. Now it was a multiple level control room. The place was a mixture of Wraith, New Asuran, Ursini, Nakai and Tau’ri technology. Wraith Hives were grown by injecting a host with a pathogen. In order to make this work, said pathogen had been adjusted. It was something that they would have never been able to pull off without the New Asurans, who had done ninety percent of the work. They had combined the pathogen with a specially developed host that the crew had begun calling Rabbit Seeds.
The first stage had taken two weeks to grow and had been really small. But after that, they had added the ZPMs to the mix. The growth had then gone through the roof. It had taken six days to finish the growth. They had spent the last couple of hours running diagnostics, with the plan being to take off at 1200. Overseeing all these preparations was Hailey’s job. She was being helped by Porter, Colson and Bennett. Aranov walked in and whistled.
“Impressive.”
“You look exhausted.” Porter said.
“I am.” He leaned on one of the consoles. “I have been working overtime getting to know the Ursini and the Nakai. The New Asurans provided us with a translator, but their files on the culture of these two races were minimal. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
“So, what are they like ?” Bennett asked.
“Friendly. Very alien, but friendly.” Aranov said. “So, they drafted you into this as well, doctor ?”
“Well, Wraith technology is organic. It made sense.” Bennett began. “Besides, the city has a medical facility with plenty of staff. They can spare me. A couple more diagnostics and we should be….” His sentence was cut off by an alarm. “Okay, that does not sound good.”
“It’s the Fleet. They’re at the edge of long-range sensors.” Colson said. “At their current speed, we have six minutes before they reach us.” The screen in front of Colson showed a starfield with a lot of red dots, which represented the Nakai ships. Colson figured that there were at least twenty motherships. “And there are a lot of them.”
“Skip the rest of the diagnostics.” Hailey said. “We’re taking off now. Nikita, take a seat and power up that console.”
Aranov sat down and activated his console, which turned out to be the weapons station. The dome had come with several particle weapons to come being with. And the growth had included four upgraded Wraith guns. Finally, the New Asurans had send along sixty Ancient drones and the supplies to create a makeshift Control Chair. The chair was sitting on a small level above the area where Hailey and company were manning the consoles.
“Diagnostics have been skipped.” Colson said. “Sounding Action Stations now.” An alarm began blaring, but Colson quickly turned it off. “Starting take-off sequence.”
“Let me guess, the bad guys showed up early.” Vale said as he bolted into the room.
“Yeah.” Hailey said. “I know it’s a cliché, but what can you do ? We’re charging the weapons and the hyperdrive now.”
“How long until we can jump ?”
“Eleven minutes.” Porter said. “But the Nakai can open fire in five. The good news is that we should be able to return the favor. The bad news that if they score one hit to the hyperdrive, we’ll be target practice for them.”
“What about the sub-lights ?” Vale said.
“Two minutes and counting down.” Porter said.
“Good.” Vale said as he ran up the stair to the control chair. “Let’s see how much they like it if we give them a run for their money.”
“You do realize that of all the people here, you put an archeologist behind the weapons !?” Aranov said. “That’s like putting a counselor behind the helm.”
“Nikita, shut up and shoot !” Hailey said.
Vale sat down in the Control Chair and activated it. He brought up a display with the sublight systems. As the minutes ticked away, all the indicators turned green. After the last did so, he fired up all the sublight drives at full power. The city rattled and everybody grabbed hold of something. At this point, all the stations in the control room where manned. And not only by Humans. The crew was a mix of all three races. The Nakai were only one minute away when the city cleared the atmosphere. Vale took the city away from the planet.
“Thirty seconds to weapons range.” Porter said.
“Weapons charged to full.” Aranov said, which was followed by a beep. “They’re in range of the drones.”
Vale fired a wave of drones. It took out two of the Nakai motherships before they could launch their fighters. As they exploded, there was another beep, indicating that the ships were now in range of the rest of the weapons. Aranov opened fire with all the weapons the city had. It took out another mothership. But then the Nakai returned fire. And then they launched their fighters.
“Shields down ten percent !” Colson said. “Five minutes until we can go to hyperspace.”
Vale knew that there was no way they could win a straight up slugging match with the Fleet. There were simply to many of them. But he had a plan. The system only had two planets, but it had plenty of asteroids. They were located in a belt between the planets. Despite what many science fiction movies claimed, there were huge holes between the asteroids. And normally, you would not even notice that you were passing through one. But Vale not heading there to play cat-and-mouse.
“Incoming fighters !” Porter said.
“I see them !” Aranov said.
He fired the weapons again, while Vale unleashed another wave of drones. Six of the incoming fighters went up and Aranov took out another eight. But there were still plenty of them coming. Suddenly – however – there was another wave of fire. Ironically, the colony had two ships to defend itself from attackers. Vale had ordered them to hide themselves behind one of the asteroids. He had drawn the Fleet to the belt so that they could join the fight. (If they had been in orbit when the fleet arrived, they would have been blasted to piece by the first salvo.) Besides the Nakai ships, there were also six Ursini ships.
The Home Space Fleet tried to fire at the friendly Nakai ships, but hit the asteroid instead. Which was why Vale had ordered them to hide there. The Colonist ships threw their fighters at the enemy ships. Said fighters made kamikaze runs at the enemy. What the enemy did not know, but Vale did, was that the ships were on autopilot. The fighters took out dozens of their Home Space counterparts and one of the motherships. They were followed by the Ursini ships, which were also on autopilot. The Ursini – or well, their ships – managed to take out two more ships. But the fighters kept coming.
“Shields down to seventy-two percent !” Colson said.
“I can’t shoot them all down !” Aranov said.
Vale unleashed all the remaining drones, taking out a whole bundle of fighters. He ran down the stairs and made his way towards one of the consoles against the outer wall of the room. It was being manned by an Ursini called T’Zalo. (That was not his real name, but translating Ursini and Nakai names was practically impossible. And they understood that.)
“T’Zalo, engage the teleporter !”
“Yes, sir.”
The two friendly ships were carrying skeleton crews. It had come as a surprise that the Ursini had teleporters, but Vale had not complained. As soon as the two ships were empty, their self-destructs systems triggered. The explosions did not do any damage, but they did send out two massive waves of electro-magnetic energy. Any fighter touched by those waves lost power. Aranov made quick work of them.
“Time !?” Vale said.
“Two minutes.” Hailey said.
The Home Space Fleet fired again. With the Control Chair off-line, the job of flying the city had fallen to Hailey. She managed to dodge some of the incoming fire. But plenty of the enemy shots still hit.
“Shields down to fifty-five percent power !” Colson said. “They’re targeting….”
Before he could finish his sentence, a fleet of alien spaceships dropped out hyperspace. They were unlike any ships they had ever seen before. The ships were oval shape and roughly the same size at a Goa’uld Ha’tak-class mothership. Aranov counted eight of them. They opened fire on the Home Space Fleet, while forming a barrier between them and the city-ship.
“Didn’t this happen last time ?” Porter said. “Aliens riding to the rescue ?”
“Who cares ?” Vale said. “Hailey, get us out of here !”
Aranov maintained fire, taking out more fighters and putting a couple of holes in one the motherships. At the same time, the newcomers were also putting down heavy fire. They took out fighters and destroyed four motherships. Then they jumped into hyperspace. The Home Space Fleet moved towards the city-ship, but it was already to late. A beep announced that their time was up.
“Hyperdrive is ready.” Colson said.
“Go !” Vale said. “Jump this puppy.”
The city-ship opened a hyperspace window and entered
it. Two of the Nakai ships tried to follow, but the city-ship was many times
faster. It quickly pulled out of their sensor range. The moment they did,
Hailey dropped the city out of hyperspace. She used the thrusters to turn it
and then took it back into hyperspace.
“So, what just happened ?” Vale said.
“I think I have part of the answer.” Aranov said. “Look at this…” He brought an image of one of the alien ships up on his screen. Then he zoomed in on a section of the hull. It showed alien writing. “…that is the same writing we found on the desert moon. And this…” He pointed to a larger symbol. “….appears to be some kind of logo.”
“That is the Seal of the Jynacko Empire.” T’Zalo said.
“You’ve heard of this race ?” Vale said. “And you did not say ?”
“Nobody asked, so I presumed you knew.” T’Zalo said. “Sorry. Neither we or the Nakai Colonists know much about them. We do know that they rule about a quarter of the galaxy containing Home Space, which is the rest of the galaxy. Relations between the Nakai and the Jynacko are tense. The Nakai have superior numbers, but the Jynacko have better technology. And thus there is a balance.”
“Preventing open warfare.” Porter said.
“But out here, where the ships cannot easily report back, they can strike.” Vale said. “And when the ships fail to return, who will get the blame ?...We. It serves the Empire’s purposes if the Home Space Nakai lose this…war of attrition.” Vale scratched his face. “Because if the Nakai lose, they will have to spend resources on resettling those worlds. Thus reducing the Nakai’s numbers.”
“It is believed by some of the Colonists that the reason the Nakai are obsessed with the Destroyer, is the Empire.” T’Zalo said. “They want the secrets and knowledge of the Des…tiny so that they can advance their technology and wipe out the Empire.”
Vale leaned against one of the consoles. One of the things had learned after coming out of stasis, was how to play chess. He and Colson had played many a game during his time at the Beta Site. And so had he and Hailey. While he and Aranov had played lots of checkers and poker. Finally, his father had taught him a lot of games as well. And that was not even counting his official strategic training. He had a feeling that he would need all of that knowledge for them to survive this game.
(Colony One – Control Room – 19 January 2017, 1200)
Things had calmed down and the control room was running on a skeleton crew. In the central area, that was just Colson and T’Zalo. Before he had found out about the Stargate program, Colson had considered aliens the thing of science fiction. But now, here he was. Having gone from business man and engineer to crewmember on alien starship. Which was on its way to rescue a group of people who were stranded on another alien starship. And he was crewing it along with an alien to boot.
When they had arrived, he had thought that the plan would be really complicated. Fortunately, they had quickly learned that the colonies were not just domes, they were enclosed modules. It turned out that the Nakai had designed these colonies so that they could be moved. But the domes were not fitted with engines. They needed to be towed by a mothership. The modules were also not airtight. But the refit had taken care of all that. He leaned on the console and sighed.
“What is bothering you, Mister Colson ?” T’Zalo said.
“I am thinking about this mission.” Colson began. “And how it has already changed the universe.”
“Doctor Aranov told me about Destiny and its mission. And what it is about.” T’Zalo sat next to Colson. “How decoding the message she is chasing would change the universe. But I think you are right. Thinking it works like that is short-sighted. The mission itself is changing existence already. It has saved us from the Home Space Nakai.”
“What did you do before we came ?”
“Me ?” T’Zalo looked at him. “I was an engineer. My grandfather was on the team that created our Gate remote. It is a big, heavy machine. So we put together a team to invent an improved version. I got lucky and was made team leader. Is it true that you are an engineer as well ?”
“Yes.” Colson said. “What happened to that project ?”
“It was put on hold when we found out about the Nakai threat.”
“Well, we have several months to pass.” Colson said. “And we have technology from five races to work with. How would you feel about asking permission to get back to work ?”
“I think that is an excellent idea.”
Colson and T’Zalo continued to talk, with neither of them being aware that Vale was watching them. Vale was well aware that their trip would be long. The hyperdrive they had grown was not as efficient as the Ancient hyperdrive that had driven Nova Roma. It would take them roughly seven months to reach Colony Eighty-Two. And in that time, they would have to share the city with the Nakai and the Ursini. Colson and T’Zalo were not the only ones developing…contact. Aranov was talking to plenty of the locals. And Hailey and Porter were often seen together with alien scientists. By the time they arrived at the planet, the Expedition would be integrated into the society of the city.
“Saying goodbye will not be easy.” A female voice said.
Vale turned to see Governor Carossa standing behind him. Carossa was a female Nakai, who was the leader of Colony One. After Yorick had explained about the threat they were facing, she had given Vale command of all the military personnel in the city. (Meaning Human, Ursini and Nakai.) The colonel had taken an instant liking to the Governor. She was not the kind to pull punches.
“Yeah, I was thinking about that.” Vale said. “And the fact that we are short on personnel.” He paused. “There forty-nine of us now. Let’s presume that we managed to rescue Colonel Telford’s team and get twelve people from Earth. That’s twenty-seven people. So, best case scenario, we have seventy-six people.”
“Why do I have a feeling there is more to it ?”
“Who are we to take Destiny for ourselves ? What give us the right to monopolize that ship ?” He paused. “Rush said that we can make things better if we finish Destiny’s mission. But who decides what is better ? Who are we to play God ?” He looked at Carossa. “I have studied enough of history to know that it never ends well.”
“I am surprise to hear you be so philosophical. From what Nikita told me, the Roman Empire expected its soldiers to follow orders without question.”
“The Roman Empire was not born to my mother.” Vale said. “She drilled a lot of things into her children. Some that father did not agree with. But she refused to yield and did it anyway. No matter how much father yelled at her.”
“I like her.” She paused. “And you are right to ask these questions. Perhaps the power of Destiny is too much for one race to handle. The fact that you have the wisdom to ask these questions give me hope. But what of your superiors ? From what Nikita said, neither the military or the civilians have much faith in this….IOA ?”
Vale nodded. “Yeah, I am going to have to ask some serious questions and have some serious conversations. But first I have to do some thinking about who to direct those questions and conversations to. I’ll be in my room.”
Vale walked away, leaving Carossa to watch T’Zalo and Colson. She was no expert on Earth politics, but she knew that some things were…universal. And she had a feeling that Vale’s superiors would not like his questions.
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