Friday 6 December 2019

SG Nova Roma, Chapter 3.17


17 – How Samuel Escaped from H-8 (and stuff happening elsewhere)

(Prison World H-8 – Courtyard – 24 January 2018, 0717)

Samuel sat on the ground in courtyard. He had just heard that his father, brother and niece had all been killed. ~How ? How could this happen ?~ From what he had heard, the some of the soldiers had gone insane. They had killed the Royal Family and the Senate. And a considerable chunk of the Palace Guard. ~But how much of that is real and how much is Senate propaganda ?~ He simply didn’t care, bowing his head and crying.

After what seemed like an eternity, he heard footsteps. He didn’t look up. ~Leave me alone.~ Whoever it was, stopped next to him and sat down. There was a moment of silence, then the newcomer spoke up.

“It stinks,” A male voice said. “It just totally stinks.”

Samuel looked up to see Pauly Carros sitting next to him. When he had arrived here - three years ago - he had found that H-8-1 was no longer a working prison. The bulk of the prisoners had been send there for the minor crimes. They had actually served their time, but because the Doorway lacked a Operator Device, there was no way for them to leave. And there were also actual criminals, who were locked away in the lower levels of the prison.

The result was a strange world, which was not really a prison and not really a colony. And of those not locked away, Pauly Carros was the most violent and cranky person in the whole place. He had been send here for murdering his wife and her lover, but he had served his time. And if he was kind to somebody, you knew it was bad.

“I have to get off this rock,” Samuel began. “I don’t care what it takes. I want those bastards to pay.”

“Okay.”

Carros waited for a moment, then stood up and walked away. Three days later, he had presented Samuel with an Operator Device. Samuel had been shocked to see this, because it meant that the prisoners could have escaped at any time. When he had asked Carros why they had not, the man had simply replied ‘to what’. They would be trading their life on this semi-colony, for a life under intense scrutiny. One tiny mistake and they would be put to death. They had more freedom on H-8 then they could ever have in the Empire.

Samuel had then spent several weeks getting into shape, before leading the guards through the Doorway. He had left Carros in charge back on H-8. ~The irony of making the most dangerous man not locked away the Warden.~ Carros had recruited several of his fellow released criminals to become the new guards. And so, the strange world of H-8 had been maintained. As for Samuel, he no longer had a claim on the throne. But he did still could claim the title of Lord of Ayos Island. Which was exactly what he had done.

Ayos Island was a small island that was home to the Royal Palace, Alpha One and the town of Toryn. The Capital City was located on the nearby mainland of Large Immosa. That done, he had decided to relocate the Royal Residence to Alpha One. This would not only give him access to every secret locked away inside the base, but it would also force the Senate to build Alpha Two. Which would be a new underground bunker to house the Senate. It would give the local economy a huge boost and he would be able to put spies in place in the facility. But first on his to-do list had been exploring the facility. Which was exactly what he and his troops had been doing when Cinara and the strangers had showed up.

(Stargate Command – Conference Lounge – Day 181, 0800)

While Jack O’Neill was attending a briefing aboard Spera, General Hank Landry was leading a meeting at Stargate Command. The subject was a terrorist group called The Trust. It was The Trust that had forced Alec Colson to go into hiding off-world. They had begun as a group of ruthless business leaders, who wanted to defend Earth by any means available. And use captured alien technology to make an large profits.

As for their approach….the group’s leaders had not cared about interstellar diplomacy or ethics. A good example was the time they had used a nerve agents against the Goa’uld, not caring about the fact that they were wiping out innocent Free Jaffa in the process. Their methods and attitudes had made them enemies of Stargate Command and Earth in general. And things had gotten worse from there.

Because in 2004, the Goa’uld had begun infiltrating the organization. And by 2005, they were in total control of the Trust. This had made them even more dangerous, because it gave the Goa’uld a foothold on Earth. But it had not all been bad news, because the great collapse of the Goa’uld Empire had also affected the Trust. And in the years since, they had suffered several setbacks. Some at hands of Earth and some at the hands of the Lucian Alliance. But now, apparently, there had been a major change.

Which was why Landry was here. And he was not alone. Because he had needed to brief the International Oversight Authority on whatever was going on. Alas, they were busy bickering about the new treaty the people of FR-2. So he had ended up with the F-team that had rubber stamped things for the Nova Roma Expedition when it had gotten into a bind. Which was fine with Landry, because he needed common sense and not bureaucracy and ass-covering.

The team had five members. Reginald Jones was a British file clerk, Doctor Ingrid Anders was an American researcher, Boris Grankin was a Russian cook, Henry Valluy was a French janitor and Qui Han was a Chinese nurse. They were all low-rank officials and had been used as strawmen before. But so far, they had been dodging the bullet. Completing the group was an NID called Malcom Barrett. It was Barrett who would actually be briefing them. He began by handing out folders.

“Inside these folders, you will find information on a Goa’uld called Athena. In 2005, she took a woman called Charlotte Mayfield as a host. And after Baal was taken out of the picture in 2008, she became the defacto leader of the Trust.”

“We already know this,” Landry began. “Get to new part, Barrett.”

“Two days ago, Russian Intelligence found Mayfield’s body in abandoned facility in Siberia. To specific, it was the same facility that once housed the Russian Stargate Program,” He paused. “Her body was severely decayed. We estimate both the host and the Goa’uld died in 2016.”

“If you knew this two days ago, why are we only getting briefed now ?” Valluy asked.

“It took a day to do the autopsy. And Athena was not the only body we found. It appears there was a coup within the Trust. Also, we have confirmed that whoever executed the coup, is also behind the disappearance of the Goa’uld from Lucian Alliance space.”

“I thought that the Goa’uld disappearances had gone beyond Lucian Alliance space now ?” Han said.

“They have,” Landry said. “According to our off-world allies, Goa’uld have begun to vanish all over the galaxy.”

“And now, that includes Earth,” Barrett said. “Based on what we found in the facility, the Trust was using it as a rallying point for what little forces they had left on Earth. Whoever took over had the organization leave Earth altogether. The facility hadn’t had been visited in at least eight months. Russian Intelligence found Athena because the renting agreement on one of their safehouses expired. The owner found the house full of dead Trust operatives. It was the investigation of this house that led them to the facility.”

“Why this facility ?” Jones asked.

“The Trust had only a handful of people left,” Barrett said. “If they put everybody on a single ship and we had intercepted it, it would have all been over. We believe that they were planning to steal an off-world Stargate and use it to escape.”

“So they were planning to move off-world anyway.” Valluy said. “And the Russian facility was their way out.”

“Which leaves us with the million dollar question,” Anders began. “Who is pulling the strings ? And where are all those Goa’uld going ?”

“We’re still working on that,” Barrett said. “But we have begun ruling out regions of the galaxy already. Including Free Jaffa, Tok’ra and New Asuran space. To speed things up, we want to organize a conference at the Alpha Site.”

“And we need you to represent Earth,” Landry said. “Otherwise the IOA will slow this down with tons of questions that we don’t have time for. If the Goa’uld are preparing to a comeback, we need to know about it before it happens.”

“Okay,” Jones said.

Landry left, while Barrett began briefing the team on the dreary details of what they would have discuss at the conference. As he sat down at his desk, he hoped that something would come out of all this. Because the last thing the Milky Way needed was for the Goa’uld to return to power.

(Destiny – Stasis Pods Area – Day 188, 0915)

Private Dennis Alexander Young was the only person left alive. After the chaos on the first day, there was only been four survivors. In the days since, two of them had committed suicide. The last of them – Private John Mackenzie – had been killed when he had entered a section that had been locked down. It turned out that section had been locked down because there was damaged Vicerant reactor inside. Mackenzie had taken a massive dose of radiation. Which had caused him to die before the end of the day.

That had been two days after the ship had jumped into FTL and he had been alone ever since. He had gone through the entire ship, stripping the dead of food and water. And he had visited both the hydroponic bay and the hydroponics dome. Alas, the dome had been turned into a dead place by some unknown event. And the plants in the bay had been removed for medical research. The problem was the replanting of both sites had been scheduled for next month. So he had been forced to make due with the rations. Which he had been able to do, until now. He checked his backpack and sighed. ~A day, no more than that.~

So he had made his way to the area with the Stasis Pods. All the controls on the ship were dead, but he hoped to beat the odds. Maybe he could turn one of the pods on. If not… Well, he had a pistol with six bullets in it. He had just walked into the area and made his way to one of the control consoles. ~Okay, let’s see if I can get this thing….~ Young frowned when he saw that the console was still on-line. ~Why wasn’t this shut down by Destiny when she went into this crazy mode ?~ He worked the console and realized that one of the pods was still working. Then he saw who had been in the pod.

“Eli Wallace,” He paused. “Of course, that’s why it’s still on-line.”

One of the things that the Vicerant had discovered when they had first boarded Destiny, was that the stasis pod Eli Wallace had been in, had been damaged. And that it had been repaired by nanites of unknown origin. Those nanites were still inside the stasis pod. Where they had been detected by one of their scanners, which was how the original team had put it together. ~The nanites had taken just enough control of the pod to prevent shutdown when things went wrong.~ He hit several buttons and watched as the stasis pod opened. Taking a deep breath, he was about to step into the pod when he heard an odd noise.

“What in the world….”

Putting his backpack in the pod, he drew his weapon and headed towards the noise. It was coming from another row of pods. Two of the pods were closed, with a yellow light coming from inside them. He took a closer look and realized that there were cocoons inside the pods. ~What ?~ Young took out a scanner and ran it over both of the pods. Both units were swarming with the same nanites. And they were building something inside the pods. But that raised new questions, such as….what were they building ? And what were they using as raw material. It was only then that he realized something.

“Where are the bodies ?”

There had been several bodies in this area. And now they were all gone. ~Oh, you have got to be kidding me.~ He had read all the reports from the original team. They had mentioned that they had found two mental patterns in the quarantine section of Destiny’s memory. ~The nanites are building them bodies.~ Young hit several keys, running it through the internal database of DNA profiles. The device labelled one as unknown, while the other was labelled Ginn. He had no idea who this Ginn person was.

~So that tell me absolutely nothing.~ But as he made his way to Eli’s old pod and stepped inside – throwing out the backpack as he did so – he realized that his life was about to get a lot more complicated. ~That is, presuming I ever wake up.~ And that the Vicerant didn’t get regain control of the ship and executed him. Then the pod closed and the world faded to black.

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