Outpost IF-63 (SG/WH40k)
Posted: 2006-03-05 03:59am
Note 1: Warhammer 40000 and Stargate are the properties of their respective owners. I claim no credit for either of these great universes. To the creators, should you read this: Please don't sue me or this site.
Note 2: This is just the first chapter, posted to see what reactions are. Depending on how you guys comment on it, I'll make adjustments and post another chapter. Also: I apologize for the shortness of the chapter, but it's all I could work up.
Chapter 1: Beginnings
The SGC: Just after Lost City pt 2
It was lonely in the processing room, where all the photos that every SG team took were analyzed and classified. Some were of buildings, others of artifacts or writing. Technician Joshua Crane was going over the data that Doctor Daniel Jackson had brought back from the last planet, along with his companian, Tech. George . Crane rubbed his eyes, six hours of staring at a computer screen took its toll. Most of the pictures brought back were indecipherable without a working knowledge of Ancient, or archeology, or another advanced discipline of which he knew nothing. All they were supposed to do was organize everything brought back. The new guy next to him yawned, and looked over at him. Crane, not having eyes in the back of his head, didn't know this and instead bent forward in concentration. Dr. Jackson came in with a smile on his face, and said "What did I get?"
"Lot's of gibberish," Crane answered "I can't believe you can really decipher this stuff".
"You could learn, it's just a matter of memorization, hell, even Jack..." the archeologist trailed off.
"Sorry about him, sir. I'm sure he'll pull through"
"Yeah, he's like that" Jackson replied.
The new guy spoke up "Hey, I was just wondering, what do these eight symbols show?"
Jackson walked over, looked at the screen, and froze. Josh was abruptly very curious as to what spawned this, and so he came over and looked too. He didn''t see anything in particular, a bunch of Ancient symbols sure, but nothing major. Jackson asked for and got the printout and left in a hurry. Crane looked long and hard at the guy's screen, but still didn't see anything that might've caused the reaction that it had. He wondered if Jackson was faking it, then decided otherwise. Joshua asked the guy "Hey I didn't catch your name, what is it?", The reply was short:"Bob".
General George Hammond was not pleased. The leader of his best team was frozen, and a new problem had dropped itself firmly in his lap. It was a Stargate address, and a power requirement. The power was well within the SGC's allowment, for one-shot things, but no good for anything more than that. If it became regular, someone at the power company was going to start asking questions, questions that the Air Force didn't want to have to answer. So Hammond thought about it. He then called in the third best, as the best and second best were otherwise occupied. The voice rang throughout the SGC "SG-8, report to the briefing room in 15 minutes".
"Colonel Richards, Doctor Jones, Lieutenents Sanders and Green, we've just discovered an Ancient wall writing that gives a gate address and a power requirement. This gate address is going to use all nine of the chevrons on the Stargate. Needless to say, we're not sure where it goes, but we'll be sending along a generator capable of twice the requirement to make sure you get home. Also, we won't be expecting you to report back for 72 hours, to make sure you have the time to figure out exactly what dials home. There may or may not be a DHD there. Any questions?"
Cnl. Grant Richards was not the most practical of men. He preferred a quiet day talking to people instead of fighting Jaffa, so he couldn't help but ask "Did it say anything about locals?"
"No, it made no mention of any indigenous people whatsoever, though that may have changed in the meantime"
The doctor was the next to think of something "What did it say about what the Ancients built there?"
"It labeled the place as 'Outpost IF-63'"
"Anything about what the outpost does?
"Nothing whatsoever. I'll make it simple, you're going in blind except for what the MALP shows. With luck, we'll just get an 'unable to dial' or hit a wall. Quite frankly, we can't afford to antagonize anyone else, Hell, we just barely made it through Anubis's attack."
The Imperium of Man, Planet Antuga, Eastern fringe of Empire
Antuga was a desolate planet. If not for the supply of promethian, it would've been colonized for agriculture and forgotten. Instead, it was colonized for a small mining operation and then nearly forgotten anyway. However, the place was on a minor regional trade route, and thus warrented a frigate and a company of Imperial Guardsmen, in case of pirates. Being on the "eastern" edge of the Imperiam of Man, there was little Warp or Chaos activity, though the occasional spotting of an Eldar foo fighter was not out of the question. The planet was totally unremarkable save for one interesting fact: It had been the place of a great (albeit short lived) experiment once. There were enough enigmatic ruins to've warrented a look see by the survey team, and after determining there was no Chaotic, Tauan, Necron, Eldar, or Orkish influence to it, an Imperial archeological team was sent in to find out exactly what it was. They met with little success, eventually abandoning the place to the occasional civilian archeological team.
There was such a team on Antuga now, and the Imperial Guard captain wasn't pleased about it. Civilians always had shoddy equipment, seeing as they didn't have access to proper techpriests from the Adeptus Mechanicus. As such, he always had to devote one of his two to making sure nothing major blew up on the poor sods. The captain settled back in his chair, and contemplated an eventual escape from this Emperor-forsaken rock.In any case, the captain was by now settled in to his routine boredom, and wondered if anything out of the ordinary would happen within ten years.
Archeoligist Raoin was a bit unhappy. The expedition had found some nigh-untouched buildings, but nothing in them. It seemed that the people had just up and left, without being nice enough to give a hint as to why. There were no other ruins like it in the galaxy, but nothing in them. All evidence save the shells themselves had just been destroyed or taken. Sure, there was some kind of script on a few walls, but not enough to get a read on the language, or help translate it. He found himself hoping for something, anything, even if it was just a fragment of pottery, to give his superiors when he had to return to (Insert planet name). Suddenly, the background noise of the team's generator stopped, and was followed by a curse from the person using the database. Raoin grinned as the techpriest bustled over and stroked the machine. The techpriest began talking to the machine "Now spirit, I know you've been working hard..." as Raoin looked away grinning. The archeologist still couldn't believe that the team had been assigned their own techpriest for the duration of the dig!
The digger was tired. She'd seen something by the edge of the village and had gone out to dig at the mound. However, after several hours of work, there was still nothing going *tink* on her shovel. "Just a few more minutes," she thought, "Then I'll go get some water". She continued to dig as the blazing hot sun pounded on her back. Others of the dig team occasionally came over and asked her why she was digging outside the designated site, and she answered that she had a hunch that there was something here. Just as she was about to put down the shovel, she thought she heard an echo below her, so she climbed out the hole and grabbed a nearby stick. After poking it into the ground, she felt something solid. Whether it was a boulder or not, she didn't know, but she WAS going to find out. She dug another four feet, then hit paydirt. A gray metallic object, with what appeared to be a light on top of it.
After calling the rest of the team over, it was a matter of an hour and a half before the object was completely unburied. The object looked like a circle, with a ring inside of it with symbols on it, with nine regularly placed lights around its circumfrance. Some half forgotten instinct led the team to put the object upright, and study it that way. Some ultrasounds were done, and another odd spot was discovered maybe 10 feet away. The next day, it too was unearthed, and had all 42 of the symbols on the inner ring on it.
The team placed it in front of the odd circle, and called the techpriest in to see what he could learn. After a few minutes, the techpriest had this to say: "This poor spirit has been left alone for tens of thousands of years, and grew very lonely. It's a 'people' type of machine, and is glad to see more have come. All the machine spirit wishes is to continue where it left off". Raoin had expected something more substantial, not this mumbo jumbo.
"Is that it?" he asked, "Is that all you could get from it? Nothing about its function, or what we're supposed to do with it?".
"Not all machines are as forthcoming as you would like. I take the blessings I recieve from the Emperor", the techpriest answered, "Indeed, I was lucky to get that much as this spirit could not believe it had been dug up again, much less been spoken to".
"So ask some more. Any ideas about what its supposed to do would greatly help the dig,"
"Patience, let the spirit come to grips with its new situation," the techpriest said, "After all, if you had just been dug up after that long a time, wouldn't you be a bit shocked?"
"Well yeah", Raoin said thoughtfully, "I suppose so."
Some people have more faith than others, some just do their duty better. In this case, it was the woman who dug the strange ring up that had gone to the captain of the Guard company. He had been very interested, and more than a little worried. Objects like that had been known to cause incredible Chaos invasions, and only under exceedingly lucky circumstances had anyone ever triumphed. The good captain had suspected that he might not be so lucky, and so had sent the eight Guardsmen on duty to get there, with the rest of the small company to mobilize behind them in preparation for anything.
Captain Jenkins knew his duty. He called the tower and asked for a message pod to be prepped. "Why? What's wrong?" came the worried response. "There's a possible Chaos gate on this world. The company is moving out, if we don't check back in, or if we do and it's fighting, then launch the pod to the nearest civilized world" the captain gushed out. "Right. Pod will be prepped in two minutes. Good luck Captain Jenkies."
It was in this scene, that eightl fully uniformed and armed Imperial Guardsmen came running up. The leader spoke "I am Sargeant Emersons, and what in the name of the Emperor is that?"
"That's an artifact we unearthed just now", Raoin replyed "It's like nothing we've seen before".
"Yeah, well, how do you know that's not a gateway straight to the Warp?" The sargeant barked "I have my orders from the captain, to secure this thing and make ready for his inspection."
"He can't do that!" a team member spoke up, "We're just getting to our own identification, and furthurmore the Tech Priest would've said something if this went to the Warp"
The techpriest, seeing his neck on the line, put in "Well, it never said anything about that, why don't I have another chat with it?"
Sargeant Emersons was not amused. "Listen priest, Chaos corrupts, I don't want to have to explain to the captain why I let a techpriest talk to something that might be Warp-ish"
At this rather unfortunate moment, the lights on the gate began to light up. The inner circle wheeled around with a slight scraping sound, and when the symbol locked into place, a solid *shu-shunk* was made. The archeologists quite smartly ran to their camp to grab what they could, while the Guardsmen hastily set up a defensive semicircle in the nearby holes dug by the civilians. As the ninth one came around the locked, the Guardsmen nervously aimed their weapons, while finishing some hasty prayers to the Emperor to save their souls. The gate gave its warning siren, a WOP-WOP, and a blue flush went out about eight feet towards the Guardsmen, who couragously held their fire for the real threat. As they prepared to face unknown horrors from beyond the depths of time, a small unarmed robot came out of the gate with a slight fwoop.
Note 2: This is just the first chapter, posted to see what reactions are. Depending on how you guys comment on it, I'll make adjustments and post another chapter. Also: I apologize for the shortness of the chapter, but it's all I could work up.
Chapter 1: Beginnings
The SGC: Just after Lost City pt 2
It was lonely in the processing room, where all the photos that every SG team took were analyzed and classified. Some were of buildings, others of artifacts or writing. Technician Joshua Crane was going over the data that Doctor Daniel Jackson had brought back from the last planet, along with his companian, Tech. George . Crane rubbed his eyes, six hours of staring at a computer screen took its toll. Most of the pictures brought back were indecipherable without a working knowledge of Ancient, or archeology, or another advanced discipline of which he knew nothing. All they were supposed to do was organize everything brought back. The new guy next to him yawned, and looked over at him. Crane, not having eyes in the back of his head, didn't know this and instead bent forward in concentration. Dr. Jackson came in with a smile on his face, and said "What did I get?"
"Lot's of gibberish," Crane answered "I can't believe you can really decipher this stuff".
"You could learn, it's just a matter of memorization, hell, even Jack..." the archeologist trailed off.
"Sorry about him, sir. I'm sure he'll pull through"
"Yeah, he's like that" Jackson replied.
The new guy spoke up "Hey, I was just wondering, what do these eight symbols show?"
Jackson walked over, looked at the screen, and froze. Josh was abruptly very curious as to what spawned this, and so he came over and looked too. He didn''t see anything in particular, a bunch of Ancient symbols sure, but nothing major. Jackson asked for and got the printout and left in a hurry. Crane looked long and hard at the guy's screen, but still didn't see anything that might've caused the reaction that it had. He wondered if Jackson was faking it, then decided otherwise. Joshua asked the guy "Hey I didn't catch your name, what is it?", The reply was short:"Bob".
General George Hammond was not pleased. The leader of his best team was frozen, and a new problem had dropped itself firmly in his lap. It was a Stargate address, and a power requirement. The power was well within the SGC's allowment, for one-shot things, but no good for anything more than that. If it became regular, someone at the power company was going to start asking questions, questions that the Air Force didn't want to have to answer. So Hammond thought about it. He then called in the third best, as the best and second best were otherwise occupied. The voice rang throughout the SGC "SG-8, report to the briefing room in 15 minutes".
"Colonel Richards, Doctor Jones, Lieutenents Sanders and Green, we've just discovered an Ancient wall writing that gives a gate address and a power requirement. This gate address is going to use all nine of the chevrons on the Stargate. Needless to say, we're not sure where it goes, but we'll be sending along a generator capable of twice the requirement to make sure you get home. Also, we won't be expecting you to report back for 72 hours, to make sure you have the time to figure out exactly what dials home. There may or may not be a DHD there. Any questions?"
Cnl. Grant Richards was not the most practical of men. He preferred a quiet day talking to people instead of fighting Jaffa, so he couldn't help but ask "Did it say anything about locals?"
"No, it made no mention of any indigenous people whatsoever, though that may have changed in the meantime"
The doctor was the next to think of something "What did it say about what the Ancients built there?"
"It labeled the place as 'Outpost IF-63'"
"Anything about what the outpost does?
"Nothing whatsoever. I'll make it simple, you're going in blind except for what the MALP shows. With luck, we'll just get an 'unable to dial' or hit a wall. Quite frankly, we can't afford to antagonize anyone else, Hell, we just barely made it through Anubis's attack."
The Imperium of Man, Planet Antuga, Eastern fringe of Empire
Antuga was a desolate planet. If not for the supply of promethian, it would've been colonized for agriculture and forgotten. Instead, it was colonized for a small mining operation and then nearly forgotten anyway. However, the place was on a minor regional trade route, and thus warrented a frigate and a company of Imperial Guardsmen, in case of pirates. Being on the "eastern" edge of the Imperiam of Man, there was little Warp or Chaos activity, though the occasional spotting of an Eldar foo fighter was not out of the question. The planet was totally unremarkable save for one interesting fact: It had been the place of a great (albeit short lived) experiment once. There were enough enigmatic ruins to've warrented a look see by the survey team, and after determining there was no Chaotic, Tauan, Necron, Eldar, or Orkish influence to it, an Imperial archeological team was sent in to find out exactly what it was. They met with little success, eventually abandoning the place to the occasional civilian archeological team.
There was such a team on Antuga now, and the Imperial Guard captain wasn't pleased about it. Civilians always had shoddy equipment, seeing as they didn't have access to proper techpriests from the Adeptus Mechanicus. As such, he always had to devote one of his two to making sure nothing major blew up on the poor sods. The captain settled back in his chair, and contemplated an eventual escape from this Emperor-forsaken rock.In any case, the captain was by now settled in to his routine boredom, and wondered if anything out of the ordinary would happen within ten years.
Archeoligist Raoin was a bit unhappy. The expedition had found some nigh-untouched buildings, but nothing in them. It seemed that the people had just up and left, without being nice enough to give a hint as to why. There were no other ruins like it in the galaxy, but nothing in them. All evidence save the shells themselves had just been destroyed or taken. Sure, there was some kind of script on a few walls, but not enough to get a read on the language, or help translate it. He found himself hoping for something, anything, even if it was just a fragment of pottery, to give his superiors when he had to return to (Insert planet name). Suddenly, the background noise of the team's generator stopped, and was followed by a curse from the person using the database. Raoin grinned as the techpriest bustled over and stroked the machine. The techpriest began talking to the machine "Now spirit, I know you've been working hard..." as Raoin looked away grinning. The archeologist still couldn't believe that the team had been assigned their own techpriest for the duration of the dig!
The digger was tired. She'd seen something by the edge of the village and had gone out to dig at the mound. However, after several hours of work, there was still nothing going *tink* on her shovel. "Just a few more minutes," she thought, "Then I'll go get some water". She continued to dig as the blazing hot sun pounded on her back. Others of the dig team occasionally came over and asked her why she was digging outside the designated site, and she answered that she had a hunch that there was something here. Just as she was about to put down the shovel, she thought she heard an echo below her, so she climbed out the hole and grabbed a nearby stick. After poking it into the ground, she felt something solid. Whether it was a boulder or not, she didn't know, but she WAS going to find out. She dug another four feet, then hit paydirt. A gray metallic object, with what appeared to be a light on top of it.
After calling the rest of the team over, it was a matter of an hour and a half before the object was completely unburied. The object looked like a circle, with a ring inside of it with symbols on it, with nine regularly placed lights around its circumfrance. Some half forgotten instinct led the team to put the object upright, and study it that way. Some ultrasounds were done, and another odd spot was discovered maybe 10 feet away. The next day, it too was unearthed, and had all 42 of the symbols on the inner ring on it.
The team placed it in front of the odd circle, and called the techpriest in to see what he could learn. After a few minutes, the techpriest had this to say: "This poor spirit has been left alone for tens of thousands of years, and grew very lonely. It's a 'people' type of machine, and is glad to see more have come. All the machine spirit wishes is to continue where it left off". Raoin had expected something more substantial, not this mumbo jumbo.
"Is that it?" he asked, "Is that all you could get from it? Nothing about its function, or what we're supposed to do with it?".
"Not all machines are as forthcoming as you would like. I take the blessings I recieve from the Emperor", the techpriest answered, "Indeed, I was lucky to get that much as this spirit could not believe it had been dug up again, much less been spoken to".
"So ask some more. Any ideas about what its supposed to do would greatly help the dig,"
"Patience, let the spirit come to grips with its new situation," the techpriest said, "After all, if you had just been dug up after that long a time, wouldn't you be a bit shocked?"
"Well yeah", Raoin said thoughtfully, "I suppose so."
Some people have more faith than others, some just do their duty better. In this case, it was the woman who dug the strange ring up that had gone to the captain of the Guard company. He had been very interested, and more than a little worried. Objects like that had been known to cause incredible Chaos invasions, and only under exceedingly lucky circumstances had anyone ever triumphed. The good captain had suspected that he might not be so lucky, and so had sent the eight Guardsmen on duty to get there, with the rest of the small company to mobilize behind them in preparation for anything.
Captain Jenkins knew his duty. He called the tower and asked for a message pod to be prepped. "Why? What's wrong?" came the worried response. "There's a possible Chaos gate on this world. The company is moving out, if we don't check back in, or if we do and it's fighting, then launch the pod to the nearest civilized world" the captain gushed out. "Right. Pod will be prepped in two minutes. Good luck Captain Jenkies."
It was in this scene, that eightl fully uniformed and armed Imperial Guardsmen came running up. The leader spoke "I am Sargeant Emersons, and what in the name of the Emperor is that?"
"That's an artifact we unearthed just now", Raoin replyed "It's like nothing we've seen before".
"Yeah, well, how do you know that's not a gateway straight to the Warp?" The sargeant barked "I have my orders from the captain, to secure this thing and make ready for his inspection."
"He can't do that!" a team member spoke up, "We're just getting to our own identification, and furthurmore the Tech Priest would've said something if this went to the Warp"
The techpriest, seeing his neck on the line, put in "Well, it never said anything about that, why don't I have another chat with it?"
Sargeant Emersons was not amused. "Listen priest, Chaos corrupts, I don't want to have to explain to the captain why I let a techpriest talk to something that might be Warp-ish"
At this rather unfortunate moment, the lights on the gate began to light up. The inner circle wheeled around with a slight scraping sound, and when the symbol locked into place, a solid *shu-shunk* was made. The archeologists quite smartly ran to their camp to grab what they could, while the Guardsmen hastily set up a defensive semicircle in the nearby holes dug by the civilians. As the ninth one came around the locked, the Guardsmen nervously aimed their weapons, while finishing some hasty prayers to the Emperor to save their souls. The gate gave its warning siren, a WOP-WOP, and a blue flush went out about eight feet towards the Guardsmen, who couragously held their fire for the real threat. As they prepared to face unknown horrors from beyond the depths of time, a small unarmed robot came out of the gate with a slight fwoop.
More would be nice.