Starborn Smith [Stargate, Battletech Multicross]

- - -

POV: Arthur Sinclair. The Next Day, Kaelastrum.

Everyone sat at the massive table, all of the Elders, the leaders from Dendred, and many of the Serkha leadership were all here. 

The most pressing thing that Elder Annelise had brought back was the history of the Systems Commonwealth. It was almost exactly as I remembered it from the show. A multi-galactic republic, with more than a million member worlds (a rather small number compared to how vast their territory was, but that's what the textbook said). 

All of us had been pouring over the historical data that had been provided, and it was all incredibly detailed. 

There were a few things that were of particular interest. First off, the home of the Human Race was listed as being one of Andromeda's satellite galaxies, though oddly enough, the specific galaxy was never mentioned. 

While that was certainly interesting, of much greater interest were the records of the Commonwealth's fall. A human group known as the Nietzscheans had started a civil war and basically wiped out the entire Commonwealth military. In a final desperate act, the remains of the High Guard, the Commonwealth's Navy, prepared a counter attack. 

And the Nietzcheans were waiting for them. The two groups pummeled each other into the ground, and then a third force intervened. A fleet of several thousand vessels, all previously unknown, wiped out both sides. 

The Systems Commonwealth primarily used a method of FTL known as Slipstream, an extra dimensional network of strings that connected points in space together. A ship in slipstream would ride these strings between star systems. The length of these strings is irrelevant to the distance in realspace. 

They were aware of the existence of other FTL Methods, but the Slipstream Drive was the technology that made the Systems Commonwealth possible. It was unreliable, the time it took to get from one location to another could vary wildly, and a biological pilot was required due to the minutiae of how the drive worked.At the best of times, it reduced a decade or century long trip (with other FTL methods) into a journey of less than a minute.

The final nail in the coffin of the Systems Commonwealth was the destruction of the Slipstream Network. It started in Andromeda; in a single moment, the entire Galaxy was suddenly and without warning removed from every slipstream connection. 

Over the course of the next few years, the entirety of slipstream space began to fracture. Within a decade, every slipspace connection was gone. Over the course of 400 years, every major world of the former Systems Commonwealth was reduced to ashes. Hundreds of Thousands of worlds reduced to glass, and in some cases debris fields.

Thus ended the SystemsCommonwealth and the twelve-centuries of peace; in its place rose the First Goa'uld Empire, with Apep as the first Supreme System Lord. 

I sat back as I read through it. Everything was just as I remembered it, right up to the battle of Witchhead. In Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, the Andromeda Ascendant had travelled back in time to destroy most of the Nietzscheans. What had happened in this timeline was the appearance of the Goa'uld; they let both sides pummel each other into dust, and once the High Guard fleet was gone and the Nietzscheans were weakened, they came in and destroyed what remained.

Elder James smiled bitterly. "If I didn't know any better, I would have thought this was all bullshit."

Elder Annelise nodded, and Egera spoke while they continued to rapturously devour the information. "Ra must have put a great deal of effort into ensuring that none of this information survived. I was completely unaware that such a civilization had ever existed."

Their voice returned, indicating that it was once more Elder Annelise speaking. "We also got a complete list of all High Guard warships and their last known status."

I practically shot to my feet. "Show me. Maybe that will jog my memory a bit."

She gestured for one of the other compads, and I quickly grabbed it and got to work. 400,000 individual entries; of that number, 120,000 were warships. 

Most of the names meant nothing to me. The Midian Breach and Renewed Valour just vaguely tickled the edge of my mind, but I couldn't place why. Not that it mattered, both had been confirmed destroyed. 

Meanwhile, there were a few names that very much did ring a bell. Wrath of Achilles, Balance of Judgement, Million Voices, and Pax Magellanic. 

Looking at the names, something very interesting came up. The Wrath of Achilles and the Million Voices were both listed as MIA. 

I gently wrapped my finger against the table. Elder James looked up at me. "Arthur, have you found anything?"

I nodded lightly. "These two ships were captured and partially disabled by the Nietzscheans during the war. They were taken to a prison system they called Tartarus where they hoped to eventually erase the ship's AIs."

The Elder raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to continue. "The ship is listed as Missing In Action. It means that the Curators are unaware of the Tartarus System."

The Elder narrowed his eyes at me. "What are you saying, Arthur?"

I blinked at him. "It's entirely possible that the Tartarus System is still undiscovered by the Goa'uld." 

The Elder tapped his fingers against the table. Elder Annelise took over from him. "What about the other two?"

I looked back down at my paper and nodded. "The Balance of Judgement started a terrorist organization which fought against the Nietzscheans in the original timeline. Though it's listed here as MIA."

I turned to the next one; the Pax Magellanic. "This one is a strange case. Most of her crew joined a ground-side battle. When it became clear that they would lose, her captain ordered her to self-destruct. She took it as a betrayal and went insane. She hunted any salvage ship that came after her for 300 years before she finally died."

There was something else I was forgetting. "I think there was some sort of saying about her… something like 'it glitters like gold, but you're dead if you see it.'"

Elder Annelise snapped her face up towards me. Her eyes glowed for a moment, "Do you mean 'it glitters like gold, but if you see it, you never come back'?"

Everyone in the room stopped and stared at her. I nodded once "Yes, that was it. I assume that you've heard it?"

She nodded curtly. "One of Zeus' underlords spoke of it once. Several of his Ha'tak had disappeared; his slaves claimed that their system had been haunted for generations, and their ships would simply disappear."

Elder James immediately sat forward. "Do you remember what star system this was in?"

She nodded without hesitation. "I do. I can show you."

I quickly stopped her. "Do you remember what planets existed in the system?"

She thought for several moments. "There were two terrestrial worlds, three gas giants… I remember that there was a sizable debris field."

I nodded. "The Pax Magellanic used her Slipstream core to destroy one of the planets in the system."

Egeria raised an eyebrow. "Then that debris field was likely this world?"

I nodded. Egeria continued. "Then we must send an expedition to explore this system. If I remember correctly, then it was within Zeus' domain. It would not be that far from here."

Elder James, Elder Annelise, Arktos, and myself all rushed from the room while the others continued sweeping through the massive quantity of information that had been shared with us. 

We took the Stargate back to Mycena where we once more entered Ares' flagship and entered the datacore room.

With a bit of finagling, a hologram representing all of Zeus' former territory was displayed in the room. 

Egeria stared at it for a moment before gesturing for us to zoom in on one particular spot. Slowly but surely, she narrowed down the location before we found a star system that was exactly as she had described. Two terrestrial worlds, three gas giants, and a massive debris field taking up an entire orbit. 

It wasn't a small field either. In the Sol System, the asteroid belt had a total mass of 3% of Luna. This one had a mass of almost 500% that of Luna. 

I nodded. "That looks about right to me. That's too much mass for a normal asteroid belt."

Elder James nodded as well. "And it's barely 4000 Light Years away."

He turned to Arktos and smiled. "Another expedition?"

Arktos chuckled. "Ohh. Absolutely. We'll just have to put together a few more teams."

Meanwhile, I was rubbing my chin. I turned to Elder Annelise. "I can't imagine that a High Guard vessel would be capable of fooling cloaking technology. Why wasn't a Tel'tak used to scout the area?"

Her response was immediate. "Cloaking tech has only been commonly in use for the past 3,000 years. This was … 7000 years ago, now."

That answered that question. Arktos nodded as well. "The system was abandoned 5,000 years ago when the planet-side naquadah was all mined. There has been no reason for anyone to go there since."

Elder James nodded, and turned to me. "What was the last ship on your list?"

I looked down and almost smacked myself. "The Andromeda Ascendant. She got trapped in some sort of stasis field in orbit of a rogue black hole. She was originally freed by a team of salvagers, but I suppose with the destruction of human civilization, she'd probably still be trapped there."

- - -

Three Days Later.

I watched on as a group of four Al'kesh, and twelve Tel'tak took off once more from Mycena. It would be just shy of fifty days before they arrived at their destination. 

We returned to Kaelastrum after seeing off the ships. Our next course of action was to start reviewing the material provided regarding the Baol. It was unfortunately not a lot. There was an introduction to their people, but it was nowhere near as detailed as the information on the Commonwealth.

It read like it was an archeological record, rather than a collection of first hand accounts. All together that didn't really surprise me though. It made sense that the Curators had existed during the Commonwealth and were able to acquire a history directly from them. 

Then there was the information about the Baol. Approximately seven million years prior, the Baol had been a pacifist hive mind that relied on an immaculate control of their environment to survive. They were supposedly capable of transforming any world they lived on into a paradise world. 

Then they had met the Grunur, a highly militaristic species that proceeded to plunder their species for all the resources they were worth, even destroying entire planets in the process. 

It was much the same as I remembered from the Stellaris Event records, if much more detailed. 

Elder James tapped his fingers against the table. "All we'd need is a single well preserved Baol and we could likely resurrect the entire species."

I nodded. "They were a hive mind capable of communicating over interstellar distances…" A thought hit me. "If we could resurrect one of them, they should be capable of connecting to any of the other Baol that might still be alive."

Elder James looked up from the files. "Then we'll have to start searching through Grunur facilities. Anything planetside will have totally decayed over seven million years. We'd have to find a location that had undergone a sudden decompression."

I nodded once more. "If we can find a few surviving data crystals, then decrypting them shouldn't be all that difficult. Those should be able to provide us with further coordinates."

Arktos raised an eyebrow. "Where should we begin our search?"

I looked through the list of gates. "Do we know where these worlds are?"

Elder James handed me a different compad that had a rendered 2d map of the galaxy from above. He pointed at a set of red dots. "Here. About seventeen thousand light years away."

I groaned. "We're going to have to start repairing those Colonial Raptors."

Elder James nodded. "We need some sort of ship capable of travelling through a gate."

Arktos looked up. "We will need to send another expedition in the meantime."

Elder James looked up at him. "How many ships did Ares have?"

Arktos blinked. "126 Al'kesh, and 54 Tel'tak."

I blinked as well. "I thought he only had like 80 Al'kesh."

Arktos shook his head. "About a third of his fleet was caught up transporting resources to and from Dendred."

- - -

The next day, another small expedition fleet was launched. This one would take 190 days to reach its destination, which was entirely too long for a single trip, so it would be taking a slightly extended trip in order to allow for the crew to rest and swap out on habitable worlds.