I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.
Stargate – P4A-771 – July 2001
SG-1 had once very briefly visited this world four years earlier, upon arrival they were greeted by a considerable quantity of what they assumed was Goa’uld firepower and after exchanging fire for a while with a foe they never actually saw amongst all the trees immediately headed straight back home, O’Neill and Carter enjoying the dubious pleasure of ending up at the Antarctic Stargate instead of the SGC.
Observing through binoculars from a concealed position it was abundantly clear to Commander Russell Sharp why you wouldn’t want to travel here uninvited by stargate. A large Jaffa garrison supported by a multitude of Staff-Cannon emplacements meant that even with superior X-COM equipment you would have to be lucky in the extreme to not incur heavy casualties trying to force a bridgehead.
On the other hand, because Sharp and the two mixed squads of SGC and X-COM soldiers had arrived on P4A-771 via cloaked Tok’ra Tel’tak’s all the Staff-Cannons, bunkers and guards were facing in completely the wrong direction which was damn convenient as they prepared to launch an attack.
‘If everything is going according to schedule they should be dialling in right about...’ Sharp whispered to the closest team, checking his watch. ‘Now’ he said with a grin as the stargate engaged, the splash like “kawoosh” of the incoming wormhole forming from Earth immediately attracting the attention of all the Jaffa Warriors in the vicinity.
Tactically the best way to assault a defended bridge is from both ends at once and you could think of the stargate as a choke point very much like a bridge in this case. ‘I can see this being a really good day’ Sharp declared brightly as his troops used the distraction to move into their final positions. He switched on his radio headset and sent the correct IDC signal to tell the SGC on the other side it was him. ‘You may fire when ready Gridley’ he said into the microphone and put his binoculars away, reaching for his rifle.
Something came hurtling out of the stargate at enormous speed and immediately started to climb, riding into the sky on a pillar of fire. It wasn’t the first time the Tau’ri had used this tactic, firing Maverick Missiles through the gate which would target anything painted by a laser, but it still seemed to catch the Jaffa very much by surprise especially when the thing did a loop and began hurtling back down towards the strongest defensive position which was being marked for destruction by a Lieutenant from SG-7, knelt beside Sharp illuminating it with a laser.
The missile slammed into a bunker, its 125 pound high-explosive warhead and what was left of its fuel blasting it and its occupants to pieces and sending a pair of heavy Staff-Cannons flying off into the distance like they were matchsticks.
‘He shoots he scores!’ the Lieutenant exclaimed as the X-COM and SGC troops took the explosion as the signal to open fire themselves, gunning down the reeling Jaffa with their L2-A2’s. Once again the element of surprise added to superior weaponry meant that the outnumbered Tau’ri had the edge.
‘Time to switch lasers and rack up some more points’ Sharp responded, indicating the Lieutenants own rifle. ‘Well after dealing with that Deathglider Airbase we scouted earlier’ he added, raising a remote detonator, flipping up the safety and pressing the button. They didn’t have the forces to attack both sites simultaneously, and taking out the Deathgliders first would have revealed their presence, but there was always an alternative means when you have sneaky special forces who can easily avoid unwary guards and a number of very special demolition charges.
The flash of light from the East arrived in what seemed like a surprisingly long time before the ground shook and the sound of the explosion arrived. It wasn’t particularly large in relative terms, but given that its relations were designed to level whole cities that didn’t mean it wasn’t still pretty impressive as the one-point-five kiloton nuclear device they had planted at the base went off and quite thoroughly removed the prospect of the Jaffa calling in Air Support. In fact one Deathglider kept on ready alert had already being prepped for flight and was just taking off when it was largely disintegrated by the blast-wave, the remains caught up in the maelstrom and raining back to the ground over a mile away.
‘Oh God I hope someone has a camera’ Sharp said to himself in awe as the familiar mushroom cloud rose into the sky only a handful of miles away. It also occurred to him that the geeks back home had better be right about a naquadah-boosted elerium grenade producing minimal radioactive fallout because in the long term he didn’t want cancer and in the short term he didn’t want to glow in the dark. ‘Shit better get back to work’ he realised and then gleefully joined in the gunfight.
With the Jaffa defenders in disarray more troops started to pour into the battle straight from Earth via the stargate. The Jaffa were brave and determined and fought to the last but they were hopelessly outgunned and outflanked and bolstered by the addition personnel Sharp’s forces finished the garrison off in a few scant minutes of vicious fighting.
The last sounds of battle were the screams of wounded Jaffa which tailed off as some were finished off as they attempted to fight on and others considered too badly wounded to save were put out of their misery. A few were disarmed and to their great surprise were then treated by Tau’ri medics who dressed their wounds and gave them painkilling drugs, it certainly didn’t seem to fit in with the stories told of the evil Tau’ri, nor with the ferocity of the human warriors the injured Jaffa had witnessed moments before. They were truly a strange people one warrior decided as the needle stuck into his arm soothed the agony of the hole burned through both his armour and his chest.
‘Alright listen up!’ Sharp ordered at the top of his lungs as the troops eventually secured the area. ‘Right up that trail is a Goa’uld Armaments Factory’ he informed them, pointing North. ‘We guessed that Apophis had his troops guard the gate for a good reason and that’s it’ he continued. ‘The minimum time for the snakeheads to get a Hat’ak here is six hours according to the Tok’ra so I want everything worth taking back through the gate and all of us gone in five’ he announced.
‘Aw shit we’re not going to be humping more Staff-Weapons about are we Sir?’ an X-COM Trooper complained. He must have carried hundreds of the things back to stargates over the last few months and they weren’t light.
‘I said “worth taking” didn’t I?’ Sharp responded flatly. ‘Leave the Staffs, just take out the Liquid-Naquadah power-cells and bring them back, there’s probably crates of the things in the factory too’ he said. ‘The real prizes are Staff-Cannons, there should be a good number and those things are worth breaking a sweat to haul through the gate’ he noted. ‘And Shock-Grenades, everyone look out for those, they’re damn useful and in short supply.’
‘What about the machinery?’ a Major asked.
‘I’m not planning to dismantle a production line’ Sharp replied. ‘The Tok’ra that flew a few of us here will help you decide if anything small enough to take is worth taking but we’re nuking anything that’s left so don’t worry about sabotage, there won’t be enough of the place to worth rebuilding.’
‘How about the workers?’ the Major queried, ‘slave labour like normal?’
‘Yeah’ Sharp confirmed. ‘Some might be willing to give us a hand once we get the message across we’re going to set them free but watch out for the ones that are Goa’uld Loyalists, there’s always a few of the poor dumb brainwashed bastards that actually bought into the “gods” bullshit’ he continued. ‘Just zat them if they’re being a pain in the ass’ he advised.
‘And the enemy prisoners Sir?’ a medic asked, indicating one nearby he had just treated.
‘Stabilise them, tie them up if necessary and leave them here’ Sharp replied. ‘Alien Containment is getting crowded and we don’t ever get much useful information out of Jaffa anyway’ he noted. ‘Hopefully they’ll spread the word that the Tau’ri aren’t monsters but they’ll get the point that we’re not people to be fucked with either’ he said.
Sharp looked back at the mushroom cloud, most others doing likewise. ‘So...’ he said slowly, ‘does anybody think we’ve been too subtle in communicating the last part?’ he asked with a grin.
Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – July 2001
Janet Fraser had been wondering why she was called to General Hammonds office but she was more than surprised when she found not only the General, Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter but also her daughter Cassie who was sat in a chair directly across from the General. ‘What did you do?’ Janet asked the girl accusingly. ‘You did it again didn’t you?’ she continued. ‘Cassie you can’t yell at people in the canteen just because they don’t empty their own trays into the trash’ she said in exasperation.
‘I’m not in trouble Mom and thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt’ Cassie replied with a glare. ‘Anyhow I never wanted the job, you could have told Commander Sharp to get bent when he said he was serious about me paying them back for all the trouble they went to for me’ she argued. It sucked helping out in the canteen, she thought with annoyance, she couldn’t even flirt with cute guys because Jack there growled at any of the guys under twenty-five that flirted back and the rest treated her like a kid.
‘I didn’t ask Cassie to come here because she’s done anything wrong’ Hammond told Doctor Fraser. ‘She’s here because of the results of the tests she went through to determine any long-term effects of Nirti’s gene-tampering’ he said.
‘She’s not sick is she?’ Janet said in horror.
‘For God’s sake Mom stop jumping to conclusions’ Cassie retorted. ‘Can’t you just tell her?’ she asked the General.
Hammond rubbed the palm of his left hand back over his bald head. In younger days he would have run his fingers through his hair but those days were long-gone unfortunately. ‘Do you want to explain Major Carter?’ he asked. ‘You’re understand this stuff better than me’ he freely admitted.
‘It’s still a new field to me too Sir but I’ll try’ Carter replied. ‘Janet, you know that Nirti was experimenting on the people of Hanka to try and develop a better host’ she began, ‘a Hok’tar or advanced human’ she said. ‘Well according to the tests our scientists did on Cassie she might have been more successful than she thought.’
‘I think it was because I went through the Mind-Fire longer than anyone else’ Cassie interrupted. ‘Usually it was a few hours before teenagers went out to the forest’ she noted. ‘If it wasn’t for the medical technology and drugs you have I’d have died’ she said. ‘On Hanka I would have’ she added.
‘Certainly possible’ Carter conceded, ‘but in any case although Nirti stabilised her it seems a lot of the changes to Cassie were permanent’ she said. ‘Scans using X-COM equipment such as mind-probes show that her brain formed numerous new connections...’
‘Hence the telekinesis which would have been cool if I wasn’t so hot’ Cassie interjected. ‘Sorry go on’ she said seeing Sam’s displeasure at the second interruption.
Carter gave the girl a look then continued. ‘... and there were other minor physiological changes as dormant genes activated’ she finished. ‘We know from research into sectoid psionics and genetics that there are clear propensities for psionic strength and skill which come from the Ancient Genes which the sectoids had added by Loki’s genetic engineering’ she continued, ‘genes that certain humans share and which determine their ability to resist psionic attack and operate Ancient Technologies.’
‘Some of us can’t be mind-controlled’ O’Neill spoke up with a smile, ‘some can’ he added looking at Carter with an amusement she didn’t share.
‘Correct’ Carter was forced to agree. ‘After considerable investigation X-COM Researchers determined a scale for psionic strength and skill in humans’ she told Janet, ‘both run from one to a hundred with the top being considered the maximum for a human being.
‘Psionic strength ninety-eight’ O’Neill said happily, pointing at himself. ‘You made the low-teens didn’t you Major?’ he asked mischievously.
‘Mid-to-high teens’ Carter corrected him, narrowing her eyes. It was still far from impressive she had to admit.
‘I’m sorry but I don’t know where Cassie comes into this’ Janet said.
Hammond leaned forward in his chair. ‘X-COM tested Cassie to see what her PSI ratings were’ he said. ‘She burned out three sensing machines before they realised they were going to need a custom unit to determine her scores.’
‘Too much voltage’ Cassie joked. ‘When they finally got one to work earlier today I thought the two guys watching the readout were going to faint’ she continued. ‘They just kept looking from the machine to me and back again.’
‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’ Doctor Fraser demanded to know.
‘I didn’t want you to fuss’ Cassie explained. ‘It’s not like any of the testing hurts’ she said. ‘So do you want to hear my scores?’ she asked.
Janet Fraser frowned. ‘Did you get the perfect hundred?’ she asked. ‘Is that what this is about?’
‘No, in fact Cassie completely destroyed the scale’ Carter responded.
‘Three-hundred and Eighty-Seven’ Cassie declared. ‘In your face Jack’ she said, playfully sticking her tongue out at O’Neill.
‘What!’ Doctor Fraser exclaimed.
‘Three-hundred and Eighty-Seven’ Cassie repeated.
‘With a baseline psionic skill score of well over two hundred which can be improved with practice’ Carter added. ‘The X-COM Parapsychologists say that they think Cassie can be thought of as representing one of the final stages of pre-ascended human evolution’ she continued.
‘They were pissed when I melted all the wiring in that other gadget too’ Cassie said with a chuckle. ‘They thought it might give me the telekinesis back’ she explained, ‘but as soon as I put it in my hand and turned it on it went really hot like those chess pieces did, made a fizzle sound and smoke started pouring out of it’ she told them. ‘Like I said, too much voltage’ she added, tapping the side of her head.
‘Yes the psionic amplifier’ Carter noted. ‘They cost a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to manufacture and that’s just the cost of the raw materials’ she said. ‘You completely fused the prototype’ she told Cassandra.
‘Don’t tell the Commander, he’ll have me working in the canteen until I’m thirty paying it off’ Cassie requested.
‘More to the point I think a larger danger is that he’d see if he could conscript you’ Carter opined. ‘We haven’t witnessed a sectoid telepath with a fraction of your potential, if they can get a functioning psi-amp which you didn’t overload you could probably force the Colonel here to stand on one leg, hop up and down and sing show-tunes.’
‘Which isn’t a serious suggestion right Major?’ O’Neill said quickly.
‘It would be an interesting test of her abilities given that ninety-eight score of yours Sir’ Carter deadpanned.
‘Conscript her?’ Janet said. ‘You wouldn’t let them do that would you Sir?’ she asked the General.
‘Technically Cassandra isn’t an American Citizen, nor even from this planet’ Hammond replied. ‘Legally I don’t know where we’d stand’ he admitted. ‘She is human however and I think that makes her “one of us” from X-COM’s perspective’ he continued. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to study Cassie in more depth but I’m sure they’d much prefer for that to be entirely voluntary, their scientific personnel aren't as hard-line as their soldiers at least.’
‘I don’t mind’ Cassie said, ‘do you think they’d pay me?’ she asked. ‘I know what they pay you guys.’
‘Some of us anyway’ Hammond said. He was still on USAF pay which meant he wasn’t remotely as well paid as O’Neill or Carter who were on X-COM wages.
‘Cassie, these are not nice people’ her mother warned.
‘Mom, I know what Commander Sharp did to Nirti to force her to help me’ Cassandra replied, ‘I know they’re not nice people’ she said, not that it particularly bothered her that Sharp had tortured the bitch who had experimented on her and wiped out her entire people. ‘But if they think I can help stop what happened to Hanka happening to Earth then I will’ she said with determination. ‘Everyone I loved died Mom’ she said quietly, ‘I still see them in my dreams sometimes’ she continued, ‘I never thought I could do anything about it until now but if I have this potential then I want to develop it and use it to defend the people I love now’ she told them. And cheat at exams and read boys minds, she thought to herself happily, not realising that the latter would be deeply disturbing.
Janet Fraser shook her head. ‘I just don’t want them to use you Cassie’ she said.
‘It’s my choice Mom’ Cassie replied, making certain by her tone she meant that.
‘You think it’s going to be an adventure but think of the possible dangers’ Doctor Fraser told her daughter. ‘All this psionic stuff, it’s all just unproven theory.’
‘Having been put under mind-control and after seeing Cassie levitate something with my own eyes it’s not all that theoretical’ Carter noted, ‘but I agree with your Mother that you need to think this through carefully’ she advised the girl. ‘We’ll all back you if you decide not to go ahead with it.’
‘We will’ O’Neill agreed, General Hammond nodding his affirmation.
‘Okay I give it some more thought before I tell them I want to go ahead with the research’ Cassandra agreed.
‘Good’ her adoptive mother responded. That might be the best she could hope for.
‘Hey at least you guys all know about the funky mental powers now’ Cassie said. ‘The Cassandra from Troy could see the future but nobody believed her’ she noted.
‘If you do become psychic and can see the future come to me when you want to make bets on the horses’ O’Neill offered. ‘You’re too young to gamble and I’ll only take a small percentage’ he said generously. ‘You only wish you’d thought to say it’ he told the other three USAF personnel who had immediately glared at him.
‘Cassie you have my permission to use Colonel O’Neill as a test subject and I expect to see a video of the results’ General Hammond told the girl. ‘The song “Gee, Officer Krupke” from the musical West Side Story would be an ideal accompaniment to the hopping’ he suggested. ‘Dismissed Colonel’ he told O’Neill before he could raise any objection.
Over the South Atlantic – Earth – July 2001
With engagement ranges measured in single digit kilometres at most the fighter combat between the X-COM pilots and their uninvited Sectoid visitors more closely resembled a classic dogfight than the beyond visual range missile duels so many of the human pilots had trained for in their previous careers flying for the various Airforces they hailed from. The aliens utilised extremely advanced Stealth, ECM and ECCM technology which prevented a target lock at long range whereas they themselves couldn’t use their own long-range radar analogues because when they did they found to their horror that X-COM immediately locked onto the active signal and used it to back-track their locations.
Sometimes it was so close that "knife-fight" might have been a better description of the action, Cameron Mitchell thought to himself as his F-302X Reaper chased a wildly jinking Sectoid “Foo Fighter” through the sky above a choppy South Atlantic Ocean below.
‘Stay still you little grey bastard’ Mitchell hissed as he fired his laser cannon again, the beams narrowly missing the target because it slid sideways just as he pressed the firing button on his joystick. That was something that still pissed him off mightily, the new human fighter was faster than its opponent and more heavily armoured being both shielded and with an outer skin made from a laminate of Trinium, super-plastics and heat-resistant ceramic, but the Sectoid fighter-jocks still had the edge in manoeuvrability and their plasma cannon had a faster rate of fire.
The Sectoid Fighter banked left sharply to try and break away from its pursuer but Mitchell had correctly predicted the move and fired again, the twin laser cannon set into the wing-roots of his Reaper searing through the alien hull alloy and clearly hitting something important because the Foo Fighter almost seemed to stop dead in the air and then plummeted straight towards the ocean with all the grace and aerodynamic qualities of a brick. ‘Can I get a hell yeah!’ Mitchell yelled in triumph as the alien craft fell from the sky.
It was the shields that did it, Mitchell knew. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Asgard modified deflectors worked properly in the atmosphere as well as it vacuum then the F-302X wouldn’t have made the impact it had when they started entering the fray only a couple of weeks before. The enemy fighters usually got in the first hits but their fire was soaked up by the Reapers and it only took one or two decent laser strikes to splash a Foo Fighter. The Firestorms had the same shields but their performance was so far behind the opposition that they were at a grievous disadvantage in a dogfight and usually never got the opportunity to get a decent bead on the target because their deflectors were depleted by numerous plasma hits.
Mitchell watched another alien fighter zip past with a pair of Reapers on its ass. ‘Get that son-of-bitch’ he said as they fired at it repeatedly, bracketing it with fire between them, one eventually got lucky and must have hit the power-plant because the Foo Fighter exploded into fragments, the debris slamming into their shields as they flew through the remains.
A far larger flash of light in the distance indicated that the larger alien ship the fighters had been escorting had just been nuked by the Firestorm assigned to deal with it. It only made sense to detail the less agile craft to the task of taking out the relatively lumbering vessels whilst the Reapers cleaned up the Foo Fighters. An X-COM pilot from the RAF had noted that it was like the Battle of Britain, with the Reapers taking up the Spitfire role of dealing with the fighters and the Firestorms playing the part of the Hurricane shooting down the slower less manoeuvrable foes they were protecting.
The production lines at Area-51 and Yamantau were rolling out more F-302X’s at a steady pace, replacing the Firestorms, captured Deathgliders and Sigrdrífa Interceptors which had been lost during the previous months and hopefully turning the tide of battle back in Earth’s favour after the nasty period when the aliens had retained the initiative. The Sectoids had responded of course, already increasing the numbers of escorts for their forays to Earth but this wasn’t making up for their losing what had been their gross performance edge over the human fighters. Reapers were being lost but in considerably lower numbers than the Foo Fighters, it was not a role reversal any combatant would welcome especially when X-COM was now churning out fighters quite a lot faster than the Sectoids were shooting them down.
The last remaining Foo Fighter of what had originally been seven before they were intercepted tried to make a run for it, heading for the safety of space at top atmospheric speed but it was chased down easily by Mitchell’s flight of F-302X fighters, their much better power-to-weight ratios giving them better acceleration and a higher maximum speed. It was summarily gunned down and fell to the ocean in two roughly equal chunks after a freakishly lucky laser beam neatly cut it in half.
‘Interceptor Control this is Shaft’ Mitchell transmitted on the secure X-COM frequency, ‘All bogeys in the water, no losses for our team’ he reported. ‘Unless you’ve got another place for us to be we’re heading home to break out the beers’ he announced.
‘This is Interceptor Control’ the radio responded, crackling to life. ‘No other intruders on the geoscape, return to base and well done’ it said.
‘You heard the man’ Mitchell transmitted to the other pilots, ‘it’s Beer O’Clock and the last one back to Fifty-One is buying’ he said.
‘Aw come on do I get a head-start at least?’ came a protest from the Firestorm pilot. Unlike the lucky Reaper flyers his craft couldn’t even make mach 6.5 whereas flat-out they could get up to over mach 9 in the atmosphere.
‘What do you think?’ Mitchell replied with a laugh.
‘I think that if you have to wait for me to reach the bar you’ll be missing out on some drinking time’ the Firestorm pilot pointed out.
‘We’ll run up a tab in your name’ Mitchell replied, ‘see you later’ he said and turned his fighter towards home. ‘Meep meep’ he added, slamming the throttles forward.
‘I always wanted the coyote to win in the cartoons too’ the Firestorm pilot declared, turning his saucer-shaped craft to follow the rapidly disappearing Reapers towards Nevada.