I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be 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.
Area 51 – Earth – August 2002
Looking around the underground hanger for a moment Major John Sheppard then reached out and ran his hand over the smooth metal of the spacecraft smiling as he did so. They had finally come up with something that would not only consign the venerable and vulnerable Skyranger Transports to retirement but was also the first Earth-built hyperdrive starship. ‘This is the alien alloy we got from the Sectoids right?’ he asked, turning from the Avenger to one of the engineers doing final checks on the machine.
‘We’ve started calling it “cydonium” now’ the engineer confirmed, the badge on his jumpsuit said he was named Spellman and given the way they had once again seemingly worked magic in not only back-engineering sectoid technology but hybridising it with both Earth and Goa’uld tech Sheppard thought it appropriate.
‘So can this thing really do Mach 8?’ Sheppard asked him.
‘Just over mach 8.1’ Spellman replied. ‘That’s in the atmosphere, you can get up to a million miles an hour in space’ he said.
‘A million miles an hour?’ Sheppard repeated, ‘you’re serious?’ he asked disbelievingly.
Spellman smiled. ‘Her sub-light drive is based on a Death Glider’ he said. ‘I worked on the first ones of those we captured’ he continued, ‘the old X-301 project that eventually led to the F-302 was my baby’ he said proudly.
‘There’s not a lot of the 301 in the 302 Spellman’ another engineer interrupted, ‘don’t oversell yourself’ he said.
‘Bite me Felger’ Spellman responded. ‘Your only contribution to this project recently is nearly blowing us all to hell by installing part of the Plasma Beam assembly backwards.’
Felger flushed with embarrassment, although highly qualified he did have a tendency to be a klutz sometimes and he knew it. ‘Meyers and I are too busy fitting the Ring Transporter into the Prometheus to do much work on this project and remember I named this ship’ he defended himself.
‘You came up with calling it an Avenger?’ Sheppard queried.
‘He got the name from a comic book’ Spellman said sarcastically.
‘The Amazing Avenger?’ Sheppard asked Felger.
Felger grinned ‘Right’ he confirmed. ‘You a fan?’ he asked.
‘I prefer the Fantastic Four’ Sheppard told him. ‘So are you guys sure about the hyperdrive?’ he asked nervously. Going fast in a conventional sense was his passion, the notion of going faster-than-light through sub-space was a different proposition.
‘That’s Murphy’s department, he designed the hyperspace window generator for both the Avenger and Prometheus’ Felger replied. ‘It’s basically just our version of the one fitted to a Tel’tak with a few upgrades to give it the roughly the same maximum speed as an Al’kesh’ he explained. ‘You’re pushing thirty-thousand times the speed of light flat-out.’
Sheppard did a quick calculation in his head. ‘So say twenty trillion miles an hour’ he said, amused by the surprise evident in the faces of the two engineers.
‘No need to push the hyperdrive anywhere near that hard when you take her up to test her’ Spellman advised.
‘I’ve been told to take a quick run around the block first time out’ Sheppard told them. ‘Head out to the mining base in the Oort Cloud then come back so you guys can go over the Flight Data Recorder, polish the windscreen and give the engine it’s ten trillion mile service’ he joked. ‘The Redemption will be playing chase-plane just in case.’
Felger smiled. ‘We thought Cameron Mitchell would be the test pilot like he was for the Firestorm and the Grim Reaper’ he told him.
‘Too busy racking up kills I guess’ Sheppard replied with a half-smile, it was in fact a hell of a complement to get this assignment he knew, it was certainly nice for someone other than a fighter-pilot to get the job for once as well. The guys flying Interceptors got the glory but Skyranger pilots like him had been risking their lives just as often as they flew into a hell of plasma rifle fire to drop the UFO Retrieval Teams directly into the action.
Taking a few steps back Sheppard looked the Avenger over once again. In some ways it resembled the much larger X-303 under construction nearby and like Earth’s first home-built capital ship the Avenger was also a design compromise of sorts if not to the extreme of Prometheus which was half battle-cruiser half aircraft carrier. The Avenger was multi-role but would be configured before the mission to act as either a tactical transport or a light warship. You could carry twenty-six soldiers wearing powered-armour and with all their equipment in the hold or if you were planning to go up against enemy warships you could mount one of the new surprises X-COM had come up with to deal with uninvited guests.
They called it a “Ripper” which described its function very well. After a couple of years success using rotary staff-weapons X-COM had scaled up the idea mounting six of the heavy staff-cannons used by the Al’kesh in the same gatling-gun arrangement. It took up most of the bay of the Avenger when installed with the uppermost cannon clearing the roof as it spun, each one firing in turn once at the top of the cycle. Firing at machine-gun rates it would cut Tel’tak or Al’kesh sized craft to pieces in seconds and meant that a number of Avengers could likely represent a threat even to a Ha’tak given enough time to relentlessly wear down the shields with a never-ending stream of plasma bolts.
Sheppard had earlier visited the X-303 under construction and had seen the first two ripper’s being mounted either side of her bow. Prometheus also had another nasty surprise for the first Ha’tak that she ran into, mounted between the rippers was a pair of elerium-powered plasma beams taken from captured Sectoid Battleships. The idea was that the continual fire from the twin rotary staff-cannon would weaken the mothership shield at one point and then the beams might be strong enough to cut right through, lancing into the heart of the Hat’ak even though its shield was still up. It certainly had more style than typical goa’uld tactics which were to pound away like you were clubbing a guy to death rather than neatly stab him in the heart.
‘You’ve flown an F-302 right?’ Felger asked.
‘Sure’ Sheppard confirmed, X-COM made sure that all its pilots were capable of switching jobs if required, you never knew when you might run short of one or the other.
‘Same flight helmet with the goa’uld head-up-display eyepiece and the sectoid neural-interlink built into it’ Felger told him. ‘All very intuitive but remember you can’t throw her around like you can a 302’ he reminded him.
Sheppard chuckled. ‘No offence guys but I don’t look at this thing and think dogfighter’ he replied.
‘Oh with the inertial dampeners you’d be surprised’ Spellman told him. ‘She’s got better acceleration than a Firestorm and could out-turn an F-22’ he continued, ‘it’s just that you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with a Foo Fighter or a Spectre.’
‘Deathgliders?’ Sheppard asked.
Spellman shrugged. ‘Probably not much in it manoeuvrability wise but you’ve got a shield and they don’t so...’
‘I get to a make a lot more mistakes than they do’ Sheppard interrupted.
‘Right’ Spellman confirmed. ‘One hit from your guns and they’re dead.’
‘And lasers or plasma beams are hard to dodge’ Sheppard said with satisfaction. All he had to do was get a goa’uld fighter in his sights and it was game over for the Jaffa in the cockpit. ‘It’s a marvel guys you should be proud’ he told the engineers.
‘Thanks for saying so’ Spellman replied with a smile, it was nice to be appreciated. ‘She won’t let you down Major.’
‘Just as long as she gets me back down after I fly her into space’ Sheppard responded. ‘And not too fast at the landing’ he added with a grin.
‘If you have to crash do it on the moon at full speed’ Felger advised. ‘You’d leave a crater large enough to be named after you.’
‘I’ll try and remember that’ Sheppard replied. ‘So she’ll definitely be ready for this afternoon?’ he checked.
‘Oh yeah’ Felger told him. ‘We’re just double-checking everything’ he told him.
‘Then I’ll go grab a coffee and see you later’ Sheppard told the engineers, heading towards the canteen.
Spellman waited until he was out of earshot then turned to Felger. ‘We’d better bolt the pilot seat down’ he said.
Felger shook his head. ‘We only just got time to get it in there before fly-boy walked in’ he said with a sigh of relief. He was going to have to buy the security guy that phoned in the heads-up a few rounds at the bar.
‘This is your fault for telling Doctor Markov we could be finished by today’ Spellman told him.
‘I didn’t want to sound bad in front of that Tok’ra chick that came with her to check the hyperdrive’ Felger replied awkwardly.
‘The only reason she noticed you was your cologne making her sneeze’ Spellman told him.
Felger blinked. ‘It wasn’t that bad was it?’ he asked.
‘Murphy wanted to ask supply if we could requisition Hazmat Suits’ Spellman replied. ‘If it makes you feel better you didn’t stand a chance anyway’ he told him. ‘Smarter, better looking men than you have tried and failed to score with that one.’
‘Maybe I should make a play for Samantha Carter instead?’ Felger suggested.
Spellman looked at him incredulously. ‘For Christ’s sake when are you going to learn to set realistic goals?’ he asked.
‘Right after this project’ Felger replied.
‘Do you mean the Avenger or trying to get in Sam Carter’s pants?’ Spellman asked, rolling his eyes.
Felger thought about it. ‘Okay, these projects, plural’ he said eventually.
Kelownan Defence Council Building – P2S-4C3 – September 2002
Jonas did his best to ignore the occasional glares being directed his way by his countrymen, to them he was a traitor and deserter who had stolen state property to give to a foreign power, an alien foreign power no less, so it wasn’t surprising he wasn’t too welcome.
The radio signal from back home to the SGC had come as a surprise. The Kelownan government had signalled that they wanted to establish trade and diplomatic relations with Earth again and had sent delegates through to begin negotiations. They hadn’t been going too well so far but they could have been a whole lot worse, if Commander Sharp hadn’t had Cassandra Frasier perform surreptitious psionic scans of the visitors when they arrived they wouldn’t have known Doctor Kieran the head of the Kelownan naquadria bomb project was suffering from schizophrenia, which turned out in fact to be caused by exposure to the material, and that could have played out very badly.
The negotiations had now moved to Kelowna with Elizabeth Weir drafted in as always to lead the delegation from Earth. Her opposite number across the table, Ambassador Dreylock gave off a similar diplomatic vibe while Colonel O’Neill faced the far more militaristic in outlook Commander Hale, recently promoted Chairman of the Kelownan Defence Council. Jonas recalled that the latter had merely been Undersecretary for Military Appropriations when he left his homeworld for the SGC only a few months before but guessed that his known hard-line attitudes had likely spurred a rapid rise given the current geopolitical and military circumstances.
Weir smiled. ‘As I have already told you Ambassador’ she began. ‘Earth is not willing to provide advanced military technology to you given that we would then be morally responsible for what you would use, or perhaps misuse it for’ she said.
O’Neill winced. ‘Do you have to say it like that?’ he asked. ‘You make us sound like the damn Tollan’ he complained.
‘The difference Colonel’ Weir responded, ‘is that the unlike ourselves Kelowna wants military equipment to use against other human nations not to defend itself from Goa’uld aggression.’
‘Both our societies face foreign conquest and subjugation’ Dreylock noted. ‘We only want access to defensive technologies in order to fend off the combined might of our neighbours, Tirania and the Andari Federation’ he said.
‘An analysis I was involved in compiling last year did predict the destruction of most of our airforce within five weeks of such a joint attack’ Jonas spoke up. ‘Without air support our army would be unable to put up sufficient resistance to prevent invasion or occupation, the war might last six months before total collapse’ he added, earning a surprised look from Hale for his apparent words of support to the Kelownan position.
‘Your jet engine technology would give our interceptor pilots a fighting chance against the enemies superior numbers’ Commander Hale told the Earth delegation.
‘Unfortunately you could also put the same engines on bombers and bomb Andari and Tiranian cities with the other side unable to stop you’ Major Carter pointed out. All three of the Great Powers on this planet were still using propeller driven aircraft, Kelownan jet bombers would be almost unstoppable and if push came to shove terror bombing of civilians might look an attractive means to force the opposition to negotiate an armistice.
‘Your Surface-to-Air missiles then’ Dreylock suggested, ‘we could protect our own cities’ he said.
‘We give you defensive rocket or missile tech and before long you’ll have offensive weaponry based on it’ O’Neill responded. ‘Sorry but it’s what we’d do in the same circumstances’ he said honestly.
‘Do you people want our naquadria or not?’ Hale asked angrily. Recent discoveries meant they had a considerable stockpile of the material. ‘We know its power, we have already told you of our test of a naquadria bomb ourselves’ he declared.
‘And if we have to we will use similar devices against our enemies’ Dreylock said more calmly. ‘Do you want that on your conscience?’ he asked rhetorically.
Elizabeth Weir looked to Colonel O’Neill for his reaction before turning back to Dreylock. ‘No but if you use Weapon’s of Mass Destruction the deaths will be on your head not ours’ she told him. ‘Have you simply considered revealing the existence of the stargate to your neighbours?’ she asked. ‘If they know of the Goa’uld they might well decide that you need planetary cooperation not a World War.’
‘We haven’t even told our own people of the existence of the stargate and you propose we tell foreign governments?’ Dreylock replied with a snort.
‘It seemed to work out okay back on Earth’ O’Neill told him. ‘Only governments and the various militaries know about the stargate and they cooperate to keep it under wraps.’
‘A secret alien threat to unite your world’ Carter said.
‘That’s ridiculous’ Hale retorted. ‘If we all demobilised now we’d never be able to explain it.’
Weir shook her head. ‘You don’t demobilise’ she said, ‘in fact you keep your economies and nations on a war footing using the foreign threat to justify high military spending.’
‘Yeah’ O’Neill agreed. ‘On Earth the North Koreans and Iran stir up trouble every so often so it looks like we’re divided as ever’ he said. ‘That freaked me out when Sharp told me about it but it makes sense, keeps the press and the public from wondering where all the money is going’ he said. ‘The Russians and Chinese are going to start sabre rattling if we have to increase the X-COM and SGC budgets much higher to fight the Goa’uld and Sectoids, you just hide the black project stuff amongst the rest.’
Dreylock looked shocked. ‘You’re serious?’ he asked.
‘It’ll work trust us’ O’Neill told him seriously.
‘It’s despicable’ Dreylock opined.
Jonas sighed. ‘It could stop a war, save millions of lives’ he pointed out. ‘Which alternative is the more despicable?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘You can lie to the people for a good cause or let them die for a bad one’ he said.
‘You’ve already tested a naquadria bomb, that gives the Andari Federation and Tirania an excuse to go ahead with similar projects’ Carter suggested. ‘Weapons like that would be useful against the goa’uld’ she said. ‘They’d laugh at your piston-engined aircraft but nuclear weapons are something they’d be far more likely to take seriously.’
‘And if we knew you weren’t going to use our technology against each other we would be willing to supply you with other military equipment’ Weir told them. ‘Meaning all three powers of course’ she added.
‘We could accelerate your scientific development by decades’ Carter told them. ‘Give you a fighting chance’ she said.
Jonas nodded, his world was at least sixty years behind Earth even if you didn’t take into account all the alien technology they had now. ‘Make no mistake the Goa’uld are coming’ he said. ‘We’re already too advanced for them to stomach they don’t like human worlds with industrial age economies and militaries, especially since Earth showed them what well equipped and trained human armies can do’ he said. ‘The naquadria is a derivative of naquadah, which is the very basis of their technology. It's literally in their blood. They can smell it. If you continue using it, I guarantee you, eventually, they will take notice and if this world, our world, isn’t united when they come we’ll be killed or enslaved’ he stated forcefully.
‘Naquadria isn’t much good for power generation, it’s too unstable’ Carter told the Kelownans, ‘but we can trade you reactor-grade naquadah in return.’
‘At a fair exchange rate of course’ Jonas Quinn interrupted, Earth had the regular isotope coming out of their ears but naquadria was a very scarce commodity worth many times its weight in even weapons grade naquadah.
Dreylock had an expression on his face akin to a deer caught in the headlights. ‘And you think this could work?’ he asked nonplussed.
‘We know it works’ Weir told him. ‘I hope for full disclosure to the public in time but until then our various governments are doing exactly what we think you should’ she said. ‘You can unite your planet...’ she said, ‘with hardly anybody knowing about it’ she added after a pause.
‘But what if it doesn’t work?’ Hale asked.
‘You’re already facing the option of either military defeat and subjugation or blasting millions of people with your naquadria bombs’ Weir responded, ‘surely it’s worth trying a third alternative to mass slaughter at least?’ she asked.
‘How could we even approach them with this information, the old hatreds run too deep’ Dreylock said.
‘The other two powers on your planet buried the hatchet to sign a non-aggression pact and come after you didn’t they?’ O’Neill asked with amusement.
‘As a temporary marriage of convenience, they’d be straight back at each others throats once we were defeated’ Hale replied flatly.
‘You’re not going to be defeating the goa’uld any time soon’ Weir told him. ‘We can certainly help you explain the gravity of the threat they represent to all humanity on every world’ she continued. ‘Bring Ambassadors from the other nations through the stargate to Earth and we’ll explain the galactic situation, perhaps introduce them to representatives from other human worlds like the Tollan or Orban.’
‘Not everyone out there is an asshole’ O’Neill noted. ‘We’ve got a few friends, basically decent folks like yourselves’ he said. ‘And we know the Aschen too’ he added with a frown, creepy bastards he thought.
‘We could demonstrate goa’uld weaponry and ships to you and the other representatives, prove the scale of the threat’ Weir told Hale, switching to talk of military matters for the soldier.
‘We’ve certainly captured enough of it’ O’Neill commented smugly.
‘You could send soldiers too, we could take them to other worlds, show them the atrocities the goa’uld are capable of’ Carter suggested.
‘This is in the best interests of all three nations’ Jonas said with all the sincerity he could muster. ‘We shouldn’t be fighting each other, we should be preparing to fight the common foe that slipped from memory when the goa’uld left a thousand years ago.’
‘We will have to discuss this with First Minister Valis’ Hale told Dreylock.
‘Earth would be more than happy to host any negotiations on neutral soil and act as an independent mediator’ Weir offered. ‘It used to be my job to facilitate such meetings between hostile states, our planet is far more fractured than yours’ she noted, ‘our United Nations has nearly two hundred member states’ she told him.
Dreylock raised his eyebrows. ‘How do you ever get anything mutually decided?’ he asked in astonishment.
O’Neill shrugged. ‘So far just about the only thing there’s ever been unanimous agreement on is that none of us are keen on being enslaved or experimented on by aliens’ he replied. ‘Not too many dissenting voices on that one’ he said.
‘The nations of Earth are in the same boat as the nations of this planet’ Weir stated. ‘We hang together or we hang separately’ she said. ‘You’re lucky that you haven’t already been singled out for Goa’uld attention yet like we have’ she continued, ‘but maybe fate has given you the time you need to prepare for the day when enemies are in orbit over your cities not massing on your borders.’
‘If you’re smart enough to help yourselves we’ll help you too’ O’Neill added. ‘Just sort out your local political problems first and you’ll be taking the first step to becoming the next world invited to the grown ups table.’
Weir turned to O’Neill. ‘I realise that the United Worlds isn’t the official name yet, and the Charter is a long way from being thrashed out, but please don’t refer to our meetings with the other powers that way’ she requested. ‘We’re hosting the next one at the SGC.’
‘Maybe the Kelownans could sit in as observers?’ Jonas suggested.
‘Good idea’ O’Neill agreed. ‘We’d probably better show them a picture of an Asgard before they meet one though’ he decided. ‘Great little guys but they probably look a lot more like your idea of an alien than we do’ he said.
‘Short and grey with large black eyes abducting drunk farmers from remote areas of the countryside like the tabloids keep talking about?’ Dreylock joked, earning laughter from Commander Hale before they realised all the Earthers and Jonas Quinn were staring at them.
‘Loki’ O’Neill growled. ‘That rat bastard’ he swore.
‘How long has this been going on?’ Jonas demanded to know.
‘The stupid stories in the gutter press?’ Dreylock asked, ‘a couple of months’ he answered confused.
Jonas blinked. ‘This could be my fault’ he realised, ‘what if Loki somehow found out about my DNA?’ he said. ‘Cassandra is the last person from Hanka so without her people being available this world is his best bet to find Hok’taur genetic material.’
‘He’d definitely want samples from here’ Carter replied, ‘lots of them.’
Elizabeth Weir collected her thoughts. ‘I hate to break this to you’ she said. ‘But you could very well be under alien attack already’ she told the Kelownans.
‘You need to talk to the Andari Federation and the Tiranian Confederacy immediately’ Jonas told Dreylock. ‘Loki is no respecter of borders’ he said.
‘Given the lack of sophistication in radar technology here it’s not surprising the locals can’t detect his ships’ Carter surmised. ‘And they’d never be able to intercept them with propeller driven aircraft either, we had trouble doing it with supersonic jets.’
O’Neill leaned forward in his chair. ‘We’ll be sending through some people to advise you’ he said. ‘Jonas does Kelowna have Special Forces?’ he asked.
‘Yes’ Jonas answered. ‘So do the other nations, good ones’ he said.
‘You’ll need the very best pilots and soldiers this entire planet has to offer’ O’Neill told Hale. ‘We’ll help train your troops but this is your planet so it’s your job to defend it’ he said.
‘You’re serious?’ Hale asked wide-eyed.
‘Deadly serious Commander’ O’Neill replied. ‘This isn’t the war you were expecting but you’ve got a war on your hands’ he said.
‘X-COM done with an early nineteen forties era industrial base’ Carter said, shaking her head. ‘Hell of a proposition even with our help’ she opined.
‘So am I the only one that just got a mental image of a Flying Saucer being bounced by a P-51 Mustang with Glenn Miller playing in the cockpit?’ O’Neill asked looking to his team. ‘Okay just me’ he said after judging their expressions.
Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – September 2002
‘It’s truly fascinating Commander’ Doctor Bill Lee enthused as he followed Sharp around the base.
‘Lights that make you high?’ Sharp replied doubtfully.
‘Well not so much that it’s the fact that both the Goa’uld and Sectoids use such a similar recreational technology’ Lee replied, wishing the X-COM officer had a slower pace. ‘We’ve now confirmed that the equipment we found on P4X-347 works almost identically to the alien entertainment devices found on the largest Sectoid Craft’ he said. ‘It’s sort of like a high-tech opium den’ he explained.
‘So is there a military application?’ Sharp asked, turning into another corridor.
‘Not really no’ Lee replied.
‘Interrogation potential?’ Sharp queried. ‘Like a truth drug?’
Lee thought about it. ‘I suppose, but the effects are at least mildly hallucinogenic as well as addictive so the intelligence obtained would be doubtful, our standard psionic methods would be more reliable’ he said.
‘Addictive?’ Sharp repeated. ‘So we could maybe turn a Goa’uld or Sectoid into a junkie and threaten to cut off their supply if they don’t cooperate?’ he suggested.
‘No it’s extremely addictive to us but both those species are much better able to handle it’ Lee told him.
Sharp stopped walking and turned to the scientist. ‘So what good is this information to us?’ he asked with some annoyance.
‘Well...’ Lee paused, ‘as pure science it’s fascinating’ he said. ‘Not everything we do should have a military application surely?’ he asked then looked awkward. ‘You’re not the ideal person to come to with this are you?’
‘Not even remotely’ Sharp told him. ‘Now I’m going to get stuck with a bunch of needles which makes me cranky so you might want to head back to your lab and don’t bother me again today without the plans for some kind of superweapon’ he advised.
Lee nodded. ‘Superweapon, right’ he said, backing away from Sharp’s stern expression then rapidly heading off back where they had come from.
Sharp sighed then resumed his journey towards the infirmary.
‘Sit on the bed and roll up your sleeve’ Doctor Frasier told him when he got there. She was the only one present because sending her staff away made it easier to berate him without looking unprofessional in front of the other ranks. It was an oft-repeated event that occurred every time he was due to have the cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs he was taking topped-up.
‘I hope those needles aren’t as dull as they were last time’ Sharp replied as he did as he was told. ‘The one you stuck in my ass made it difficult to sit down the rest of the day’ he complained.
Janet Frasier rolled her eyes. ‘You big baby’ she told him.
‘I’ve been in less pain after being shot than I’ve been after you’ve given me a shot Doctor’ Sharp told her exaggerating more than slightly.
If that’s true it’s only because you injected yourself with those moronically strong painkillers you X-COM people use’ Frasier replied. ‘It’s a wonder you aren’t all permanently stoned’ she opined, filling a syringe.
‘I think some of the stuff we take cancels out some of the other stuff we take’ Sharp told her. ‘Which is your cue to tell me I should be putting my body through this’ he added.
‘Would it make any difference if I did?’ Frasier asked.
‘Probably not’ Sharp conceded. ‘But I’d be very disappointed’ he said, ‘I like a little routine in my life.’
Doctor Frasier shook her head. ‘Wake up, eat breakfast, intimidate the base personnel, go through the gate, kill a few people, eat lunch, kill a few more people, gate home, intimidate the base personnel again, eat dinner, go to bed’ she responded. ‘That is your routine’ she declared.
‘It all sounds very boring when you put it that way’ Sharp replied, ‘maybe I should skip lunch?’ he said.
‘Don’t worry you don’t need to lose weight at least’ Frasier told him. ‘You’re disgustingly healthy in some ways’ he told him. ‘You’re just burning yourself out by taking this crap’ she told him, sticking the needle in his arm, earning a minor ouch for her trouble.
‘Like I said before I’m perfectly happy to inject myself’ Sharp told her.
‘I want to make sure it’s done properly and none of you try taking more to make yourselves even stronger or faster’ Frasier replied. ‘Now turn around and drop your pants’ she told him, switching to another syringe which she began to fill from a second bottle.
‘A woman telling you to take your pants off shouldn’t be so unwelcome’ Sharp complained as he did so. One of the injections needed to be administered in a less dignified place than your arm for maximum long-term effect. This time instead of an ouch Janet Frasier earned a yipe that made her grin with satisfaction though she got rid of it before he turned around.
‘Pills’ Frasier told him, passing him a small container with a large number of different sized and coloured ones.
‘Water?’ Sharp asked.
‘The jug and glass on the side there’ Frasier told him, pointing.
‘You normally hand the water to me’ Sharp told her.
‘I thought you wanted some variation in your routine Commander’ Frasier replied.
‘I like being waited on’ Sharp replied, moving to pour himself a glass. ‘So have you talked any of the other X-COM maniacs into abandoning their reliance of pharmaceuticals?’ he asked.
‘You know very well I haven’t’ Frasier replied curtly. ‘And that several SG Team members from the US Military not seconded to your organisation are still asking permission to take them as well’ she added with annoyance.
‘The results are to obvious to ignore I suppose’ Sharp told her. ‘Lean mean alien-fighting machines’ he said, thumping his chest.
‘Who are playing a dangerous game with their body chemistry’ Janet Frasier stated.
‘Back to the routine again’ Sharp replied, starting to take the pills one by one. ‘You try to look out for my personal best interests, I tell you I put the interests of others first and then you veer off on a tangent and accuse me of harbouring heinous plans to turn your daughter into Darth Cassandra.’
Janet Frasier made sure the door was closed. ‘Permission to speak freely Sir?’ she requested.
Sharp swallowed another pill with some water. ‘Given.’
‘Why are you such an asshole?’ Frasier asked flatly.
‘Could you be more specific?’ Sharp replied, clearly amused at the question. As a rule only the Doctor here and Elizabeth Weir talked to him that way.
Frasier crossed her arms, pulling herself to her less than intimidating full height. ‘I’ve watched you’ she said. ‘You lose people and it doesn’t phase you at all’ she said. ‘You don’t even care too much about yourself’ she continued, ‘you act like a posturing gung-ho jerk one minute and the next minute when you need to be cool and collected you’re as professional as any military officer I’ve ever met’ she told him. ‘You’re far from being stupid, and I don’t think you’re certifiable like some of your troopers clearly are, so why are you like the way you are?’ she asked. ‘I used to think it was the drugs but that’s not it is it?’
Sharp finished the last of the pills. ‘Do you really want to know?’ he asked. ‘It’s taken you a while to ask’ he noted.
‘Yes I really want to know’ Frasier replied.
Sharp moved over to a wall and leaned back against it, he didn’t want to sit down just yet. ‘Okay here’s a story to depress your little heart’ he began. ‘Back in 99 when I was new to X-COM, my third mission in fact, I was commanding a UFO Retrieval Team that caught an Abductor Class ship on the ground’ he said, his eyes seeming to drift off into the distance unfocused as he remembered the day. ‘Well we went in with twelve troopers and went home with five in the end but that wasn’t too unusual back then’ he continued, ‘but the thing that makes this mission stand out was that we found a little girl on the aliens examination table’ he said.
Janet blinked. ‘Dead?’ she asked quietly.
‘No, dead children I’d seen before plenty doing UN Peacekeeping, this was different’ Sharp replied, ‘the thing was those abductors they have a device to paralyse the person laying on them so there she was, this little eight year old on the table after the sectoids had been cutting on her with laser scalpels to get a good look at her insides, and she’s opened up like an autopsy but she’s still alive somehow because of the machinery’ he said. ‘Now she’s paralysed by the tech in the table but those things only stop you moving or speaking they don’t stop the pain so she’s in agony but she can’t scream all she can do is cry’ he continued. ‘So there’s three of us looking down at her, absolutely nothing we can do to actually save her life so our medic injects her with those painkillers we carry that you hate and after a few seconds they must have worked because we can tell she’s looking at us.’
‘Oh my God’ Frasier said, putting her hand to her mouth.
‘So we look at each other and I remember I'm in charge so I lean forward and smile at her, tell her my name is Russell and we’re the army and we’ve come to rescue her and that it’s all going to be better soon’ Sharp resumed. ‘And I wipe away her tears, then I tell her she needs to be very brave for a little while’ he continued, ‘I kiss her on the forehead, put my hand over her eyes, place the muzzle of my service pistol against the side of her head and then I make it all better.’
Frasier just looked at him. ‘That’s...’
‘A horrible story I agree’ Sharp interrupted. ‘So we went back to base, I spent a week or so getting drunk and crying a lot but one day it just occurred to me that I was feeling sorry for myself more than her and that feeling sorry for her wouldn’t help her much now anyway’ he said. ‘But I could do my very best to stop it happening to another little girl like her and then my life became very simple’ he continued. ‘I killed aliens, then I taught other soldiers the best way to kill aliens, and now I’ve got hundreds of soldiers under my command who I can send out to kill aliens for me, and I feel righteous about it every day’ he told her. ‘I will defend this planet and the human race to my last breath because it’s the only way I can look myself in the mirror and if that means being an asshole then so be it’ he added, his voice trailing off at the end.
‘Why don’t you tell people this?’ Frasier asked him, still trying to come to terms with the story. ‘If they understood...’
‘I don’t give a shit if they understand me, or like me, I only need them to do what they’re told’ Sharp interrupted her tersely. ‘And I really don’t want anyone to feel fucking sorry for me’ he continued, ‘most of the X-COM Old Guard have stories like that’ he said. ‘You know Sergeant Andianov, she’s got a story about a chryssalid and a pregnant woman that would make you sick’ he continued, ‘we just don’t talk about it’ he told her. ‘We use it as fuel instead’ he explained. ‘High octane blind hatred will keep you going when compassion runs out trust me and now if we’re all finished I’ve got to gear up and lead some soldiers into battle because that's been the sum total of my reason to be since 1999, see you later Doctor’ he finished, heading out the door.
It took a few minutes left alone in the infirmary for it to occur to Janet Fraser that if he didn’t care what people thought of him, or that they liked or understood him, why had he told her?
