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Chapter Text

Chapter One

Zentraedi Reclamation Site L314
Giza Plateau, Egypt
5th September 2013

Colonel James Fawcett, formerly of the US Army Corps of Engineers now UEDF Army Core of Engineers, smiled as he carefully read through the latest report from the teams working outside the dense robotech alloy walls of the repurposed Zentraedi dropship that they had been using as a base for the last few months. Finally, after several months of work they had almost finished the job that they had been sent out here – to the torn up remains of the Giza Plateau – to do. The job in question was one that he, and many of his colleagues, was becoming quite familiar with.

They were here to remove a crashed Zentraedi warship – specifically a Thuverl Salan-class heavy cruiser – that had fallen to Earth in the aftermath of the Rain of Death and the battle with Dolza. The cruiser in question like so many others having been caught up in the massive reflex weapon detonation that had not only obliterated the massive asteroid that had been converted into the Zentraedi’s main fleet base but created a wave of supercharged particles and plasma that had annihilated the vast majority of the Zentraedi Main Fleet. The cruiser and the others that had crashed had been at the edge of the blast area and while they had escaped utter obliteration they had still been disabled – the crew aboard this particular vessel killed – and far, far too many of them had fallen into the gravity well of the smouldering Earth.

This particular cruiser had come down over North Africa and as it came in had completely trashed the pyramids of Giza – the ancient Egyptian monuments, which had endured several millennia of Saharan sandstorms and countless generations of tomb raiders, being no match for a few million tons of super-strong alien alloy falling at hypersonic velocities – before ploughing into the rest of the Giza Plateau and ripping up the sandstone like it was water before coming to a dead halt. There it had laid leaking both gamma and hyper-ionic radiation from broken open sublight engine cores, radiation that had begun drifting towards both Cairo and the extremely fertile farmland of the Nile delta. A situation that everybody knew could not have been allowed to continue – especially as they needed all the fertile farmland they could get right now as so much had been scorched into uselessness by the quantum fires of the Rain of Death.

Hence Admiral Gloval and General Maistroff had sent them here to clean up and dispose of the wreckage before the radiation could reach either Cairo or the delta.

Using a number of adapted destroids – specifically Spartan destroids which were the easiest to customise and had fully functional hands much like on a battloid – they had gotten to work. The damaged sublight engine cores had been relatively easy to remove and transport somewhere they could be safely disposed of through a combination of disassembly and decontamination. The bigger problem they had faced was disassembling the rest of the ship due to the heavy armour and structural bracing that all warships had not to mention some of the more complex internal components like the reflex furnaces as well as safely removing the cruisers huge stockpile of anti-ship munitions.

It was the disassembly of the ship that had taken the most time. But now they had more or less finished, according to the report the last few segments of the hull were scheduled to be taken away to a foundry outside Lisbon later today where they would be melted down and recycled. After all there was nothing wrong with the metal once recycled it could be used for any number of purposes including the rebuilding of Earth’s infrastructure which had naturally been very badly damaged during the Rain. He had already heard that some of the metal they’d recovered had already been recycled into a brand-new maglev track between Paris and London via a newly refurbished and upgraded – a project that had actually begun before the Rain, but which like so much else had had to briefly put on hold by the need to deal with the post-Rain global humanitarian catastrophe – Channel Tunnel.

A knock at the door brought him out of his perusal of the progress report. He looked up with a frown of confusion wondering who it was. “Come in,” he called out. The door opened and Lieutenant Paulson, who looked a lot younger than his twenty-nine years, came in. “Yes lieutenant?”

“Sir we’ve finished loading the last of the Zentraedi ship fragments onto the trucks for transport to the airport,” Paulson reported before pausing, “however when we removed the last piece, we found something buried underneath.”

Oh, please let it not be an artifact from Ancient Egypt, James thought, knowing that if that was the case it would require him to fill in six ton of additional paperwork. He would also have to secure the site until the UEG to rustle up archaeologists or Egyptologists from somewhere to come and investigate. Which wouldn’t be easy as so many of the world’s scientists had perished during the Rain of Death as many had been based in universities that had been incinerated during the reflex cannon bombardment.

“What kind of something,” he asked after a moment.

Paulson grimaced, having seen the expressions that had flashed across his CO’s face. Thus, he knew what he had to say was probably not going to go down that well, hell he didn’t relish saying it himself given all the additional paperwork that was about to be dumped on both their desks. “Sir it’s a series of sandstone cover stones engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics, the cover stones are approximately several meters in diameter and have to weigh a good few thousand tons,” he reported, “to make matters worse there is a huge crack running across them from where the underside of the cruiser’s prow was literally pressing down on them. And that’s not all.”

James winced. “What else,” he asked knowing that the Egyptologists were not going to be that happy with that report, not that they could blame him for it as a few million tons of derelict robotech warship sitting on top of the cover stones was bound to cause significant damage. Frankly they were lucky that the whole mass hadn’t been reduced to broken shards or melted by the heat of the cruisers initial impact with the desert floor.

“Sir there is something buried underneath the stones,” Paulson replied, “the sensors on our Spartans are picking up a large metallic signature, two of them in fact, that does not match any material in our database, whatever it is it’s definitely not from Earth.”

“It’s alien? How long has it been there?”

“From the depth beneath the modern desert surface I would say at least six thousand years. Sir should we attempt to recover it?”

“No but secure the area we will call in some experts to help recover whatever it is,” James answered, “however I want you to run a few scans through the cover stones if you can. Forward me the results as soon as you have them.”

“Understood sir.”

“Dismissed lieutenant.”

“Sir.”

~~//~~

United Earth Defence Command
New Macross City
Three Days Later

Admiral Henry Gloval felt like he was beating his head against a brick wall as he attempted, once again, to deal with those members of the defence council and the United Earth Government who wanted to increase controls on all planet side Zentraedi – both those that were and weren’t micronized. The reason that they were giving this time was the increased tensions and frustrations the aliens were exhibiting as they attempted to adapt to a life outside of constant warfare. Some of the councillors were concerned that it would lead to violence – the aliens falling back into old habits and programmed responses – others well they were simply being xenophobic assholes using any excuse to try and make trouble.

The former he could understand their concerns – especially as there were rumours of Zentraedi warlords out in the wastelands created by the Rain who were seeking to create trouble, warlords like Khyron, Azonia and someone called Zeraal – and he even shared some of them to a degree. Hell, he knew that Commander Breetai also had some concerns about the warlords – especially Zeraal who had been one of Dolza’s most loyal and capable commanders, and Khyron who for all his instabilities could be very charismatic when he wanted to be – hence why they had quietly begun slipping some of Breetai’s people – well ones that Khyron and Zeraal probably would not know to be loyal to Breetai and through him them – among their ranks. The latter members though, they were just arrogant small-minded people that he had little time for.

“Enough,” he said looking firmly at Colonel Matthews who was one of the leading xenophobes. “The council has already decided that imposing additional restrictions and controls on the Zentraedi at this time would be counterproductive – raising the issue at every opportunity is not going to get us to change our minds.”

“But sir we need to…”

“The decision has been made,” Secretary Anderson, the current UEG secretary of defence who was also acting as council chairman, added firmly. “Admiral Gloval is right in his words. The issue of additional restrictions is closed for now, should the situation change, we may consider the matter again but not until then. Is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” Matthews replied, glowering slightly at being foiled once again. Damn it didn’t they see that they had to put some additional controls on the Zentraedi? The giants had exterminated eighty percent of the human race in minutes for goodness sakes. Were they to just let them roam free so they could plot wiping out the rest of them? Still, he knew better than to push some more now, though he glared at Gloval infuriated by his cowardice in this matter only to be pointedly ignored.

“Right moving onto the last item on today’s agenda,” Anderson said, shooting a warning glare at Matthews having seen the way he looked at Gloval. The other man obviously read the implicit warning as he winced. Then he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. “General Markwell I believe you have something to report?”

“Yes, as you are all aware I have a number of combat engineering crews spread out around the planet cleaning up some of the more dangerous wrecked Zentraedi vessels,” the general reported, “three days ago they finished cleaning up the crashed Thuverl Salan cruiser on the Giza Plateau. As they were clearing away the last of the wreckage from the bow section, they found something underneath it.”

“What kind of something,” Anderson asked.

“Beneath a series of carved sandstone cover stones covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs, they discovered a large ring structure six point seven meters in diameter and a smaller vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal device. Both are engraved with strange symbols and are made from a material not found on Earth,” Markwell replied. “I passed a copy of our scan data to Exedore to see if the Zentraedi could identify it from their own records.”

“And we have,” Exedore answered taking that as his cue to speak. “While the purpose of the ring is unknown to us the material that it and the pedestal device are made from are not. They are composed of a rare quasi-metallic element called naquada. A material with some very interesting and useful properties though its scarcity in their native galaxy has long prevented the Robotech Masters from exploiting them in anything other than a limited fashion.”

“What kind of properties are we talking about, Exedore,” Gloval asked curious.

“Naquada is a room temperature hyperconductor as well as an energy amplifier,” Exedore replied, “whatever energy you put into it you get a hundred times as much energy out. In certain situations, and with certain materials it can also be used to generate considerable amounts of energy though not as much as a reflex furnace.”

“Sounds highly useful,” Matthews commented, even as he inwardly grimaced at having to talk to the micronized Zentraedi official at all. He would have much rather shot the alien bastard dead where he sat than talk to him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t act on that impulse, not without signing his own death warrant anyway as he knew full well that Gloval wouldn’t hesitate to have him shot or worse turn him over to Breetai so the Zentraedi could slowly crush him for killing his former advisor and still close friend.

“It is colonel,” Exedore replied “though as I said its relative scarcity in our native galaxy has prevented the Robotech Masters from exploiting it as anything other than a scientific curiosity. However, I believe the material might be far more common in this galaxy.”

“What do you mean?” Anderson asked curious.

“When we were searching for the SDF-1 our forces scanned numerous star systems before our finder beams locked onto this planet,” Exedore explained, “in almost every case we detected signatures that indicate that naquada is likely present in system. However, since there was no protoculture signature we did not investigate any further.”

“Do you know if there is any more in this system?” Gloval asked.

“I’m afraid not, once we located the SDF-1 our focus was naturally on recovering the ship and not scanning the rest of the system for resources,” Exedore replied. “As you all know our mission was to recover the battlefortress and return it to the Robotech Masters not resource acquisition.”

“What about the ring itself and the cover stones?” Anderson asked changing the topic slightly, “what are we doing about them?”

“The ring and the cover stones have been transported to the UEDF base on Crete. We didn’t want too but intelligence indicated that at least one of the EBSIS backed Islamist militia’s that are still at large in the region was heading in the direction of Giza, so we carefully moved them,” Markwell replied. “We are currently attempting to find someone who can translate the hieroglyphics for us but it’s slow going. Sadly, almost all the world’s Egyptologists were killed during Dolza’s attack or in the immediate aftermath. Finding one who is alive is proving difficult though we do have a promising lead on a former Egyptologist and anthropologist a Doctor Daniel Jackson. He is now working as a language teacher in a university in the Chilean capital Santiago.

“As for the rings some scientists from the Robotech Research Group facility in Austria, led by an astrophysicist named Samantha Carter, have arrived on the base, and are beginning to examine both it and the pedestal. They have already determined that they are some-kind of wirelessly linked mechanism.”

“How so,” Gloval asked, making a mental note to check up with Emil later if he knew anything about the ring. Though he was also familiar with the name Samantha Carter, the former US Air Force officer turned civilian researcher had been instrumental in helping unlock the secrets of reflex furnace technology. He would also have to check his inbox for any reports on this ring device as being the admiral of the fleet he would naturally have a copy forwarded to him.

“When they were unpacking the pedestal one of the techs inadvertently touched one of the panels,” Markwell answered, “it lit up and the ring itself made a grinding noise. When they looked at it, they could see that the symbols are mounted on an inner ring that was rotating. It stopped beneath one of the chevron shaped devices spaced around the ring which made a locking motion and locking in place.”

Exedore frowned. “That’s strange have you compared the symbols to anything?” he asked.

“We have. They appear to be stylized representations of various constellations though why they’re there we still do not know.”

“Keep us appraised General,” Anderson ordered.

“Of course, sir.”

“Is there any other business,” Anderson said glancing around to see if anyone else had something that they wished to bring before the council. There was nothing. “Then this meeting of the defence council is officially adjourned. Good evening gentlemen and ladies, I will see you all at next week’s meeting.”

With the official end of the meeting everyone picked up their tablet computers and stood before starting to make their way out of the room. General Markwell quickly moved to speak with Admiral Gloval before the Russian man could leave the room, thankfully Gloval seemed to realize that he wanted something, so he stood back to wait for him.

“General Markwell is there something I can help you with?” Gloval asked, “something to do with the ring?”

“Yes, sir there is,” Markwell answered, “as I said in the meeting, we have located Doctor Jackson in Santiago. However, I need your help to contact him. I would send someone myself but…”

“…doing so would mean you would have to deal with General Leonard, and he would certainly want something in return and make you jump through far too many bureaucratic hoops while sending one of his own people to seek out Doctor Jackson,” Gloval finished, knowing Anatole Leonard of old. Thus, he knew the power plays that he liked to get up to whenever he thought he could get away with it and being the senior UEDF officer in South America he tended to treat the region somewhat as his own personal fiefdom. Thus, he would argue and frustrate almost anyone who asked for something from him or his region – well unless that was someone like him. While Leonard would argue with Markwell, he wouldn’t dare argue with him or do anything to get in his way – he knew where far too many of the other man’s skeletons were buried for him to do that.

“Yes.”

“Send me all the information you have on the ring and some of the images of the hieroglyphs. I’ll send one of my old command crew down to Santiago to recruit Doctor Jackson,” Gloval said already working out just who he would send to accomplish the mission of recruiting the former Egyptologist. While Anatole would still outrank whoever he sent he knew full well that the other man wouldn’t dare do anything to interfere with them or their mission. To do so would risk a confrontation with him and that would be the last thing that Leonard would want.

“Thank you I’ll make sure it’s sent to you as soon as I get back to my office.”

“You’re welcome,” Gloval replied prompting the other officer to smile, nod, and walk away to return to his office to make the appropriate arrangement. Gloval was about to leave himself when Exedore came up to him. “Yes Exedore?”

“Admiral based on the discussion that has just been had do you want me to speak with Lord Breetai,” Exedore asked, “and request a more detailed scan of both the planet and the system in general?”

“To search for more of this naquada mineral?” Gloval asked, the micronized Zentraedi nodded in response. Gloval considered that for a moment, this naquada did sound like it was a highly useful material. If they could find more of it, not to mention figure out what the hell the ring and the pedestal actually did, then it could help them a lot. They wouldn’t have to rely so much on the protoculture they were recovering from the wreckage of the Zentraedi main fleet to power their technology, especially the technology that was helping them with planetary regeneration like the atmospheric filtration towers and soil regenerators.

“Very well ask Breetai if he wouldn’t mind doing it,” he said at last. “And while we are here, has there been any word from our spies?”

“Very little at the moment otherwise I would have mentioned it during the meeting,” Exedore replied. “I do know that Kazarn has successfully integrated himself with Zeraal’s group and Arzen has done the same with Khyron’s group. The fact that we arranged for both of them to have received training in maintenance and repair of battle mecha has helped considerably there. Beyond that we have nothing so far, beyond that there is considerable friction between Zeraal and Khyron – which does not surprise me in the least given Khyron has a less than stellar reputation among my people – though how far that goes at the moment we do not know.”

“It would be advantageous if we could get them to fight one another.”

“Indeed. I have forwarded what information our spies have gathered so far to your inbox.”

“Thank you Exedore.”

“You are most welcome. If there is nothing else Admiral, I will take my leave and contact Lord Breetai to arrange the scans.”

“No there is nothing else. Good day Exedore.”

“And you Admiral Gloval,” Exedore replied with a polite half-bow – that among Zentraedi conveyed genuine respect for a superior – before turning and walking away. Gloval watched him go for a few moments, then sighed, and started walking back to his office he had a mission to arrange and a mountain of paperwork to get through…

…what fun.

~~//~~

Santiago
Chile
Eighteen Hours Later

Daniel Jackson felt a familiar mixture of exhaustion, frustration and humiliation pulling at him as he drove through the streets of downtown Santiago heading for the small, somewhat rundown, apartment that he had called home for over a decade now. The reason he was feeling like he wasn’t due, well not entirely, to his job he actually quite enjoyed teaching young people how to speak English and a few other languages well when they wanted to learn anyway.

Which his current crop of students didn’t seem to want to do. Hence why teaching them was such an exhausting, frustrating experience. Every single one of them would rather talk and gossip about the recent appearance of UEDF construction crews – which consisted of a mixture of humans, micronized and full-sized Zentraedi – that had shown up a few weeks ago and begun restoring and upgrading the cities infrastructure, which had been quite seriously damaged by the earthquakes that had followed the Rain of Death. He could understand it to a degree, learning modern international English or ancient Sumerian was nowhere near as cool as seeing giant humanoids – be they biological like the Zentraedi or technological like the engineering outfitted Spartan destroids – walking around their city.

Of course, understanding it didn’t make it any less frustrating.

The humiliation though came from the fact that he was having to do this work at all. He had not spent nearly a decade becoming an archaeologist and anthropologist just to teach a bunch of teenagers with galloping acne, not to mention the usual amateur dramatics teenagers loved to indulge in, how to speak English and almost other language they had signed up to learn. No, he had done all that work to learn about the past, to piece together the mysteries of the Ancient World. He had thought, had actually known, that he had stumbled onto something amazing, something that could rewrite everything they ever thought they knew about the civilizations of the Ancient World and Egypt in particular.

And what had he got for his trouble… being laughed out of academia by conservative peers who didn’t like anything that interfered with their preconceived notions of the past. He sighed wondering why it was bothering him so much today, he had had over two decades now to get used to it. Then he remembered as it was on this day all the way back in 94 that he had presented his research and findings, only to be torn to pieces by the attack dogs of the academic world.

A world that no longer really existed as he knew that so many of his former colleagues had died in or just after the Rain. Their lives snuffed out either in the quantum fires of phenomenally powerful alien energy beams or in the geological and climatic chaos that had followed as the Mother Earth writhed in agony from the assault.

Mentally he shook himself before turning down the road that led to his apartment block. He noted idly that the UEDF and Zentraedi engineers had finished clearing up the collapsed remains of a large hotel complex and had begun preparing the ground for new construction. A quick scan of the sign outside the site showed that it would soon be housing the second of the three atmospheric filtration towers that were to be built in Chile – and from there do their part in clearing up not just all the dust and debris that had been blasted into the stratosphere during the Rain but much of pollution from the industrialisation of the world – returning the atmosphere to a state of cleanliness that it had not been in for nearly two centuries.

He couldn’t help but shake his head in amazement at that prospect. He was no climatologist – though he did have some passing familiarity with the science from where it had impacted global history – but even he could see how big of a job that was going to be. And if what he had heard on the talk shows was right, they would have it done within at most the next ten to fifteen years – the filters and cleaners made possible through robotechnology being just that good. Hmm maybe if the wi-fi is working in my building, for once, I’ll download some papers on them from the internet, he thought as it would be a nice distraction from the inevitable marking he would soon have to be doing.

Reaching his apartment building he pulled into his normal parking bay, turned off the engine and got out. After retrieving his box of marking from the back he made his way inside.

~~//~~

Five minutes later, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee, he had just settled down in his favourite armchair when someone knocked on his door. He looked up in surprise. Now who could that be, he thought as he put the mug down on a side table and stood up. He made his way to the door and looked through the peep hole, to see a beautiful African-American woman in a green UEDF uniform standing in the corridor. Who was she? What, was she doing here? What, did she want with him? He guessed there was only one way to find out.

He undid the locks and opened the door to see the woman still standing there, holding a briefcase that he hadn’t seen, standing behind her was a dark-haired young man also dressed in UEDF uniform wearing the insignia of a veritech pilot. “May I help you,” he asked politely.

“Doctor Daniel Jackson?” the woman asked seeking to confirm his identity as the man before her looked a little different to the picture she had seen of him, his hair was longer, and he was sporting a significant beard and all in all looked a bit more haggard.

“Yes,” Daniel confirmed.

“My name is Major Claudia Grant from the Robotech Defence Force,” she said introducing herself, “this is Captain Rick Hunter my escort and pilot. May we come in please?”

Daniel looked at them in surprise. He recognised the names now; he would have to have been living under a rock not to recognise two heroes from the war with the Zentraedi. “Sure,” he said stepping aside to let the two of them enter his apartment. As soon as they were in, he closed and locked the door again. “This way.”

He led them into the living room and gestured for them to sit on the couch, like most of his furniture it was somewhat moth-bitten but was still comfortable. Once they had done so he sat down in his air chair again.

“So, what does the RDF want with me?” he asked.

“We need your help,” Claudia replied, “are you aware that you are one of the few people left in the world who can translate Egyptian hieroglyphs?”

“You want me to translate something for you?” Daniel asked, “why would I do that? I was laughed out of that world a long time ago.”

“Maybe because doing so could help you prove that you were right all along,” Claudia pointed out. Daniel blinked at that reply, he had been quietly searching for years for conclusive, undeniable proof of his theories so he could return to the academic world if only to say, ‘I told you so’ and to see the look on the face of that sanctimonious ass Jim Raynor when he realized he had been right. While Jim was dead now, like so many others, killed when Washington DC was incinerated by a reflex blast having proof to show to any of the survivors, who still doubted him, would be nice.

“I’m listening,” he said after a moment.

Claudia nodded and began explaining about how one of the Zentraedi cruisers that had crashed to Earth after the defeat of Dolza had come down over Egypt totally destroyed the great pyramids of Giza – causing a horrified look to appear on Daniel’s face at the news of such a legacy being gone forever – before crashing into the plateau where it finally stopped. How after a year or so it had begun leaking radiation from its damaged sublight engines and how that radiation had begun drifting steadily towards both Cairo and the Nile valley and how they had sent combat engineers to clear up the wreck and deal with the radiation problem.

“Thank god you stopped it,” Daniel commented knowing how many people lived in the four millennia old city and how vital a farmland the Nile Delta was. “But what does this have to do with me and my theories?”

“I was just getting to that,” Claudia replied. “As they finished clearing away the remains of the cruiser for recycling, they found something buried beneath it. Something that has been buried beneath the sandstone of the Giza Plateau for over six thousand years.”

Daniel’s eyes widened. “What!” he breathed, shocked and amazed. “What did they find?”

“They found a series of sandstone cover stone tablets circular approximately several meters in diameter, they were covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Old Kingdom era. What was buried beneath them, well that is classified at the moment.”

“The Old Kingdom,” Daniel breathed amazed, recovering anything from Ancient Egypt was remarkable but from something so long ago, from when the great pyramids themselves were built, was even more astonishing. “I take it that it is those hieroglyphics that you wish for me to translate. Though how does that connect to my theories?”

“That’s the classified part of things at the moment Doctor Jackson,” Rick said calmly even as Claudia opened the briefcase she was carrying and extracted a file.

“This file contains a few images of some of the hieroglyphs,” Claudia said offering it to him. Almost reverently Daniel accepted the file from her and, after a glance for permission, he opened the file and saw three of the highest quality photographs that he had ever seen. Each showed a single hieroglyph that he carefully read and translated, feeling his old passion for the subject come to the fore.

“Well, this first one says sealed, the second translates to all time and the third says Ra,” he said at last, intrigued as all three were clearly part of a single statement. He gave the African-American woman an impressed look, they had given him just enough information in these images to whet his appetite to know more about what was written on the recovered cover stones. “Okay you’ve got me I’ll come with you to translate the rest of the hieroglyphs for you,” he said at last. “Though what about my job here?”

“You need not give it up,” Claudia answered, “the United Earth Government and United Earth Defence Forces are quite prepared to negotiate with your employers for use of your services. I believe that the school is currently quite strapped for cash as well as having to use very antiquated technologies."

That's an understatement, Daniel thought knowing how rundown many of the buildings on the campus were becoming because the school just didn’t have the financial resources to maintain them properly. Plus, the technology they had was getting increasingly antiquated with computers that barely ran even the most basic modern software because they were so old. Heck they were still using blackboards and chalk for writing in sometimes quite drafty classroom not interactive smart screens and definitely no holograms. The promise of a huge cash injection from the UEG, plus a possible massive building and tech upgrade, in exchange for a loan of him would definitely be snapped up by the school authorities.

“Alright if it can be arranged and if I know my students will be taken care of then I will not hesitate to accompany you to wherever you have the cover stones.”

Claudia smiled.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two

UEG Government Flight LT14
Two Days Later

Daniel’s mind was still somewhat awhirl as he sat in an incredibly comfortable seat as an official government plane conveyed him towards his destination. Which was apparently Fort Minotaur a UEDF military base on Crete – a base that was serving as the centre of UEG political and UEDF military operations in the European sector – a few miles to the south-west of the capital city of Heraklion. He still couldn’t quite wrap his head around how quickly events had moved from the moment he had agreed to assist with the translation of the hieroglyphics.

As soon as she had had his agreement Major Grant had set things in motion with a call, from a portable fold comm device, straight to Admiral Gloval himself. Within no more than two hours he had received a phone call from the dean of the university informing him that they had agreed to loan his services as a translator to the UEDF, though they hadn’t said at the time what they had been given or offered in exchange. He had later found out from friends among the staff that not only was the university getting a hell of a lot of money – enough to run it for nearly five years – from the UEG but they were getting a whole lot of state-of-the-art equipment out of it along with a full refurbishment of the campus. Both the speed of their offer, and the immense generosity of it, had communicated to him quite clearly that whatever this was, whatever the UEDF had found beneath the remains of the Giza Plateau it was big, possibly as big as the arrival of the SDF-1 had been nearly fourteen years ago.

Since then, everything had been something of a whirlwind, the vast majority of his time being taken up by travelling. First there had been a flight from Santiago to New Macross City where he had spent the night put up in one of the nicest hotels in the city. Then after a hearty breakfast they had boarded this plane and begun a long trek across first the Atlantic Ocean then the Mediterranean Sea towards Crete. At least I have good travelling companions, he thought glancing across at where Major Grant – or Claudia as she kept telling him to call her - and Exedore were sitting. They had both been very good conversationalists, he’d especially enjoyed talking with Exedore as the anthropologist in him had been fascinated to learn more about the Zentraedi as a people and how they were learning to, slowly but surely, embrace a way of life that didn’t involve being at war all the time.

“May I have your attention please,” the voice of Captain Hunter said from the public address system gaining all their attention. “We have entered the approach pattern for Fort Minotaur and will be landing within the next ten minutes. Please prepare for landing.”

“Finally,” Daniel muttered, it had been a very long time since he had taken a flight anywhere, let alone one like this that crossed hemispheres and multiple time zones. Thankfully the phenomenon known as jetlag was a thing of the past as drugs existed now – and had done since two thousand four, along with numerous other things they had been developed from technology and knowledge found on a fallen alien starship that had been both a Rosetta Stone and a Pandora’s Box in equal measure – that compensated for physiological upsets that caused the condition. He had made sure to take some before they had left New Macross.

“Not used to flying for long periods are you Doctor Jackson,” Exedore asked with a smile.

“Not these days, Exedore,” Daniel replied with a smile of his own as he fastened his seatbelt for landing. “Until I left Santiago, I hadn’t been on a plane for over a decade. Taking a long flight like this after so long is therefore a bit taxing even with an anti-jetlag drug in my system.”

“While your people use it for that that is not that particular drug’s primary purpose,” Exedore answered with a smile. At the surprised look Daniel shot him he explained. “The drug was originally created by the Tirolians to counter the occasionally very deleterious effects of the first generations of space fold drives. As space folding technology has improved over the last few millennia, and the flaws that caused said effects eliminated, the need for the drug diminished though its formula has remained in most databases.”

“Which is where we found it,” Claudia said recalling how they had found the formula for that and a number of other drugs that had radically improved life for so many on Earth before the Zentraedi arrived and the Robotech War began. Though those drugs had also helped save a lot of lives after the Rain, especially the ones that boosted cell regeneration and helped counter the worst effects of radiation poisoning.

“Indeed,” Exedore agreed.

“Who are the Tirolians,” Daniel asked not recognising the name, though something told him that it was an important name.

“They are the ones who created the Zentraedi initially as tools of labour but later they repurposed us into weapons of war,” Exedore explained. “For the last thousand years they have been known more as the Robotech Masters.”

Daniel frowned. “They don’t sound that friendly,” he commented inwardly feeling disgusted at the thought of engineering an entire species first to be a labour force somewhere and then later transforming them into weapons of war, tools of destruction and conquest. It was a disgusting practice as he could think of much better things to do with the knowledge of bioengineering and genetics that these Tirolians/Robotech Masters had to have to create the Zentraedi in the first place.

“The Robotech Masters are a very advanced, very powerful race yes, far more so than my people have ever been, but they have not been to war in many generations,” Exedore said reassuringly, unsaid was the fact that warfare was what the Zentraedi were for, “plus Tirolian space is a very, very long way from here being literally galaxies away. There is nothing to fear from them.”

For now, at least, he thought knowing that the Robotech Masters certainly knew of the death of Dolza and the destruction of the vast majority of the entire Zentraedi armada by now. He didn’t think though that they would be in a position to do much about it for quite some time given that their own forces were limited and mostly tied down keeping the subject worlds of the Tirolian Empire under heel or fighting off the occasional border raid from the Invid. The distance from Tirolian space - located as it was in the galaxy that Earth humans referred to as Andromeda – was also a good defence given space folding across intergalactic space was a tricky and dangerous process given the relative lack of navigational markers. It was certainly something that the Robotech Masters wouldn’t want to do unless they had no other choice.

“I see.”

The sound of the fasten seat belts sign lighting up and a change in the pitch of the engines, as they were beginning their landing approach, brought an end to the discussion before it could go any further. Daniel braced himself for the bump of landing while wondering just what it was, he was going to find when they entered the base and he got to translate the hieroglyphs on the cover stones.

He also had to wonder if they would show him whatever it was that the cover stones had been concealing. For them to have given all they had to the university in Santiago in order to secure his loan it had to be something massive.

“What are you thinking of Daniel,” Claudia asked using his name as he had asked her to do, in exchange for him calling her by her name.

“Just thinking about the cover stones Claudia,” Daniel admitted, “I have to admit that I am very intrigued to know what it was that was underneath them. For the UEG to go to all the trouble and be as generous as they have been it has to be something incredible.”

Claudia smiled. “You will see soon enough,” she replied knowing that the UEG and UEDF High Command first wanted him to translate the hieroglyphs before they showed him the ring. It was believed after all that the hieroglyphs would reveal something about what the ring was meant to do. Despite an exhaustive search by Exedore and his fellow advisors the Zentraedi records had not been that helpful in that regard, having no idea what the ring was though they had revealed a bit more about the capabilities and potential uses of the material that it was made from.

“I look forward to it,” Daniel answered as a jolt ran through the plane as the wheels touched the ground for the first time in hours, followed by the sound of the engines going into full reverse thrust slowing them down.

“It shouldn’t be long now,” Claudia replied as the feeling of deceleration died away as they came to an almost complete halt. The only feeling of motion now was Rick taxiing them to their assigned stand on Fort Minotaur’s aircraft parking grid.

After a couple of moments even that stopped as they reached their assigned parking spot, the sound of the engines dying away completely a moment later. A few moments later someone beating on the door to the outside world indicated that a set of steps had been brought up to the hatch. Meaning that there welcoming committee was certainly waiting outside for them to disembark.

“That’s our cue,” Claudia said undoing her belt and standing up. Knowing that it was time to disembark both Daniel and Exedore undid their own seatbelts and stood up, falling in behind Claudia as she approached the hatch to the outside world. A hatch that was already being opened for them by Rick, who unlocked it, pulled it back and slipped the door to one side letting the warm, moist air of a Mediterranean autumn spill into the interior of their jet.

Throttling down his nervousness Daniel followed behind Claudia, with Exedore following along behind, as they stepped out into the golden sunlight of evening. The sun was beginning to set casting long shadows across the surface hangars and structures of the base – the vast majority of the base including the living quarters would be buried deep underground safe from all but the most powerful of attacks. Daniel briefly looked around noting that the base was primarily constructed from a material that resembled reinforced concrete though it was probably a robotechnology material and thus much stronger than it appeared. Then he noted the small welcoming committee that was awaiting them.

Knowing that he couldn’t linger here he followed Claudia down the steps to the ground, Exedore and Captain Hunter following a few paces behind him. Once they had all disembarked, they approached the small group of officers, led by a athletic-looking middle aged man with salt-and-pepper hair.

“Major Grant, Doctor Jackson, Minister Exedore, Captain Hunter,” the man said, “I am Colonel Charles Kowalski, welcome to Fort Minotaur. General Richards sends his apologies that he cannot be here to greet you himself but his eldest went into labour an hour ago, so he’s had to leave the base to be with her.”

“That’s quite alright Colonel,” Claudia answered.

“If you’ll follow me some guest quarters have been prepared for you,” Kowalski said, “I’m sure you would all like to freshen up a bit from your long flight.”

“That would be nice,” Daniel admitted. “Though I would like to take a look at the cover stones as soon as possible.”

“Understandable as we are quite anxious to know what the damned things say,” Kowalski admitted, “but you should take a little time to rest and maybe have a bite to eat first. The cover stones have sat in the ground for thousands of years they can wait another couple of hours for translation to begin.”

“True,” Daniel admitted, eager as he was to get started, he was quite hungry, and he did desperately need a shower and maybe a change of clothes.

“Please lead on Colonel,” Claudia said.

“Of course, Major this way please.”

~~//~~

Two Hours Later

Daniel felt like he had rattlesnakes performing a mating dance in his stomach as he followed a UEDF marine through the brightly lit corridors towards the lab where they were keeping the cover stones. It had been nice to freshen up and have something to eat in the quite comfortable quarters, which were certainly a lot more comfortable than his apartment back in Santiago, that he had been assigned in the VIP section of the underground complex.

Now though he was quite eager to get started and it would definitely be interesting to see just how much of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that he actually remembered as it had been so long. It had been pure luck that he had recognised the meaning of the glyphs that he’d been shown back in his apartment that had convinced him to come here and help.

“Here we are Doctor Jackson,” the marine said as they arrived outside one of the numerous labs that dotted this particular level. The marine swiped a security card – identical to the one Daniel himself had just been issued with – through a reader beside the door making it open with a whir of electromagnets. Daniel smiled and followed the marine inside…

…only to stop at what he beheld.

The lab was a large rectangular box eight meters wide by ten meters long. It was largely empty though there were several work benches dotted around that in the labs normal life would have no doubt been filled with all sorts of equipment. It was certainly an impressive workspace but what instantly grabbed Daniel’s attention was what was floating suspended on a complex rigging apparatus at the far end of the lab.

The cover stones.

Moving almost on automatic pilot Daniel approached them gazing at the huge circular stones in awe. Though he immediately noticed evidence of damage to the stones, especially the central one as it had a very nasty crack running right through it, damaging some of the glyphs which was going to make translating them somewhat difficult. But then he liked a challenge.

“What happened here,” he asked gesturing to the crack, noting with some surprise that the marine had been joined by Major Grant – he hadn’t heard her come in or hadn’t heard her following him.

“We believe the damage to the cover stones is from where the derelict Zentraedi cruiser was sitting on top of them,” Claudia told him, “there was only a centimetre or so of pulverized sandstone between the underside of the cruiser’s prow and the cover stones. These stones had a few million tons of derelict robotech alloys sitting on top of them for nearly a year. Between that and the initial impact with the plateau it is not surprising that they took some damage.”

“No, I suppose not,” Daniel admitted with a sigh as he turned his gaze back to the cover stones noting the worst of the damage was to the circular centre stone though some of the others were also damaged being chipped and cracked from the weight of the cruiser, “I suppose we’re lucky that they weren’t shattered into a million fragments by all that weight pressing down on them. Still, I can tell you now that some of these hieroglyphs are going to be quite difficult to translate as they are quite badly damaged.”

“Can you still translate them,” Claudia asked.

“I believe so yes,” Daniel replied with a reassuring smile, “it’s just going to take me awhile as I will have to somehow reconstruct the damaged glyphs to figure out what there likely meaning is. Due to the damage, I do have to warn you that the translations aren’t going to be quite as accurate as I would like.”

“We have a high-resolution laser scanner due here tomorrow,” Claudia told him making his eyes widen in surprise. “Will that be of any help reading the damaged hieroglyph sections?”

“It should yes,” Daniel replied after taking a moment to recover from his surprise. “Though I will need quite a bit of help deciphering the data as I’ve never used a laser scanner before thus, I have no idea how to interpret what it tells me.”

“That can definitely be arranged,” a new voice said from the direction of the doorway, drawing everyone’s attention. Daniel turned with the others to see a relatively tall blond-haired woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties – much like Daniel himself – and wearing a lab coat had come into the room. “Sorry I’m late I was unfortunately delayed dealing with a slight spat between some of the other scientists. It’s been resolved now.”

“That’s quite alright doctor,” Claudia replied knowing from experience how tetchy scientists could sometimes be, having worked with a fair few of them over the years since the SDF-1 first fell to Earth. To say that it could be like herding cats at times would have been an understatement. “Doctor Jackson please allow me to introduce Doctor Samantha Carter, she is the head of research here at Fort Minotaur and is the leader of this project. Doctor Carter this is Doctor Daniel Jackson.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Samantha said holding out her hand for the other scientist to shake. She had been reading up on Doctor Jackson and had found his theories about the pyramids being constructed by aliens as well as crosspollination of the ancient cultures of Earth quite interesting. The arguments were logical and made sense, unfortunately they had been a bit too radical for the scientific authorities in the pre-Robotech world and the poor man had been made a laughingstock by those who felt threatened by what was clearly a very intelligent and intuitive mind.

“Likewise,” Daniel replied with a smile taking the other scientist’s hand and they shook. “Though what project is that? There is obviously quite a bit more going on here than just these cover stones.”

Sam blinked. “You haven’t told him yet?” she asked looking at Claudia.

“Not yet,” Claudia replied, “UEDF High Command wanted Daniel to begin working on the translations first before we showed him the rest.”

Daniel blinked. “Show me what,” he asked.

“Why what was under these things Daniel,” Claudia replied with a smile. “I know you have been curious ever since we first met you in Santiago and you have been patient enough, as much as command may disagree, I am not going to make you start translating until we can do the laser scan.”

“You mean,” Daniel started to say.

“Indeed, we are,” Sam replied taking the lead. “This way please, doctor.”

“Please call me Daniel.”

“Alright then Daniel. You can call me Sam only my father ever really called me Samantha and usually when I’d done something wrong,” Sam replied, even as she felt a familiar stab of pain at the thought of her father General Jacob Carter, who’d died of cancer a year or so after the arrival of the SDF-1, before the modern anti-cancer drugs – created from information found in the computers of the alien battlefortress – and treatments became available. Treatments and drugs that had cut the mortality rate of all forms of cancers down to virtually zero – something that had saved a lot of lives both before and after the Rain.

“Alright Sam it is.”

“This way,” Sam said with a smile before turning and leading the way out, back into the near featureless corridors of this particular subterranean fortress. Only the fact that she was well used to UEDF underground bases, all of which tended to follow the same basic floor plans with only small, mostly cosmetic, differences between them due to scale and the bases intended function, enabling her to navigate the corridors towards the main lab. The sound of footsteps behind her letting her know everyone was following.

In no time at all they reached the main lab and she gently ushered Doctor Jackson inside, Claudia also following while their marine escort remained outside. Daniel immediately noticed that this lab had a lot more people in it than the one assigned to him, all the tables had people working on them but what really grabbed his attention were two objects in the centre of the room, which unlike his lab was circular with everything facing inwards.

One was an enormous ring-shaped structure made of a brownish-grey material that didn’t look like anything he had ever seen before. It could almost have been mistaken for stone but there was something about it, something about how it gleamed under the lights told him that it wasn’t made from stone. As he looked closer, he could see that it was actually two rings in one with the inner ring consisting of thirty-seven panels each engraved with different symbols whose meaning escaped him. Spaced equally around the edges of the outer ring were nine chevron-shaped objects that appeared to be centred around a reddish-orange crystal of some type. The other thing that grabbed his attention was a vaguely mushroom shaped pedestal with a slanted circular board on the top clustered around an orange crystalline dome. Again, he could see that it was split up into a series of panels each with a symbol on them – a symbol that to his trained archaeologist’s eyes were identical to those on the ring-shaped device.

“Incredible,” he breathed, “these are what were buried under the cover stones?”

“Yes,” Claudia confirmed, gazing at them in wonder herself. It was one thing to see these things on computer screens or projected as holograms, quite another to see them in person. She couldn’t help but feel that whatever these things were, they held an incredibly powerful secret one that could bring great scientific and technological riches or utter annihilation in equal measure.

“What are they,” Daniel asked.

“We don’t know,” Sam answered. “We know that they are some kind of linked mechanism, our sensors confirm a subspace link between the pedestal and the ring, but what they are and what they’re actually meant to do we have absolutely no idea at this time. We’re hoping that your translation of the hieroglyphs on the cover stones will provide us with some answers.”

Daniel blinked and then looked at the devices again, eyes practically glowing in glee at the puzzle these things and the cover stones were presenting him with. A puzzle that was eons in the making and one he would do his utmost to solve. “Then I guess I better get started at least with some of the least damaged glyphs,” he said a moment before a whooping alarm began to sound throughout the base. “What’s that?”

Claudia looked up in surprise and concern at the sound of the alarms, then she turned and spoke to Daniel. “It’s a battle alert,” she said, “this base is under attack.”

~~//~~

Front Gate
Fort Minotaur
A Few Minutes Earlier

Private Adrian Campbell was bored.

As he had been everyday for this last duty rotation, he was sitting here in the guard house watching the feeds from the sensors and cameras that monitored the perimeter of Fort Minotaur searching constantly for any threat to the base. It was a job that to his twenty-year-old mind was the textbook definition of boring. He had joined the military to add some spice, some excitement to his life, not to just sit around watching a bunch of monitors.

He glanced at the chronometer on the wall, noting that it was approaching 1400 hours. Another two hours of this tedium then I can clock off and I’m off on leave for a week then, he thought with a slight smile as he imagined the fun he was going to have over the next few days. While a week wasn’t enough time to make his way back home to the small town in rural Pennsylvania where he’d grown up – global air travel had a long way to go before it recovered from the Rain as so many jetliners had been incinerated in transit during the Rain as the sky suddenly filled with lethal energy beams – there was time for him to really let his hair down. There were some nice pubs and nightclubs in downtown Heraklion, perfect places for a guy to unwind.

He put those thoughts out of his mind for now as he picked up his mug of coffee. Only to find to his displeasure that the blasted thing was empty. Grumbling, he stood up and went over to the coffee machine and poured himself a fresh cup. He was just returning to his station with a fresh-ish mug of the liquid – he was really going to have to change the filter soon as it was starting to taste a bit stale – when one of the sensors emitted a warning bleep.

“If it’s a bloody rabbit again,” he muttered as he sat down and pulled up the feed from the sensor. It was one of the camera feeds that was monitoring the approach road to the base. The blasted thing was forever getting tripped by rabbits or other small animals bounding across the road.

The camera feed appeared…

…and the mug of coffee slipped from this hand to shatter on the floor. He didn’t notice as he was too busy staring at the camera feed in shock and horror. Walking up the road was what looked like an entire platoon of battle mecha, specifically a mixture of Spartan and Tomahawk destroids with what looked like two Monster destroids following slowly behind.

Quickly he sent an interrogative command to the computer, prompting it to both send an IFF request to the approaching mecha as well as checking if any of the bases mecha platoons were out today. If Jeremy failed to tell me that someone was out when I took over from him, I’m so going to kick his ass, he thought as the results came back. There was nobody out today, certainly not in platoon strength, plus the destroids were not giving off UEDF IFF signals, or any IFF signals at all in point of fact. Which meant only one thing…

…they were hostile.

Instantly his training kicked in. Reaching out he pressed the alert button, setting alarms ringing throughout the base and bringing the automated perimeter defences fully online while also within the base causing personnel to begin scrambling to stations to defend themselves and the base. Simultaneously with sounding the alarm the control triggered blast shutters on the small kiosk-like room that was his station.

The shutters were just closing when he heard a whistling sound. A moment later he felt some tremendous force lift him up as if he weighed nothing, instead of a hundred and eighty pounds, and slam him into the far wall with enough force that he was instantly robbed of consciousness.

~~//~~

Sitting in the cockpit of his upgraded destroid, the man who now referred to himself only as Prime, watched as railgun slugs from one of their Monsters impacted next to guard house and detonated. The force of the blasts shattering some of the windows – which weren’t already covered by closing blast shutters – and collapsing part of the outer wall.

He had hoped that they wouldn’t be detected this soon, or that whoever was in there would believe they were just a platoon returning from a patrol, but such was life. It was just going to make his and his fellow disciple’s task that much harder as now Fort Minotaur would be on alert and its own destroids – not to mention any veritech’s stationed there – would be scrambling alongside fixed defences. While he didn’t doubt that the upgrades made by his lord to their destroids would give them an advantage it was a complication that he could have done without.

“Monsters take out the main gates before they seal,” he ordered, even as he observed large metal shutters made from a dense robotechnology alloy beginning to emerge from slots in the wall to seal the gates. If those shutters – made as they were from warship grade armour plating – successfully closed, then what was already going to be a difficult task would become near impossible.

He need not have worried as the two Monsters roared again. Eight 381mm heavy railgun slugs – each packing a plasma warhead – slammed into the shutters, four to each, and detonated. The yellow-white flash of plasma detonations momentarily blinded his external cameras but when he could see again the could see that they had done their job. Both shutters had been pulverized as had the gates beyond them…

…the way was open.

“All forces move in,” he ordered calmly. “Head straight for the runways and surface to air batteries. We need to take them so our troop carriers can land.” He did not need to say that they needed those troop carriers to be sure to take the base long enough to recover the Stargate. They obviously wouldn’t be able to keep the base as Admiral Gloval and the rest of the infidels would no doubt send reinforcements as soon as they learned of the attack – and if they were really unfortunate Commander Breetai would send forces down from orbit – but then they didn’t need to.

A chorus of affirmative’s came from his fellows, and he began guiding his Spartan towards the entrance.

It was then however that things began to go wrong as the base defenders were clearly reacting far faster than they had expected they would. The first indication of this being when one of the perimeter turrets opened up on them, spewing bolts of ionic energy towards them. One of the Tomahawk’s was hit almost immediately and immediately staggered, an energy field flaring into existence around it as their lord’s protection activated as the ion blasts tore at it. A second volley of ion blasts from the turret hit the staggering mecha and the field collapsed allowing the following volley to blow the destroid apart.

Growling in annoyance he aimed the modified gunpod he was holding in the Spartans hands at the turret and fired. Golden energy bolts flayed at the armour protecting the turret though it held. Cursing softly at the strength of the alloy, even as deep in the darkest recesses of his mind a faint shiver of doubt about his lord’s true momentarily blossomed before being quashed, he fired again.

This time the alloy gave way and the turret exploded. But not before firing on him, its ion blast slamming into his shield like an energetic sledgehammer dropping the barrier strength by nearly a half from just one blast. The energy cell immediately began regenerating the defence even as he got his Spartan moving again, charging into the base with the others.

They ran straight into a slaughterhouse of crisscrossing energy beams, railgun, and autocannon slugs as a mixture of fixed turrets and defending destroids – which included two full squads of Regult battlepods deployed a few days earlier by Commander Breetai with the agreement of the Defence Council to assist in the defence of the base – opened fire upon them.

Prime was thrown hard against his seat restraints even as he manoeuvred to escape the lethal crossfire. While he managed it, though his shield was depleted in the process as he took several glancing blows, several of his companions weren’t so lucky as their mecha turned into charnel houses – their souls on the way to the heaven offered by their god. On one of his side screens, he saw one of the Monsters aiming to take down a group of Zentraedi battlepods – only to abruptly explode as a pair of Stiletto missiles slammed into it from above the first cracking the shield and the second punching through the armour to turn the walking engine of destruction into a funeral pyre for its three crew.

Frantically he looked around for the source of the Stilettos to find Valkyrie’s swooping down on the remains of his platoon autocannons, lasers and missiles bursting forth from them. Quickly he manoeuvred his destroid to avoid the worst of the bombardment even as a burst of 55mm autocannon rounds slammed into him, tearing through his still regenerating shield to slice deep into the body of the Spartan. Only the fact that he had manoeuvred to avoid the worst of the barrage saved his life as instead of finding the ammunition store for the Spartans central gun cluster the slugs tore apart the main circuit breakers sending a momentary burst of power through the entire mecha.

Prime screamed as the sudden electrical surge overloaded the dampeners on his controls sending a massive charge of electricity through his body microseconds before all the controls went dark as the Spartans computer shut down all systems. It didn’t help him though as the momentarily uncontrolled burst of electrons arced through his system bringing with it a tidal wave of pain…

…right before everything went dark.

~~//~~

Sitting in the cockpit of the Valkyrie he’d commandeered as soon as the alert went off Captain Rick Hunter watched as the last of the attacking destroids went silent. The sensors of this particular Valkyrie confirming that the destroid while not destroyed by his shots had been mission-killed losing all power. The life signs scan confirming that whoever the pilot was they were unconscious.

Calmly he assessed the rest of the battle to see that it was over. The destroids and Regult battlepods that had helped defend Fort Minotaur moving calmly through the wreckage, much of which was smouldering and burning from the intense heat of particle beams, lasers, and plasma warheads. Ground troops in battle armour were also approaching, searching for survivors so they could learn who the hell these people had been, where they had come from and how there destroids came to be upgraded with energy shields and for the Spartans to be armed with some type of plasma rifle instead of the normal GU-11 gunpod.

A check of his sensors showed that there were no other survivors in the remains of the mecha. But then there rarely were survivors when battles were fought with the immense destructive power of robotech weaponry. Whoever the pilot of the Spartan was, he or she was the only one who might be able to give them some answers.

Hence why he switched to battloid mode and landed next to the Spartan before carefully opening up the pilot’s compartment through the external emergency controls. Carefully he reached in and extracted the unconscious pilot before gesturing for some of the ground forces to come over.

“This one is still alive,” he said, the external speakers relaying his voice clearly. “Though from the looks of him he’s gotten one hell of an electric shock. Take him to the infirmary but keep him under heavy guard.”

“Sir yes sir,” one of the marines acknowledged as he set their prisoner down. He stepped back to watch as a combat medical team approached even as the marines searched their prisoner, extracting a strange, coiled serpent shaped device from a hip holster – its positioning indicating it was some kind of sidearm – along with a wicked looking knife – a kukri he noted – from a holster on the other hip. Then satisfied that their prisoner was disarmed turned him over to the combat medics.

He was about to turn away, to check over the rest of the battlefield, when the external cameras removed the helmet, the guy was wearing – and from his muscular build he was definitely a guy, an exceptionally fit one at that – and he saw his face…

…and gasped in shock and recognition.

“Sir are you alright,” one of the marines, from the IFF his powered combat suit was giving off he was a lieutenant, asked having heard him gasp loud enough for the battloids internal microphones to pick it up. “Sir do you recognise this guy?”

“I do indeed lieutenant,” Rick replied at last, mind still reeling wonder what the hell he was doing here. Last he’d heard he and his mother had been on a tour of Europe when he’d run off to join some cult somewhere or other, much to Aunt Maria’s horror and despair. “I don’t know what he’s doing here or how he became so buff as he was a six-foot beanpole last I saw him but his name is name is Nathan, Nathan Hunter – he’s, my cousin.”