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POV: Kaela Arden
With a woosh, hyperspace gave way to the pale yellow glow of a desertified planet.
From the command chair, Re'vok spoke "Cloaking." The hum of the cloak activation filled my ears.
"Do we have confirmation that the others are with us," I asked him.
He nodded. "Confirmed." A few more moments passed. "We're in the right place. There are some Goa'uld ruins on the planet below, and a massive asteroid field, just where we expected it to be."
Nothing unexpected then. "Is there a stargate within reach?"
Re'vok was quiet for a few moments. "None show up. If there is one, then it's been buried. It's more likely that it was taken when the world was abandoned."
I nodded. "Alright, order the rest of the fleet to remain here. We'll check the place out and ensure that it's secure."
After a quick radio call Re'vok took the ship in. The world itself had no name, though we had been referring to it as Voragine-Five due to its position as the fifth planet in the Voragine system, and was just on the edge of the Goldilocks zone for its star. Any closer and it would be almost too hot for any liquid water to appear on the planet.
From initial scans, it looked like all of the planet's water was trapped in massive underground oceans and aquifers. The entire system was rich in trans-actinide metals, with especially large quantities of Naquadah detectable through the system.
The planet below had clearly taken a beating. Massive craters dotted the surface of the world, probably caused by debris from the asteroid belt that had once been Voragine-Six.
We very quickly passed through the atmosphere, and a series of massive pyramids came into view in the distance. "What do we see?"
For a few more moments, Re'vok was quiet before he responded. "I'm detecting a single Ring Transporter, but other than that it looks like it's just a standard facility."
I raised an eyebrow. "Really? What about people?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. Most of the place has been buried in sand too."
I shrugged. "Alright. Take us down. I'll get everyone ready."
I entered the back of the Al'kesh where the team was waiting. "Alright. We're landing. We'll be sweeping through the facility."
Within ten minutes, everyone was in their full tactical outfits (with included cooling vests, outside was nearly 90°C).
So, as Re'vok finally brought the ship in for a landing just before the main entrance of the massive Pyramid complex.
As soon as we were out of the ship, Re'vok took back off and reactivated the cloak. Just like that, it was as if the ship hadn't even been there.
With a deep breath, we entered the facility. Inside was almost exactly as we had come to expect. Every wall was covered in hieroglyphs despite the fact that the entire facility clearly hadn't been visited in centuries at least.
Over the next five hours, we swept through the entry building. The place was entirely too large to sweep all of the pyramids (there were thirteen of them on the surface), and a truly massive number of empty rooms underneath the facility.
Once we were done with the initial sweep, we felt it was safe to assume that no one had used the facility in at least several centuries.
So, the rest of the fleet came down to the surface and we started setting up the Stargate. Within just thirty minutes we had the gate and the DHD setup; just thirty minutes later, a team was through the gate to start examining the facility.
Among the last in that group to come through was Elder James.
As he walked out of the gate, he nodded to me. "Kaela. Status."
I nodded. "About what we expected, sir. No signs of activity in at least several decades. The debris field is much richer in heavy metals than we expected as well."
The Elder raised an eyebrow. "I was under the impression that it was a standard earth-like world."
I took my compad from my side and handed it to him. "The number of transactinides is much higher than what we've detected in other solar systems."
The Elder took the pad and started looking through the list. His already raised eyebrow rose even higher. "Hmmm. I'll make sure to pass this information onto the engineering department. What about your primary mission?"
"Nothing yet, we're just waiting on your order to begin searching the belt… Sir, do we really believe that there is a ship out here?"
The Elder shrugged. "It is a very real possibility. From what we've read, a single System's Commonwealth Warship could give three Ha'tak motherships a run for their money. If there really is a ship in this system, then I genuinely hope we can find it… and that it doesn't try to kill us."
I shuddered. I didn't really know how to feel about the System's Commonwealth integrating AIs so heavily into their vessels.
I quickly shook it off. "Then do we have permission to start the search?"
The Elder blinked and nodded. "Permission granted. Try and gather some rock samples. Hopefully the Engineers can use it for something useful."
With that, I saluted once and walked off to start preparing the ships. A few minutes later, the second wave of personnel flooded from the gate. Together, they would be doing a much more thorough sweep of the entire facility, which wasn't my problem.
The next day, once the crews of all the vessels had gotten properly rested, the fleet once more took off from the world.
To scan the entire asteroid belt was expected to take no more than a couple of weeks. Of course, that was with very surface-level scans only. We could get the shape of every asteroid, and a general idea of what material composed each of them, but it wouldn't be anything specific.
Once the initial scan was complete, assuming we didn't find anything particularly interesting, we'd start going back and checking all the asteroids that had high quantities of heavy metals.
Five hours into the initial scan, we found the first piece of wreckage; the wing of a destroyed Death Glider. We quickly had it dragged back to Voragine-Five for analysis. Over the next few days, we continued to drag in more and more debris.
Most notable was the fact that most of it wasn't actually Goa'uld. During the first three days of combing through the salvage, we discovered half a dozen ancient fighters. We all knew the design, they had been listed with the information provided by the Curators. Garuda Class Slip Hunters.
So, time started ticking away as we started scanning the system.
- - -
Fourth day of scanning the Voragine system.
I nodded to the Elder as he exited the Stargate. He nodded right back. "Kaela, what have you found?"
I didn't say a word. All I did was hand him a compad. As he looked over it, his eyes seemed to narrow. "Where did you find this?"
"Small planetoid, about 60 kilometers in diameter. There was a system of rather large caves. We almost passed it entirely, but the person doing the scan noticed some unusual readings. The only reason we caught it at all was because we knew what sort of alloys we were looking for."
The Elder continued looking through the information. "What have you done with the site so far?"
I raised an eyebrow but answered none the less. "Nothing yet."
He nodded. "Good. You are to stop bringing in any salvage until we know more. I need to see the site in person."
I gestured for the Elder to follow. A ship was ready and we were off the planet within moments. It took us less than ten minutes to reach the asteroid in question. As it slowly came into view, Elder James spoke to the pilot. "Are we cloaked?"
The pilot nodded. "We are, sir."
The Elder pursed his lips. "Alright take us in, slowly."
Our Tel'tak slowly and carefully entered into an absolutely massive cave, easily three kilometers in diameter. As we slowly inched our way inside, the cause of our sudden increase in caution became clear. Massive pieces of wreckage, each one anywhere between 300 meters and 500 meters in length.
Just from the outside, many of the wrecks looked to be mostly intact, though all of them had clearly suffered catastrophic damage of some sort.
Each of the wrecks appeared to be the same class of ship. A large, heavily armored capital ship; one end of the ship was much wider and seemed to taper into a point at the other end.
For a moment, I had thought that the wide end was the back of the ship, it took me several moments of examining the orientation of the ship's weapon placement and sensor arrays that it became clear that was not the case. Nietzschean Battlecruisers, the backbone of the Nietzschean fleet when they began the civil war.
In total, there were 47 such wrecks hidden within this asteroid. Most of them remained in a single piece, but several of them had clearly been split straight in half.
The Elder seemed to finally regain himself. "You are to stop salvaging other vessels until you have either searched the entire asteroid belt, or found the Pax Magellanic."
I furrowed my brows. "May I ask why? This is the ultimate haul. There is so much here."
The Elder was silent for several more moments as he examined the interior of the asteroid. "These didn't end up here by accident. You said it yourself. You only found this place by happenstance. These wrecks were all moved here for a very particular reason. To keep them hidden from anyone who might come searching for them."
I gulped and nodded. "Understood. We'll move to full radio silence from here on out."
We finished another round of scanning before we finally returned to Voragine-Five. The Elder seemed to stare out into the space surrounding the planet.
We landed, and the Elder returned through the gate. We had a lot of stuff still to do.
- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair
I stared at the half dozen ships. All of them were in pretty good condition, none of them had less than 75% of their hull intact, and all of them had their main cockpit intact.
They had been towed into orbit of Voragine-Five for a few hours. Upon a thorough inspection of the vessels, it was discovered that four of them actually had intact bodies that had remained frozen for nearly 25,000 years.
It was a sombering discovery, but no one knew what to do with them. Nonetheless, 37 Stasis Tubes were found until a decision could be made over what to do with them. According to Lieutenant Moretti, they would be viable for revival using the sarcophagus, but there were still Manassas and Daedalus crew who came before these people, and the list wouldn't be emptying for at least another year.
That wasn't my issue though. I was here to get a good look at these Nietzschean ships.
They were technically classified as fighters, but they were easily large enough to be bomber craft. Each one had six turrets. Four on the front, two on the top and two on the bottom, and two at the back, one on the top and one at the bottom. Each vessel had six gunners, two engineers, and a pair of pilots, for ten crew total.
They were heavily armed craft meant for hunting smaller, lighter fighters, like the slip fighters used by the Systems Commonwealth.
That meant one thing, however. These ships were equipped with slipstream drives. While the slipstream drive itself wouldn't be all that useful considering the fact that slipspace had shattered, there was still a lot we could learn from them
Without much thought, I ran my hands across each of the fighters. With each one I touched, information flooded my mind.
First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: Garuda Class Slip Hunter
Garuda Chassis, Garuda Fusion Engine, Garuda MagnetoplasmaDynamic Drive, Garuda Mini-Slipstream Core, Garuda Gravitic Field Initiator, Garuda Turret System
As my hand came away from the last of the six vessels, I couldn't help but smile. The Slipstream system was a fascinating piece of technology. I had no idea if we'd be able to apply it to our own systems, but simply studying the technology would, without a doubt, provide a lot of useful innovations all on its own.
Just the Gravitic Field Initiator technology would allow us to massively increase the maneuverability of our own vessels.
My smile grew even wider; I wouldn't be getting any sleep for at least a few days.