- - -
POV: Eamon Thorne. Unnamed system in Grunur space.
The station hung in geostationary orbit above an unnamed continental world. Its vast collection of solar arrays would have covered an area of nearly 50,000 square kilometers if 60% of them hadn't been shattered by the occasional space dust and debris.
How this station had survived was truly beyond any of us, but there it was. We had spent several hours scanning the station, and we already had a decent look at the interior. The best description of the station would be to call it a farm. A series of enormous internal chambers ran down the center; the internal chambers had openings to other rooms, which looked to be for processing material.
It would have been fascinating had I not known that the purpose of this was to farm sentient beings. Nonetheless, we had a full map of the internal structure, and our entry teams were prepared.
The four Al'kesh all approached their assigned entrance, decloaked, and docked. Within moments, the initial teams had entered the station. Over the next twelve hours, the outer layers of the facility were carefully searched and cleared.
Once the initial sweep was completed, we found an empty but intact warehouse and set up the stargate. Within moments, dozens of marines were pouring through the gate and into the station.
From there, the true searching began. It took eight hours to identify the station's control room, and a further four hours to actually disable the site security. As the engineers ran over internal diagnostics, one of them found what we were looking for; a list of currently active stasis pods.
The results were grim. Total pod failures: 198,902; partial active: 1097; active pods: 1. A small team was quickly sent to examine the last active pod, and floating there in a nutrient solution was the emaciated body of a heavily mutilated Baol. The instruments showed it to still be alive, though it would have died long before if not for the life support systems, which were themselves on their last legs.
Other teams began examining the other pods. Of the total 200,000 pods, 99.5% of them had failed completely. That sounded like a high failure rate until you realized that they had been active continuously for seven million years. Of the half a percent that were still partially active, a little less than half had preserved the corpse of the Baol within sufficiently for us to potentially revive them. That meant about 500 Baol that might be revived, though whether the revival process would even work was still up in the air.
At the same time, we began hooking up what sensors we could in hopes of communicating with the Last Baol. Our previous excavations of the fossilized Baol biocomputers had already given us an understanding of their language; now we just had to let the baol speak to us.
As the translation software activated, we tried speaking to the creature within its container. For the first time, the Baol squirmed, and a pair of glowing yellow-green eyes opened and turned to us.
Over several minutes, text appeared on the flexis that were being used for translation. When I had heard that the Baol were slow, I hadn't quite understood what that meant; they were living plants, they literally moved slower than humans.
"A visitor? Can it be?" The baol shuddered in its vat. "But you are not the ones who put us here, though you come as the alarms sound. Have you come to give us peace, at last?"
I looked up at the creature; I spoke with as much empathy as I could muster. "If that is what you truly wish, but I hope you'll decide against reaching your end just yet."
Several minutes pass before the baol once more speaks. "My body is failing. Even if I wished it, I could not."
I furrowed my brow. "Are you really willing to give up so quickly? To allow all that you have suffered to have been in vain?"
This time, the response was immediate, though it still took several minutes for the entire response to come through. "At first we were angry, then we were simply upset, now we are tired… I am tired. I am all that is left."
I pursed my lips. "We have a device, a sarcophagus; it can heal the most grievous of wounds. If a body is sufficiently well preserved, then we can even revive it."
"I would not be alone… then we would not be alone."
I took the opportunity to continue. "I don't want to get your hopes up; we don't know whether it would even work on your kind, but even if it doesn't, there is another way to bring back your people; are you familiar with Astral Rifts?"
Naturally occurring tears in space-time that lead to other universes. Surprisingly enough, the baol was actually familiar with them. I continued my explanation. "We are aware of the existence of a rift that leads to a universe where the Baol have not yet been defeated. It might not even exist, but you owe it to them, and to yourselves, not to leave the world yet."
The baol was quiet this time for much longer than before, a full half hour. Its response this time was even slower than before. "Very well. Tell me of the sarcophagus."
I let out a sigh of relief and began explaining what I knew of the device. While the baol was skeptical, and even somewhat alarmed when I mentioned the damage to the soul, he was still interested in going through with the revival attempts.
- - -
The next day, once the integrity of the facility had been confirmed, we assessed the feasibility of moving the Baol. It quickly became clear that it wasn't possible. The pods simply could not be moved, not without damaging their contents.
So, the sarcophagus was picked up and shipped to the system. Even without people to revive, thousands of people suffered from illnesses, and if all anyone was doing was going in once, then there was no issue.
The Baol were large aliens; luckily, the sarcophagus fit even large creatures, though why that was the case was beyond me. With care, we opened up the first of the stasis pods and placed the body into the sarcophagus. Once the body was in, the lid closed shut, and we began the wait.
- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair.
With a snicker, I entered the room. It had been several months now since the expedition to New Dallas had recovered the Hegemony Memory Core from the world. They had transmitted the information back, but it was only now that I was finally having time to examine the memory core itself.
First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: Hegemony Memory Core.
Prometheus Data Core
As was standard for the Terran Hegemony, the memory core was entirely over-designed. I still didn't have the other components, obviously, but the storage medium alone was designed to survive at least 10,000 years without data loss, and I was fairly confident that it would easily survive a hundred times that with no issue.
At the same moment, a star fell; the forge reached out to grab it and just barely missed.
Special Achievement: Recover a Complete SLDF Memory Core.
Perk 'Origami Witch' missed due to insufficient points.
(Available Points: 100, Required Points: 200, Points Doubled, New Point Total: 200)
I had gotten used to missing the perks, so I shrugged and moved on. While the memory core was certainly interesting, it wasn't anything particularly groundbreaking, not when compared to Goa'uld technology.
The next object would be much more interesting. During the Star League, Camelot Command was the homeport for the SLDF 12th Fleet. Most people didn't quite realize what that actually meant. During normal operation, one third of the fleet was undergoing maintenance. The rest were in port or in active service.
Camelot Command could dock and perform maintenance on one third of the 12th Fleet at a time. That kind of work required tens of thousands of engineers, which required cooks, and cleaners, and everything in between. Camelot Command was not just a small port; it was a city in space, capable of holding a million-plus individuals comfortably.
Operation EXODUS had stripped almost everything, whether or not it was nailed down. The most notable thing left behind had been the repair facilities for the SDS drones in the system, and it wasn't hard to see why. While the Colonials' issue with the Cylons came from them failing to follow orders, the Exodus Fleet's issue resulted from the SDS system doing the opposite. It followed its orders to a T.
The issue was that Stefan Amaris was the one giving the orders at the end. So, the repair and manufacturing bays were among the few things left behind, though it certainly didn't hurt that they were absolutely massive and having to pack them away would have added hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment to an already overloaded fleet.
As I arrived before the stargate, the first of the objects came through; a Voidseeker Interceptor, followed by even more of them. I wasted no time in grabbing the blueprints.
First Perk Activated. Complete Blueprint Acquired: Mark 39-004 Voidseeker Interceptor.
F-90 Stingray Chassis, GM 300XL Fusion Engine, Shielded Aerospace Smart Robotic Control System (SASRCS), Beagle Active Probe, RCS Systems, Atmospheric Control Surfaces
Twelve of the Voidseeker Interceptors came through the gate, after which a further twelve of the Voidseeker Striker variants came through as well.
First Perk Activated. Complete Blueprint Acquired: Mark 39-007 Voidseeker Striker.
F-90 Stingray Chassis, GM 300XL Fusion Engine, Shielded Aerospace Smart Robotic Control System (SASRCS), RCS Systems, Atmospheric Control Surfaces, Artemis IV Fire Control System
With a satisfied smile on my face, I had all the drones moved over to the part of the mountain that had been assigned for my work. Then I got down to business.
There were a hundred of these drones sitting in the bay of Camelot Command alone, forgetting the three external hangars at other parts of the system. While the drones themselves wouldn't be particularly valuable on their own, if we could refit them with new technology — gravitic pushers and maybe some primitive shields — then they might become a serious threat to the Goa'uld.
I had a week of free time before I needed to be back on the Voidhawk project; that meant a week to potentially replace the drive and reactor. Certainly not bad; the hard part had been designing the reactors from scratch; downsizing was pretty easy, especially with Goa'uld-based designs.
Like that, we got to work. We started by detaching and disassembling the weapon emplacements; we wanted everything off so that nothing would activate in a worst-case scenario. Then we got to everything else. The engineers got to work disassembling the chassis while I started changing the design of the existing gravitic pusher from the XJF.
- - -
The next day, as I was working on the redesign of the reactor, one engineer came over to ask for my opinion on some readings. They had carefully removed the SASRCS system so that they could get a closer look at it; they had even created a test environment and let the AI fly around for a little.
The machine was acting strangely. It had set a course for a nearby planet where it would arrive in a few days' time; that wasn't supposed to happen. The thing had been disabled and was supposed to stop and wait for further orders.
I didn't question it at first, but the further I dove into the coding for the fighter's rather primitive AI, the more confused I became. Further tests showed even more strange actions; the AI would actually spend some time playing around while on its journey.
It was only once we realized the fighter knew it was in a simulation that some things became clear. It also led me to a startling realization. With as great care as I could manage, I placed my hands on the delicate machinery that was the Voidseeker drone's brain, and I closed my eyes.
A few minutes passed as I let the whispers of everyone else in the room slowly fade away, and I focused just on the drone itself. With everything else gone, I finally heard the machine, and it confirmed my suspicions.
I let out a deep sigh and turned to the engineer near me. "Make sure that the fighter is doing alright while I'm gone. Things just got a lot more complicated."
The engineer nodded, but asked anyway, "What happened?"
I stopped for a moment, thinking of how best to explain it when it hit me. "It has a machine spirit…"
- - -
POV: Eamon Thorne.
The first three attempts to revive the Baol failed. While the bodies were returned to a healthy state, the mind was missing. It was only as we were running out of hope that the sarcophagus opened up for the fourth time, and we waited. For several long moments, nothing happened, and as we were prepared to start again, slowly but surely, a figure rose from the sarcophagus.
Several levels down, the last baol, no longer the last, shuddered before speaking. "I am no longer alone."