MoonGate. Chapter One
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon created by Naoko Takeuchi and owned by Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. Stargate is property of MGM
Spoilers: Sailor Moon, roughly to Sailor Moon S, and elements of Sailor Moon SuperS and the Dreams arc from the manga (I'm mixing and matching here).. Stargate mid-to-late 5th Season.
Author note: while I'll mostly be drawing from the original Anime, and elements from the manga, that doesn't mean that I won't draw from other sources in the Sailor Moon franchise (live action series, musicals, videogames, etc.)
Somewhere in outer space
Visions rarely came to her in dreams, but it was not unheard of, and this was one of those times. The image was blurry, as if seen through frosted glass, but it seemed to be a throne room of some kind.
"It's strange that you came here in person... so to speak, giving your kind's penchant for hiding behind their brainwashed soldiers." a cold and harsh female voice, coming from a tall figure dressed in gold, said in a condescending tone, with barely a hint of surprise in her voice. "Now, before I lose my patience, worm, why did you want this meeting?"
"As you probably already know, I'm not usual for my kind…" an inhumanly deep male voice answered, coming from a hunched figure in black, in a patient tone, like the one that one would use with a slow child. "Now, as for why I wanted this meeting... We are both the most powerful of our kind, and a fight between us will at least weaken the winner enough for our enemies to take us down easily, and very probably would destroy us both."
"And...?" said the woman, archly.
"I'm proposing an alliance." Said the male voice
"An interesting proposal..." started to say the female voice, her voice fading in the background
And then she saw an upright ring of stone, with engraved signs, and a glowing, watery surface in its center.
Rei Hino, Sailor Mars, awoke with a gasp. Quickly, she reassured herself, she was in her flat in Tokyo, but she couldn't repress a shiver. She hadn't had a premonition so strong since all the mess with the Messiah of Silence.
The part of her that was exclusively Sailor Mars, the Senshi of flame and passion, had recognized the ring, but the feeling had disappeared too quickly to find out its origin. This premonition puzzled her, as there was no clue of the identities of both enemies, and the lack of images, other than the ring of stone. Tomorrow she would try to get a vision on the fire, and warn the others, as apparently new enemies would show their face in a short time. She opened the window and looked at the lights of the city below, and then to the clouds hiding the few stars that could be seen in the middle of the city.
"A storm is coming." She said, as she felt a gust of wind, full of the scent of the sea.
The house shared by the Outer Senshi
Two women, a tall blonde with short hair, and the other with shoulder-length wavy teal hair were sleeping together in the same bed. Another woman, a tall, dark-skinned woman with long green hair opened the door for a moment before closing it. The noise awakened the blonde, who spent several minutes just looking at her partner, who was moving and mumbling in her sleep, seemingly on her way to awakening. The teal-haired woman finally opened her eyes, saying something under her breath.
"What did you say, Michiru?" said Haruka Tenoh, Sailor Uranus, seeing the worried expression of her girlfriend.
"I said, Haruka, that a storm is coming." Said Michiru Kaioh, Sailor Neptune, looking at her lover and partner directly in her eyes. "And I'm not talking about the weather. Get dressed, we need to talk with the others."
Stargate Command
Daniel rubbed his eyes after waking up, having fallen asleep over the pictures that he had examined, that had been taken by the SG-7 in PGS-345. Obviously, he hadn't planned this, but even with all the all-nighters he had pulled lately to try to get this out the way, he hadn't even finished with the murals. He took his notebook and started to take a few quick notes.
They depicted mural writings in Ancient, although judging by the architectural style of the ruins where it was found, it was probably one of the most modern Ancient settlements in the Galaxy, dated only a few thousand years ago. If that world weren't now under Baal's control, he would be happy to spend some time there.
Back to the pictures, it was a recount of one event that had been obliquely alluded in some other Ancient texts that they had recovered, the fall of an important system to an enemy. But it was told in a very mythologized form, which, together with some archaic turns of phrase, made him wonder if the Ancients in that planet had fallen into a Dark Age somehow...
The story, as told in the inscriptions, talked about how the enemy, which according to the text had been guided by "a spirit of chaos and darkness that had been hidden in the Sun" had been opposed by a group of female warriors, called the Anima Mundi, who had died defending their ruler. This ruler, also a woman, although the term used for her title was an Ancient word he wasn't all that familiar with, Rexis, had used an artifact, Empyreon Argyrokrystalos, to "seal the darkness" and give the fallen defenders... something. Unfortunately the wall was damaged in that part, but seemed to be derived from the same root as the Ancient word for Ascension, although that was not clearly the case.
"Good enough for now." He told himself before getting down to the mess hall for breakfast and a big cup of extra-strong coffee. Once he got this, he noticed Sam, eating breakfast alone.
"Hello, Sam. What's the matter?."
"Oh, I came early to get the results from the Takahashi team on P7X-326." Sam said, before hunting the last errant fragment of blue jello "But other than some preliminary data, they haven't transmitted much. And you?"
"I fell asleep on my desk." Daniel recognized with a chuckle. "Too many all-nighters. Not to mention how far behind I am in the translation of several Ancient texts, we really need some other specialists full time here. In fact..."
He was interrupted by the sudden sound of the alarm, alerting of an unexpected activation of the Stargate. Sam downed her coffee and ran toward the gate room, while he took his coffee pot and sandwich before following her at a more sedate pace.
P7X-326
"Doc, can't you do it more quickly? Those Jaffa are almost here!" Lieutenant Cally Mason, the last unhurt member of SG-19, said to the head of the science team, Doctor Karen Takahashi, who was keying the address in the DHD, while the remaining members of SG-17 and SG-19 tried to hold the fort.
"It's not easy to press the keys while dodging staff blasts, you know!" she shouted as she pressed the last symbol, and the wormhole opened. Just in time, as a Death Glider appeared on the horizon
"Come on people!" Colonel Dixon, commander of SG-17, said as he and Mason used suppression fire to give them time to scramble for the Gate.
Doctor Takahashi, started to run up the stairs, but trying to dodge a blast, she stumbled and almost fell, only for Mason to pick her up and jump into the wormhole, just as the Death Glider gun bolts impacted on the gate.
Somewhere
"My head..." moaned Karen Takahasi, as she tried to get up, only to be kept in the ground by a gentle, but strong hand. She had her eyes open, but she didn't see anything.
"Don't move, Doc." said the voice of Cally Mason, over her. Karen then felt something moving near her face "How many fingers do I have here?"
Karen groaned as Mason's weird humor sense reared its ugly head again.
"How the hell can I know? I can't see anything!' said Karen, as the darkness didn't alleviate as her head cleared and the details of the mission came back to her.
"Okay, okay. And you're right, Karen, it's pitch black down here." said Mason, rummaging in her pockets. "Wherever it is."
"Wherever? I was dialing the SGC!" said Karen, a bit of panic seeping into her voice.
"Have you read how we discovered the Antarctica Gate, you know, the one that the SGC was using for some time." Said Mason, as she kept messing with her pockets.
"Something involving the SG-1 trying to cross the gate under heavy... oh." she said as she realized what Mason was trying to say. 'Damn it! I studied the physics involved when I joined the program. Why didn't I remember it?' she thought, and said aloud, analyzing the situation "The energy bolts from the Jaffa and that Death Glider must have overloaded the wormhole and deviated it to another gate."
"Pretty much. Ah, here it is!" she said as she produced something from her pockets, she twisted it, breaking something inside and shook it, revealing that it was a glow stick. "Better to conserve the flashlight batteries, besides, I have like two dozens of these things, good for like twelve hours or so. How many have you?"
"Uh... Standard load?" ventured Karen, she didn't remember how many she had, honestly.
"That makes another dozen, good." Said Mason. "At least we won't be sitting in the darkness." Using the light, Karen checked her own pockets. She had packed the standard load, indeed. And given how much a pack rat Mason was, they shouldn't have to worry for food for some time, so she looked around.
The dim light of the glow stick revealed a rather spacious room, with the gate at one end and only darkness in the other. The Stargate was different to any that they had seen, being darker and smaller with different looking chevrons. The symbols, though, looked like cruder versions of the ones in the normal Stargate. On one side of the gate a control panel could be seen, pretty intact, for what she could see.
She went to the control panel, but it looked like even if it was intact, it had no energy to operate. At least the signs on the different controls made identifying its origin quite easy.
"Cally, I might be wrong, after all I'm not an archeologist, but I think that this is Ancient." Said Karen with a frown
"The gates were built by the Ancients, so what..." started to say Mason
"I mean all of this." interrupted Karen, waving her hand around, "This installation was built by the Ancients, not the Goa'uld, and this..." she said, pointing to the Stargate "...could be a prototype Stargate."
"Jumping a bit ahead, aren't we?" said Mason
"Well, maybe." She conceded "But I want to see what is here, if there are other rooms and if we can somehow determine where the heck we are."
"Are you crazy?" Mason said, "We could get lost..."
"Not really. There are procedures for exploring labyrinthine structures, if that's the case" Karen said, "And who knows, we may find something that could help us against the Goa'uld in the other rooms. Why don't you come with me?"
"Are you mad?" said Mason looking at her like she effectively was mad "To go wandering around when they could find us at any moment?"
"We have the radios to communicate and..." started to say Karen
"And we don't know if they work through the walls of this place, or if there is some kind of dampening field in this place that could make them useless." interrupted Mason.
"It has an easy solution. We can test, and I can use the glow sticks as bread crumbs to guide me back." Said Karen, reasonably.
"But..." she started to say, but she stopped, as she didn't really have a counter to that.
"But what?" said Karen, recognizing the sign.
Mason sighed and raised her hand in surrender.
"Very well, you can go to explore this, but I'm going with you. After all..." she said, collecting her weapon"...we don't know what could be here. But remember, the moment that we find something remotely weird or dangerous, we come back."
"..."
"What?" said Mason as she got her notebook and scribbled a message to their would-be rescuers.
"...All right." Conceded Karen.
Mason didn't answer, as she was leaving a note under the glow stick, and the glow stick in the control panel, just in case that a rescue party came, and followed the scientist through the corridors. She thanked her stars that the younger woman was quite coordinated, remembering stories about Daniel Jackson's clumsiness back in the first days of the SGC.
Karen took her notebook and started to make a diagram of the part of the room where they were.
"Better safe than sorry, and it could help us to discover hidden rooms or passages later." she explained, "I knew that those Archeology courses would be useful someday, when I was studying Astrophysics."
"Really? I would never have thought that, given how you and Jenner..." Mason asked, referring to the archeologist that had been with them in the last mission.
"He is a narrow-minded idiot set in his ways. He is still using Budge works as a main reference work, for God's sake!" and then added, to Mason's confused expression, "Victorian archeologist, Archeology has moved on since then."
"Okay... Hey, look at this." Mason said, having discovered a plaque on the wall that they were following to find the true dimensions of the room, as well as trying to find an exit.
"Hey, Ancient characters. I think that I got Jackson's guide for translating them on my pack." Karen said, taking a couple quick pictures of the plaque, "But that would be better for later."
"I'm not so sure about that." Mason said, having walked forward a bit, and getting the first glimpse of the door of the room, or rather, its broken and burnt remains. She then added as she started to rummage on her backpack, "I think this justifies using the flashlight a bit. I hope that I'm wrong about what we are going to find."
She turned on the flashlight and started a slow survey of the room, and as she had feared, the more powerful light revealed things that had been hidden before under the dim illumination given by the glow sticks. Faint scorch marks on the walls, the floor and the ceiling, some broken pieces of what could have been once energy weapons, maybe, and other small details, like the broken crystals close to an open panel in the control console, that formed a clear and not too pleasant picture in Mason's mind.
"There was a battle here." Karen said, as Mason turned the flashlight and let their eyes get used back to the glow stick.
"Not a battle, a last stand." Mason corrected, "This place was evacuated through the Stargate, and a few people remained behind to ensure the others weren't followed." She then gestured where the control console was placed, "One of the things we learn is how to get the DHD inoperative by removing a crystal. I assume this control console works in similar principles and there was a broken crystal close to an open panel."
"You are the soldier. But if there was a battle here, why are there no remains? We didn't see anything, even bones. And if the survivors of either side carried the remains away, why didn't they repair that door?." Karen said, "There are a lot of mysteries here."
"Don't know. Perhaps they were after somebody who was evacuated, or died. Who knows?" Mason said, "It happened a long time ago. At least, the air is still fresh, though pretty dry."
"Yeah, now that you mention it…" Karn said, with a thoughtful expression and then started to talk softly, almost to herself, "Freefall or pendulum? Freefall, is simpler, and though the acceleration would be only an approximate number…"
"Karen, what are you talking about?"
"Ah, sorry, I was thinking of how to determine the acceleration of gravity here. Or haven't you noticed that you feel lighter?"
"A bit, but I thought that it was because the last world was bigger than normal."
"It was bigger but less dense, so the surface gravity was roughly the same as on Earth. Here it is 0.9, 0.85 Earth gravity, if I had to hazard a guess." Karen explained, "That's a common error in sci-fi."
"You're the Physicist, not me." Mason said with a shrug. She appreciated the effort that Karen was making to distract her from the dire situation with her antics, really. "Let's continue, then."
Stargate Command Infirmary
Lieutenant Martin McAuliffe was sitting on one of the beds, with one of his arms in a cast, while Doctor Frasier was examining Major Dixon who was unconscious in a nearby bed. The Lieutenant was giving a report of what had happened to O'Neill and Hammond.
"...We ran into an ambush from Anubis' Jaffa, we thought that they were Anubis, at least. Then Major Dixon called for regrouping to the Gate, and keeping a security perimeter around it. And soon we were under heavy fire, we lost some people and as soon as Takahashi managed to get the Gate open, a Death Glider came ready for a strafing run. We ran to the Gate, and well, you know the rest."
"Did you see Lieutenant Mason and Doctor Takahashi?" O'Neill asked.
"Mason was before me, but she stopped to bring Doctor Takahashi who had slipped in the steps of the Gate. They were the last ones crossing, as far as I know."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Hammond said.
"And now, if you have stopped bothering my patients." Doctor Frasier said, pointedly.
"Can we use your office for a moment, Doctor?." Hammon asked, "And tell Major Carter to join us there."
A few moments later, the three of them were in the Doctor's office, discussing the events.
"It's pretty obvious that we have a repeat of the events that led to the discovery of the Antarctica gate." Carter said.
"So, we start looking for another Stargate hidden, who knows where?" O'Neill said, "I vote for Hawaii."
"Not funny, Colonel."· Hammond said, "Any workable idea to look for them?."
"I have studied the ideas for the original case, and if memory serves, General, the worlds in range from P7X-326 to Earth are a lot less than in our case." Jack said, a bit more seriously.
"I'll order SG-3 and SG-5 to start the search immediately." Hammond said, "Major, any idea from your part?."
"Our knowledge of the internal workings of the Stargate is far greater than back then." Carter mused, "I'll see if Monterosso and Summer have any idea about how to find the address they have been rerouted to."
TO BE CONTINUED…