Homeworld Command

Meeting Room 12

"Svoriin was a heavily industrialized world. Their technological level ranged from forty years in advance of our own, to nearly fifty behind," explained Doctor Carter, the male one from the alternate reality miror. "They blindly explored through their stargate, eventually bringing back a deadly infestation of parasites."

The slide show flipped to a dissection of one of the flying bugs. Its scale covered back thinned into a long stinger tail, and four firefly wings expanded to either sides of the body.

"Unfortunately for the inhabitants, genetics and medicine were not of their advanced sciences. They did not understand how this parasite changed the DNA of its victims, even less what sort of chemicals could be used to fight it. Their civilization collapsed rapidly."

"A very dangerous world. Yet, you wish further missions to this planet?" Asked General Hammond.

"Rocketry was one of their most advanced areas of expertise. They were very religious, stemming from their transport from Earth to this planet by Thor. They believed their God lived in the stars, rightfully so in retrospect. As you can believe, this led to extensive efforts to advance space programs. Just some basic observations from the ground show us they had many orbiting space stations. I believe taking a look at their launch sites and any remaining vehicles would be very beneficial," said the Doctor.

Beneficial to what not needing to be said. The stargate program was trying to release as much technology into the wider US as possible. Medical technology was easy, but things like artificial gravity was much more suspect to scrutiny. They couldn't just pretend this advanced technology was invented out of nowhere. Instead, the plan was to slowly release increasingly advanced technology over many years.

Already, President Clinton was trying to find ways to increase spending to NASA to jumpstart this process. Space technology was obviously necessary for the inevitable full scale conflict with the Goa'uld, even if it be in hundreds of years. Though, such things were not easy to push through congress without informing everyone of the stargate program.

However, Svoriin could give them practically free technology that wouldn't be too advanced, yet still years ahead of current technology. A new space fervor could be jumpstart by such technology. The public loved progress, and to see such progress would build excitement. Excitement which could be harnessed for increasing budgets.

"Very well, I'll forward the proposal for risk assessment," said the General. Risk assessment was a key word in the stargate circles. Everything being done to keep the Goa'uld ignorant and the Earth safe. The US was in a fantastic position at the moment, with tons of technology to reverse engineer and no direct threats on the horizon, it was imperative to keep that situation unchanging. "Let's get on with the crux of this meeting."

"Very well; please turn your briefing to the start of the X project, page 21," instructed Doctor Carter to the room. The reality traveler sat at a table along with General Hammond and several other ranking members of Homeworld Command and its affiliate programs. His female twin sat next to him. The table was at the center of a small amphitheater, the seats of which were filled with the lower ranked military personnel and assorted scientists whom had worked on the project.

"For the record, the date is June the twelfth of 1997. The current topic of discussion will be an overview of proposed space vehicles, their tactical uses, and also scientific input on the practicality and time scale of these plans," General Scott spoke into the microphone. "Major Carter will begin."

"Although redundant, I shall remind this body that the technological demonstrator codenamed Snowy Peak has completed blueprints. The decision was made to limit any requirement changes once construction begins so as to expedite the process. Obviously; lessons learned through this vessel in terms of anti-gravity, life support, radiation shielding, reaction-less engines, naquadah power sources, and all other systems could result in the opinions stated today being changed or invalidated completely," started the military astrophysicists. "Nevertheless, we shall start off with the X-301 program."

"The proposal is for a single manned platform that can engage Goa'uld fighters and bombers, using a combination of current and reverse engineered technology. We first recognize Colonel Darnell who submitted a thesis on this topic."

The recognized Colonel was provided a microphone in the audience.

"Goa'uld vehicles have several significant advantages over any current interceptors," began the Colonel. "Firstly, their reactionless engines and durable construction mean nearly any Goa'uld craft would have a top speed, acceleration, maneuverability, and range advantage. Furthermore, in atmosphere they would be able to attack our fighters from above and even rise above our SAM max engagement height."

"The reactionless engines mean no heat from rockets or jets, which hurts heat seeking missiles. Still though, the friction against the atmosphere should provide enough heat for lock on. The Death Gliders are a wing shape design, but not nearly stealthy. Considering these factors, and also that dogfighting would be nearly impossible at the speeds these things move at, missiles are our best approach to taking them down."

"The Death Gliders use scaled up staff weapons. These short ranged and inaccurate weapons further confirm the advantage to missile carrying adversaries. Perhaps the single greatest advantages the Death Glider has is its control system. A user only needs to touch the red ball interface and use thoughts to direct the craft. A complex HUD delivers subspace sensor information from a mothership Ha'tak that eclipses situational awareness of any modern fighters."

"As a conclusion of these facts. A counter would need to close the engine gap, desirably with our own reactionless engine due to the benefits of omnidirectional thrust. We would also need to increase our pilots' situational awareness. But ultimately, train our pilots to avoid close range encounters and attack from range. This will of course necessitate a missile with increased range to attack Death Gliders before they can use speed to close. And of course, this is just for in atmosphere. A space interceptor would require development of systems to handle vacuum and the reactionless engine would again be perfect for this role."

"Thank you," ended Doctor Carter. "We next have General Keith on the tactical role of fighters in future Goa'uld conflict."

"The current tactical role, or rather the lack of, is something we must consider before pushing significant assets into a fighter program. The simple fact is there is not a current or planned weapon we can fit on a fighter which would damage a capital ship, and destroying Death Gliders can be done by other weapons. Nukes have significant yield losses in space, and regular guns and missiles would just scratch the shield of a Ha'tak," began General Keith. He directed the room to several scientific papers he had received which pointed out the space yield of nukes would probably not affect the Goa'uld, and on the proven strength of even personal shields against heavy machine guns.

"Furthermore on the attack, any fighter would need a capital ship to deploy it to battle. This takes up valuable space of the ship. In the event we would need to retreat, recovering the fighters would be a huge problem. And for defending Earth, fighters won't matter if we don't first destroy the Ha'taks. The Death Gliders only carry staff weapons, not a real threat if we work on our tactics and upgrade existing system."

"These are all specific problems to using fighters against the Goa'uld, but there are existential questions to using fighters in space. Remember, naval carriers work so well because aircraft operate in a different medium -air- than ships -sea-, and can extend their attack range significantly. In space everyone is in the same medium. Space fighters and bombers won't have the same maneuverability and speed advantage over ships."

The discussion continued for quite a while, but the cons of a space fighter quickly piled up. The necessary investment didn't seem worth it, as the fighter would be designed to destroy Death Gliders; a task which could be done by missiles from a capital ship, or the planned railguns. The primary problems were the need to recover fighters, which would hinder hit-and-run warfare against the far more numerous Goa'uld. And the questionable ability to damage enemy ships.

Research into fighter systems was still authorized, but the immediate development of a homegrown death glider was no longer demanded in a few short years. In the meantime, thinking of what role such a fighter would fill was needed.

"Next up is the X-303 project," narrated Doctor Carter. "As one of the leading scientist and engineers on this project, I'd like to begin. Overall the project goals as dictated by Homeworld Command were as follows; To design a space going vehicle with the ability to perform Faster Than Light travel, To outfit such vessel with system which will enable the carrying out of war against the Goa'uld."

"The current leading design, taking in to account the rejection of the X-301 project, is a relatively small vessel compared to the Goa'uld Ha'tak. As a reminder to this body, the Ha'tak is perhaps the most inefficient design ever conceived for ship to ship combat. It has huge amounts of space dedicated to transporting Jaffa and any materials needed for such an army, a massive hangar area, overly large hallways and rooms, a massive open pyramid in the center for landing on planet, lavish arrangements for any onboard Goa'uld, and a general inefficient design."

"The Ha'tak is armed with 60 large staff cannons, although larger than their ground based variant, they are not individually enough to destroy other ships and rely on continual bombardment of multiple. Only a handful of the total can point at one enemy at a time, the best firing arc being underneath the Ha'tak. The current plan, developmental designation Boomerang, calls for an oversized and powered plasma weapon -loosely based on Goa'uld cannons- to perform large alpha strikes on the enemy. The development of neutron bomb nuclear weapons will supplement this, weapons which maximize their neutron radiation for use in space warfare."

The X-303 was eventually given the full go ahead. The ship would practically be a flying gun. A massive plasma weapon would be forward facing, performing long ranged sniper fire like the Asgard Hausakljufr-class vessels. A small number of turreted plasma weapons would also be mounted, weaker than the main one but strong enough to destroy Alkesh and add to attacks on a Ha'tak. Railguns and missiles would complete the weapon systems. There would be no wasted space, enough to fit the necessary systems.

The hope was that with efficient use of space; a much smaller ship could be a match for a Goa'uld Ha'tak. Ideally, several of the ships could use their main weapons simultaneously to 'one-shot' a Goa'uld ship.

SGC

Cafeteria

"Dear lord..." muttered Captain Carter. The entire cafeteria was staring up at the TV. CNN was reporting live from Washington D.C. where congress was having emergency joint sessions. Even though the SID had given the SGC a heads up, only few hours for most of the low level clearance personnel, it was still mind boggling. The modern Red Scare.

The Goa'uld memory recall device had been rushed into service by Homeworld Command. The SID (working together with the other US intelligence agencies) had taken the 'perfect lie detector' and hooked up nearly everyone from the SGC, military contractors, Tier 1 special forces, government contractors and civilians, to intelligence agents. Many of these workers were already required to have lie detector test, the government tested nearly 70,000 times a year, so the memory device was just disguised as another regular one of these.

Should anything incriminating come out of the memory device, the suspect would be kept unaware until the FBI could investigate and uncover their own evidence. This way, the memory device could be kept secret, and the FBI's investigations used to arrest and detain. It wouldn't be good to arrest a bunch of spies and say your evidence was top secret.

Needless to say, Congress had started a bonfire as soon as the FBI announced it had arrested many dozens of individuals. The fact that the spies were in every part of the government imaginable only furthered the hysteria.