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Monday, August 19, 2019

(Untold Told) The Good Shepards Part 10


The gate activates and Husks come pouring
into the gate room of the Alliance cruiser.

The guards on station open fire without orders and the commanders are left standing there dumbfounded.  In the observation room overlooking the scene one of the technicians slams the emergency alert followed be a warning of "containment breach" and the whole of the Alliance
cruiser is thrown into a panic.

The sonic weapon, localized to the gate room, begins to try and kill what comes through the gate and those humans without the proper ear protection, but these Husks are sooner slowed than halted.

Commander Sheppard comes to her cell door.

COMMANDER:  Hey!  What's going on?

Crew continue to run passed
without acknowledgement.

The colonel is across the way.

JOHN:  If something's happening
we can't stay in here.

Book is in the cell next to the commander.

BOOK:  It must be the Husks.  
The Alliance doesn't have any
real enemies to match them,
that I'm aware of.

JOHN:  Then we really need
to get out of here.

Steader marches into the command center.

STEADER:  Report.

OFFICER:  The Husks have established an
incoming wormhole and are currently trying
to override our lockdown of the gate room.
We have no idea where they're coming from.

OPERATOR:  I might know, sir.  There's a large
object leaving the corona of the star
and heading directly for us.

STEADER:  Prepare to send a communication.

OFFICER:  Yes, sir.

Steader plugs in a card.

STEADER:  Use this frequency.

OFFICER:  You're patched through.

STEADER:  You will stand down.  All forces
will stand down.  Authorization, Omega 3rd.
Sending coded authentication.  

To the officer.

STEADER:  Disengage sonic defenses.

After a  moment the Husks stop closing
in on the survivors in the gate room.

OFFICER:  They've stopped.

Steader resumes speaking
for the ear piece.

STEADER:  Thank you.  I realize that events are unfolding
prematurely, but that couldn't be helped.
You should not interpret our actions as 
going back on the agreement, but your
Husks were found feral while 
outside of your control and had 
to be destroyed.  And we were 
just in the middle of trying to
learn the reason why that is 
when you arrived.  Now we
can look forward to working
together on this.

OFFICER:  Sir, someone's still trying to
override the gate room lockdown.

STEADER:  We are not compromised.
We are not... damn it!

He yanks out the ear piece and stomps on it.
The officer notes a streak of blood from
Steader's ear.

OFFICER:  Orders, sir?

He feels a dark vein on his neck.

STEADER:  Move us away from Haven.

OFFICER:  Yes, sir.

Steader leaves the command center.

Oculus drones pour out from the Reaper
and zip toward the Alliance cruiser.

Steader ignores the warning of new contacts
coming over the PA system and the command
for alert aircraft to launch.

He is flanked by an escort of two soldiers
by the time he arrives at the brig.

Each of the prisoners pound on the doors
demanding they be freed to ward off the threat.

Book's door opens.

STEADER:  Tell me how to beat these things.

BOOK:  I didn't fight them but once.
You'll want the other two.

Their doors open.

BOOK:  Come on.

The hallway blast door seals before them just as a red hot beam rends one of the towers from the cruiser.  Fighters and missiles launch from the cruiser and are quickly dispatched by the Oculis drones.  The Alliance cruiser continues to be harassed by these drones while the Reaper holds fire on its main weapon.

A Husk puts its finger to a keypad
and emerges from its observation chamber.

The party round the corner to be confronted
with the Husk standing in the hall.

STEADER:  We had a deal!

Commander Sheppard fights for a sonic rifle
from the nearest soldier to her and throws
him aside.  She fires.

The Husk is thrown back against a wall.

COMMANDER:  You never make a deal with Reapers.

The Husk gets up again and Book
punches a code into the key pad
and closes another blast door
in the Husk's face.

BOOK:  This way.

The Husks and soldiers stand together in confused peace in the gate room.  The ship tremors, but the soldiers know nothing more.  Upon their orders to stand down the following Husks meander through the Stargate and collect at the bottom of the ramp.  Crew run passed the large windows of the gate room, but otherwise the soldiers have no orders.

Through an ear piece.

BOOK:  Authentication caprice omega
3459285.  Your commander is
compromised and facilitating
an invasion of the Alliance.
You must respond.

SOLDIER:  Say again?

SERGEANT:  What's the issue?

SOLDIER:  Someone's trying to give me
an attack order.

They look up and Commander Sheppard and Book
have taken the control room.  The soldier sees
Book's hand rise to the headset.

BOOK:  I mean it Marine.  You are standing in a
room of mutated humans.  This is an alien incursion
that will spread if we do not fight it now.  I'm sorry.

SOLDIER:  For what?

BOOK:  They will probably kill you.

The soldier turns his eyes from the control room
and is nose to nose with a Husk staring him down.

SERGEANT:  Hey, hey.  There's no problem here.

SOLDIER:  They look a little soulless, don't you
think so, sir?

SERGEANT:  Steady private.

SOLDIER:  I mean, like they used to have
souls and they're not just machines.
These are demonic.

SERGEANT:  Okay.  We're just going to
back away slowly.

The sergeant reaches across to the private and the Husk turns on him with a violent push that sends him flying through the air.  The private reflexively opens fire and all the other soldiers in the chamber do the same.  The gate room erupts into violence and more Husks start pouring through the wormhole.  Commander Sheppard cuts power to the gate and about a dozen Husks are rended in half and proceed to drag themselves forward with their hands.

Commander Sheppard begins the dialing sequence, which is outpaced by the dial in, but Book cuts the power and throws the switch back on again to resume dialing.  In the moment dipped in darkness the soldiers are overwhelmed unable to switch to night vision, but dog piled they continue firing.

Book activates the sonic weapon, which causes the Husks to withdraw.

Some even begin returning through the Stargate, which cannot sustain them going both ways and the Reaper realizes that it is losing Husks needlessly and breaks the connection.

Commander Sheppard begins dialing again.

The connection is made and a new series of beams slice through the cruiser.

Book deactivates the sonic weapon and unlocks the door for Colonel Shepard to enter the gate room.  All around him the Alliance soldiers are fighting for their lives and he shoots what he can with the commandeered sonic rifle, but continues on his mission toward the gate.

At the base of the ramp to the gate he is tackled
to the ground and looks up to see Steader
standing halfway up the ramp.

STEADER:  No one is getting off this ship.

Colonel Shepard fires his sonic weapon into the agent who is hardly phased and begins to march toward him.  Shepard continues to fire until the agent is mere feet in front of him.  He throws the weapon, which has more the heft of plastic than metal and bounces off the agent's head; an indignant announce.  The colonel draws a knife and stabs through the agent's outstretched hand.

JOHN:  You're no Wraith.

STEADER:  (collective voice) We're superior.

Half-a-dozen Husks run up from behind and Colonel Shepard pivots around to throw the agent into them and leaps through the event horizon.  He lands on the other side and waits to be followed through.  But then the daytime sky goes dark.

He looks up to see the hulk of the
Hive ship bearing down on him.

JOHN:  Daedalus, beam me out.

He disappears from the forest floor and
the Hive ship collides with the Stargate.

Shepard appears on the bridge.

CALDWELL:  He came through a few minutes ago.
Perhaps you'd like to make the formal introductions.

JOHN:  It was you?

Book and the commander board an escape shuttle
and soon are watching from a distance as the
alliance cruiser dissolves beneath the laser beams.

Within the gate room arm of the Reaper
the chevrons begin to light up one by one.
The wormhole is established.  The Husks
fill the dark chamber bathed in the
shimmering blue light.

A grizzly bearded old man steps through
and the wormhole disappears behind him.
He has an explosive drum under his arm.

COMMANDER:  You killed my crew.
                      It's time we finished this.

The Reaper disappears in a fireball.








THE END

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