Post by ErwiiRommie on Mar 15, 2007 21:30:36 GMT -5
Giza Plateau
Cairo, Egypt
1928
The year is 1928 in the desert sands of Giza, Egypt. The sun is beginning to rise over the dune-lined horizon to shine its first rays of light upon the monolithic, great pyramids. Men in loose working desert cloths have already begun the day’s work digging in the sand, searching for something from the ancient past. They were told to dig there because one man, a German archeologist believed there was an ancient temple of Ra buried underneath the sands of time.
Years of research had led him and his team of diggers to this particular location not far from the Giza Plateau. It was a logical to assume that a temple had once stood here since everywhere else in the surrounding area other archeologists before him had discovered relics and buildings dedicated to the worshipping of the Sun God. They were standing pretty much in the center of that area.
That is what he had initially thought he would find there. Instead he had found something entirely different. Something far different from anything else discovered in Egypt. Whatever it was, it certainly was a grand find.
Professor Erik von Klaus stood on some stone remains of an old Egyptian hut they had found a few days earlier, overseeing the process of the digging and sifting of the sand. Late evening of yesterday they had hit something solid underneath a few hours after dusk had arrived and they had been digging around the clock since then. Now as the first rays of the new day began to creep over the sand dunes and pyramids, he could now see what it was they had found in better detail.
The German archeologist stepped down from his perch to get a closer look at the circular stone carving they had unearthed. It had the usual hieroglyphic symbols engraved into the limestone. But there was a set of symbols near the center that matched no known hieroglyph he knew of. The symbols were arranged like usual hieroglyphs are written, straight down and enclosed. There were six in all and none of them were the same, giving him no hint as to what they could mean.
As more of the stone was uncovered, he discovered more of the strange hieroglyphs along the outer and inner rings of the circular stone. He recognized the six earlier ones among the thirty-nine he counted on the stone. They were all different and none repeated themselves except for those six. Von Klaus was certainly at a loss as to what he had found. If only he knew that he had discovered the tip of the iceberg.
As the day wore on and the last of the sand was removed from the stone carving, the workers began to remove it from its earthly grave one section at a time. What they found underneath took the very breath away from them all. Von Klaus now understood what the strange symbols were for. A representation for the item underneath the covering stone, a circular and metallic ring that had absolutely nothing on it to indicate that it was Egyptian.
His first thought upon seeing it was the lost city of Atlantis. He had read theories of archeologists that spent their entire lives searching for that legendary myth, especially the ones that had to do with ancient Egypt. After all it was an Egyptian who had told Socrates who then told Plato about the story of the lost city and if it was indeed true then Von Klaus had just found a piece of it. It made sense. Atlantis was suppose to be this advanced civilization and what he had just found certainly looked advanced.
It was definitely beyond anything civilization had today.
"Rheinstein!" he shouted to his colleague as he quickly turned away towards his tent. "Rheinstein, kommen Sie hier!"
"Ja? Was ist das?" replied his colleague who emerged from the tent.
"Kommen Sie dieses ansehen! Schnell, schnell!" His colleague approached as quickly as he could through the sand and across the occasional wooden walkways. Von Klaus pointed down into the hole the crew had dug and at the circular ring and heard the astonished intake of air from Rheinstein.
"Mein Gott! Was ist das?"
"Ich weiss nicht! Anruf Berlin!"
"Jawohl!" Rheinstein ran, clinging to his hat as he hastily made his way to their car.
Sometime later, long after Erik von Klaus and his crew had completely dug up and erected the ring, the Weimer Republic had sent representatives to see what it was they had found. Shortly afterwards, those same representatives made calls back to Berlin and before the month was over the Reichsarmee had taken the ring, handsomely paid those involved to remain silent and employed Von Klaus and Rheinstein to figure out what it was as they were the leading Egyptologists in Germany.
Scientists and engineers were brought in to figure out what it did. They all knew it was a machine of sorts but no one knew what it was capable of. The Reichsarmee hoped it was a weapon while those in the Weimer Republic hierarchy hoped it was nothing more than a metallic ring for some kind of Egyptian ritual. But they soon discovered it was something more extraordinary and mind-boggling then a weapon or ancient relic...
Seventy-three years later...
Chullak
Apothis Homebase
2001
The screams were the most unsettling sounds to hear from terrified and dying aliens. Each time he heard them, they wrecked at his nerves and nearly, each time, forced his hand to stop the source for the screaming and blood-curdling cries. But the sight of the bent cross overlapping the blood red flag atop a pure-white circle reminded him who he served and the consequences that would come if he interfered in the purification of the galaxy. So after being reminded of whom his masters were, he stopped himself from taking action and silenced any words he would have uttered to stop the disgrace he witnessed before him.
He pushed away any of the thoughts of helping the people, who were being herded like cattle into the mass graves, to the back of his mind. A place where he kept all the memories and thoughts of doubt and disgust for what his people had become, for what he had allowed himself to turn in to.
The screams had subsided for the moment as he watched more of the aliens were being prodded into the massive pit; this group had both women and children in addition of the soldiers. He witnessed once more as the chain mail or loincloth wearing and tattooed branded aliens filled the hole in the earth, and turned away as the stormtroopers fired their weapons into the mass once more. The screams and carnage were too much for him and he began to walk away, hoping that this time it would all be left behind him and knowing that it was a futile prayer.
"Was ist los, Herr Feldmarschall?" asked the Obersturmbannführer. The man was clad in a black and crisp uniform with a death skull decorated hard cap atop his blonde hair. The man wore a Knight's Cross with Silver Clusters around his Aryan-like neck and his blue eyes were cruel and uncaring. The Field Marshal refused to acknowledge and face the SS Colonel, knowing that he would have to make eye contact with the moral-less man if he did so.
"Herr Feldmarschall?" the SS officer repeated in a perplexed and concerned voice.
The Field Marshal kept on walking, leaving the atrocities and the evil men committing them behind him and continued to walk until he could no longer hear the screams or smell the stench of death anymore. His nostrils still carried the smell, and the memories of the foul stench of rotting flesh, the shrieking cries for mercy, and the terrified sobs of the children, forced him off the pathway to empty his stomach of its contents. When he recovered his composure and stepped back onto the path, he knew that was the first time he had ever reacted to the slaughtering of thousands, even if they were his enemy, in many years.
"Where along the road of my life have I changed into this uncaring monster?" he asked himself out loud as he followed the path he knew would take him back to the SternGatter and back home. He knew the exact moment when the war turned into one that he fought with hate. When his wife and son had been executed among scores of dozens of other civilians as an example to the rest so that they understood who held the power and who to fear.
He had been in the United States waging war when he received the unnerving phone call from Berlin. He had known that the Gou’ald had attacked parts of the mainland Europe, what he had feared became reality when those few sentences were spoken to him. He had rushed out of his headquarters without leaving any instructions for his command staff and flown back to Germany as quickly as technologically possible. What he discovered in the ruins of Ulm tore his heart out.
There, sprawled in various positions of death were dozens of headless bodies being moved off to the side neatly and respectfully covered. It was not the bodies that had disturbed him, he had seen many corpses in his life as a soldier, but it was the sight built upon the statues of great generals and leaders past. In the single moment as he stared helplessly and aghast at the gruesome display, recognizing his wife and son among it, he knew he would vow revenge on the entire parasitic race and would not rest until every last one was destroyed.
So when the Realm had declared a war of annihilation against the Gou'ald, he had become one of the war's strongest supporters and participated in as much of the war effort as possible. Even staining his own hands with the blood of the human hosts' the parasites used. Looking back he never had realized how evil and dishonorable he had become, not until this day and the largest mass killing of prisoners of war happening right behind him in the distance.
"Verzeihen Sie mir, meinen Lieben...," he asked his dead wife and son for forgiveness for what he had done during the war.
"Heil Hitler!" came the greeting from the panzergrenadeir that manned and guarded the VHV. The Field Marshal looked up from the ground to see a young man salute in the customary out-stretched and erect arm salute of the party. He lifted his own arm but did not extended it in the same way like the young soldier, but instead bent it at the elbow as if he was just casually waving to a passerby. The soldier was dressed in the standard feldgrau, or field gray, uniform of the army and had an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. A coalscuttle combat helmet adorned his dark haired head and his brown eyes were alert and bright with intelligence.
"Where shall I send you today, my Field Marshal?" the soldier asked him, turning to face the hieroglyphic images of star constellations on the circular device.
"Home, Sergeant," the officer replied in a tired voice. His posture and face did not share the same feeling as his voice did; in fact he looked energetic and ready to fight another battle. But it was all for show, to keep the morale of his men high for if they saw their commander look haggard and tired their own hopes would drop. It wasn’t like that was going to happen anytime soon, not with today’s victory.
The feldwebel nodded and began pressing in seven of the buttons and as he did so each one lit up in a dull yellow-white light, highlighting the shape of the constellation. At the same time the sergeant pressed in each shape, chevrons on the SternGatter began to glow a dull golden-red until seven had lit and the ring device activated. A vortex of energy splashed outward before caving in on itself into a shimmering pool that created the event horizon of the wormhole.
"Dankeshon, Feldwebel." The Field Marshal pulled out a small device that fit into the palm of his hand and pressed in a sequence of buttons only he knew before he began walking toward the blue shimmering pool.
"Have a nice trip, Herr Field Marshal Rommel!" the sergeant called out just before the officer stepped through and disappeared. The SternGatter soon deactivated and the sergeant stood once more at guard and ever watchful of his surroundings.
* Translations can be found in the Q&C thread.