Stargate Etheria (Stargate SG-1/She-Ra crossover)

[Lightxdarkwing]

Sea-Ra. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mermista is going to be salty that she missed this one. Sorry, I'll stop now, this isn't the plaice for water puns.

 

[Starfox5]

Chapter 242: Containment Part 4

PT-9499, PT-9499-System, Heru'ur's Realm, April 23rd, 2002 (Earth Time)

One moment, Adora was trying to recover Castaspella's equipment without damaging it or the plants that had grown around and over it; the next, the Earth split in front of her, and a column of water rose into the sky.

"Mermista?" she blurted out. They had thought about calling her, but calling someone who could control water to talk with magical, possibly sentient - or sapient - water might have been seen as a hostile act.

"No," Catra's voice replied - with a delay - over the communicator. "But I think I'd have preferred her."

"What?" Adora was still staring, the water didn't stop - it looked like it was flowing in place, if that was possible. And she couldn't see what had happened to the trees that had been there. Or the magic crystals and magitech scanners in the area.

"The water has formed a giant figure of you."

"What?" What did Catra mean? Adora looked up. The canopy hid the upper part of the water column, but a giant water figure of herself?

"It's moving!"

And so was the column in front of her - and as it was moving, the trees shifted out of its way. But she saw an enchanted crystal get swallowed up by the water, disappearing from her view.

That couldn't go on. Adora clenched her teeth and jumped to the highest branch she could spot, then jumped again, breaking through the canopy above her - and almost failed to land safely on a treetop at the sight in front of her.

"It really is a water figure of myself!" she whispered. And a giant one - that was… a lot of water. It towered over the forest here as Gaia towered over the trees near her. "They must be a protector!"

"Yeah, we kinda figured that out," Catra replied. "Think you can contact them without a ritual?"

"I'll try." Adora wasn't sure, not at all, but she had to try. And wasn't the fact that the water was using her form a good sign? If it didn't work, they would have to find an alternative, and she didn't think it would be easy to find or create a working ritual.

"Whatever you try, don't jump into the water!" Catra said.

"Ah…" Adora winced. That had been her first idea.

"Adora!" Catra yelled.

"That seems to be a very dangerous plan," Castaspella added.

Adora raised her sword, steadying herself with one hand on the treetop, focused and sent a wave of healing magic up in front of the figure.

The figure stopped moving - flowing - and slowly bent their toros, then her head, to look at Adora.

It was very weird to see her own face, giant-sized and half-transparent, peering at her. And a giant hand reaching for her.

Adora took a deep breath and stood her ground as fingers thicker than tree trunks slowly moved as they descended on her. Was the water trying to pluck her like a fruit?

No, the giant hand slowly turned, and the fingers steadied, forming a platform.

You didn't have to be a linguist to understand. Adora jumped and landed on the palm of the hand before her friends could urge more caution. They had to make contact with this protector before a misunderstanding happened.

"Adora!"

"I'm fine." Adora didn't think the hand could crush her - certainly not before she could jump clear.

The face above her changed her expression into a wide smile, and the palm started to move upwards.

"Don't let them eat you!"

Adora didn't know if water could actually eat and digest anything, but she wasn't going to take that chance. But, so far, at least, it didn't look like the figure wanted to eat her.

Even though they were slowly moving their hand, and Adora with it, closer and closer to their face.

But the mouth kept smiling and didn't open, and Adora found herself at eye level with the water giant wearing her form.

"Don't bring up copyright."

She snorted at Jack's joke but kept her eyes on the water-eyes facing her.

Seconds passed. The face didn't change its expression. The only thing that was moving was the water - and it flowed inside the figure, without changing their form.

"Do you think they can hear you?"

"Water should transmit sound easily, but we don't know if the water has receptors to hear sound. Or the capability to understand the meaning of the spoken word."

"I don't think water, smart or not, speaks our language."

"Can you mime?"

Adora waved. The figure slowly tilted their head slightly to the side and back. It took about half a minute but felt much longer.

"Mimicry doesn't signify understanding."

"At least, they are seeing Adora."

"Or they felt the vibrations from the air. We can't make assumptions about their senses. We do know they react to magic, though."

Adora didn't think waxing and pointing would be much help. She took a deep breath, then knelt and placed her palm on the, well, palm beneath her - and focused on her power. Her magic. Let it swell up - and then released it straight into the water on which she was kneeling.

The magic glowed for a moment, then the entire figure glowed, blinding Adora for a second.

And then the water swallowed her.

Adora tensed at once, holding her breath as the water engulfed her. Then she forced herself to relax. As She-Ra, she could easily walk, jump and fight in vacuum without any problem. This wasn't going to hurt her. But it might hurt anyone else…

"ADORA!"

"I'm OK!" she replied to Catra. She was tugged upward, she realised - carried inside the figure's arm, towards their body. Should she break free? Cut her way free? She didn't think the water could withstand her; few things could.

But she was here to communicate with the water, she reminded herself. Cutting herself free just because the water might not understand how dangerous they were to someone else wouldn't help with that - quite the contrary.

So she let herself be carried up through the arm, into the chest. And then downwards - more rapidly than before. As if she were in a raging river, or a waterfall - she saw the blurred view of the outside change from the sky to the green of the forest, and then to the dark of the ground.

"ADORA!"

She winced at the anxiety in Catra's voice. "I'm still OK!" she replied, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. "I think they're carrying me to meet their core."

"Really? You think they have a core? I was hoping they were an entity made up of networked single drops of magical water. Though a central core would probably be easier to understand. But then, if every drop could represent the whole, they wouldn't have needed to transport Adora anywhere. Except for privacy, I guess," Entrapta spoke up.

"Or to remove Adora from the field before they go after us." Glimmer, as expected, wasn't as optimistic.

"You're about to reach the aquifer we detected before," Bow cut in.

"Give the word, and I'll get you out!" Glimmer added. "We're tracking your position."

Adora pressed her teeth together. Glimmer could aim her teleports with such data, but… it wasn't the most precise method. And while She-Ra couldn't easily be hurt, that wasn't the same for Glimmer. Sheer water pressure could be lethal. And yet… if Adora refused, Glimmer would try anyway. "Alright. Wait for my signal, though."

"Of course!"

Catra just grumbled something Adora didn't catch. She smiled, though - she could imagine what her love had said. Something about idiots.

Then the water stopped dragging her along, and she found herself floating in place - the glowing aura of She-Ra showed that she was in some sort of cave. An underwater cave. For a moment, she wondered what the cave divers she had seen on TV on Earth once would say about this.

Then the cave suddenly got brighter and brighter, the water itself shining - and in front of her, another water figure was formed, made of currents moving fast enough to cause ripples that outlined…

"Another me?" she blurted out. This one was her size, though.

The figure cocked their head to the side, Adora thought she caught a smile, though it was hard to make out expressions on the water-in-water face, and reached out with their hand towards her.

Without thinking, Adora raised her hand as well and shook theirs. Gently.

And her mind was suddenly filled with pictures.

Feet walking through puddles of water. People working in a shallow stream, digging into the sand below. Sweat drops falling onto dry ground. Waste flowing into a river. Rocks forming a dam.

Then sounds joined the pictures. Lightning striking a lake, followed by thunder. A crackling noise, followed by a body falling into a puddle, screaming and twitching. A Goa'uld whip, Adora realised.

More sounds followed. People singing as rain fell on a parched field. People praying as they bowed to some unknown object or person. People crying as a body was carried away in a stream.

Whispers drowned by the sound of boots marching over a muddy field. Engines howling as clouds were pierced by Death Gliders. And a lake rippling, waves crashing against the shore and breaking, as a huge mountain descended from the sky.

A Ha'tak, Adora saw.

Then feelings were added. Pain. Fear. Short bouts of happiness. Relief. But fear and pain, both physical and emotional. Always near or in the water.

"You felt the people, didn't you?" she whispered.

Her friends asked what had happened, but she was focused on the water.

The figure in front of her nodded.

"You're this world's protector."

Once more, the figure nodded, then pointed at themselves and then at Adora with their free hand.

"And you can't speak," Adora added.

The figure nodded again, then tilted their head left and right.

What did they mean? They could obviously hear sound. And water could make a sound when it moved, couldn't it? But probably not enough to form words. And yet… Oh! Adora smiled at them. "Can you use a tablet?"

The figure tilted their head again, and Adora felt confusion.

She spoke into her communicator. "Can you send a bot with a tablet to their hand?"

"What?"

"I want to see if the water can use a tablet," she explained.

"What's the pressure like?" Entrapta asked. "The tablets are waterproof, but they can't withstand too much pressure."

Adora winced. "I have no idea."

"Alright, let's hope that the regular tablet is sturdy enough!"

As it turned out, once Adora had managed to explain things to the water, a regular tablet couldn't withstand the water pressure in the water's cave.

And as they found out, and before Entrapta had finished designing a 'high-pressure-resistant tablet', the water could move to the surface - and use a tablet.

*****
​

"...so, if we tweak the parameters here, and dedicate more processing capacity to analysing the data already gathered, and add more cross-referencing, that should help translate the water's meanings!"

Looking up from her own console in the temporary lab the Alliance had erected for this near the Magical Forest's border, Samantha Carter took a closer look at Entrapta's suggestions. They did seem to be sound, but… "I am not certain adding more cross-reference cycles is a good thing," she said.

"Why not? The more data, the better!"

"But the data that's referenced is not related to the water here, and so it might add cultural context to the process that's not applicable," Sam explained.

"Oh. Right. Data contamination!" Entrapta nodded. "So, we keep the data restricted to that set we gathered from the water so far. Though that will slow down the process significantly."

"We shouldn't limit the data that's processed to the information directly gathered from the water," Daniel cut in. "As Adora's impressions showed, the water observed and - presumably - learned from the slaves on the planet. So, their experiences and customs might help interpret the water's messages."

As far as you could call the pictures and sounds that the water produced on the tablet 'messages'. Some of it had just been the results of playing around, Sam was certain of that. Like a child with a new toy. A child that outmassed everything on the planet; even though the amount of magical water they had detected was - fortunately - nowhere near the majority, or even a significant part of this world's total water mass, it still defied belief. A creature as massive as a sizeable lake!

And, even more impressive (and frightening), the water truly could control every single drop of its mass. While there had to be limits, they hadn't found them yet. If the water could split up into single drops, or even smaller units - the thought of it controlling single molecules made Sam shudder - and use that to influence the rest of the liquid containing said drop… Humans weren't made of mostly water, contrary to popular belief, but the human body contained enough water to be very vulnerable to anyone being able to control it.

Sam hoped she was wrong about her hypotheses. Mermista, who was on standby but not on the planet yet, for obvious reasons, couldn't manipulate the water inside people or animals. So, whatever magic had formed this protector might be limited in similar ways.

They would have to ask once they had a working translator for the water's messages. As things were, Adora could pass on images, sounds and feelings, in addition to the pictures and sounds the water generated on the tablet, but that was still… Daniel had described it as playing charades with someone from a culture where puns were used for every name, without knowing enough about the language to spot, much less understand, the puns.

It certainly felt similarly frustrating at times, at least to Sam.

"So… let's run the pictures we have saved through the improved translation matrix!" Entrapta said.

"With various biases accounted for," Daniel cautioned. "We don't know enough about the water's stance on worship to interpret those."

Sam had to bite back a sarcastic remark as she started the next trial run. According to Adora, almost all the images she had seen in her mind of people worshipping had featured Goa'uld and had been accompanied by negative feelings. It wouldn't do to have the water associate Adora with the same. Fortunately, the Clones had seen reason and kept their distance. Which, incidentally, also meant Sam didn't need to handle more requests to sanctify the water.

If this world became a sort of pilgrimage destination for the Church of She-Ra, as Daniel was speculating, things could become even more of a problem.

"Oh! The translator's percentages improved!" Entrapta beamed.

Sam nodded, even though the improvement was, while not marginal, not enough to push the results out of the pure speculation range. But progress was progress. Of course, sometimes, you had to backtrack, or start anew, she reminded herself, because you had pursued what turned out to be a dead end. Or, worse, misinterpreted the data you started with, rendering the entire research faulty.

They wouldn't know until they had a workable version of the translation matrix and tested it more thoroughly. Fortunately, the water seemed to enjoy the process and hadn't shown any signs of impatience. At least, as Sam could tell - she was aware that she was projecting human reactions and emotions on an utterly alien entity, thank you very much, Daniel.

"OK! So, let's run the next data sets through it, and compare!"

"Very well. Let's start with the sea images," Daniel said.

Sam nodded in agreement. Ultimately, at this point, they were still just trying to make sense of an alien mind through shared pictures. But they were making progress, and even if it might take them more tries than Sam wanted to think about, they would manage to communicate with the water. One way or the other.

As long as it didn't turn out that Jack's joke about the water trying to sell them insurance against flooding turned out to be true, Sam could live with that. It was even a welcome distraction while she waited for more messages from the agents they had sent after Delta.

Sam would rather be able to focus on an important task than keep herself busy with minor routine things while she was stuck waiting without being able to do anything to help things.

*****
​

PT-9499, PT-9499-System, Heru'ur's Realm, April 24th, 2002 (Earth Time)

Catra scowled openly while Entrapta, Sam and Daniel made a few more tweaks to the translation matrix in the tablet.

"Don't be so grumpy."

She turned her head to glare at Adora. "You don't have the right to talk about being grumpy. Not when you let yourself be swallowed by sapient magical water and taken down to the aquifer!"

"That was my decision! I could have escaped at any time."

"Really? When you were hundreds of metres below the ground?" Catra scoffed.

"Well… I wouldn't have died before you got me out?" Adora smiled weakly.

Catra scoffed again.

"It all went well. We made contact, peaceful contact, with this planet's protector."

"That was sheer luck." Catra crossed her arms over her chest. If Adora had been wrong… "Luck runs out."

Now Adora was narrowing her eyes at her. "You don't get to talk about luck running out."

"Calculated risks are different," Catra shot back.

Adora snorted and looked at their friends working, then at the water figure watching them all. "It worked out. Sometimes, you have to take a risk."

"Doesn't mean it has to be you who takes the risk," Catra grumbled.

"This time, it had to be me. Anyone else would have probably been hurt or died," Adora pointed out.

Catra knew that. It didn't change that she had felt as if she was dying when she had seen Adora vanish into that water giant. If she had lost her… She pressed her lips together and looked away.

She still heard Adora step closer and tensed up. This was…

Strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, and she heard a whisper near her right ear, through her helmet. "I'm sorry…"

Sighing, she nodded, her ear flicking as it touched Adora's shoulder. "I know. I just…" She shrugged, as much, at least, as she could when held by Adora.

"I know. And I am sorry. But there was no other way."

Catra grumbled. "I still don't like them." At best, the water was careless, like a child who didn't know any better - a child with immense power. At worst, the water didn't care at all and was just curious enough to see what they would do when left alone. They wouldn't know until the others got the translation matrix going.

"We're ready for the next try, Adora!"

Catra felt Adora tense and spoke up before her love could say anything. "Go help them! The sooner we can talk to the overgrown puddle, the sooner we can leave this planet."

As Adora walked over to the figure, which was turning to wave at her, Catra sighed. Water. Of course, it had to be magical water. Not something else. She felt her fur stand up at the thought of being swallowed by sapient water and shuddered.

"Alright! Try this time!"

"OK! I am Adora. This is Entrapta. This is… that's hair! Yes, hair. That's also hair."

According to Daniel, they weren't as much trying to translate the water's language but teaching them how to understand people. Because the odds of the water having a language of their own were low.

Whatever the reason, Catra only cared about the results. They just needed to talk to the water, make them understand that the Goa'uld and Delta were enemies, and then they could leave. The water could keep the planet safe, at least from ground-based invasions - Catra didn't think the water would fare well against orbital bombardment. There was no way the water could strike back. Even if they somehow could control water on an atomic scale - and Sam and Entrapta were quite certain they couldn't - they couldn't reach into high orbit.

Even blowing up the landscape by using nuclear fusion somehow - Catra didn't think it would be that easy - wouldn't hurt a fleet in space. It would only help the ships since the water would have to blow up part of themselves.

Catra blinked, then scowled again. She was spending too much time focusing on magical water. Not even Entrapta had speculated about such things.

Then again, even if the water could only control small drops, that would give them a huge range of options, especially if they could hear through such drops. Just the potential for recon and intel gathering would be a massive game-changer. If they could track water molecules, that would be even worse. And if they could control water inside someone's body… She shuddered again. That was even worse than what the Goa'uld did. And that was why they needed to talk to the water. And why they all were wearing sealed suits. And drinking water that was brought in from off-planet in sealed containers.

The quartermasters were screaming about the logistics of all, and the soldiers occupying the planet were complaining about NBC protocols being a hassle, but they couldn't risk rendering the entire force that had taken the planet so vulnerable to a still mostly unknown, alien force.

"...and yes, that's 'A'. Like 'A-dora'. And that's 'B', like 'B-elt'. Exactly! You're doing well! And that's 'C', like…"

Adora was still teaching the water. It would be adorable, and Catra would love to tease her about it, if not for how dangerous the magical water was. She shook her head. This would take some time even if everything went well. Maybe she could check on the latest reports, so Adora had less work to catch up to, and…

"Oh! They're typing!" Entrapta's excited announcement interrupted her thoughts.

She quickly joined the group looking at the screen mirroring the tablet's.

I am the Flow of Life. Hello.

"We did it!" Entrapta cheered.

Catra smiled wryly - she was pretty sure the water hadn't just now learned how to type. If they had, that would make them even more dangerous.

*****
​

Jack O'Neill didn't trust the magical water flow of whatever. Just as he didn't trust the magical desert tree back home. Not really, in the latter case. And not because they were magical - or not just because of that, at least.

Those spirits - or entities, as Daniel liked to call them - were alien. Even more alien than most aliens he knew, actually. The Etherians, the Asgard, even the Tok'ra and the snakes - he could get them. When it was all said and done, their actions tended to make sense. Even all the 'cultural differences' Daniel liked to explore and explain were minor stuff in the end. But the core motivations were pretty… he didn't want to say human, but it fit. Greed, pride, hatred, fear, love - for some of them, at least - he understood that.

But a giant tree? Or magical water that could think? Or a giant worm, or a living stone that ate the dead? They were different. What did a huge mass of water want?

The others claimed it was the protector of the planet, like She-Ra was for Etheria. And it fit the pattern. But Jack couldn't help feeling that there was a difference between She-Ra and the others. She-Ra was a human first. An Ancient, a small part of him he didn't like reminded him, and he clenched his teeth. Ancients were humans. As far as he was concerned, at least.

Whatever! Adora was a human, thought like a human. Saw others as fellow humans. Felt guilt and joy and love.

But what did a magical aquifer think and feel? How did a giant worm see people? Or a living rock? Did they see friends, family, fellow whatevers? Or pets? Curiosities? Food? If they were protectors, were they protecting people or just their territory?

He remembered an old Godzilla movie he had watched once. Well, parts of it - Godzilla was fighting some alien monster. For Earth, supposedly. But as far as he remembered, the friendly monster was still a monster, and who knew when the thing would turn on the humans? Or tried to protect Earth from the humans?

So, Jack wasn't as happy about making contact with the magical water monsters as everyone else seemed to be. Well, everyone else except for Catra - she was frowning openly and glaring at the watery She-Ra the Flow of Whatever was using to type on its waterproof tablet. And her tail was swishing back and forth.

He checked if his seat was still sealed - there was no way he was going to risk accidentally inhaling some magical moisture - and stepped next to her. "It's going a bit too well, hm?" he said on a private channel.

She turned her head to look at him. "They didn't learn to type whole sentences that quickly."

Ah, right. "Sandbagging?"

She shrugged.

There were good reasons not to let others you just met know exactly what you could do. It made you look less scary sometimes. And it let you gather more information. If they thought you didn't understand them, they might let slip things when they chatted in their own language. Or they just underestimated you and didn't take you seriously; Jack had used that trick far too often to count.

He wouldn't make the same mistake.

"As long as the water plays ball…" If it didn't? He shrugged as well.

Catra nodded.

"So! You have memories of the time before magic was gone? Fascinating!" Entrapta was gushing. "You must be using magical or extradimensional fields to store your data! Because without magic, water cannot hold data like that! And since we didn't detect extradimensional structures connected to your water mass, you're either using magic for that that we can't detect yet, using magic to connect to other dimensions that we can't detect, yet, or using a metadimensional technology we cannot detect, yet!"

New letters appeared on the screen.

I am magic.

"Magical," Castaspella corrected it.

Magical.

"Yes!"

"And you're the protector of this world!"

I am the Flow of Life. I protect all life.

"Even the life that wants to hurt other life?"

Good question, Daniel, Jack thought.

All life. I am life.

"There are life forms that do not need or use water, but it's probably correct for most of the life forms we know," Sam said.

"Will you stop life hurting other life?" Adora asked.

The cycle of life flows.

"Great. We got a neutral observer as planetary protector," Catra muttered.

Jack could live with a neutral entity that didn't mess with others. They didn't need magical water to kick snake butt. Or to fight Delta. But… He blinked. "What about bots? Machines that hurt life?"

Machines?

Everyone was glancing at him. Right, think before talking, he reminded himself. "Machines. Metal constructs. They don't live."

Not life?

"They're confused," Adora said. Right, she was still holding hands with the water mirror image.

Entrapta called a bot over to demonstrate machines.

Those 'bots' hurt life?

"Some do. Like Delta. Many help us, though," Entrapta replied.

The water figure flickered for a moment, and Jack tensed.

"They're angry," Adora reported.

At Delta, Jack hoped. And cursed his own comment.

*****
​

Images flowed through Adora's mind - faster than the Flow of Life apparently could type. Or wanted to type. Machines tearing up the ground, diverting rivers. Blaster fire blowing rocks to rubble and draining ponds. Factory complexes releasing waste into lakes. Plants withering on fields near landing pads.

And emotions accompanied the images. Anger. Outrage. Hatred.

She drew a sharp breath through her clenched teeth as she held on to the water hand despite a sudden urge to pull her hand and stop the exchange. She had to explain. Closing her eyes, she imagined Delta's viruses taking over people. Controlling them like puppets. Using them as disposable tools. As suicide attackers. Living bombs.

The anger and outrage turned into rage. The tablet spewed letters, but they didn't make any sense. Flow of Life was too angry, it seemed, to pay attention to the keyboard.

"What is going on? Is this a bug?"

"Did it break the tablet?"

"Adora?"

She ignored her friends' questions and focused on Flow of Life. This was crucial. The water could lose their temper, Adora realised even while she grit her teeth under the strain. Like a human.

That thought helped her bear this rage. "We can help them," she said as she thought about what they had done - examples of people getting 'deprogrammed, literally', as Entrapta called it. "We're working on finding Delta and taking them down."

The rage didn't vanish - but it faded a little, and Adora took a deep breath. "We're looking for them." She tried to think of good ways to show how they were looking, so that Flow of Life would understand. Not the spy bot network. And computer viruses would make them look like Delta. Oh. She imagined a drop of colour - of paint - falling into water, and being carried away. And eyes tracking it, as it travelled through rivers and lakes to the ocean, and then down the seabed, until it found a wreck on the bottom of the ocean, with a bot hidden in it.

Flow of Life reacted to that, and Adora suddenly saw the world they were on - through millions, billions of eyes. No, not eyes. Drops of water.

Oh.

Flow of Life was far larger than she had thought, she realised. Apparently, they could spread through all the water on the planet.

She winced. That revelation was not going to be received well by the others. They would have to change all the protocols - probably retreat most of the troops from the planet's surface, just to be safe. And all the bots, too, before Flow of Life mistook them for Delta - or for a threat.

She bit her lower lip.

"Adora?"

"What's going on?"

"Are you talking to them through your mind?"

"We made the tablet so you don't have to, idiot!"

"I have to," Adora replied. "This is too important." She closed her eyes and imagined water inside a person. Inside someone's body.

Flow of Life felt confused. Then Adora again saw through millions of drops of water. Then through one - facing the mouth of… an animal. And a tongue.

Then she saw the inside of the mouth, followed by darkness as the mouth closed. And shortly after that, nothing any more. Not even darkness.

"So, you can't control water inside bodies? Living bodies?" she asked, out loud for her friends, as she imagined water fading inside a stomach.

Flow of Life made her feel agreement - or something close enough.

That was a relief. If Flow of Life had been able to perceive, much less control water inside a person… Jack would have said something like 'nuke it from orbit to be sure', and he wouldn't have been completely joking. Catra probably too.

The rage faded some more, but it didn't go away - it stayed, simmering. Like a fire on a stove turned down but still burning. And Adora saw water splashing on a bot, seeping through cracks - and then freezing.

And the screen cleared, the strings of nonsense letters vanishing, replaced by a clear sentence.

I will help fight Delta.

Adora forced herself to smile. Flow of Life wanting to help them fight Delta was a good thing, she thought. Probably. It meant they wouldn't fight the Alliance, at least.

And it wouldn't work out, anyway, with Flow of Life on this world, and Delta being somewhere else.

"Thank you," she said.

Then she saw images of water running through a Stargate.

Oh. That might work - but it would definitely create even more problems.

*****
​

In Orbit above PT-9499, Heru'ur's Realm, April 24th, 2002 (Earth Time)

So, the magic water's - Flow of Life's - capabilities were worse than Samantha Carter had hoped for, but not quite as bad as her worst estimate. That didn't mean the offer - as much as the statement could be interpreted as an offer that could be refused - to join the fight against Delta wasn't a huge problem.

"If Flow of Life can send parts of them through an active Stargate and keep control over the water on the other side, and I am tending to assume they could, although if the other world has no magic that might turn out to be wrong, then the question is what happens if Flow of Life spreads through the other world and then the Stargate closes," she said as she pointed at a holoprojection in the middle of the flagroom. "Would that render the magical water in the other world inert? Or would the smaller part be rendered inert? Or would this cause Flow of Life to split up into two distinct entities? Which may or may not reunite if contact is reestablished? We don't know," she answered her own question before Jack could say anything.

He pouted at her for a moment, and she had to suppress a smile at his reaction.

"We have several hypotheses!" Entrapta chimed in. "But we would need a lot more data to test them. First, we don't know if Flow of Life can spread or grow by taking over water. Since they lose control over water that's ingested in a body, they either have the capability to restore control over the water after it leaves said body - which could be complicated if it does so in a different form - or it can take over all kinds of water through touch. Or it will inevitably permanently lose mass for every drop of water that's ingested by a person or animal. And that's just the first question! We also don't know if and how magic plays a part - does Flow of Life need a world with magic to exist? Was it in hibernation, of sorts, while magic was missing for a thousand years? Or did She-Ra's power recreate it rather than activate it, using a magical template that was part of this world from before the loss of magic and which endured somehow? They-Who-Protect and the Saviour of the Dead seem to indicate Protectors go into a sort of hibernation without magic, but we cannot assume that what is the case for one Protector will be the same for another; magic and worlds are very diverse. But! If, say, a world somehow could keep a memory of Flow of Life and then imprint that on water once magic returned, it wouldn't be reaching to assume that Flow of Life can do the same to all water they can reach - and we don't know if they need physical contact or if there's a magical field that defines their reach. Either would impact their ability to spread through another world's water cycle. But! All this is just hypothetical; we need testing and more data to know for certain."

"I don't think testing a magical water creature that might outmass everything we have in the system is a good idea," Jack commented.

"And I think Adora would agree," Glimmer said.

"If she were here and not talking to Flow of Life on the planer," Bow added, which earned him an eyeroll from Glimmer.

Sam agreed with Glimmer but saw no need to say anything.

"And I think I should go down on the planet and talk to this water," Mermista spoke up.

"And join forces for a watery crusade against Delta?" Sea Hawk flashed a smile and took a deep breath, but an elbow from Mermista shut down what probably would have been a loud declaration of either love, adventure or both, in Sam's experience.

"Ugh. No. But I would like to know if I can control them before I might have to fight them."

Glimmer shook her head. "That would be seen as a hostile action. By anyone."

Mermista grumbled but didn't argue the point.

Sam agreed with Glimmer about this as well; the Etherians, especially those who had been mind-controlled, had not forgotten Horde Prime's attack. She had no doubt that they would react quite hostilely, possibly violently, to such a test if they were the test subjects.

"Indeed," Daniel chimed in. "We should refrain from any actions that might be interpreted as hostile until we have a better understanding with Flow of Life."

"That's a kinda catch-22 situation, Daniel," Jack replied. "We can't understand the water without knowing more, and we can't know more without tests."

"Then we need to be subtle with our data gathering," Sam said. "I don't think Flow of Life would react hostilely if we want to test travel first to a safe destination. Such as a Stargate within a ship." Preferably an expendable one, like a Constitution II-class. That way, those design failures might see some use.

"Good idea, Sam!" Jack grinned. "Let's see what we can find out before we have to decide whether or not we want to use water against Delta."

Sam was about to nod when her computer interrupted her with a priority message - as did Entrapta's visor and Bow's tablet. A planning meeting like this wouldn't be interrupted for something unimportant, so she tensed as she opened the message.

And then drew a sharp breath at the same time Entrapta and Bow gasped.

"Sam?"

"Entrapta?"

"What is it, Bow?"

"The agents we sent have located Delta's core," Sam replied.

"That wasn't my fault!" Jack blurted out.

*****
​

 

[Starfox5]

Sea-Ra. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mermista is going to be salty that she missed this one. Sorry, I'll stop now, this isn't the plaice for water puns.

Click to shrink...

Alas, Mermista's presence, as shown with today's chapter, might be seen as a hostile move

 

[Starfox5]

Chapter 243: Containment Part 5

PT-9499, PT-9499-System, Heru'ur's Realm, April 24th, 2002 (Earth Time)

Catra grit her teeth as she went over the report on her tablet. They had found Delta's core! Or so it seemed - Catra wouldn't put it past the bot to lay a trap for the Alliance. It's what she would do if she noticed the agents Entrapta, Sam and Bow had sneaked into Delta's commnet. But assuming they had found Delta's core, they needed to move quickly - the coordinates they had received were located in a system without a Stargate. And in a rather inconvenient location, at the edge of Horde Prime's former territory, far from the borders with the Goa'uld Empire or the Asgard. That meant only one task force was close enough to reach it in less than a week, and that was a fleet group still working up with pretty green crews. The closest veteran task force would take about three weeks.

And they had no idea of what awaited them. Well, no real idea; all the estimates of Delta's fleet strength Catra had seen were pure guesses without any hard data, and the agents apparently hadn't been able to help with that, either, having been purely focused on tracking Delta's core and staying hidden during that.

And while Catra would take any Alliance task force against any Goa'uld fleet, Delta was a different enemy. If they had a whole Clone fleet under their control, then a task force would be outnumbered and would have to rely on better technology and tactics - and the latter was more than a bit chancy against Delta themselves, even if they could use all the Alliance sensor and command and control network at full capacity. Which they couldn't; Delta would take over half the fleet in no time.

And if Delta had even more frigates than that - which might be the case since Delta had been focused on Horde Prime's forces - then things would be even more dangerous…

Catra sighed. They would have to focus on Delta's core. Even if that meant using an entire task force as a distraction to get a strike in. That meant a commando action. But a very dangerous one - since the planet had no Stargate, its magic had never been redirected to the Heart of Etheria, so Adora couldn't restore it as a trump card and use all that stored power to wipe out Delta.

On the other hand, since the world had magic already, if they could bring a Stargate to the planet and have Flow of Life enter the fray through it, they might have a surprise for Delta that could be almost as decisive as Adora using an entire world's magic.

Only if Flow of Life could actually control water through a portal and spread quickly enough, though. And if the magical water entity wouldn't use that to take over another world, of course.

And they could barely communicate with them; they didn't know them well enough to judge whether or not they could be trusted. Which meant they would have to hope for the best since Adora certainly wasn't going to turn down the offer to help.

"So?" Adora smiled at her, apparently having finished reading the report herself.

"Unless Delta's trusting secrecy for security and has no defence fleet ready, we'll have to do this with a commando raid," Catra said.

Adora nodded. "We'll send in spy bots, of course - I've already dispatched the closest ones - but yes, I doubt that we'll have the force available to defeat Delta's fleet without taking unacceptable casualties. And neither the Goa'uld nor the Asgard have forces available to reinforce our task force."

"As far as we know," Catra said.

"Do you really think they moved forces so far away from their own realms?" Adora raised her eyebrows.

Catra sighed. She wouldn't put it past some of the System Lords they had fought, but those were all dead or captured; the remaining System Lords struck her as being more cautious - and too paranoid about some rival stabbing them in the back to risk a significant part of their fleet for such an attack.

Adora nodded. "So, it'll have to be us."

"As usual," Catra grumbled. Not that a combined fleet would have been that much better; she didn't trust the Goa'uld not to betray them as soon as Delta seemed defeated, and if that happened right after a fight with Delta's ships, or even during such a battle… "And you'll accept Flow of Life's offer."

Adora had the grace to blush a little. "I think we can't really refuse them."

Catra sighed again. She agreed with Adora, of course - she had run the numbers herself - but she didn't like it. Not at all. Still, the alternative was worse.

She hadn't had any good experiences with the First Ones' bots so far. Not at all. Dealing with Beta had gotten her stranded and almost killed in a metadimension. And Delta had already managed to take over Adora and send her against her friends.

Catra clenched her teeth. She would make sure this wouldn't happen again. She couldn't let Adora hurt or even kill their friends; it would destroy her.

Catra would risk working with Flow of Life rather than seeing Adora hurt again.

*****
​

Deep Space, Near Former Horde Realm, April 29th, 2002 (Earth Time)

"You know, all those years we spent building up a big space fleet with big honking spaceguns, and now it all comes down to us sneaking down on a planet to kick the enemy leader in the butt. Again," Jack O'Neill commented as he stepped into the flagroom.

Unfortunately, no one present laughed. Adora looked slightly puzzled, Catra rolled her eyes, Glimmer looked annoyed, and if Bow were focused any more on his tablet, he probably would break the screen with his nose. And Sam… was looking slightly annoyed as well.

"Most of the Alliance fleet buildup was borne by the Horde fleet trains, sir. Earth yards are still gearing up to handle spaceships."

Right, definitely annoyed. Shouldn't have reminded her of the US Navy ship design mess, Jack thought.

"This is a combined fleet and commando mission," Adora said. "We need both elements to succeed. We need to stop Delta from evacuating the planet before we can secure their core, and the fleet is needed for that."

"Yeah, sure," Jack agreed. Teach him how to lighten the mood, huh?

"Secure or destroy," Glimmer added. And judging by her scowl, it was pretty clear that she wouldn't mind the second option - not at all.

Yeah, Delta's mind-control tactics had struck a chord with the Etherians. And, given that the planet had never lost its magic, many princesses would be on the mission, that was both encouraging and a bit worrying, in Jack's opinion. People with a grudge were usually very motivated, but also a bit reckless.

But the entire mission was pretty reckless from the start. "So, what's the latest from the agents?" he asked.

"No change in location, sir. And no sign that they were detected - the dominant data traffic patterns haven't changed," Sam reported.

Of course, just because there were no signs that Delta had noticed the viruses that Sam and the others had sneaked into its network didn't mean that was the case. The damn thing was sneaky and had had a thousand years to optimise its tactics. Still, Jack wouldn't write off the mission - he didn't want to toot his own horn, but he could be pretty sneaky himself, and his friends were no slouches in that area, either.

"And the spy bots are about to close in, so we'll get up-to-date intel about their fleet dispositions," Adora added.

And risk the spy bots being detected by Delta, but no plan was safe in this situation. At least, the spy bots being exposed would mean they wouldn't fly the stealth shuttles into a trap.

Unless, of course, Delta expected that and let the spy bots be to trap the actual assault…

Jack clenched his teeth; he couldn't afford to worry too much about this mission or he'd sabotage himself. "Then let's hope that the magic water works as intended."

"Our tests have proven that, as long as the connection stays open, Flow of Life can control their mass and take control of other water through a wormhole," Sam said.

And that the magic water lost control as soon as the connection was cut - according to Castaspella because the water was tied to the world of their origin. Jack wasn't a sorceress, but he had his doubts. Flow of Life could be faking that, after all, so they could take over another world or two.

Well, the world they had used for the test was uninhabited, and would be quarantined - they had removed the Stargate afterwards - so if the magic water was faking it, it would only get a deserted world in the ass end of nowhere.

And Delta's world didn't have a Stargate to begin with, so the water couldn't protest that they weren't leaving the Stargate there after the battle was over. They needed that gate for the task force, after all.

Provided they won, of course. If they lost… Well, Jack doubted that he would have to worry about anything in that case. Delta didn't strike him as the kind of enemy who would want to gloat so much, they'd make a fatal mistake. Like some Goa'uld he could name.

"Alright. So, once the gate opens, we're on a time limit. Forty-three minutes, win or lose," he said.

"Plenty of time to win," Catra said.

"Especially since we'll have magic on our side," Glimmer added. "I can teleport anywhere I need."

That was a significant advantage. They would have Perfuma and Scorpia with them as well, and Mermista, though she'd have to work with the magic water. The same went for Frosta - Jack hadn't been able to prevent the damn teenager from joining this. Netossa and Spinnerella were not in the same weight class, but they were more experienced, at least.

Jack would prefer a more balanced group, but magic was their trump card when facing Delta. His own soldiers could fight without advanced technology, he had made sure of that, but even with all their technology, they weren't as effective as princesses.

Well, Jack had his own ace up his sleeve. C4 wasn't high-tech but still effective. And his good old carbine would work anywhere.

"Alright," Catra said. "Let's see what the spy bots find so we can plan our approach and landing zones."

Jack nodded. Time to stop worrying and focus on the task at hand.

*****
​

"It looks like a normal system. One gas giant, two planets outside the habitable zone for this kind of star, one planet in the habitable zone, a few asteroids."

Adora focused on the enemy ships while Entrapta started listing other celestial bodies. It wasn't quite a Horde fleet, but Delta had enough Horde frigates in the system to outnumber their task force. And what looked like an intact fleet train.

"The asteroids are being mined. It's an extensive operation."

"Delta's building up," Catra commented.

Adora made a note to attack those yardships in the coming battle. It should force Delta to shift frigates to protect them, making the distraction easier - and lowering the number of ships Delta could use against the main task force. That would even the odds a little bit. And speaking of the odds… "Do we have any scans of the frigates' technology?" The Horde frigates Delta had sent against them at the truce meeting had been the same kind of frigates that Horde Prime had used, but they couldn't count on Delta's new production to be on the same level.

"They have slightly improved systems, as far as we can tell from long-range scans," Sam replied. "Weapons, propulsion, communication, sensors."

"Can they see through our stealth systems?" Jack asked.

"That's hard to tell with our current data, sir. We cannot exclude the possibility that Delta has upgraded the software as well as the hardware, which would improve the sensor's efficiency above what we would expect." Sam shook her head.

"So, no sneak-docking to their hull, huh?"

"I would advise against it, sir."

So would Adora. "We're not going to board them under stealth," she said. "But we need to reach the planet without being detected."

"Even with improved sensors, we should be able to evade detection if we keep our distance," Sam said. "There's only so much software upgrades can do with limited hardware, and the Horde already used advanced analysis programs for their sensors. Delta might have managed a breakthrough that renders our current software obsolete, although we haven't seen any sign of that in our current encounters."

"I'd think Delta would focus on researching better computer viruses," Jack commented.

"Well…" Entrapta chewed on her lower lip for a moment. "Delta was made to adapt to the enemy any way they could. If they limited themselves to certain fields, that would make it harder to discover a weakness they can exploit, or a new technology they can use to counter present protections. On the other hand, they have limited resources, like everyone else, including us, so if they spread their efforts too far, they would fall behind in every area. And we know they didn't fall behind in the computer area - they advanced far beyond the First Ones. And analysis software is a core part of computers."

Jack chuckled, probably at the unintended pun.

Adora focused on the issue. The First Ones had built very advanced computers. Alpha and Beta were still amongst the foremost researchers in their fields. But Delta had to keep up with ever-changing security protocols; had they been able to spare the effort for less crucial research for their task? They could've gotten a lucky break, of course…

"Get the spy bots closer; we need more information," Adora ordered.

"Sending them into the system," Sam replied.

While the bots slowly closed in on the main planet - which was putting out almost as many FTL signals as Earth, Adora noted - she looked at the ship composition and formation of the enemy fleet.

"Standard Horde doctrine, or so it seemed," Catra said before Adora could.

"Delta might not have changed it," Glimmer said. "That might indicate they haven't made any progress in space-based tactics."

"Or they have the Clones work according to standard procedure while they're still ready to take over and micromanage them if needed. Horde Prime's doctrine wasn't exactly bad," Catra said.

Adora nodded. Horde Prime had been a terrible, cruel despot and destroyed defenceless worlds on a whim, but he had won his war with the First Ones legitimately. And she was sure that he would have adapted his tactics if he had to fight the current Alliance.

Still…

"Delta was made to subvert the enemy and use their own resources against them. Alpha and Beta were made to break new ground and develop new technology," Bow spoke up. "For all their intelligence, they have stuck to their fields and original goals. Delta was made to adapt, but their core mission remained the same. That's why we're fighting them."

That was a good point. Delta might be limited in similar ways despite its adaptive focus. Might.

"Let's hope you're right," Catra muttered. "Because if they also innovated tactics, that planet's going to be a kill zone."

Adora was forced to agree as she looked at the most recent data - the first bot had flown close enough to get the main planet into range for a closer sensor scan.

"That's a lot of defences!" Jack said.

Adora pressed her lips together. The planet might not be covered in fortresses, as in some of the Earth movies and shows she had seen, but this was the most extensive ground-based planetary defence complex she had seen so far. Still… "It's focused on one area," she said. "The other areas have weaknesses."

"Small weaknesses," Catra commented. "A landing operation would be massacred unless the entire defence grid were disabled."

"Enough to get a shuttle or two through," Jack said.

But not much more. And even so, they couldn't just fly down in a stealth shuttle.

And only if the sensors were not too much improved on the software side.

"At least we've confirmed Delta's location," Bow said. "The sensor traffic matches the agents' reports." He smiled. "We've really found them!"

But they hadn't defeated Delta yet.

*****
​

Delta's System, Near Former Horde Realm, April 29th, 2002 (Earth Time)

Samantha Carter kept her attention on the sensor feeds in the stealth shuttle's operations bay - a long overdue improvement for such missions; stealth shuttles needed a dedicated sensors, electronic warfare and stealth station far more than additional cargo space.

So far, none of the patrols - mostly Horde fighters with standard sensors according to her scans - had detected them on their way into the system. Of course, she couldn't be a hundred per cent certain of that; if anyone were capable of ensuring that their units didn't react at all to an enemy they detected, it would be bots like the pilots of those fighters. Or pilots directly mind-controlled by Delta, but those would show more comm traffic than the Horde fighters.

Still, Sam didn't think a better analysis algorithm would improve outdated sensors so much that they could detect the latest stealth generator at the edge of their range. Delta was one of the most adaptive enemies in the realm of electronic warfare that Sam had ever encountered, but there were physical limits even if you were using advanced technology and magitech - and while Delta had started with the First Ones' magitech sensors, Sam didn't think the bot could have improved those without a sorceress, or not much.

If she were wrong, they would find out soon enough - their shuttle, and the two others they were leading, were approaching what would have been dubbed a 'planetary exclusion zone' in other circumstances; the area around Delta's World - a name Sam disliked out of principle but had stuck somehow - that was covered by capital ships.

She checked that her own analysis tools were working - this data would be crucial for the task force's diversionary attack - and took a closer look at the bigger picture. The defence fleet was split into several formations, the largest covering the planet's orbit, a smaller force stationed at the Lagrange point towards the system's sun, covering the factory and yardships there, two similar forces roaming the area between them, with individual squadrons escorting transport ships, and a slightly larger force serving as a reserve a bit off to the side.

An impressive force, though not even nearly equal to a Horde Fleet. The Alliance task force was outnumbered two to one, though - and at this range, Sam's sensors were showing various - and varying - improvements made to the ships, both frigates and fighters. Not enough to reach parity with the Alliance's latest, or even second-latest versions, but combined with their numerical advantage?

If the task force stayed in a protracted battle and Delta fought half-way sensibly, the Alliance would almost certainly lose, in Sam's opinion.

"That's worse than I hoped," Jack commented next to her, staring at the holoprokĵection. "We already knew that we can't fight it out in space, but it would have been nice if it were still a Hail Mary option."

"At least they haven't caught up to us in technology yet, sir," Sam replied.

"We just need to do our part on the planet, and we'll be fine," Mermista added with a sniff.

"It'll be an ADVENTURE!"

"Pipe down! We're sneaking!"

"But my love! We're in space, sound doesn't travel in vacuum!"

"Ugh. It travels through the air into my ears! And they're hurting!"

Sam clenched her teeth. She knew they would likely need Mermista's power, to support Flow of Life, and, of course, to potentially counter the protector, should the need arise, but she wished they'd show a bit better discipline.

"Pipe down, you two!" Frosta chimed in, and Sam didn't have to look at Jack to know he was tensing up. He didn't like including the teenaged princess on such a mission, but, like Mermista, she was too powerful and too useful to justify keeping her out when she insisted on coming along.

Sam focused on the sensors. They were now skirting the exclusion zone's inner area. Any closer would increase the risk of detection significantly. The frigates' sensors were more powerful than the Horde fighters', and since Delta could be controlling all of them, and their crews, at once, that would increase their effectiveness since the bot could compare all readings simultaneously for minimal differences. If Delta's sensors were not as effective as their worst-case scenario assumed, they could still progress further, but even so, it would be dangerous. And they didn't know how good Delta's sensors were. So… "We've reached the staging area, sir," she reported.

He nodded. "Signal we're ready."

Communicating with other stealth shuttles was tricky - any active transmission threatened to reveal them - but since they knew where the other shuttles were, the weakest optical signals could be used without risking detection.

Sam triggered the sequences and received confirmation.

A moment later, a stronger transmission would go out from Adora's shuttle to the closest spy bot.

Which would rely it to the waiting task force.

Now they just had to wait.

*****
​

Catra knew the operation's timetables by heart. She still checked her HUD for the projected course of the task force. Everything was on schedule, or should be - in stealth mode, the shuttle's sensors couldn't really track hyperspace, and they relied on signals fed back from the spy bots instead, which introduced a delay.

"Here comes the distraction," she muttered under her breath as the vanguard approached in hyperspace.

Adora winced, and Catra felt bad for a moment for her snippy remark - even if it was true; the whole battle that was about to start was a distraction for the actual assault. But a necessary distraction - as they had learned in cadet training, sometimes you had to sacrifice soldiers to achieve your objective. Or 'send into harm's way', as Jack called it. How you called it didn't matter, though; while it wasn't quite the same as sending troops to their assured death, everyone knew that there would be casualties when the odds were that steep.

She wanted to assure Adora that it wasn't her fault, but that wouldn't be honest, either - Adora was the Supreme Commander; she had agreed to the plan, so it was her responsibility. That the plan was the best they had managed to come up with, for those circumstances, didn't change that. People would die, Alliance crew and mind-controlled, enslaved Clones and humans forced to fight for Delta. Still, they had no choice; Delta needed to be stopped.

So Catra let her tail run over Adora's calf and sat in silence as the markers representing the Alliance task force approached their destination. In a few seconds, she'd know whether the projected course matched the real course.

The task force's vanguard dropped out of hyperspace at the exact time it should, and Catra clenched her teeth and drew a short breath as the frigates pounced on the yardships, the first squadron already opening fire on the escorts as the six ships tried to slip past the enemy before they could react. If they managed…

But the spike in comm traffic told Catra it wouldn't work before the display updated with the real-time data; the entire defence fleet was already pivoting and changing formation, squadrons fanning out to envelope the vanguard as the escorts barred their way.

No, not just to envelope the vanguard - to guard against a follow-up; Delta would have realised at once that the Alliance wouldn't send just such a small force.

But they had counted on that, and as the enemy fleet manoeuvred to engage the expected second wave, the actual main body of the task force appeared behind them, between the enemy reserves and the frigates guarding the orbitals.

Knife-fighting ranges, for a space battle.

Once more, the enemy reacted quickly and in perfect coordination, squadrons whirling as the formations reformed and adjusted, the orbital defences shifting to meet a possible attack on the planet itself while the main body started to form a wedge formation to smash into the task force.

And then the entire projection flickered, and the markers changed from real-time to projected positions when the Alliance forces activated their jamming devices and disrupted sensors and communications in the entire area around the planet.

Including their own. It was a gamble, one of the most dangerous ones in the plan, but if all channels were jammed, Delta had no working Alliance channels to hijack or working sensors to take over.

It meant the entire battle would descend into chaos as command and control collapsed and ships were reduced to picking their targets to fight without any coordination or information, with most of their sensors rendered blind. It didn't play to the Alliance's strengths, but it would, in theory, hurt Delta's forces even more.

But the real reason for this was that it would grant the stealth shuttles the window of opportunity they needed to reach the planetary surface.

"We're going in!" Bow called from the shuttle's cockpit without waiting for Adora's command - the other shuttles wouldn't hear her, anyway.

Catra tensed even more as the shuttle shot forward, through the enemy perimeter, and plunged into the upper part of the atmosphere. Beam cannon fire was already hitting the planet, its flashes hiding the plasma trail from the stealth shuttles' descent. If Delta had figured out their plan, if its sensor analysis caught them… Catra had seen the anti-air defence grid from their scans.

But the shuttle didn't explode from concentrated fire, nor did they catch a stray beam cannon shot from the chaotic fighting in orbit, and they reached the lower atmosphere, where they slowed down to stop lighting the air on fire, without incident.

In space, the fighting continued. There would likely be friendly fire - hopefully mostly on Delta's side since the Alliance crews would be aware of the risks and not be mind-controlled and under orders to shoot anyway - but as long as the jamming lasted, Delta would be unable to assume direct control or even give out orders. That favoured the Alliance.

Until Delta adapted - they would, and quicker than any other enemy - and rendered the jamming less or even ineffective, at which point the tables would turn and see the Alliance on the back foot.

Which meant Catra and her friends had to hurry and take out Delta as soon as possible.

Despite being unable to contact each other, either.

Yeah, it might be the best plan in their circumstances, but it wasn't a good plan, in Cara's opinion.

And as they flew towards their destination, as close to Delta's core as possible without revealing themselves at once, Catra could only hope that all teams would achieve their objectives.

*****
​

Delta's World, Near Former Horde Realm, April 29th, 2002 (Earth Time)

"We're approaching the landing zone! Get ready to disembark!" Jack O'Neill announced as Sha're took their shuttle even closer to the ground after a lightning-quick descent through the atmosphere. For someone who had grown up with Bronze Age technology, she had taken to piloting really well. Of course, she had spent a long time as a host of a snake queen…

He still felt a sudden urge to take over piloting as she flew nape-of-the-earth. But he felt that every time he was a passenger, and it never lasted long.

He checked the sensors. They didn't show any enemies nearby, though that didn't mean anything. Even if they weren't using their stealth generators and had active instead of passive sensors, they wouldn't be able to detect anything - not with every Alliance ship pushing as much power into jamming as possible. But old habits died slowly, or not at all.

The landing zone was at the shores of a large lake, not quite an inland sea. Right at the delta caused by the largest tributary - a bit too open for Jack's taste, even if they picked a small cove, but between the need to be near a large mass of water, not too close to but not too far either from the fortress that protected Delta's core, they hadn't exactly been spoiled for choices.

On the other hand, the odds that Delta expected that location to be picked for a conventional assault or landing zone were very slim, so that should even things out a bit.

Sha're flew over the rocky shores, not the lake - their stealth generator wouldn't do them any good if they left a wake behind on the water - and then rose just high enough to clear the trees surrounding the cove before setting down on a sandy part of the delta.

"Well done!" Jack said. He unbuckled before they touched the ground and was halfway to the rear ramp when Teal'c opened it.

"Clear," Teal'c reported a moment later, staff weapon at the ready.

"No enemy in sight. As far as we can see, at least!" Sea Hawk joined him as Jack stepped out as well.

He didn't see any enemy either and turned back to the shuttle. "Alright, set it up!"

"Get clear!" Mermista appeared in the airlock, waving her trident, and the waves of the nearby shore grew taller, quickly carrying the sand of the small beach away and exposing rocky ground as she stepped up to Sea Hawk. Then the ramp turned into a glacier, and Frosta slid down the ice ramp as if she were snowboarding. She even struck a pose as she came to a stop.

Jack clenched his teeth. He didn't like taking a teenager into a battle, but he had been overruled - Frosta's power was another safeguard against a possible betrayal by Flow of Life.

"Dialling!" Sam yelled from inside the shuttle. A few seconds later, Jack heard the typical sound of the vortex forming and collapsing. Setting up a Stargate inside a stealth shuttle so it could be used without destroying the shuttle had been tricky, but they had managed it. "Signal sent!"

And while the Stargate collapsed, Frosta used her power to quickly raise huge columns and crystals of ice around them, forming a makeshift shelter. Then Mermista covered the whole thing with more water from the lake, which Frosta then froze.

The huge igloo the two built wouldn't stop orbital bombardment, but it would protect the shuttle against strafing runs from Death Gliders.

"Stargate activation!"

Jack stepped on the ramp, now free of ice again. Sure, they expected PT-9499 to call back, but you never knew if someone else managed to dial in before your friends. And the shuttle was too small to allow an iris or another way to stop a hostile gate, except for some force shields and whatever weapons you could bring to bear.

"Code clears," Daniel said.

Jack still kept his carbine ready as the wormhole stabilised. Better safe than sorry.

And he tensed even more when, instead of a figure, a tendril of water came through the wormhole, moving around as if looking for some poor bastard to drag back into the gate. Flow of Life had arrived.

And the magical water didn't lose any time - it quickly shot through the cargo space of the shuttle, out of the air lock and into the lake, which Mermista had brought right to the foot of the ramp.

Jack narrowed his eyes. Was that a ripple that quickly spread through the cove? Or was that his imagination?

Then a tendril of water carried something else through the gate - Flow of Life's tablet. A version of it without any network capability, so Delta wouldn't be able to hack it. It came to a stop in front of Jack's face, and the screen lit up.

I control the water. Moving towards the enemy.

Things were going according to plan. So far.

Jack had a bad feeling about it.

*****
​

Lying on a small ridge overlooking a valley, hidden by a bush that had grown a lot more dense thanks to Perfuma, Adora stared at the camouflaged gate in the valley below. The fortress housing Delta's core was built into a mountain. It was a vast underground complex, but that was all they knew about it. They hadn't risked exposing the spy bots by having them approach the planet close enough for a detailed scan, and the stealth shuttles had made landfall with the stealth generators active and only running passive sensors. And now the fleet was jamming the entire planet.

That meant Adora's HUD, already struggling to keep up, wasn't showing much beyond entrances and weapon emplacements, which had exposed themselves when the task force had dropped out of hyperspace. Well, they had known that going in. Just as they had known they would lose communication with the other teams and the task force once the jamming started.

"I can teleport us behind that gate," Glimmer commented in a whisper next to her.

"The jamming is much less effective inside the bunker," Catra spoke up on Adora's other side. "We'd lose the surprise almost at once. No need to waste your magic power for that when we can take the entrance anyway."

She was right - the weapon emplacements wouldn't stop She-Ra. They were designs from the First Ones, which made Adora wonder how old this complex was. Was this Delta's original research station?

"We still need to deal with the anti-aircraft cannons," Glimmer retorted.

The beam cannons could cover the ground as well as the air, but Adora could take them as well. She saw multiple approaches that would get her in close to the two emplacements guarding the gate without getting spotted - at least, as long as the jamming remained effective. And that wouldn't last much longer.

"I'll rush the cannons," she said. "You deal with the anti-personnel defences and crack the gate."

She heard Catra hiss under her breath and winced. She knew Catra wanted to stay at her side. But She-Ra could withstand a beam cannon volley that would vaporise Catra. And Catra knew that.

"Alright." Glimmer nodded. "Let's go."

"Yes." Adora slid back down the ridge, then started running through a crevice leading down into the valley. It was dry now, but would likely be full of water in what passed for spring on this planet when the snow melted. There was barely any vegetation here, just some lichens. Well, a lot of lichens, actually. It might be the dominant plant life in this area. Still, there were enough bigger plants - trees and bushes - for Perfuma to work with.

In any case, it made for a good way to approach the fortress, though, since it hid her from view, and sensors placed inside it would be affected by the jamming.

Her friends rushed after her, Catra in the lead, as a quick glance over Adora's shoulder confirmed - her HUD had still not updated.

They reached the bottom of the valley quickly, and Adora clenched her teeth. Delta had cleared the valley of any dense vegetation - clear lanes of fire. "Stay behind and let me draw their attention!" she snapped - and dashed ahead without waiting for confirmation. Time was running out.

She was halfway to the complex's entrance before the automated defence turrets started to track her, a quarter to the gate before the first shots were fired. Few came even close to hitting her - the jamming was still effective. And she was already too close to the large beam cannons to be hit by them.

But if they fired blindly, they could hit her friends.

Snarling, Adora sped up. The fire from the smaller gun emplacements intensified, and she felt more and more shots hitting her. Nothing that could hurt her, though, and so she didn't even bother with turning her sword into a shield.

And when she reached the gate, she leapt, sword held in a two-handed grip - directly at the right beam cannon emplacement. The barrels tried to track her, but she was too fast, and her blade cut through both of them in one blow, then into the armoured turret itself. She felt something give, and then sparks and smoke appeared in the gap as she withdrew her blade.

Whirling around, she jumped again, towards the second beam cannon turret. Halfway to it, the first turret blew up behind her, and the shockwave propelled her forward. She adjusted, though, and used the additional momentum to hit the second turret even harder.

It came apart under her blow, and she jumped down again, rushing to the closest gun emplacement. The closest gun emplacement not already covered in glue, blown up or cut by various weapons and Scorpia's lightning, or choked up by dense grass, actually - her friends had been busy.

Soon, every gun had been destroyed, and they were gathered at the gate between the smoking remains of the weapon emplacements.

"Looks tough!" Scorpia commented, cocking her head to the side as she rapped her pincers against the armoured plate, sending some lichens that had grown on it into the air. "But old."

"No obvious controls… I guess Delta wouldn't need them, but if this was built by First Ones, there should be some," Entrapta said as she pulled her tool out.

"I'll cut through it," Adora said, lifting her sword. That would be quicker - and not risk Delta hacking Entrapta and Bow's tools.

"Wait!" Perfuma blurted out.

Adora turned her head. Her friend was standing there, hand on the gate - no, on the lichen covering it.

"Honey?" Scorpia asked.

"I can't control the lichens," Perfuma said. "They're plants, but… It's not like cacti; I can't do anything to the lichens. It's like…"

"Shit!" Catra cursed. "Check your filters! That stuff is all in the air!

Adora didn't wear a combat suit, so she had no filters to check. But her friends did.

"Oh. The smoke is saturated with spores," Entrapta said. "And they're starting to clog our air filters. But the concentration isn't dense enough for that. It should not…"

"Those are spores! Lichen spores!" Perfuma said. "And they're magically controlled!"

"Shit! We're covered with the stuff!"

Adora whirled. The lichens covering everything were magically controlled? But… Delta didn't have magic! They were a bot! And even if they had magic, Perfuma was a princess! her power should be stronger than…

She drew a sharp breath as she realised that the gate area was growing darker as huge clouds of spores started to block the sun, growing denser - and moving towards them in the form of massive tendrils.

"What the hell is this?" Catra hissed.

*****
​

 

[Anonymous Brainwash]

Did Delta subvert a Planetary Guardian? Or did Delta just trick them into messing with one?

 

[Starfox5]

Chapter 244: Containment Part 6

Delta's World, Near Former Horde Realm, April 29th, 2002 (Earth Time)

"What the hell is that?"

Samantha Carter whipped around upon hearing Jack curse - and froze for a moment.

In the direction of Delta's fortress, clouds were forming giant… limbs? Tendrils? She quickly grabbed her scanner. Normal sensors were still being jammed - and their shuttle's sensor suite, much less her handheld sensors, had no chance to detect anything that wasn't practically touching them - but the magic scanner had a chance to work, provided she could calibrate the settings just right; the output was already isolated, so…

"That's… Clouds don't do that."

"Call Adora, Daniel!"

"It's green… did Perfuma find some flying plants?"

"I don't think so, Frosta."

"I can't raise the first team, Jack!"

"Keep trying!"

Sam adjusted the scanner's parameters while the rest of the team reacted to the ongoing event. She had to compensate for all the magic being used by the Alliance. In her case, Mermista and Frosta were not much of a problem - though she would have to leave the bunker-igloo to avoid interference - but Flow of Life was flooding the entire area with magic, and that made it difficult.

We shouldn't have sent Castaspella with the distraction team, she thought as she fiddled with the settings. Or I should have stayed wth Entrapta and Bow.

Still, Flow of Life had a known magic… signature, Castaspella called it. Though while it was altered on this world, Sam still should be able to adjust the parameters to… There!

The all-encompassing magic that blinded the scanner vanished. And was replaced by… "The entire cloud is magical," Sam reported as she studied the data.

"Coulda fooled me," Jack commented.

"It's one magic signature." Sam ignored the comment. "Like… Not a spell. Not a spell, as far as we know," she amended herself.

"Is it a princess?" Mermista asked.

That was possible. Sam altered the parameters to compare the data with the scans of the ice Frosta had created. "No," she said. And clenched her teeth as she ran the next analysis. Which confirmed her suspicion. "It has a lot in common with Flow of Life's magic."

"It's a planetary protector?" Frosta gasped. "And it's attacking Delta?"

Sam winced as she checked the scanner's results. "I don't think so. It seems to be attacking… Adora's team."

A beep from the tablet made her look up.

An ally of Delta is an enemy. I will strike them down.

And in front of Sam's eyes, the water in the lake rose, forming a huge wave - and rushed downstream, towards Delta's fortress.

"Just like an eager recruit in their first combat," Jack muttered.

*****
​

"I still can't control the spores and lichens! My power can't get a grip!"

"Don't panic! The combat suits are sealed!"

Adora was right, Catra knew. Their combat suits - altered in her case to cover her tail as well - were rated against the worst biological weapons Alpha had thought up. Even a cloud of magic lichens shouldn't be a threat.

Shouldn't - but her hackles were raised as the spore clouds descended on them.

"And the internal air supply, together with the carbon dioxide scrubbers, will last hours before you'll have trouble breathing!"

Entrapta's addition wasn't quite as comforting as Catra would have liked. Still, they would have to worry about orbital bombardment long before their air would run out. "Open the gates," she snapped.

"That will let the spores inside," Adora replied. "And they'll still stick to us."

"And the damn cloud will make it harder to navigate the bunker," Catra spat. "But we can't stay here." They had to get Delta's core as soon as possible.

"Alright. Stand back!" Adora replied, and Catra saw her figure, barely visible in the whirling spore clouds, approach the entrance, raising her sword.

Catra started to take a step back - she would rather not find out up close that the entrance was trapped in a way Entrapta's scanner had missed. She wasn't as tough as Adora. But she found herself slowed down - moving felt like wading through water.

The spores!

"The clouds are growing thicker!"

"This makes no sense! These are plants! But I can't control them!"

"Thick as water!"

"It got my hair!"

Catra whirled - or tried to, she was moving too slowly - towards Entrapta. She could barely see anything in this soup, and her HUD was useless due to the jamming, but even with the howling winds, she could hear Entrapta.

Snarling, she forced herself to advance, pushing against the winds and spores trying to capture her.

"It's like… it has to be magic. Can anyone operate a magic scanner? This is not how such a substance usually acts." Perfuma yelled.

"Is this a princess?" Glimmer asked.

"No. Can't be," Entrapta yelled back.

"I got you, Entrapta!" Scorpia's voice boomed.

"Thank you!"

Good. Scorpia was strong enough to move easily through this damned cloud. Or soup - the cloud was growing thicker and thicker; Catra felt the tugging on her limbs now, worse than trying to swim. This was… "Get the door open, Adora!" she yelled as she turned around. "We can hole up inside!" They could get through another door and close that.

"I'm cutting, but it's taking… The spores are filling the cuts!"

Catzra gasped. If the spores could do that… And they were covering the entire team. "They're trying to glue us!" she snapped. Or something worse.

But as she struggled towards Adora, who was frantically hacking at the gate, she heard a distant rumbling.

Which was quickly growing stronger. Louder.

Then she realised what it was: A wave of water rushing towards them.

She whipped her head around as she turned. "Adora! Hurry!"

"Yes, Hurry!"

"With that speed…."

It was like trying to run through the water pit in Cadet training, completely sunk. Worse, actually - muddy water offered less resistance. Catra clenched her teeth and hissed in frustration - and fear - as she pushed on, trying to reach the gate before the water reached her.

But she wouldn't make it. She could hear the water approaching, and the damn spore cloud seemed to be growing stronger and stronger. Her feet seemed partially stuck, just taking a step was a major ordeal, and…

Something wrapped around her waist, and she gasped. "What…"

Then she was torn off her feet, dragged away - no, forward, towards the gate. By…

"Hold on tightly!" Scorpia, that was the big shadow in front of her, yelled.

"Yes!"

And that was Entrapta, whose hair had wrapped around Catra.

Oh.

"Watch out!" Adora yelled. "It's falling outward. I'm going… Ngh!"

"Let me hold it!" Scorpia rushed forward - how could she move so fast in this clingy, sticky soup?

"Nothing's growing in this cloud!"

"Watch out!"

"I've got it!"

Catra could only watch as she was dragged forward - past Scorpia and Aodra holding up a slice of the massive armoured gate that Adora must have carved out.

"Everyone inside! Hurry!"

Suddenly, Catra shot forward - Scorpia must have sprinted. That meant Adora was holding up the gate by herself!

"Adora! Don't…"

Slamming into the second gate behind the first gate cut off Catra's yell. "Adora!"

"Glimmer? Bow?"

Shit. Had they lost them in the cloud? If the water reached them with that force…

Next to Catra, something sparkled in the cloud. And she could spot two hugging figures. "They're inside!" she yelled.

"Coming!" Adora yelled back.

But so was the water - its roar was almost deafening now, and Catra could see ripples in the cloud as the water's pressure wave pushed the cloud through the breach, increasing its density even more. And Adora was still out there!

"Hold on, everyone!"

Hair tendrils closed around Catra before she could start towards the breach in the gate. She snarled and tried to rip them off, but they held fast.

For a moment, she unsheathed her claws. She could cut…

Then a glowing figure appeared in the breach.

And a rushing wall of water hit the mountain. Catra felt the pressure wave hit her through the spore cloud. Then the water came, and she closed her eyes.

It wasn't as bad as she had feared - she was pushed back, but not with nearly the force she had expected. And the water was only knee deep, so…

The water had cleared the spore cloud some, though, so Catra could see Adora standing in the breach, braced against a glowing shield. But she looked like… Oh, the shield was larger than the breach. She wasn't pushing against the shield - she was holding it back so the retreating water didn't carry it out.

The spore cloud had thinned, but it was still present. Still active - she could feel the push against her limbs, and her helmet's visor was getting covered by the spores again, in a thick film.

Then the water rushed up. Catra gasped - and heard the others gasp - before she realised the water had wiped the spore gunk off her visor. Oh.

"It's Flow of Life!" The others must have opened the gate. Catra hadn't expected to be so happy to see the magic water. Or any water.

All around here, the water rose and whirled, and tendrils struck out - but the spore cloud was not done. The spores drew back, avoiding the water - and, Catra drew a sharp breath through her teeth as she noticed, they were bending the water out of the way!

"They are struggling with each other's control!" she blurted out.

"Oh, no! Two planetary protectors fighting each other!" Perfuma chimed in.

Yeah, Catra had realised that as well.

"But why are they helping Delta?" Scorpia asked.

Good question, Catra had to admit.

"Who cares? Let's just hope they keep each other busy so we can get at Delta!" Glimmer blurted out.

If Jack were here, he'd mutter about taunting Murphy, Catra knew.

"I'm already working on the door lock here," Bow said.

"But it's in lockdown," Entrapta added. "Like… the control crystals have been wiped clear."

"So we're going to directly access the servos opening the door," Bow went on.

Wiped clear? Catra cursed. "Delta's ready for us."

"We'll see that!" Adora said as she strode towards the gate, water and water-logged spores parting in front of her. "I can cut this as well!"

"Don't we want to close the door to the spores?" Bow asked.

Adora hesitated.

"Fighting anyone knee-deep in magical water filled with spores would be bad," Catra added.

Adora nodded sharply. "Right. Just open the door. I'll go in first."

And we hope that Flow of Life holds out, Catra silently added. At least, they didn't have to worry about the spores burrowing through their suits or capturing them in a hardened shell made from spores any more.

Just about Delta's next traps.

*****
​

"Any news from the first team?" Jack O'Neill asked even though he was listening to the entire command channel. Still, what else could he do right now? Shooting clouds of magic spores with his rifle wouldn't do anything to them, just as it wouldn't do anything to magic water.

"No, sir. All communications are still being jammed," Sam replied.

That was both good and bad. It was good that Delta was as blind and deaf as they were. Or should be, at least. The bot almost certainly had landlines on and in the ground, but they couldn't contact and direct the fleet. But it also meant they had no idea what had happened to Adora's group.

"What's going on there?" Mermista snapped.

"Magic water fighting magic spore clouds," Jack replied. From their igloo, you could see the top of the green cloud tentacles wave around from here, but nothing more. At least, as long as the tentacles were writhing, the water must still be fighting.

"I know that! But what about our friends?"

"We have to trust them to do their mission, my love!"

"Ugh."

"Well, we won't be able to do anything if we stay here," Frosta piped up. "We've set up the gate; we can leave and help our friends!"

"Or take over their mission, if necessary," Teal'c chimed in.

Jack pressed his lips together; sure, he had thought the same - with two giant magic monsters fighting nearby, humans were in danger even if neither was directly targeting them - but to say it out loud…

Frosta gasped. "We need to head there at once!"

"Can you handle the spores?" Jack asked. Like Hell he'd take a kid on a suicide mission!

"They can't go through ice!"

"Neither can we," Jack shot back.

"And we need to protect the Stargate," Sam added. "If the gate is closed, Flow of Life will be cut off, and nothing will stop the spore creature."

"If we lose Flow of Life, we have to step in!" Frosta wasn't giving up.

"Water should be able to disperse the clouds," Mermista added.

"Well, it's not looking like it works," Jack pointed out - the green clouds were still moving, from what he could see.

"Ugh."

"We can't abandon our friends!" Frosta blurted out.

"The objective of our mission is to secure or destroy Delta's core," Teal'c added. "Everything else is secondary."

Jack narrowed his eyes at him; keeping a kid alive wasn't a secondary objective.

Teal'c, however, calmly met his gaze. Of course, he wouldn't budge; he saw nothing wrong with Frosta being here. Damn Jaffa warrior culture, as Daniel would say.

"If we take the shuttle, we can be there in minutes," Mermista said.

"But we would draw attention to the attack," Daniel pointed out.

"More attention than a giant cloud of spores and half a lake fighting?" Mermista scoffed, and Daniel blushed a little.

"It isn't very heroic to stay here and let our friends risk their lives," Sea Hawk added.

Jack clenched his teeth. He was aware of that, but they couldn't just leave the Stargate, either. And he was sure that the Etherians would race each other to be the first jumping into this mess. "Look, we can't just…" He trailed off with a curse.

"What?" Frosta used a slab of ice to carry her to Jack's spot at what counted as an observation post in their makeshift gate bunker.

"We've got incoming spores," Jack said. "Seal the igloo - but leave the underwater connection open." Spores couldn't enter through the water's tendril. Or they shouldn't. Who knew about magic?

Frosta, to her credit, did as she was told, and ice closed all entrances. It was clear ice, but it still meant Jack couldn't easily see outside any more, but with the spore cloud headed their way, pretty soon that wouldn't matter any more.

"How did they spot us?" Daniel asked.

Jack turned to raise his eyebrows at Daniel, though the helmet's visor probably hid them. Whatever. "We're a giant igloo at a lake from which magical water flows; I don't think the spores had a lot of trouble following the water back to the source."

"Right." Daniel slightly blushed again.

Then the spores hit them, and the entire igloo shook.

Jack drew a sharp breath. That wasn't a gust of wind, or even a storm, hitting them - he knew how that felt. It was more like a ram attack with a car - he had heard the ice crack.

"Hah!" Frosta sneered. "I can repair the ice faster than you can attack!"

Yeah, outside was now a thick green soup. A soup that was somehow semi-solid and taking swings at the igloo as if it were a giant hammer.

"Shoulda brought Napalm," Jack muttered.

"That would melt the ice!" Frosta protested.

"You can replace the ice. And it would burn those damn spores," Jack replied.

He blinked. "Is it just me, or is the soup growing thicker?"

"You are correct, sir," Sam replied, eyes glued to her laptop. "The density of the spore cloud is increasing rapidly."

That was definitely bad.

"And the pressure on the igloo's walls and ceiling is increasing as well, sir."

That was worse. Way worse.

*****
​

"Lock's picked!"

"I'm ready!" Adora replied to Bow's call. "Open it!" They were on a timer. And standing in waist-deep water, surrounded by green spores that were constantly washed away by water tendrils as Flow of Life fought the planetary protector.

"Opening door!" Entrapta yelled.

A moment later, Adora heard a whining noise and steeled herself, shield raised. Unlike the others, she could see pretty well - spores didn't cling to She-Ra's aura - and so she saw the waiting bots right when they opened fire.

First Ones designs, same as, or at least similar to, the ones Light Hope had used, she realised as the blasts hit her shield. The door continued to slide open, and Adora pressed on, entering the corridor behind them with a flood of water and a cloud of spores.

She caught the bots on her shield and barreled through their formation, smashing a couple and slamming the rest into the wall at the junction in front of her. "Get inside!" she yelled as two other groups of bots attacked her from both sides. "Close the door!"

"Coming!"

She stopped the bots on the left, blasts pinging off her shield, but the others jumped her, shooting and clawing at her, trying to drag her down by sheer weight and numbers.

But she was She-Ra. She slammed her shield down, crushing the left group's front ranks, then rammed her back into the wall and felt several bots crumbling under the impact. Reaching over her shoulder, she grabbed a still-moving one and threw it into another that was just getting up from where she had left it on the floor.

Both vanished in an explosion that shook the entire floor, and Adora gasped. "Suicide bomb bots!" she yelled, moving back into the first corridor, in front of her friends, her shield enlarging.

The remaining bots followed on her heels, lights on their bodies blinking rapidly, just as Adora felt strong arms brace her from behind, Pincers folding around her shoulder - and then they blew up, all at the same time, and Adora grunted as the shockwave tore up the corridor and hit her shield.

She felt her boots dig into the floor as she braced against the impact, walls to both sides of her crumbling under the pressure as smoke, steam and fire filled the corridor. Behind here, someone yelled about closing the door.

As the smoke started to clear seconds later, she saw craters in the ceiling, walls and floor, lined with cracks as water swept debris away.

Glancing over her shoulder, past Scorpia, who had helped her withstand the pressure wave, she saw that Bow and Entrpata had closed the doors behind them. The air was still kinda green, swirling around them, but it seemed weaker - she felt no force behind the thin trails of green spores.

The water, though, didn't move at all. Adora hoped that just meant that Flow of Life was cut off completely by the closed doors, and not that something had happened to them.

"Let's go!" she said. "We need to reach Delta's cores."

"One moment!" Bow raised one of his trick arrows. A signal flare, Adora realised. "Close your eyes!"

She did, out of reflex. What was he…?

She heard a boom and, even with closed eyes, saw a flash of light. When she opened her eyes again, the green tint of the air had lessened a lot.

"I modified my signal arrow to flash-fry the spores," Bow said with a grin.

"Good work!" Glimmer beamed.

"They seem all gone…" perfuma trailed off, looking around. "Or… No, they are dead. I can't feel them at all any more."

"Good work!" Glimmer repeated herself.

"Yes, now let's go and nab those damn computers," Catra grumbled. "At least the water's flowing away."

She was right - with Adora's shield shrunk again, the water, which had been knee-deep, was now ankle-deep and still flowing away - into the bunker complex. That would make moving easier, though…

With a cracking noise, lightning surged all over the water, racing towards them from the junction ahead. People screamed and gasped as the air crackled around them - but then fell silent.

"The suits are insulated as well!" Entrapta said. "Electricity won't harm us, well, not unless it's a discharge with far more power than this. Or if it is strong enough to vaporise the water, which might overwhelm the thermal insulation of our suits."

"Best not give Delta any more tips!" Catra snapped. "Let's go!"

Adora looked at her friends, making sure they really weren't hurt, and then started down the corridor again, the remains of the bots crumbling and cracking under her boots. "Which way?"

"Uh…" Entrapta trailed off. "Let me check my scanner."

While Entrapta worked, Bow let loose an arrow down the left corridor, and Adora saw a piece of machinery explode. "That looked like a capacitor," he explained.

So, no more lightning attacks. At least in this corridor. Adora nodded.

"The right corridor leads towards our goal!" Entrapta announced. She projected a holographic map of the bunker complex - incomplete, Adora saw, but it covered their immediate surroundings well enough.

Adora nodded again and headed down the right corridor.

*****
​

"Get more water! More ice!"

"Make it stronger!"

"I am!"

"Just thicker ice won't do it!"

Sitting at her station inside the shuttle, Samantha Carter wished she could go outside to direct Frosta and Mermista in using their powers to reinforce the igloo bunker. But, ultimately, it wouldn't help - the difference between just adding more material to the shell and forming a support structure wouldn't be enough; the tendrils' blows did shake the entire shell, but that wasn't the actual problem.

The problem was that the spores were digging through the ice shell. They were melting the ice to water and sucking it up, according to her scanner. And making the Igloo's walls thicker was enough to stall the attack. For a time, at least - even if they kept the walls as thick as before, the volume was shrinking.

Sam could only hope to find a defence against this kind of attack before the ice shell completely covered the shuttle while the spores kept digging and melting.

"Sha're! Prepare to blast a path through the ice!" Jack yelled as he entered the shuttle.

"That would expose us to the ships in orbit, Jack!"

"They're already painting us for their ships!" Jack retorted. "And the jamming won't last forever."

He was correct, Sam knew. In fact, optical sensors would have the easiest time to spot and target them, if they were aimed at the planet's surface - jamming could only do so much, and stealth generators were useless if the area they were covering was brightly marked. If they wanted to avoid being attacked from orbit, they would have to leave before the jamming was rendered ineffective - which was hard to predict.

Of course, between Flow of Life's tether of water running out of the shuttle's Stargate and into the lake and the attack by the spore tendrils, Delta should have an easy time finding them. That they weren't already being strafed by ground-launched fighters or shelled with artillery or missiles must mean that Delta had no direct link to those spores and still couldn't direct the ships in orbit.

She glanced at the scanner's screen once more; nothing in the air or orbit, so far. Though the magic scanner wasn't exactly the best tool to track enemy spaceships and fighters; it was too slow to cover the volume needed for that. So, the defence fleet still hadn't detected them.

Which made it even more urgent to find a way to deal with the spores. Something that could work as an advanced weed killer, Jack would say. But the herbicides needed for such would qualify as chemical weapons, and Sam wasn't quite sure they would work on magical spores.

Maybe if she rigged the shuttle's shields to flare with heat and a small shockwave? Combined, that might kill the spores… No. A quick calculation involving the kinetic and thermal energies the spores used to break down the ice showed that they would mostly survive such an attack.

"Keep making water for me to freeze!"

"I am!"

Evidently, cold wasn't stopping the spores.

The spores were controlled by magic - Sam hadn't detected any other possible way to direct and propel them, which meant she couldn't modify a jammer to disrupt that. She would need a magic jammer - though whether that would be enough to overcome the magic behind those spores was a coin toss at best.

Heat and kinetic force would work, her scans showed - if they were powerful enough. That excluded the theoretical shield flare she had considered, no matter how elegant that would be. Perhaps demolitions? But a force strong enough to kill the spores surrounding them would likely collapse the shuttle's shields.

But heat… any spaceship could withstand heat far more easily than it could stand up to kinetic force. But enough heat would still kill the team, if not the shuttle. Still, if they could saturate the air with fuel, fuel in a concentration that it would burn rather than explode if ignited… The shuttle didn't carry such fuel, much less in the quantities they would need, and they didn't have a dispersal system.

But they had an open wormhole that connected the shuttle to their base on PT-9499, and through which Flow of Life ran their water. And an Alliance base to call. And if Flow of Life could control water mixed with spores, as they had seen before the spores covered them, they should be able to transport fuel as well - and be able to expel the fuel drops from their water body. But would that be enough to achieve the effect she needed?

She ran the calculations as she opened a line of communication through the Stargate to check available supplies.

Yes, it could work. Could. She didn't know enough about the spores' nature to be certain. But they were good odds. Better than some of the odds SG-1 had bet on in the past. And they had no alternative, anyway.

"Sir?" she spoke up.

"Carter?"

"I think I have a way to deal with the spores."

Jack beamed at her.

*****
​

This is going too smoothly, Catra thought as she sprinted after Adora. They were already down three levels, halfway to the section where the core was located according to their agents, and, so far, Delta hadn't pulled any more surprises.

Of course, the bot had mined the stairs and lift shafts, but that wasn't exactly a surprise; anyone in their place would use natural choke points for that. But Delta was too smart not to expect Adora to simply cut through the floors and avoid the trapped areas. And, by now, they were definitely aware of Entrapta's magic scanner. Just the fact that they had picked the safest spots to jump down, avoiding more ambushes by those damned bots, would force that conclusion.

And, speaking of bots…

"Bots ahead!" Adora yelled - and charged into a hail of fire.

Catra ran off the wall next to her on all fours, pushed off the ceiling and landed right behind Adora as her love barrelled through the dozen bots, smashing most with her shield or boots.

Most. Catra jumped over a twitching wreck, slashing through one still-moving limb with her claws, and then pierced the control matrix housing of another before it could turn around to shoot Adora's back.

Adora was growing a bit sloppy - but they were running out of time. Maybe that was Delta's plan? Just make them take long enough so the jamming would be overcome, and her fleet could bring their entire firepower to bear against the task force and the teams on the surface? According to their estimates, Flow of Life wouldn't be able to withstand orbital bombardment for long. But would Delta fire on their own bunker? As close as they were already to their core?

Catra doubted that. And yet… With the jamming, Delta couldn't micromanage the fleet. And the bots trying to stop their team weren't fighting any better than the ones Catra remembered from Light Hope's lair.

So, what was Delta doing instead of directing their bots? Catra could feel her hackles rising inside her suit. She was missing something.

"Alright, take the next left and then stop at the junction - that will be the safest place to drop down the next level!" Entrapta, following behind them thanks to her hair tendrils, announced.

Adora changed direction at once, crushing another bot with a snap kick as she took the corner.

Catra glanced over her shoulder as she followed. Good, the others were right behind Entrapta, Scorpia bringing up the rear. No bots would get past her - she didn't think they could easily squeeze past her friend's bulk even if Scorpia didn't do anything.

So… She gasped as she took the corner herself. They were only facing the same kind of bots Light Hope had been using - a thousand-year-old designs! "Entrapta! Scan for hidden bots!" Catra yelled.

There had to be updated types. Delta had had a thousand years to adapt and improve on the things!

"But we scanned… Oh! You mean stealth bots?" Entrapta blurted out, and Catra winced.

"Adora, stop!" she yelled - her love was already raising her sword to cut through the floor.

"What?"

"There's a trap!" Catra yelled.

"A trap?"

"I don't… Oh!" Entrapta trailed off as she joined them, head cocked in the angle she usually used when focusing on her visor's - or HUD's - display. "That's a lot of stealth signatures. And they're moving right beneath us."

Shit! "We need to move!" Catra snapped. There was nothing worse than letting the enemy execute their plan while you still had no idea what exactly they were planning.

Adora nodded and turned to head towards them.

"Oh! They're… filling up the corridor! And the power fluctuations!"

Catra clenched her teeth and whirled, grabbing Entrapta around the waist as she started sprinting. "Run! It's gonna blow!"

"What…" Entrapta started to yelp.

In front of them, Catra saw Bow and Glimmer starting to turn as well, and behind them, Perfuma and Scorpia slowing down.

Instead of an explosion, she heard a hissing noise, and the entire floor started to sag, turning her dash into a desperate uphill race as acid smoke rose from the floor.

As she dug all her claws into the tilting floor for better purchase, she heard Entrapta mutter on her shoulder: "A dissolving agent? That works on metal and advanced concrete? With that speed?"

She wouldn't make it, Catra realised. Not before the entire floor fell down or vanished. It was just too far. Glimmer whirled again, and Bow drew his bow, but they would be too late, Catra could tell.

Then something hit her in the back and pushed her up the last leg, directly into her friends, bowling them over.

Adora!

Catra turned her head as she kept scrambling forward - the floor wasn't entirely stable.

Adora was there, hanging from the wall - she had driven her sword into it to serve as a handhold, waving with a relieved smile.

Cara started to smile as well.

Then the wall next to Adora dissolved, and she started to fall into the smoking mess below.

*****
​

"Alright, the fuel lines are set up!" Jack O'Neill announced as he took a step back - and checked, once again, that he hadn't spilt any fuel on himself helping to set up the whole contraption. If he set himself ablaze by mistake, he would never hear the end of it. And Sam would probably blame herself even though it would have been entirely his own fault.

"The diffusers are ready as well - but they need to be deployed," Sam replied as she appeared at the top of the shuttle's ramp, followed by Teal'c carrying two bulky devices that looked a bit like the emergency power generators they had started as - another thing Sam had requested from the base.

Jack couldn't help feeling a bit vindicated that the key to beating those damned spores wasn't some magic or alien doohickey, but an old, near-obsolete piece of machinery that he could understand and handle in his sleep and which had apparently only been present in the forward base because someone had been using outdated manuals when preparing the supplies.

"What do you need us to do?" Mermista asked as she and Frosta joined them.

"Those need to be connected to the fuel lines first," Sam replied.

That didn't take long, fortunately - it could be his imagination, but Jack thought the sound of tiny cracks in the ice shell protecting them had grown stronger in the last minutes.

"Done!" he said.

"Good." Sam checked the connection, and Jack pressed his lips together to avoid making a comment about not trusting his work. This wasn't the time for it. "Now, the muzzles need to be clear of any obstruction and outside the ice shell," she went on.

Mermista nodded. "No problem. I'll use water to blast a hole through the shell, and Frosta can push the things into the hole using her ice pillars."

Frosta nodded without adding anything.

Jack still didn't like having teenagers on a battlefield, but Frosta at least was professional about it. Most of the time - she could be a bit too enthusiastic. But spending so much time under attack by some magic spore cloud that could melt ice down and probably crush you into thin paste had a way of making people focus.

"Do it!" Sam ordered. "Everyone else, get into the shuttle. The ice shell might break under the pressure since it's no longer being constantly reinforced."

Jack nodded at the others as he kept standing next to Sam. As if he'd let her face this by herself. Besides, he was the team leader.

Sam glanced at him but didn't comment.

Then Mermista raised her trident, and two jets of water formed and smashed - or splashed - into the ice shell, which had grown so close from constantly being reinforced on the inside while the outer side melted and crumbled. Jack felt some spray from the impact hit him as the jets kept the pressure up.

"Ugh." Mermista grimaced; she had been working without the slightest break since the spores had started attacking, Jack remembered. But as long as she could keep up a little longer… "Start pushing!"

Frosta spread her arms, and two pillars of ice appeared, carrying the diffusers up.

That was a good sign, or so Jack hoped. Just a bit longer…

"We're through." Sam started typing on the magic water's tablet.

Flow of Life, we are starting to diffuse the fuel.

I am ready.

Ready or not, here we go, Jack thought as he saw the fuel lines start to twitch a little as Sam's contraptions started up.

"Fuel flow is constant," Sam muttered. "Reinforce the ice again!"

"Already on it!" Frosta shot back.

Mermista grunted, but sent jets of water up again despite being clearly tired.

"The level of saturation is adjusting…" Sam mumbled as she stared at her scanner's screen, where columns of numbers scrolled past that didn't mean anything to Jack.

Not until they turned red, at least.

"Get into the shuttle!" Sam snapped.

Frosta and Mermista hesitated.

"Move it!" Jack yelled, then turned to stare at Sam.

She was moving up the ramp already, staring at her laptop. Mermista and Frosta hurried past her, and Jack sprinted up as well.

"Hit it!" He pushed the control to close the airlock and raise the ramp.

"Ignition initiated!"

Jack stared at the ice shell as the doors closed. Just before the doors cut off his line of sight and the water flow from the Stargate, he saw a red flash.

Then the shuttle shook, and alerts started.

"Get us out of here!" Jack whirled and made a dash for the cockpit, trying not to touch the moving water tendrils still coming through the Stargate.

"Taking off!" Sha're replied. "Shields are taking a beating!"

Jack could see that as soon as he reached the cockpit - huge chunks of ice were pushing on the shuttle's shield. They wouldn't be able to withstand that for much longer. "Start blasting the ice!"

Sha're didn't argue, and the shuttle's guns opened up as the engines whined.

The ice around them started to move. Slide off. Jack could see the sky through the cracks. A blue sky, not a green one. "Looks like it worked! Good work, Sam!"

Now they just had to survive the side effects.

And touch down next to water so Flow of Life could reestablish control over what water had been fighting the other spores.

*****
​

 

[Starfox5]

Did Delta subvert a Planetary Guardian? Or did Delta just trick them into messing with one?

Click to shrink...

That will be a question the crew has to answer.