"Good evening. I am Kyōko Ikusawa. Welcome aboard Arizona, Colonel."
Jack O'Neill nodded his thanks as he stepped off the CY-199 onto the main hangar bay of the starship, located just above and forward of the aft upper main gun turrets, hemmed in on both sides by the aft-of-athwartships broadside main gun mounts. Having seen the sheer number of guns and missile launchers the newest ship in the American military packed, the commander of SG-1 had to admit that Arizona would be as much of an — if not an even greater — asset that the X-303 class aircraft carrier or the X-304 space battlecruiser currently under development at Area 51.
He then nodded his thanks to the blue-haired teenager in the plain white jumpsuit who had greeted him. "Thank you. Kyōko, right?" he said as he took her hand and gave her a gentle shake as his teammates came up, followed by two of the Canadian flight crew. After Kyōko nodded, he asked, "I take it you're here to take us to Kōgetsuei?"
A nod. "This way, please."
With that, she turned and walked towards the forward doors of the hangar bay. The members of SG-1 and their companions were quick to follow her. As Sam Carter came up to walk along side their guide, she gave her a curious look as they passed through the doors into a reception hall with a turbolift station, and then asked, "Are you an android?"
"No, Major. I am a bioroid."
Silence.
"What's the difference?" Jack asked.
"Well, sir, 'bioroid' is a portmanteau meaning 'biological android,'" Sam explained as the turbolift doors opened and they all stepped inside. "In other words, she was created in a laboratory, but she's as organic as a real person."
"That is correct," Kyōko said as the doors closed. "Main bridge."
The car went off. "So were you designed to be this way?" the Canadian co-pilot — Lieutenant Luc Mason, as the nametag on his flight suit read — asked.
"That is correct," she replied. "Properly, I am addressed in your language as a 'Terran-form Avalonian.' 'Avalonian' is the racial name applied to my kind."
"So there can be other kinds of Avalonians?" Jack asked.
"Yes, Colonel," she answered. "Other than Terran-form, most Avalonians alive today are Niphentaxian-form. I know also of many Noukiite-form Avalonians, as well as an Oni-form, a Fukunokami-form, a Seishin-form and a Neptunian-form. You will meet them soon when Mister Moroboshi returns from Okusei with his sisters and companions."
"What is Okusei?" Daniel asked.
"Colony world of the Noukiites, Professor Jackson," the Canadian pilot, Captain Norton Grey, answered. "If you take a direct trip from Noukiios to Uru, Okusei is the first system you run into. It's the headquarters of the government of the Imperial Outmarches, where the Chancellor Miss Moroboshi knows is currently based."
"This is definitely going to be a very informative trip," Sam noted.
"Why's that, Carter?" Jack asked.
"Sir, even though we've been quite busy using the Stargate to explore the galaxy, we really haven't looked in our own back yard, so to speak," the major supplied as the turbolift, which had dropped a bit and then headed forward for a distance, began to ascend. "It surprises me that NCA never ordered us to probe places like Uru."
"You would not have been able to travel there, Major," Kyōko advised.
"Why not?" Teal'c asked.
"It is believed that Uru does not have an active Stargate."
"That's odd," Daniel asked as the car slowed down. "Why wouldn't they make use of it?"
The car then stopped and the doors swooped open. "I cannot answer that question, Professor Jackson," Kyōko said as she waved everyone onto the spacious command room. "Welcome to the main bridge." She then switched to Japanese. "Tsukihana-sama, your guests are here," she said to the young man standing by the main sensory station.
The members all blinked as he walked over, hand out. "Pleased to meet you," he said in English as he took Jack's hand in his own. "You're Colonel O'Neill, right?"
"Yes, I am," Jack replied. "How old are you, by the way?"
"I'm thirteen."
Jaws dropped. "Tabarnak!" Luc hissed out.
"You can say that again, Luc," Norton breathed.
Jack blinked, quite overwhelmed at the thought that someone THIS young had a hand in the creation of the great starship around him. "How's that possible?"
A sigh. "Well, sir, the Goa'uld aren't the ONLY race that liked to kidnap humans from Earth for their own purposes," the young man answered.
A nod. "Gotcha."
Later…
Sam moved to recap what she had been told: "So after you and Ayami escaped from Ipraedies custody with the help of people who were sympathetic to you, you literally blundered onto this abandoned spacedock — a vessel as big as New York City itself! — then decided to turn around and build all these ships to give to us."
A nod. "That's about right," Kōgetsuei affirmed. Everyone had moved to the captain's cabin above the bridge to enjoy snacks and pleasant conversation. Daniel was currently being helped by Nakamura Masumi — a sultry blue-eyed Avalonian with shaggy, short-cut caramel brown hair; she currently served as the ships systems maintenance officer — with downloading copies of Arizona's databanks for transport back to Stargate Command for further distribution to the relevant authorities. "We knew when we arrived at the Den'sha system that many of the worlds of the Galactic Federation were at the time — this was about two years ago — seriously looking at opening contact with Earth. So we had to work fast. Fortunately, the spacedock's design computers were quite quick to understand what we needed. And since the original owners of that dock had been gone for well over ten thousand years, there were no moral objections from them when we asked them to build ships for a planet that had yet to discover warp travel."
"Well, we're working on that now," Jack admitted. "But I think this ship will give us a huge boost forward." He then perked. "What did you do with it?"
"With what?"
"The spacedock?"
A shrug. "We eventually found out that there was a successor race to the ones who built that dock in the first place, so Ayami and I felt it was only right to return the dock — and all the ships that we found with it — back to them." Kōgetsuei smiled. "I think they won't be mad. From what we understood of them when we did find out about them and their exact needs, they'll need that fleet. We didn't take away anything that we couldn't replicate for any of these ships."
A nod. "Neighbourly thing to do," Jack admitted. "So where does Hiromi Moroboshi fit into all this, Kōgetsuei? I agree that since she is Ataru's adopted sister, she obviously does have some knowledge of what's been going on around Earth since the Tag Race, but how did she came to be the leader of this whole fleet?"
The young man smiled. "You see this?" he asked as he pointed to his ear.
Jack looked. "Kind of young to wear an earring, aren't you?"
"There are even younger ones who wear these," Kōgetsuei warned. "They're called 'magatama.' It's made of a material that, eighteen hundred years ago, was able to absorb a soul-copy of a woman named Huáng Yuèyīng. She was…"
"The wife of Zhūgě Liàng?!"
Eyes locked on a wide-eyed Daniel Jackson. Sam blinked. "Wait! You mean the great strategist of Shǔ Hàn during the Three Kingdoms period in China?!" she demanded.
"The very same! My God!" Daniel gasped as he walked over to sit down so he could stare intently at Kōgetsuei. "So you're saying your soul was actually TOUCHED…?!"
"By that of the spirit of Huáng Yuèyīng. Yes, Professor," he affirmed before gazing on the others. "That's why I call myself 'Kōgetsuei.' In Japanese, that's one of the ways that you can read the characters that go into 'Huáng Yuèyīng.'" He then smirked. "The other way is how you read my real name in Japanese: Ki Tsukihana."
"Oh, my God!" Sam breathed out. "How is that possible?!"
A shrug. "Throughout all the ages these magatama have been passed on from one generation to the next across China, and then Korea, and then Japan, no one's ever really sat down to find out, Major," Kōgetsuei said. "It's our fate."
"And you bear that fate well, young one," Teal'c said. "Is Hiromi Moroboshi like you?"
"I am."
Everyone turned to see a smiling woman standing at the doorway to the emergency stairwell to the main bridge, still dressed in her school seifuku, several companions with her, with almost all of them dressed as she. One other was dressed in a boy's uniform, but was clearly a girl. Seeing her, the members of SG-1 and their Canadian companions rose as Hiromi walked around to greet them, immediately seeking out Jack O'Neill by his obvious seniority and the colonel's eagles on his uniform. "I'm Hiromi Moroboshi, Colonel," she said as they shook hands. "My apologies for not meeting you sooner, but my currently employer prefers I get a substitute to take my place waiting tables at her restaurant before I go off to gallivant around the galaxy."
"Or at least in orbit," Tsuruya Rumiko said with a grin; her English scores were the second-highest in all of Metropolitan Tōkyō, so she spoke the language well.
"It's quite alright, ma'am," Jack said as he gave her a friendly squeeze, and then he stared at her. "So who were you back then?"
Hiromi blinked, and then she nodded as he pointed to his ear. "Back in my first life, I was Liú Hóng," she admitted. "In China these days, I am addressed as 'Hàn Líng-dì.'"
Daniel gaped. "The Emperor Líng?!"
"The same," Hiromi said as she gazed on him. "You are familiar of that time?"
"I've read the Sānguó Yǎnyì and the Sānguó Zhì."
Hiromi nodded. "Who was he?" Jack wondered.
"The Emperor Líng was the last true emperor of the Hàn Dynasty, sir," Sam supplied. "When he died in 189, that's when everything in China began to really fall apart."
"Though we've been trying to persuade Hiromi here to accept that she doesn't have to take ALL the blame for what happened back then," Inu Chigaiko noted in slightly more accented English than the near letter-perfect voice Rumiko had.
"Hopefully, she'll get it soon," Rumiko added.
The other girls laughed as Hiromi shook her head. "Do you possess a name as well?" Teal'c then asked as he stared intently at Hiromi. "As Tsukihana Ki possesses?"
"I do, sir. Ryūkō Kyōrei."
"The Japanese way of saying her birth name and her posthumous name," Kōgetsuei added.
"Which, you much confess, is much more proper than being called 'Reitei,'" Hiromi said before gazing on Jack. "I take it, Colonel, you're here to take official possession of Arizona?" As Jack nodded, she then smiled as she gave him a curious look. "So since you're clearly an Air Force officer, is she going to be the United States Ship Arizona or the United States Air Force Ship Arizona?"
Jack moved to reply, and then he stared at her. "Do you think you can persuade the President to rename this ship the Enterprise?" he asked.
Sam gaped. "Colonel!"
Daniel laughed and the Canadians grinned. Teal'c's eyebrow arched. Hiromi stared at him for a moment, and then she smiled. "Much that I personally would sympathise with your viewpoint, sir, but I believe the crew of the current Enterprise would be rather insulted if you take their name away from their ship."
"Then again, we were planning to get hold of some spacedocks," Kôgetsuei reminded her. "When we finally start building new ships, the Enterprise will probably be decommissioned by then. I'm sure we can use the name then."
Jack gave the young man a thumbs-up as everyone else laughed as Sam shook her head while we now…
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