I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.

Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – May 2004

‘Major Carter it’s out of my hands’ Elizabeth Weir told the officer who had intercepted her just outside her office attempting to gain a few minutes of her time before they were due to meet Major Davis in the briefing room. Weir had only just managed to get off the phone to the new X-COM administrative headquarters in Geneva and she wasn’t happy about the outcome of the conversation. The Optricans were asking for more troops to assist in their pacification of Bedrosian territory and specifically that the new Langaran Psionic-Warfare-Specialists with Psi-Amps and Mind Probes be deployed to help crush the insurgents once and for all. X-COM was willing to support the proposal, and the Langaran nations considered aiding Optrica a debt of honour after Optrican soldiers fought to drive off Loki’s invasion of Langara, but others including Weir were less than happy at the idea of forcibly screening every Bedrosian one after another in order to root out the religious extremists who were conducting a terrorist campaign in the name of their god Nefertum. It had an extremely oppressive and authoritarian air to it all even if it would be effective and likely save a lot of lives.

‘Jack O’Neill literally saved this planet and they’re going to let him stay in that box?’ Carter continued in an exasperated tone.

Weir stopped walking. ‘Samantha I agree with you’ she said. ‘We both know that Heimdall has already agreed to extract the information from Colonel O’Neill’s mind, the problem is that almost everyone in authority including the IOA considers that knowledge far too valuable to be lost’ she said. ‘The Asgard would simply erase it like last time.’

‘To save his life’ Carter interrupted. ‘There was an Asgard ship in orbit above Earth less than twenty-four hours after we defeated Anubis, the Colonel didn’t need to spend so much as a day in that thing but instead as soon as they helpfully beamed away all the larger pieces of debris that might have posed a danger once their orbit decayed we told them thanks for your help, you can go home now, and by the way could you do us a favour and dump off all the pieces of Ha’tak at Cydonia on your way home so we can pick through the salvage’ she seethed.

‘According to every medical report on his condition the Colonel’s life is not in any immediate danger’ Weir reminded her patiently. ‘He’s in stasis, his condition is not deteriorating and he’s not even aging ’ she pointed out.

Carter frowned. ‘Technically he is aging’ she responded, ‘just extremely slowly’ she admitted.

‘Major I’ve read your own analysis of the Ancient Stasis Chamber’ Weir told her. ‘A person could survive in one for thousands of years at least, perhaps tens of thousands’ she said. ‘It’s not going to take us that long to figure out how to extract the Ancient knowledge from his head into some kind of computer.’

‘It could be decades before we have the technology required’ Carter exclaimed.

‘And he’ll have aged a few minutes at most’ Weir replied before sighing, ‘for what it’s worth I have told the IOA in the strongest terms that I feel we should allow the Asgard to perform the procedure and bring the Colonel back to us right now’ she said. ‘I even tried to make the argument that we might need him to operate the Ancient Weapons Platform if another goa’uld tries to attack us’ she continued, ‘but the truth is other personnel likely have the same ability to interface with the Control Chair as the Colonel does and besides which we’ve already started to rebuild our other defences which did prove highly effective in themselves.’

‘We lost the Enterprise, the Admiral Kuznetsov will need another two or three months worth of repairs, Atlas is out of commission getting her hyperdrive made operational and they had to use spares taken from her to keep Prometheus running in the meantime’ Carter responded negatively. ‘We’re at least six weeks from getting any more ZapSat’s put in orbit, twice that before we can put any more AG-3X satellites up there and you know as well as I do what percentage of our F-302’s and Avengers were lost fighting Anubis’ she pointed out.

‘Fortunately the goa’uld don’t know any of that’ Weir replied evenly. ‘We know from the Tok’ra that the System Lords are currently scared witless because of what happened to Anubis and his fleet’ she said. ‘They seem aware it was the Ancient Weapon that won the day but they also know that we had already taken out at least half his fleet beforehand and it’s got them rattled’ she continued. ‘Anubis had the most powerful warships and most advanced fighters of any of the System Lords and we were taking them down regardless, add in the fact that our soldiers were defeating Kull Warriors when their Jaffa were being butchered by them and its highly unlikely anyone will want to risk a confrontation with us right now.’

‘Isn’t there anyone else we could talk to?’ Carter almost pleaded. ‘You’ve got a direct line to the President don’t you?’ she asked.

‘Yes I do’ Weir confirmed, the Oval Office was number one on her speed-dial. ‘Unfortunately the Vice President has more sway than I do and he is one of the major advocates of keeping the Colonel on ice until we can extract the database from his mind’ she told Carter before checking her watch. ‘We need to get going’ she said, starting off towards the briefing room again, Carter following once more.

‘The Vice President just wants the Colonel out of the way’ Carter opined.

‘I’m well aware of their personal history and mutual dislike for one another Major’ Weir replied.

‘What does X-COM think?’ Carter queried.

‘Well Commander Sharp thinks we should immediately defrost Colonel O’Neill so he can sit in the Control Chair, guaranteeing the safety of Earth against counter-attack’ Weir replied. ‘Then he insists we should modify all our remaining Avengers with the hyperdrive upgrades the Colonel made to the Tel’tak you used to get to Proclarush Taonas’ Weir told her.

‘Why?’ Carter asked.

‘Because the Commander wants to load the Avengers with our stockpile of naquadria and naquadah-enhanced nuclear devices and then efficiently bomb the System Lords back to the Stone Age before they know what’s happening’ Weir explained. ‘We’ve got such a potential speed advantage over goa’uld ships he thinks they’d be unable to respond effectively to an all-out strategic bombing campaign.’

‘He could be right’ Carter replied, ‘in terms of being correct in his tactical assessment, I’m certainly not going to try and say the incineration of millions of Jaffa is remotely moral ’ she said.

‘The IOA politely turned down his suggestion when he presented it’ Weir noted, ‘he called them “a bunch of idealistic peaceniks” and went back to the Omega Site looking annoyed’ she told the Major as they arrived at the briefing room.

Major Paul Davis looked somewhat grave, then again he usually only ever came to the SGC to deliver bad news so for all most people there knew that was really just his natural expression. He did at least look a little less grave than usual so maybe the end of the world wasn’t as near as it typically was when he visited.

Daniel Jackson and Colonels Ferretti and Reynolds, the commanders of SG-2 and SG-3 respectively, were already say waiting when Weir and Carter arrived. They took their own seats and Major Davis began his report.

‘The cover story seems to be holding so far’ Davis told them, ‘in fact it’s working better than expected’ he continued, offering a smile. ‘It looks like the media is falling for it so the contingency plan of disclosure has been shelved for now’ he said.

‘People actually bought the story that freak solar activity caused all that EMP the AG-3’s and Mark VIII’s really caused just when every army on Earth went on alert?’ Ferretti responded doubtfully.

Davis shook his head. ‘A few people probably did but we never expected that to stick so we planted a few other stories underneath to catch the press when they went digging for the truth’ he said. ‘It’s taken them a few months but a couple of the more determined newspapers and at least one news channel are about to break what they think is the greatest story of government cover-up since Watergate’ he said.

‘But nothing to do with an alien invasion right?’ Daniel asked.

‘No’ Davis confirmed, ‘in fact they think that talk of alien spaceships is just another amateurish cover-story dreamed up by the same mooks that thought “Solar Flares” sounded plausible’ he said.

Weir chuckled, she already knew quite a lot of this. ‘It’s just a question of giving the press a story they want to think is true and one that the government would want to keep quiet if it was’ she said.

Major Davis nodded. ‘Once journalists really started to pry, contacting sources high-up in several world governments they had used before they started to hear a few rumours about all the military mobilisations back in March’ he said. ‘One phrase kept cropping up that set their alarm bells ringing as soon as they got home a punched it into google’ he continued, ‘Able Archer 83 all over again.’

‘Able Archer?’ Daniel repeated, confused.

‘Able Archer was a NATO mobilisation exercise in 1983 designed to test preparedness for a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe’ Davis explained. ‘It nearly ended very, very badly because the Russians got it into their heads that the exercise was really the prelude to a NATO pre-emptive strike against the Warsaw Pact.’

‘Wow’ Daniel responded, blinking.

‘The Soviets went on alert and readied their Strategic Missiles for war’ Davis continued, ‘fortunately for all of us World War Three didn’t break out because of a misunderstanding but it could have, in fact it was probably the closest we ever came to a nuclear exchange apart from the Cuban Missile Crisis’ he said.

‘And people think international affairs is a dry topic’ Weir quipped.

Davis smiled at her joke such as it was. ‘Now oddly enough just over a month before Able Archer there was another occasion that might have conceivably led to war when the Soviet Early Warning System reported an ICBM being launched by the United States’ he told them. ‘Fortunately the Russian Officer in command rightly decided it was just a computer glitch not a nuclear attack but consider what would have happened if the glitch had occurred during Able Archer when the Soviets were already poised to push the button’ he suggested. ‘What the press will discover, or at least think they’ve discovered when they go looking into the events of March 2004 is that someone badly misread a Chinese military exercise as a prelude to an invasion of Taiwan which the PRC expected would trigger a limited nuclear exchange with the United States’ he said.

‘It’s so horrifying that they’ll want to think its true’ Weir commented.

‘Bad news sells’ Ferretti agreed.

Carter frowned. ‘But how does this tie into the EMP, and all the debris people are actually seeing fall from the sky?’ she asked. ‘For that matter even with the government observatories keeping quiet there are plenty of civilians who witnessed those Drones being fired from Antarctica’ she pointed out.

‘That Major is because it became much worse than Able Archer ever did’ Davis replied. ‘You see the other story the press is going to learn about when they push hard enough is that for the last twenty years most of the major powers have been secretly launching armed satellites into orbit’ he said. ‘Those anti-missile and anti-satellite satellites with lasers, kinetic energy weapons and particle beams talked about in the 1980’s they got built but not just by the US’ he said.

‘And some of them were presumably nuclear armed in direct contravention of the Outer Space Treaty’ Weir observed.

‘Of course’ Davis replied. ‘It was all an unfortunate chain of events’ he said. ‘China began a military exercise which was seen as a cover for an actual attack on Taiwan predicted by bad intelligence reports so the US went on high alert and mobilised’ he said. ‘With the United States going to DEFCON 2 China then mobilised for real and prepared its own nuclear deterrent, causing Russia, then India, to do so in response’ he continued. ‘Pakistan in turn mobilised and readied missiles because India had and then the rest of NATO, ANZUS and pretty soon the whole world did too thinking that the Third World War was about to break out because now suddenly everyone’s weapon satellites were shooting at everyone else’s too.’

Colonel Reynolds had been pouring himself a glass of water. ‘Okay so what’s the supposed story with the satellites about?’ he asked.

‘The planted story is that when the Russians went on full alert they activated their ABM and ASAT systems in space’ Davis replied. ‘Unfortunately a lot of their birds are old, cranky and should have been retired years ago and the moment they went live one of them started firing at an American platform’ he said. ‘Now we’d already activated our satellites and when they’re turned on they’re programmed to defend themselves automatically so...’

‘So our satellites fired back at the Russian satellite’ Daniel interrupted, ‘which then presumably triggered all the other Russian satellites to start firing and pretty soon it cascaded into complete mayhem with any Chinese and European military satellites getting hit too’ he worked it through.

‘Right’ Davis confirmed. ‘Now some of the satellites, only a handful though, were armed with nuclear-pumped X-Ray Lasers and when they went off they caused all the EMP as a side-effect’ he said. ‘The journalists will read about X-Ray Lasers when they look into the Strategic Defence Initiative so that’ll fit what happened’ he continued. ‘Now as Doctor Weir said earlier putting nuclear weapons in orbit is a violation of International Treaty so no government would confess to being responsible increasing the plausibility of it being covered-up as the result of “Solar Flares”.’

‘And Antartica?’ Carter asked.

‘Once the US, China and Russia managed to sort out what was happening, and they found they couldn’t stop it, a new ground-based Anti-Satellite Weapon which had built secretly in Antarctica was fired as a last resort to destroy the remaining weapon satellites in Polar Orbit’ Davis told them. ‘Neat isn’t it?’ he asked rhetorically.

‘Placing something like that on the continent would itself be a breach of the Antarctic Treaty which expressly prohibits weapons been based or tested there’ Weir observed, ‘yet another reason for a cover-up’ she noted.

Major Davis began playing with a pen. ‘One of the biggest advantages of working through the X-COM structure is that every government, military and intelligence agency is already aboard on this’ he said. ‘Now we’ve made it very hard for the press to start to find out any of this but the sheer scale of it was apparently too much to hide in the end. Apparently the various governments were so nervous of this tale of woe, ineptitude and violations of international law leaking out they even tried to concoct some BS about aliens and ran with it for a while before somebody with more sense realised nobody was ever going to buy that crap’ he joked.

‘It might make the National Inquirer’ Colonel Ferretti responded, chuckling. ‘I’ll look out for it on the news stand’ he added.

‘You do that but the orders from above are that if anyone ever asks you about weapon satellites you will immediately look shifty and try and change the subject’ Davis told them.

‘Do we really think this will work?’ Carter wondered aloud.

‘People believing that their government is comprised of morons, criminals, gung-ho generals, clueless intelligence agencies and people trying to cover their own ass?’ Daniel responded, looking at her knowingly. ‘Yeah I can see that sticking’ he said sadly.

‘Point taken’ Carter conceded. ‘I’m surprised that all those governments would go along with a cover-story that makes them look so bad though’ she said.

Major Davis sighed. ‘There was a price to pay, of sorts’ he said. ‘Doctor Weir may know more of the details through her IOA connections if she’s free to divulge them’ he told her.

‘I might as well, you’ll all become aware soon enough anyway’ Weir responded. ‘We are about to enter a golden age’ she declared with a wry smile.

‘We are?’ Daniel asked, raising one eyebrow.

‘Within a month President Hayes will announce that a massive breakthrough has been made in fusion reactor technology by the United States’ Weir told them. ‘The design for a fully functional commercial fusion powerplant will be offered to every country’ she continued, ‘unlimited cheap electricity for all’ she continued. ‘It’ll be a couple of years before the first is completed and generating power but soon the things will be all over the place.’

‘I just hope someone remembers to translate the manuals from Eurondan’ Daniel chipped in. Well it would raise far few questions if fusion reactors appeared than naquadah generators even if they were still alien technology he thought.

‘I’ll make sure to mention that’ Weir responded, ‘oh but there’s more’ she said. ‘A few weeks after that the Japanese will announce they have perfected a lightweight battery which can store more than a hundred times the charge of anything else on the market’ she told them.

‘So much for gasoline powered cars’ Carter observed, wondering what the OPEC nations were getting for going along with this. ‘That’ll be the power-pack design my robot copy made on Altair I assume?’ she queried.

‘Certainly not officially by any means’ Weir replied. ‘Before the end of the year we’ll also see new alloys plus breakthroughs in lasers and computing’ she said.

‘If we start buying and selling stocks in advance would we get into trouble for insider trading?’ Ferretti wanted to know, greatly impressing Colonel Reynolds for thinking of it.

Weir ignored the commander of SG-2. ‘Then from 2005 onwards new pharmaceuticals are going to revolutionise medicine’ she said. ‘One can take the place of a failed immune system, another drastically speeds up the healing of injuries and last, but not least, there’s an injection that’ll mean you never get cancer’ she listed them.

‘Tretonin, Beta-Cantin and the Aschen Cancer Vaccine’ Carter responded. ‘Probably best not to release any of the nanotech we have yet though’ she suggested. ‘Regarding other pharmaceuticals we’ve encountered over the years however the anaesthetic we obtained on P3X-593 was highly effective and I know there was also a team trying to modify the goa’uld drug Rashna into a less addictive compound’ she said. ‘It’s an extremely powerful analgesic but other than being a narcotic it doesn’t have a lot of the other bad side-effects associated with opiates like morphine.’

Daniel crossed his arms. ‘So releasing all this technology is the pay-off to the worlds governments for remaining complicit with keeping the Stargate program and the existence of the alien threats to Earth then’ he stated.

‘The standard of living for people right across this planet will soar’ Weir told him, ‘with fusion power we’ll be able to do things like desalinate seawater and green the deserts, we can end poverty, hunger and disease in a generation if we put some effort into it.’

‘And win a lot of politicians a lot of votes in the process’ Daniel added sardonically. ‘They’ll claim all the credit you know.’

‘Let them’ Weir replied. ‘I know that the Vice President is already positioning himself to say publicly that the fusion reactor research was carried out by the US military and he helped spearhead the project and ensured it received the budget it needed.’

‘An outright lie that’ll benefit him hugely in the polls if he’s planning to run for President after Henry Hayes and if the truth ever does come out it wasn’t really a malicious lie, he was only doing his patriotic duty by assisting the cover story’ Daniel remarked before humming a few bars from “Hail to the Chief”.

‘Won’t people wonder about the timing of the announcement that the US has perfected fusion power... and we’re giving it away?’ Reynolds asked.

‘The cynics will probably think that it’s being done precisely to get all the stories about treaty violations and space weapons off the front pages, and that we’re giving it to other countries in return for them keeping quiet about it all’ Major Davis replied. ‘It actually helps add credence to the story if anything’ he continued. ‘President Hayes still has another three years before the next election to get people talking about fusion reactors instead of fusion bombs in space so he seems happy enough with the scheme from what I’ve heard on the Pentagon grapevine.’

Daniel sighed and looked at Weir. ‘I assume you’ve read Mein Kampf’ he asked her, Weir nodding. ‘For some reason I can’t help but remember Hitler’s idea that the big lie was often easier to sell to the population than a little one because the more epic the untruth the less likely the majority were to think anyone would possibly make it all up’ he said.

‘Maybe so, but personally I still don’t think most people would ever believe the actual truth is aliens unless we crash-landed a Ha’tak in Central Park’ Ferretti opined.





Omega Site – PX0-999 (Terra Nova) – June 2004

Russell Sharp looked at the new rifle the scientist was holding up to show him doubtfully. ‘Why bother to bring out a new version of our Laser Rifle when we’re starting to produce enough elerium to equip everyone with a P3-A1’ he asked Doctor Bill Lee who had arrived from the SGC with the prototype and a spring in his step and was now standing in front of Sharp’s desk bubbling with obvious enthusiasm.

‘Because the differences aren’t just cosmetic’ Lee told him, the weapon was less blocky in appearance that the previous laser rifle and that was the first thing people tended to note of course, that and the fact it was slightly lighter.

‘Improved powerpack?’ Sharp suggested, ‘more shots?’

Lee shook his head. ‘Well actually although the powerpack has been upgraded the L2-A3 fires less individual shots from a full charge’ he replied apologetically. ‘Two-hundred and fifty-five discharges at standard wattage’ he informed the commander.

‘Less shots’ Sharp responded negatively, narrowing his eyes.

‘Yes and no’ Lee replied cryptically before smiling. ‘Before I explain that firstly I should probably tell you why it fires less shots from a powerpack that carries more charge’ he said.

Sharp sighed. ‘Go ahead, I’ve still got half an hour before I need to gear up for a mission’ he said, leaning back in his chair.

‘Okay’ Lee began, placing the weapon gently down on Sharp’s desk. ‘As you know the Tollan have been experimenting with elerium for a while now, ever since we gave them some samples to see if they could synthesize it in fact’ he continued. ‘Well during all the myriad tests they performed they discovered that if a beam of coherent light focused through a properly cut elerium crystal, instead of the materials both they and ourselves were already using for the purpose, you could produce a greatly more powerful beam’ he said.

Sharp looked at the rifle with more interest now. ‘How much more powerful?’ he asked.

‘It proved possible to double beam intensity but limitations on other materials meant if you did that you had to sacrifice rate-of-fire because you could melt the weapon’ Lee replied. ‘As a compromise the L2-A3 has a fifty-percent increase over the L2-A2 for only a very small reduction in time between shots when placed in rapid-fire mode.’

‘Fifty percent increase?’ Sharp queried. ‘That’s still a lot less firepower than a Heavy Plasma Rifle’ he noted.

‘True but you’ve got a lot more ammunition to compensate as it were’ Lee replied. ‘Another advancement we’ve made with the L2-A3 is that you can quickly eject the depleted power-pack and insert a fresh one’ he said. ‘A fully charged rifle and one spare pack gives you the equivalent of over fourteen clips for a P3-A1 so it’s ideal for extended fire-fights.’

‘You’re selling this very well’ Sharp told the scientist honestly, X-COM squads and SG Teams often found themselves knee-deep in hordes of Jaffa. On several occasions he had resorted to using his sidearm by the end.

‘You haven’t heard the best part’ Lee told him, ‘the L2-A3 also automatically recharges itself in the field between firefights’ he declared.

‘It what ?’ Sharp responded disbelievingly.

Bill Lee picked up the rifle again and began unscrewing the bottom of the hand grip. When it came free he put it down, reached inside the grip with one finger and hooked out a liquid-naquadah power-cell which he held up. ‘This little widget not only powers the standard built-in zat’nik’tel it also trickle-charges the laser power-pack’ he said. ‘It takes about thirty seconds to charge the equivalent of one shot for the rifle however so a fully depleted pack takes about eight hours to be back up to maximum capacity’ he continued, ‘but it’s good for at least a thousand shots worth of re-charging in the field before you need to replace the naquadah power-cell.’

‘Congratulations Doctor Lee I am now officially impressed’ Sharp told him. ‘I’m on the verge of heaping gushing praise upon you in fact’ he declared. This was indeed a sweet piece of hardware, teams armed with a mix of these and Heavy Plasma Rifles for dealing with Kull Warriors and Mini-Tanks would stomp goa’uld ass.

‘If you’d care to add that to my annual performance evaluation and that of the other guys and gals that helped me we’d all be grateful for the endorsement’ Lee replied.

‘Consider it done’ Sharp told him.

Doctor Lee smiled. ‘Talking of endorsements the L2-A3 could represent a nice opportunity for us to open up a market lead in small arms’ he said. ‘I know the X-COM Finance Director was looking for something we could sell to the Optricans and other allies such as the Pangarans and Tagreans and I’ll bet with the right marketing we could put them into mass-production reducing the unit cost and increasing profit margins’ he suggested.

‘Oh Dwoskin would love that’ Sharp agreed. The funding nations had already been making noises that perhaps X-COM could try and use its R&D and manufacturing arms to help cover its own ever-climbing expenses. They probably wouldn’t be happy with some of the more destructive hardware being offered for sale to other worlds but an infantry weapon being sold to trusted allies might be approved without too much trouble, especially when Earth soldiers still had more destructive personal weapons in their arsenal, the P3-A1 Heavy Plasma Rifle and the BL-1A Blaster-Bomb Launcher. Besides Earth only the Tollan had the ability to produce the elerium allotrope from regular naquadah as yet and they weren’t telling anyone else, their laws prohibiting the export of advanced offensive military technology and power-sources actually working in favour of the Tau’ri for once.

‘The prototype is ready for field testing if you want to try it out properly’ Lee told Sharp. ‘I’ve got two spare powerpacks with me if you want to assign someone the weapon’ he said, putting the liquid-naquadah power-cell back and screwing the retaining piece back onto the rifle.

Sharp chuckled. ‘Oh I’m going to try this thing out personally’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me to Jebanna’ he told the rifle. ‘We’re gonna bag us a few Jaffa and hopefully some goa’uld who are looking for new hosts’ he added.

‘Then good luck to you both’ Bill said as Sharp stood up, picked up the rifle and shouldered it.

‘Hey you added an ammo-counter’ Sharp noticed, looking through the rifles built-in electronic gunsight where a number was being projected below the cross-hairs.

‘Just a little Head-Up-Display’ Lee replied, ‘it uses the same technology as the goa’uld eyepiece our pilots have on their helmets. ‘You can turn it off if it becomes distracting’ he told him. ‘You’ve also got auto-focus zoom and night-vision’ he continued. ‘I’d probably better give you the manual to be honest’ he realised.

‘I’ll skim it later’ Sharp replied, ‘do yourself a favour and visit the canteen before heading back to the SGC, we’ve got steak today served with this hot-sauce they make in Orban and it’s great’ he told him. ‘I need to go brief the troops and get kitted up’ he said. ‘See you later Doctor and thank you again for all your efforts’ he said, putting the rifle down on his desk once more and reaching out his hand to shake the scientists. ‘You invent the tools we need to win the war and put them in our hands’ he said with gratitude, ‘between us we’ll ensure that Earth always remains free’ he declared with conviction.

As he rolled out of the stargate and then jarringly down the stone steps on the planet Jebanna Sharp decided to request better springs for either the seat of the suspension of the new Dune Buggies they were starting to employ off-world. For that matter the engines didn’t make a very satisfactory sound either, he thought. An electric motor powered by a naquadah generator might be environmentally sound, and it could run continually for months without needing refuelling, but the roar of an internal combustion engine would have been preferable to the quiet drone of the motor in terms of being a fun ride.

On the other hand when five of the two-man machines started tearing along the dirt track towards the largest settlement on the planet, kicking up plumes of dust as they went, it was still quite a rush, Sharp decided. Always one to promote the principle of leading from the front this gave him an excuse to be in the lead vehicle whilst the lower ranks behind ate dust and they quickly made up ground, heading towards what an earlier survey by an agent posing as a trader reported was the largest settlement on the planet.

With both a gatling-staff and a laser cannon mounted on the roof, both powered by the same generator that turned the wheels, the lightweight buggies could put out plenty of firepower as well as being a faster way to get about than hiking to and from the stargate. You couldn’t wear powered-armour and get into one unfortunately but generally unless they were expecting Kull trouble X-COM didn’t usually wear the bulky and expensive suits. For one thing they tended to frighten the hell out of most human societies living throughout the galaxy who were medieval at best, the Tau’ri were trying to present themselves as the protectors and benefactors of the peoples who had been abducted from their world by the goa’uld millennia ago and looking like great metal monsters made it hard to get a fair hearing, or indeed anything more than running away and cowering.

Defeating Anubis had done wonders for the reputation of the warriors of the First World, and they were already legends on many worlds beforehand. As the tale spread of mere humans defeating the most powerful weapons of the most powerful and most evil of the gods in open combat, of great pyramid ships wrought asunder and the fearsome deathgliders humbled by the greater magics of the Tau’ri many planets were seeing the start of open rebellion, these in some cases supported by the surreptitious supply of crates of Staff-Rifles to the slaves and peasants that worked the mines and tilled the fields of goa’uld controlled planets throughout the galaxy. Smuggling contraband had been made easier because of efforts made by agents working for X-COM to cultivate ties with criminal elements such as the infamous and shadowy Lucians and weapons were often being shipped right under the noses of loyalist Jaffa.

According to a tip-off from the Tok’ra the people of Jebanna were preparing to send a few of their own people to a goa’uld world to be taken as hosts. They had been told that this act of loyalty and sacrifice would lead to there being no more people being taken for the next two seasons and the gods promised good weather and bountiful harvests in return also. The Tok’ra didn’t know what world the “offerings” would be sent to but the people on Jebanna knew and that gave X-COM a mission, stop the people of Jebanna sending their sons and daughters to the goa’uld, find out where they were going to be sent, go there and in Sharp’s words kick the shit out of whoever they find.

Jebanna was still in the Bronze Age, with the exception of a few planets where the people wore animal furs they made into clothing with stone knives it was about as technologically primitive a society as you can find in the galaxy. Needless to say when the strange machines arrived outside the village, metal carts that still moved though they had no horse or cow to pull them, the villagers panicked thinking it must be the gods come to claim more people than they had asked for.

A young girl, braver than most, watched out of the window of her home, half concealed by a curtain. A piece of woven cloth like one of the banners the goa’uld sometimes flew was fixed to a pole on one of the machines and as the wind took it she could make out the symbol depicted upon it. ‘Tau’ri’ she recognised it. ‘Father it is the symbol of the Tau’ri of X-COM that the trader who visited two summers ago drew for us in the dirt’ she announced, turning to her parents. ‘Do you remember?’ she asked. ‘The man from Ferenginar that gave me my seashell necklace?’ she added, fingering the pretty ribbon around her neck that the sea-shell hung from.

The girl watched a man wearing armour on his chest that was different from that worn by the Jaffa stride into the village square alone. ‘Is there a village elder, a mayor or someone else I can talk too’ he called out. He was wearing something that looked like two mirrors connected by wire over his eyes and he reached up to his face and took them off.

A few people began emerging nervously from their homes, one of them, the richest man in the village who owned the largest farms nearby approached the stranger, his eyes directed towards the ground submissively. ‘What god do you serve?’ he asked.

As the girl continued to watch wide-eyed through the window the stranger looked at the landowner askance. ‘The only being in the galaxy I can ever be described as worshipping in any way, and currently tend to obey without question, is a hormonal pregnant woman and I only do what she says because it makes for a much less stressful life’ the man in armour responded. ‘Please look up, I don’t trust people that don’t look you square in the eyes’ he requested.

‘Who are you?’ the landowner asked, other villagers starting to approach too now. Some holding makeshift weapons such as bronze farming implements and one carrying a wooden quarterstaff made to try and slightly resemble a Jaffa weapon.

‘I am Commander Russell Sharp’ the stranger announced loudly. ‘I and my soldiers fight the false gods of the goa’uld and we’ve come here to free you from their oppression.’

‘Sharp of Canada’ the little girl exclaimed and before her father could stop her she dashed outside with him trailing in her wake.

Judging from their expressions they had heard of him Sharp decided. Several looked totally intimidated, others shocked he thought but one of them looked defiant. ‘There is no need for you to send your people to the goa’uld’ he told the villagers. ‘Just tell me the symbols you were to press on the chappa’ai before sending them through and I’ll go there instead and ensure no one from that world ever bothers you again’ he vowed.

‘We have heard the Tau’ri magics are strong’ a woman replied. ‘Stories are told that they are stronger than the magics of the gods’ she said quietly, looking around scared as if she feared being struck down for heresy.

‘We have no magic’ Sharp replied, ‘the goa’uld have no magic either’ he continued, ‘we simply have weapons that they cannot stand against’ he declared, turning back towards the others who had come with him. ‘Fire a few bursts from the gatling-staffs into the air’ he yelled.

Things atop the five horseless metal carts started to spin and then angled up they launched a hail of lighting bolts like those of a Jaffa weapon skywards, though many, many more. When they stopped the Tau’ri visitor turned back to the awed villagers. ‘We do not fear the goa’uld’ he said. ‘The goa’uld fear us ’ he declared.

‘Blasphemy’ the villager with the wooden staff responded. ‘I will strike you down in their name’ he exclaimed, leaping to the attack.

Sharp dodged the first clumsy swing and deciding that blowing a hole in the idiot with his plasma-pistol would be an over-reaction he instead pulled his side-handled baton free and used it to help parry away the next blow. The villager was clearly not very good at this and Sharp waited until the local had unbalanced himself and then cracked him on the forearm hard with his baton, making the villager yelp and drop the staff. He then thumped him in the gut with the baton and when he bent double Sharp cracked him on the back of the head dropping him to the dirt.

‘Oh stay down you idiot’ Sharp muttered as the man shakily tried to rise again. ‘Okay for the record this is not magic, this is just a device you can’t make yet but one day we’ll show you how’ he said loudly, pressing a recessed switch on the baton that caused electrodes to pop out. He pressed the baton against the man and put fifty-thousand volts through him leaving the true believer twitching on the ground in pain wondering why the gods had forsaken him.

Sharp pressed the switch again, the electrodes sliding back into the shaft of the baton and he was about to return it to the harness that held it when a little girl ran right up to him. The others looked scared but she was giddy with excitement and seemed to want to ask something. ‘Hello’ Sharp greeted her quizzically.

‘Hello’ the girl replied, starting to blush. ‘If you’re really Sharp of Canada that must be your Hockey Stick’ she said, pointing at the side-handled baton. ‘Can I have a look at it up close?’ she asked hopefully.





Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – June 2004

Daniel read the text message which had been transmitted to the SGC via the stargate. As he read the Goa’uld script he frowned. ‘It’s from one of the System Lords’ he told Weir who like himself had also dashed to the Control Room when the warning of an unauthorised incoming wormhole sounded. ‘Camulus, Celtic God of War’ he added.

‘Didn’t Colonel Rodrigues raid his capital world recently?’ Weir asked.

‘Camulodunon, yes’ Daniel confirmed. ‘Camulus was hit hard during the war with Apophis, a fleet led by Zipacna razed a few of his worlds and last we heard he was struggling to re-build his forces’ he said.

‘So we kicked him while he was down?’ Weir replied, ‘I guess that does make it easier.’

‘X-COM don’t tend to put much stock in fair play or chivalry for that matter even if they do wear armour’ Daniel observed.

‘So is Camulus sending us threats?’ Weir theorised. ‘Vows of revenge perhaps?’

Daniel kept reading, as he did so his eyes widened. ‘Wow’ he exclaimed.

‘I guess you mean that in the normal sense and it’s not the name of another goa’uld with an inadvertently amusing name like Yu?’ Weir responded.

‘Sorry’ Daniel apologised, ‘it says he wants to arrange a meeting for the purpose of negotiating a treaty’ he announced.

Weir looked suitably surprised. ‘A goa’uld wants to arrange a treaty with us?’ she queried doubtfully.

‘Not just one Goa'uld. All of them. The System Lords’ Daniel told her. ‘They want to send representatives here’ he said.

‘Is it too much to hope that they’re surrendering?’ Weir joked sardonically.

‘The fact that they’d even condescend to meet with us on anything approaching equal terms is more of a breakthrough than I’d ever expected’ Daniel replied. ‘When the System Lords sent delegates here before it was to negotiate with the Asgard, the SGC was just neutral territory’ he said. ‘You know under the terms of the Protected Planets Treaty the human race is officially recognised as a source of slaves and hosts for the goa’uld, certainly not a species to be negotiated with.’

Weir looked at the text, I’ve got to learn goa’uld, she thought. ‘Presumably our defeat of Anubis has changed a few opinions’ she reasoned.

‘The goa’uld only recognise or respect the threat of force’ Daniel noted. ‘The Asgard practised gunboat diplomacy for precisely that reason and it would seem that the System Lords have decided that Earth is now sufficiently capable of doing them serious harm to be taken seriously.’

‘Sounds like just another day at the United Nations’ Weir observed humorously. ‘It’s not exactly a coincidence that the five permanent members of the Security Council are the five countries with the most nuclear weapons’ she commented. X-COM wasn’t a country so it didn’t count although it now had a stockpile of devices from sub-kiloton to multi-gigaton that dwarfed that of any Earth nation.

‘You do realise that the goa’uld doing this might be seen in some circles as justifying the X-COM approach of putting the military option first and foremost’ Daniel warned.

Weir sighed. ‘I’m sure certain individuals will spin it that way’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for keeping good relations with our allies and forging peaceful links with other powers Earth wouldn’t be near as strong as it is now however’ she pointed out. ‘A recourse to violence and the threat of force is not always the solution’ she stated.

Daniel nodded. ‘I agree, but you might want to expect several more voices contending that whilst it’s not always the best way it works more often than some of us would like to think’ he said regretfully. ‘If you want to head to my office I’ve got some background reading you might want to go through on the System Lords since I assume the IOA and the US Government will be asking you to represent Earth’ he said.

‘I’d hope my track record puts me in that role’ Weir replied, after all who else could boast so many successful treaty negotiations as her, both between Earth nations and between Earth and other worlds she considered as she followed Doctor Jackson towards his office. He had reclaimed it from Jonas Quinn after his return, reasonable since Jonas spent far more time back home on Langara these days than he did at the SGC, and it had only taken a few weeks before it once again resembled the workplace of someone slightly scatterbrained rather than a neat-freak.

‘I’m afraid if the System Lords are coming here then I’ll have to ask you to remain on Earth until after negotiations are concluded’ Weir told him, as he opened his door.

‘I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as Sam at going to watch the Asgard collapsing a star anyway’ Daniel replied, stepping inside and switching on the lights. Where had he put those notes he had been gradually compiling comparing Tok’ra intelligence on the various goa’uld with the Earth legends concerning them he wondered?

Weir looked at him knowingly. ‘I’m well aware that part of the reason Major Carter jumped at the invitation was that you all saw it as an opportunity to try and persuade Thor to champion the case for bringing Colonel O’Neill out of stasis to the IOA’ she said.

Daniel smiled. ‘That transparent huh?’ he asked.

‘I’ve never really thought of Teal’c and Sergeant Andianov as holding an interest in astrophysics’ Weir told him, ‘Samantha yes, and you out of scientific curiosity but not them’ she said.

‘Oddly enough though Jack would probably like to see it himself’ Daniel told her, ‘astronomy is the only academic field he’s interested in as a rule’ he said, opening a filing cabinet and starting to rummage through some papers.

‘So when are we expecting the Asgard to turn up?’ Weir asked.

‘Any day now’ Daniel replied, scanning one sheet of paper and then putting it back. ‘They’re sending a science vessel to collect Heimdall, her research and equipment and the rest of us were going to hitch a ride to Ida’ he said. ‘The Asgard are still a little embarrassed that they didn’t send any ships to help defend Earth so the invitation might be an olive-branch of sorts, make sure we’re still on good terms’ he continued, ‘plus it was us that helped trap the Replicators on Hala and that wasn’t even the first time we helped Thor defeat the things.’

‘It’s probably a good thing that some of the goa’uld did try to attack other planets covered by the Protected Planets Treaty or there would have been a few less than politely worded comments directed at the Asgard High Council’ Weir told him.

‘Twenty-seven planets covered by the Treaty including ours and the Asgard couldn’t possibly send ships to them all’ Daniel replied. ‘So many of the System Lords have Ha’tak motherships with at least some of the weapon and shield upgrades Anubis came up with now and only an O’Neill Class warship can be guaranteed to win a fight with two or three of those’ he said, finally finding what he was looking for. He would give her a few brief pointers and then it was over to the President and the IOA to make the call what they were going to do, Daniel realised, it was certainly an exciting prospect to have a goa’uld delegation here but part of him was feeling guility that a thought had crossed his mind it was probably for the good that Jack wasn’t around, his incessant goa’uld-baiting would have undoubtedly caused ructions.

Fortunately most of the goa’uld had decided to sit it out quietly, ignoring the prompting by Anubis to attack a few of the other Treaty worlds whilst he attacked Earth but Olokun had sent a decent force at a world called Galar and a minor goa’uld, Sargon, had tried to take K’tau. In both cases an Asgard vessel already on station had destroyed the attempted invasions although it had caused a great deal of strife on Galar.

Although the Galarans were slightly ahead of Earth overall technologically the world had only just managed to get their own stargate program operational. Galar had only been making tentative first steps into exploring the galaxy when several gigantic ships appeared above them and fought a battle and the government there deciding to go public in response was proving to be a major mistake so far. The people of Galar were panicking that they were defenceless themselves against these goa’uld and were therefore utterly reliant on the protection of an alien race. The press and certain political groups were also kicking up a storm about the previous suppression of knowledge of the existence of alien technology which was destabilising the government still further. After the Asgard apologetically told the government of Galar that they were still bound by the terms of the Protected Planets treaty, and that therefore the High Council couldn’t provide them with a means for self-defence, the Galarans had begged them to reconsider. After some prevarication the Asgard again told them categorically no to a request for advanced shields and weapons but if while they were randomly dialling symbols on their stargate they were to put in this particular set and sent a radio transmission through saying hello they might be able to obtain what they were after from another advanced human world. Although they tried to abide by the letter of the law the Asgard were not above being slightly underhanded however, they had been basically bluffing the goa’uld for centuries after all.

After the usual debate and attempted political points scoring the IOA approved the negotiation with the System Lords and they were instructed to travel to a neutral planet where they would be met by SG-7 and an X-COM Squad before being escorted to Earth. It had been decided that a show of strength was warranted so the world chosen for the rendezvous was one close to Earth and when the delegation arrived to meet their Tau’ri escorts they found themselves beneath the shadow of USAF Prometheus hovering above. Once they had embarked on the next stage of their journey, stepping through the stargate to Earth, Prometheus would immediately head home too at full speed to retake its role as a guardship but it was felt that reminding the System Lords that the humans had hyperdrive capable capital ships and therefore offensive as well as defensive ability was important.

Colonel Rodrigues was commanding the X-COM squad that met the goa’uld under the shadow of the BC-303 and it was evident from the reaction of Camulus that he recognised the name although he didn’t say so. Rodrigues, now referred to by the goa’uld as the First Prime of the Tau’ri Warlord Sharp of Canada, had bloodily defeated the garrison and blown up many buildings on Camulodunon earning the wrath of Camulus to add to everyone else he had already riled as he obeyed his bosses general orders to “Kill, maim, loot and pillage”. The price on his head was already starting to catch up with that on the likes of Daniel Jackson, if not yet rivalling the huge sum in shesh’ta that would be paid out to whoever killed either the infamous O’Neill or the despised shol’va Teal’c and provided proof to the High Council of the System Lords.

Whilst Camulus was clearly becoming angry, and Lord Yu and his ever-present First-Prime Oshu seemed to be completely ignoring the Tau’ri as the chappa’ai was dialled for Earth, Morrigan the third of the goa’uld representing the System Lords couldn’t help but be intrigued by the ship above their heads and also the human warriors, particularly those wearing the mechanical armour they occasionally wore into battle. The design aesthetic of the vessel they called Prometheus was horrible of course, and ranks of polished Jaffa might have made more of a show, but the Tau’ri were an intriguing society and it was hard not to have a grudging admiration for a skilled foe she thought. When they were finally crushed she would have to try and capture as many of them as she could and add them to her armies she decided, the Jaffa of Morrigan had always shown more loyalty than most and this was because she took pains to see to their well-being. It wasn’t done out of compassion of course, it was simply born from a realisation that they would fight harder and be less likely to desert her if she didn’t treat them as being quite so disposable.

To Weirs annoyance the IOA had insisted that although she would lead the negotiations Commander Sharp would be present also, if mainly in an effort to cash in on the propaganda campaign. He and General Hammond, another name well-known to the goa’uld as a senior Tau’ri soldier, would mostly be there as a reminder that Earth had a worrisome track record of beating the odds and defeating the goa’uld even before they enjoyed their apparent recent leap in military capability.

As Weir waited at the end of the ramp at the SGC stargate, Sharp and Hammond flanking her a step behind indicating she was in charge, Daniel was watching from the control room above. Sam along with Teal’c and Lyudmila were probably close to arriving in the Ida galaxy on the old Beliskner Class ship called the Sigrdrífa which had collected them by now. Apparently the Asgard used the few Beliskners they still had in service as bulk transport ships these days, and after dropping off Heimdall and her stuff on the new Asgard capital world of Orilla it would then ferry the SG-1 members on the remaining short hop to the Hala system where Thor and his temporary command the brand new science vessel Daniel Jackson (when he found out the ships name Daniel was grateful not to be going) were doing very unpleasant things to a sun.

The now very pregnant Doctor Frasier, she had steadfastly refused to get married until after the birth because she didn’t want to have an album of wedding photographs where she was clearly knocked-up, was stood beside Daniel having declined the offer of a seat from Master Sergeant Harriman. As the gate activated with an incoming wormhole and the SG-7 IDC transmission was confirmed Daniel noted Frasier’s expression. ‘Going to miss all the excitement?’ he asked.

‘I’m going on maternity leave, I’m not quitting the program’ Janet replied. ‘I’ll be back on active duty before you know it’ she said. ‘I already raised one child whilst working here, this one will just be smaller for a while’ she told him.

‘At least Cassie doesn’t need so much looking after these days’ Daniel noted with a smile.

‘No I just stress about her more’ Janet replied.

Daniel chuckled as the iris became to open. ‘So what’s it like having a certain Commander living under your roof when he’s not at the Omega Site?’ he asked her.

‘It’s not so bad, he veers between fussing and ignoring me completely if he’s focused on something else though’ Janet replied. ‘I really need to get him to stop taking all those drugs’ she opined. ‘I didn’t get so much as four words out of him last night, he was stuck on a computer most of the evening.’

‘Yes he said this morning he was doing in-depth research into how to handle negotiations’ Daniel replied, as the three System Lords stepped out through the gate with Oshu following behind his master.

Janet laughed. ‘He surfed the net for maybe three-quarters of an hour and spent the rest of the time playing some computer game’ she told him.

Elizabeth Weir stepped forward smiling. ‘Welcome to Earth’ she began. ‘Allow me to introduce...’

‘We are not interested in your name’ Camulus interrupted her curtly.

Weir maintain her poise. ‘Really?’ she responded unperturbed, ‘I find it generally helps so much...’

‘We prefer to present our offer, so we can spend as brief a time as possible on this planet’ Morrigan cut her off this time.

Ever the professional diplomat the demeanour of the System Lords didn’t faze Weir at all and she was about to simply direct them in the direction of the conference room when Commander Sharp took two steps forward bringing himself to her side, glaring at each of the Goa’uld in turn and his hand now placed on the holster of his pistol in an obvious threat. ‘You might not want to know our names’ he growled, ‘but this is Doctor Elizabeth Weir head of this facility and our lead negotiator and I am Commander Russell Sharp of X-COM’ he continued. ‘While you are here I want you to always keep one thing at the forefront of your minds’ he told them. ‘OUR WORDS ARE BACKED BY NAQUADRIA WEAPONS’ he thundered.

Whilst it was taking all of Weir's willpower not to sink her face into her hands Daniel turned to Janet in the control room overlooking the scene. ‘I’ve been known to while away a few hours playing the Civilization games too’ he admitted, ‘never thought to apply anything taken from them in real life though’ he added as the System Lords began to recover from their shock at being talked to that way.

I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.

Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – June 2004

A look from Weir as they left the gate-room had been enough to tell Commander Sharp his presence during negotiations with the System Lords was neither required nor welcome and since the IOA in their infinite wisdom had placed her in charge of the SGC he took the hint and left them to it, deciding to seek out Janet to ask if she wanted him to pickup takeout food before heading to her place later.

The Goa’uld had already collected themselves again by the time they sat down at the table, any temporary disruption in their sense of innate superiority and the certainty that they were the dominant party in the discussions due to Sharps less than veiled threat having faded fast. As well as Weir being there to represent Earth both General Hammond and Daniel were also present to act as advisors, and in Hammond’s case as an observer too now he was based out of Washington DC.

Having both Sharp and Hammond at the Mountain, if only for a short while, was not helping Weir in her efforts to be seen and accepted as being in charge. The overwhelming majority of personnel still regarded General Hammond as being the man that should still be running the SGC and of the rest most were X-COM and thought that Sharp should be, or at least that known liberal do-gooder Weir certainly shouldn’t be. It was an awkward situation to be in but at least this particular day’s task was something that was within her demonstrated skills-set, diplomacy, bargaining and negotiation was where Elizabeth Weir truly shined and she was determined to damn well prove it.

Despite the fact that Lord Yu was the senior System Lord in attendance, being not only the most venerable and established but also still possessing the greatest quantity of military assets, Camulus seemed to be leading the discussions from the goa’uld side. ‘Your unexpected defeat of Anubis has created an unstable situation among the System Lords. In order to avoid open war, we came to an agreement to divide his territories and his armies evenly’ he told the Tau’ri.

‘How civilised of you’ Daniel replied.

‘Yes’ Camulus replied, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘Unfortunately, one among us has broken that agreement’ he noted.

‘Baal’ Weir replied, ‘we know that he and his allies Bastet, Kali and Amatarasu have been starting to launch attacks on the other goa’uld after licking their wounds inflicted by Anubis’ she said.

Camulus nodded. ‘Although Anubis did press Baal very hard before he launched his attack on Earth his shipyards emerged unscathed and he has proven able to rebuild his fleets in short order on previous occasions’ he said, ‘most notably after the war with Apophis’ he added.

‘Even so according to our intelligence Anubis and Loki crippled much of both Baals offensive striking force and that of his allies’ Weir noted. ‘Anubis knew we would destroy quite a lot of his fleet attacking Earth directly, even if he defeated us, and he didn’t want Baal on his back straight away taking advantage.’

Morrigan looked from Camulus to Weir. ‘True’ she agreed, ‘but although his fleet is still a long way from recovering its losses he has obtained a considerable edge over the rest of us in ground combat to compensate’ she told Weir.

‘Which is?’ Weir queried.

‘Thoth, the scientist who created the Kull Warriors for Anubis, offered his services to Baal once it became known that his previous master was dead’ Camulus explained. ‘He also likely bought with him the Ancient and Asgard technology Anubis had used to create his most advanced ships so we can expect to see the newest model Al’kesh and Ha’tak vessels appearing in Baals service in time too’ he told her. ‘We have already faced the new Deathgliders with their shields and rapid-fire weapons.’

‘Baal has Kull Warriors now?’ Daniel asked in surprise.

‘Small numbers so far but more every day’ Morrigan replied. ‘He also has another type of abomination flying his Deathgliders’ she continued, ‘one originally created by the rogue Asgard Loki’ she said.. With those Orac at his command, Baal has tipped the balance of power in his favour.’

‘We call the pilots Aereons’ General Hammond said with distaste. The genetically-engineered super-pilots with their cybernetic upgrades were generally thought of as being the Kull Warriors of the skies. Placed in the cockpit of an upgraded Deathglider they went through squadrons of Jaffa pilots much like the Kull went through Jaffa infantry, they simply outclassed the opposition.

‘Kull and Aereons’ Weir commented. ‘Thoth is really earning his keep’ she said. ‘I imagine he thought that Baal would be the highest bidder?’ she suggested.

‘It is likely he was offered a small domain of his own’ Camulus replied, ‘the promise of a System or two carved from the territory of one of the defeated System Lords after Baals victory’ he said. ‘Nerus has a similar arrangement’ he noted.

Lord Yu beckoned his First Prime closer and whispered something in his ear. ‘My Master points out that with both Nerus and Thoth now in his service Baal is likely to increase his technological superiority over the other System Lords’ Oshu spoke up. ‘Although they are known to dislike each other personally their rivalry may spur them to greater heights of inventiveness.’

‘Some among us have already spoken of capitulation’ Camulus told the Tau’ri.

‘Well, this is all very interesting I'm sure’ Weir replied, ‘but I fail to see what it has to do with us’ she added.

Yu whispered to Oshu again. ‘My master wishes to say, it is well known the Tau'ri possess powerful new weapons of many types’ the Jaffa said, including a weapon of the Ancients.’

‘Yes’ Daniel confirmed. ‘We used the Ancient weapon to destroy the remainder of Anubis’s Fleet’ he said.

‘By means of these weapons, Baal can be prevented from conquering the galaxy’ Oshu said.

Camulus looked Weir in the eyes. ‘If Baal defeats us, how long do you think it will be before he turns his attention to you?’ he asked rhetorically.

Weir looked unconcerned, the goa’uld had no idea the only person who they knew for sure could operate the Control Chair that launched and guided the Ancient Drones was currently in stasis. ‘If he does he'll suffer the same fate as Anubis’ she replied dismissively.

‘Perhaps’ Morrigan conceded. ‘But there are other worlds in this galaxy without the luxury of such advanced defences’ she pointed out.

‘Meaning?’ General Hammond asked.

‘Although the Asgard sent vessels to defend a small number of other worlds which were under attack we noticed that they did not dispatch a warship to Earth’ Morrigan observed. ‘It is said that the Asgard Fleet is overstretched and cannot even defend all the worlds listed under the Protected Planets Treaty let alone interfere with the goa’uld on a wider scale’ she said.

‘They didn’t send a ship here because they knew we could beat Anubis without them’ Weir responded, deliberately adopting a condescending smile. ‘Ask the goa’uld who attacked Galar and and K’Tau if the Asgard still defend worlds that can’t protect themselves... assuming any of them made it home alive to ask’ she added, her smile becoming a smirk.

‘But could you or they stand up to the goa’uld united by a single leader?’ Camulus asked. ‘Anubis already destroyed the myth of Asgard invincibility and others say that Loki demonstrates that the Asgard are not even as unified as we generally believed’ he said. ‘You defeated thirty Ha’tak, could you stand up to three-hundred?’ he queried.

Elizabeth Weir laughed. ‘Yes but don’t expect me to say how many motherships could overwhelm us, that’s still a classified military secret’ she bluffed. In reality far few than three hundred goa’uld Ha’tak could do the job she knew, for one thing the Goa’uld could just drop out of hyperspace all around the planet and open fire on the surface destroying every major city before the Drones could destroy them or drive them off.

‘Three hundred would take us years to clean up though’ Daniel told Weir, playing along. ‘Although it could be a financial opportunity’ he continued thoughtfully, ‘Is there a market for Ha’tak spares?’ he asked Camulus. ‘We’ve already got a few million tons of them if you want to make an offer.’

‘Your overconfidence will be your undoing’ Morrigan warned.

‘You must see that it is better for the Tau’ri that Baal does not dominate the galaxy’ Camulus told Weir, ‘we know you did battle against Apophis and then Anubis to prevent such an outcome’ he continued. ‘Even if you can defend your world, and the Asgard can protect the other twenty-six planets named by the Treaty, thousands of others have no such defence.’

‘You see yourselves as the champions of your race do you not?’ Morrigan asked Weir. ‘Would you stand idly bye and let countless humans die during Baals war of conquest?’

‘What is it exactly that you want?’ Weir asked.

‘We ask for Tau’ri military intervention against Baal’ Camulus replied.

‘So basically our soldiers dying to defend your worlds, or were you hoping to be supplied with our superior weapons?’ Weir replied, making sure to stress “superior” as she said it.

‘We were hoping that you would utilise your weapons to destroy Baal’s Fleet and his shipyards’ Morrigan told her. ‘If we had complete orbital superiority then the Kull become mere insects to be crushed at our leisure.’

‘Insects that still have a nasty sting’ Daniel noted.

‘If Baal cannot protect the nest does that matter?’ Camulus responded.

Weir was tempted to continue with the metaphor herself but the fact was they couldn’t use the Ancient Drones against Baal, at least not yet, so it was perhaps best to end this charade before someone realised what amounted to little more than bluff. ‘Perhaps when this facility was run by our military they would have accepted your proposal but I’m a diplomat and see this as primarily an internal goa’uld political dispute’ she said.

Lord Yu was becoming angry, he slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Enough’ he bellowed, ‘with each passing moment Anubis becomes more powerful’ he exclaimed.

The other goa’uld looked at him, frowning. ‘You mean Baal’ Daniel reminded him, at least the senile old bastard hadn’t said Apophis, that was two wars ago he thought to himself.

‘My Master is fatigued’ Oshu said hurriedly, ‘we request a short adjournment’ he said.

Yu turned to his First Prime. ‘Silence’ he ordered. ‘I need no adjournment’ he told the others.

Camulus decided to get the negotiations back on track. ‘We know you have a formidable defensive weapon, plus some limited ability to launch offensives against your enemies’ he addressed Weir, ‘we are prepared to offer hyperdrive engines that are likely more advanced than...’

‘We already have faster hyperdrives than you’ Weir interrupted him. ‘What else have you got to offer?’ she asked.

Morrigan frowned and looked at Camulus doubtfully. ‘Perhaps they obtained the design used by Apophis somehow?’ she theorised to him.

‘No we’ve got a hyperdrive that is faster than any vessel used by the goa’uld’ Weir told them. It was technically true but at the moment she was also accurate in using the singular and she neglected to mention the severely diminished operational life-span.

‘The Asgard gave you their hyperdrive technology?’ Camulus queried, ‘that could be seen as violating the Protected Planets Treaty’ he pointed out.

‘It’s not an Asgard design it’s a goa’uld design upgraded to Ancient specifications’ Weir told them, ‘you didn’t think we only obtained one of their weapon systems did you?’ she asked rhetorically, letting the goa'uld jump to the conclusion that the Tau'ri might not be awash with Ancient devices. The IOA had cleared her to reveal the information regarding the upgraded drive, they wanted the System Lords to know Earth had a means to almost instantly retaliate against any future attacks. Deterrence rather than the immediate pre-emptive strike Commander Sharp continued to advocate.

‘Would you would be interested in naquadah supplies as payment then’ Morrigan queried.

‘We’ve so much of that stockpiled we’ve cut back production, so not really’ Weir replied, her voice sounding almost bored.

Camulus pursed his lips. ‘You are familiar with the sarcophagus’ he said, ‘with those you could...’

‘We make our own, actually we’re working on a better one than yours because the original Ancient Device it was based upon is now in our possession’ Daniel told them.

Camulus was starting to get annoyed now. ‘Staff Cannon...’ he began.

‘How many do you want?’ Hammond asked. ‘We’ve got warehouses full of captured goa’uld weaponry’ he told him. This was fun, he thought.

Morrigan had a thought. ‘This Ancient weapon’ she said, ‘such an advanced piece of technology’ she continued. ‘The power requirements must be enormous. Even simple maintenance must be extremely difficult, given your limited capabilities’ she surmised.

‘We manage’ Weir responded.

‘Of course, we believe you’ Morrigan replied. ‘But I wonder what Baal would think if he were to receive intelligence that the weapon was temporarily out of commission’ she asked. ‘Would he consider it wise to attack the Tau’ri before they had grown too strong with their other weapons?’

‘He would have to take advantage of the window of opportunity’ Camulus responded. ‘The Tau’ri would be forced to destroy him.’

‘And we would have to give them nothing’ Morrigan concurred.

‘We didn’t actually want anything you were offering’ Daniel noted. ‘Baal would never fall for that anyway. He knows how desperate you are. I think he might find this information a little bit convenient’ he added.

‘Perhaps, but you leave us few option’ Camulus replied.

Weir didn’t like where this was heading, time for another tactic, she thought. ‘Okay we’ll do it’ she told the goa’uld.

Daniel raised his eyebrows. ‘We will?’ he asked in confusion.

‘In exchange we want Baal’s territory’ she declared.

The three System Lords looked at each other. ‘All of it?’ Camulus responded.

‘Well, that's the way it works right?’ Weir checked. ‘When one System Lord kills another, he takes over his armies, his fleet, his planets. That's what we want’ she said. ‘Everything in Baal's possession’ she told them.

‘The High Council would never agree’ Camulus replied, then took a deep breath letting it back out slowly. ‘Much of his territory consists of Systems that formerly belonged to Ra and Apophis’ he said, ‘they are the closest to Earth’ he said. ‘We might be prepared to cede you that part of his domain upon his defeat’ he bargained.

This was certainly not the reaction Weir had been expecting and she almost choked but instead she managed to maintain a calm demeanour. ‘So we do the work and get left the scraps from your table’ she replied, ‘not good enough’ she said.

‘You don’t have the ships to hold more than a fraction of Baal’s current holdings’ Morrigan stated. ‘As Camulus said none of the nearby systems ever belonged to any of the High Council so we would not be losing face if they came into your control’ she said.

‘We will accept the Tau’ri ownership of every system within... fifty light-years of this one’ Camulus told Weir. The other System Lords would probably agree to that.

‘Five hundred’ Weir replied, she had simply multiplied his offer by ten.

‘Ridiculous’ Yu responded.

‘That would include some worlds belonging to other members of the High Council’ Camulus told her.

‘We're reasonable people so two hundred and fifty light years, take it or leave it’ Weir told them

Camulus grimaced. ‘We will have to consult with the others’ he said. ‘Take us to the chappa’ai’ he told Weir.

After the System Lords left the room, Hammond following to keep an eye on them, Daniel remained behind with Weir. ‘I assume you were trying to make a demand they wouldn’t accept without sounding like you were doing that’ Daniel asked.

‘Yes’ Weir replied, ‘I was caught off-guard when they offered us any territory at all’ she said. ‘How much of the galaxy did I ask for anyway?’ she wondered.

‘Well thanks to spending an awful lot of time with Sam I know the Milky Way is a hundred-thousand light-years across so not much I guess?’

Bill Lee walked in wearing a white Lab Coat and an amused smile, he was carrying a clipboard. ‘I hope you don’t mind me intruding’ he said. ‘Camulus is communicating with the other System Lords via an encrypted signal sent through the gate, he’s typing the message into some gadget he had with him, and we’ve been decoding it almost right away thanks to information we got on goa’uld ciphers from the Tok’ra’ he told them. ‘So far they don’t seem happy’ he said. ‘I was also asked to work out how many stars lie within two-hundred and fifty light-years of Earth and I thought you’d be interested’ he added.

‘Hundreds?’ Weir wondered.

‘No, it’s a few more than that’ Lee told her with a chuckle. ‘Some of them are binary stars of course so it’s not quite this many systems but we’re talking over a quarter of a million’ he announced.

‘A quarter of a million’ Weir repeated slowly before sighing with relief. ‘Okay, they’ll never agree to that’ she said.

‘Only a very small proportion have a stargate though’ Lee noted. ‘In the galaxy as a whole there are hundreds of billions of stars so a quarter-million isn’t actually a lot.’

‘So what do we do if they do agree to your terms then?’ Daniel asked Weir nervously.

‘You mean other than me trying to explain to the UN and the IOA that not only have I gotten us involved in another major war as an official ally of the High Council of the System Lords but that somehow I’ve accidentally turned Earth into an imperial power that rules over a quarter-million stars?’ Weir replied.

Daniel looked thoughtful. ‘You need to work on your phrasing’ he advised. ‘Though on the plus side you may have earned the undying gratitude of X-COM’ he told her.

Weir blinked. ‘Suddenly I feel so dirty’ she said bleakly.





Hala System – Galaxy of Ida – June 2004

‘It’s very beautiful’ Lyudmila Andianov observed as she watched the planets of the Hala System continue to break up and spiral to their fates in the newly created black hole which had once been their sun.

‘Beautiful?’ Teal’c queried.

‘In the way that a desert or a polar wasteland can be’ Andianov explained. ‘The dark beauty of desolation’ she added.

‘I thought Russians only got poetic about tractors’ Samantha Carter joked.

Andianov looked away from the scene of destruction. ‘You are thinking of Ukrainians’ she replied.

They were on the bridge of the Asgard Science Vessel Daniel Jackson with Thor sat in his chair monitoring the situation as the Hala System was wrought apart. The Beliskner Class ship Sigrdrífa had dropped them and their supplies off with Thor and then headed back to Orilla while the Daniel Jackson moved closer to the Black Hole. Now they were enjoying the sight of the Replicators being finished off once and for all, even the normally placid and civilised Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet had a definite aura of primitive vengefulness about him as Hala died, taking the killer von-neuman machines with it. His people had been fighting them for century after century and they had killed many of his friends and colleagues over the years so perhaps a little atavistic barbarism was understandable.

Hala itself was breaking apart thanks to the gravitational sheer. The planets which had been closer to the sun were already nothing but debris, falling inexorably towards the event horizon of the artificially created singularity, and the former Asgard colony was about to share their fate. You had to give the Asgard credit for not dealing in half measures, they expected the Replicators would eventually escape from the time-dilation field which trapped them and so they were making sure to pre-empt that situation by putting the Replicators somewhere they couldn’t escape from. Once you were sucked into a Black Hole there was no getting back out, for that matter the time-dilation effects of even getting too close made the field they were already bound by look pretty unimpressive.

‘This is strange’ Thor said, his expression as close to a frown as his race developed.

‘I guess you’re not referring to the fact we’re watching the accretion disk of a star where the gravity was artificially increased to collapse it’ Carter replied.

‘No, we’ve done this before to deal with a star we feared was close to supernova and which was too close to an inhabited system’ Thor replied. ‘Although the planet is breaking apart it seems that a large number of Replicators have managed to come together in a coherent mass that is not spiralling towards the event horizon’ he said, pressing a control to turn the display console he was looking at towards Carter.

Carter shrugged. ‘Well, even if they can withstand the gravitational force without being torn apart there's no way they could ever….’ she began.

‘Interesting’ Thor cut her off.

‘What is it?’ Carter asked him.

‘The mass of replicator blocks have begun moving further away from the event horizon’ Thor told her.

‘How is that possible?’ Carter queried.

‘They have the time dilation device’ Thor replied. ‘I do not know exactly how, but they seem to have used it to counteract the gravitational effects that should be pulling them in’ he explained as best he could.

‘Frightening’ Carter responded. ‘Not only that they can do that, but that you don't know how’ she said.

‘I agree’ Thor replied. ‘They are picking up speed. Scans indicate the blocks have formed together’ he told the humans.

‘Into what?’ Teal’c asked.

‘A ship’ Thor replied. ‘They are escaping. Their course indicates they are headed this way’ he said.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Carter asked the Asgard.

‘No, and it is doubtful my ship's weapons will be effective against it’ Thor replied. ‘This science vessel is not even as heavily armed as the Beliskner I once commanded’ he continued. ‘And we retired those as front-line warships because they could not effectively fight the Replicators.’

‘We should probably get out of here then, huh?’ Carter suggested seriously. ‘Can you jump into hyperspace?’

‘We must clear the gravitational distortion field of the black hole first’ Thor replied, starting to activate other controls, the ship turning as he did so. ‘They are also interfering with subspace communications.’

The Daniel Jackson began to pick up speed, accelerating against the gravity holding it back. The Replicator vessel was gaining fast however, as it closed it fired something at them.

‘They have fired upon us’ Thor announced.

‘Can it penetrate your shields?’ Carter asked him.

‘It is more than likely’ Thor replied evenly. That’s it, he thought to himself, from now on I’m never going anywhere unless I’m aboard an O’Neill Class ship he decided bitterly. ‘Brace for impact’ he warned.

The Daniel Jackson shook and the sound of an almighty distant thump towards the stern of the ship indicated the Replicator weapon had gone right through the shield and hit them.

Thor looked at the damage control computer display that was urgently trying to attract his attention. ‘The hull is breached’ he told the humans.

‘Where’ Carter asked him.

Thor activated a control that projected an internal schematic of the ship. ‘The damage is minimal’ he said. ‘The projectile was likely composed of Replicators’ he continued. ‘They are not visible to my ship's scanners. This is how they have boarded Asgard ships in the past’ he added.

‘Can you use the shields to prevent decompression in those sections?’ Carter asked him.

‘Yes’ Thor replied.

‘I think we need to repel boarders’ Carter told Teal’c and Andianov.

‘We are not suitably armed’ Teal’c pointed out.

Carter turned to Thor. ‘Have you got the schematics for our projectile weapons?’ she asked. ‘Can you make copies?’

‘Yes’ Thor replied. ‘I have an extensive database of Earth weaponry, its effectiveness against Replicators ensured my people made sure to have them available even though we are not well-suited to carry them or handle the recoil’ he said.

‘Three AA-12 Automatic shotguns, six 32 round drums of buckshot per weapon’ Carter told him.

‘They are being created’ Thor replied, pointing to a device where the first AA-12 was already appearing, seemingly from mid air. Asgard science was fiendishly advanced which was unfortunate given that the Replicators had assimilated so much of it.

‘This trip is turning out to be far more enjoyable than I feared it would’ Andianov said brightly, moving to collect the weapon.

As they headed back through the ship the sounds of Replicators scurrying about grew louder and more distinct. ‘I think they may be inside the walls’ Teal’c told the others, placing his ear against a bulkhead.

‘We need Replicator traps’ Andianov opined, ‘do you think a large mousetrap with a piece of high technology as bait instead of cheese would work?’ she asked, eyes scanning the environment, weapon shouldered.

‘I’ve baited them before’ Carter replied, ‘of course that was with a whole ship’ she noted.

The sound of a torrent of metal feet clinking against the deck up ahead had all three taking up firing positions as a large number of Replicators appeared from around a junction in the corridor. ‘Not all in the walls then’ Carter observed. ‘Open fire’ she ordered.

Firing at a rate of three hundred shells per minute the AA-12 firing buckshot had proven to be an extremely effective way of dealing with Replicators. The spread of the shot meant that each shotgun shell could be relied upon to shatter several of the things at once and being hosed over the tide of metallic bugs surging towards them the trio of fully-automatic shotguns was more than enough to effectively deal with the things, blocks sent in all directions.

The recoil was fierce and Carter knew her shoulder was going to ache like hell later but she had to admit that the Sergeant was right about this being fun, she thought. Ejecting the first drum which was now empty and starting to load another, which had been hooked to her belt, Carter saw that Teal’c was already firing his second drum whilst Andianov had been firing only aimed single shots, albeit still quite rapidly, and was still on her first magazine. The Russian was carefully picking her shots, taking out the Replicators that were ahead of the main mass that Teal’c was firing into, none shall pass, Carter thought with a grin as she started firing again.

Tactically the Replicators were not very skilled. They rarely had to be since they always had weight of numbers and for the most part their foes had employed ineffectually energy weapons, but as they skittered towards the human soldiers and were blasted into their component pieces Teal’c couldn’t help but wonder if the Tau’ri considered fighting Jaffa being much like this? Certainly the goa’uld cared as little for their slave warriors as the Replicator collective cared for each individual within their ranks and even today some of the System Lords had yet to recognise that attempting to charge down Tau’ri automatic weapons was simply insane. ‘The enemy numbers are decreasing Major Carter’ he told her.

‘We should try and flush these blocks into space somehow’ Carter replied as the attack petered out. The last few were shot down and then Teal’c walked forward and scattered the piles of blocks to make it harder for them to reform.

Carter looked around. ‘Thor should be able to vent this section into space once we are clear’ she said.

‘I can still hear more of them’ Andianov said as the sound of gunfire echoing down the corridors ceased.

‘We’ll get rid of these first and then come back and finish off the rest’ Carter responded.

A single replicator appeared from behind some ducting looking like it was about to attack Carter who was nearest, before anyone could fire however she disappeared in a flash that was identical to an Asgard transporter beam. Andianov took out the replicator before Teal’c could and he took out his radio. ‘Thor, it is Teal'c. Major Carter was beamed away. Is she in your presence?’ he asked.

‘I did not do it. The Replicators must have her ’ Thor replied.

More of them appeared, though far fewer than earlier and pushing the fate of Major Carter from their minds for the moment Teal’c and Andianov began engaging them. They had to deal with the boarders before they could consider other things.

Clear of the sub-space distortions caused by the Black Hole the replicator vessel jumped into hyperspace. Thor vented the areas of the ship Teal’c told him to and as the blocks were sucked into space along with the atmosphere in the stern compartments the two remaining members of SG-1 aboard returned to the bridge.

‘We have eliminated all the replicators we could locate’ Teal’c told the Asgard.

‘There is no way of knowing if there are more. The replicator ship has entered hyperspace’ Thor replied.

‘Can you follow?’ Teal’c asked.

‘Yes’ Thor confirmed, powering up the Neutrino-Ion Generators and bringing his FTL engines on-line to give chase. As the Daniel Jackson pursued the replicators into hyperspace Thor told the humans that the sections of the ship he had vented were now sealed again and being pressurised. Andianov told him she would go back and search for any remaining bugs whilst Teal’c remained on the bridge.

‘Do you know its destination?’ Teal’c asked Thor as they followed the enemy ship.

‘Before you destroyed them, the replicators managed to access the ship's computer’ Thor replied. ‘They learned the location of Orilla, the planet where we are attempting to rebuild the Asgard civilisation. I assumed it would be their first target’ he said.

‘What is your reasoning?’ Teal’c queried.

‘Orilla is rich in neutronium, which is a key element in Asgard technology’ Thor explained. ‘It is also essential for the creation of human-form replicators’ he noted.

Carter had found herself onboard the replicator ship. As she made her way along a corridor entirely faced with replicator blocks she reached out and gingerly touched them, being reminded of the surface of Hala after it had been consumed by the machines.

A familiar figure seemed to simply step out of the wall next to her. ‘Major Carter’ the human-form replicator known as Fifth greeted her.

‘Fifth’ Carter replied, this could be good or bad news she thought.

‘I imagine you never expected to see me again’ Fifth remarked, his expression was not friendly.

‘Look, I'm sorry we left you behind, but we had to do it’ Carter told him. ‘We couldn't risk the others getting out. You know what they're capable of. I know you must be upset’ she tried to sooth him.

‘Upset?’ Fifth responded as if that was the understatement of the epoch.

‘We betrayed you, it must have hurt’ Carter continued, trying to placate him, trying to reach out to his humanity, assuming he had some. ‘See, that's the part of you that's most like us. The human part of you. I understand how you feel’ she said.

Fifth moved towards her, Carter nervously backing up as far as she could as he approached. ‘No you don't! You couldn't’ he replied. ‘But I promise, you will’ he added, smirking as he pushed his hand into her forehead.

As the Daniel Jackson gradually closed on the replicator ship, her hyperdrive marginally faster than the one propelling the other vessel Thor was already making plans.

‘How can we stop them?’ Teal’c asked.

‘My ship's weapons will not function in hyperspace’ Thor replied. ‘Much like the shields’ he continued, ‘however, in close proximity, the self destruct may be sufficient to eliminate both ships. I am sorry, but we have no choice’ he said. ‘If the human-form replicators reach Orilla, they will have the resources to replicate many thousands of times. We cannot allow that to happen.

‘So be it’ Teal’c replied, he had no doubt that Sergeant Andianov would concur.

Just as they neared the other ship however the Daniel Jackson began to lose ground again. ‘We are slowing down. Something is interfering with the controls’ Thor announced. ‘The auxiliary control console, outside the engine room’ he said.

Teal’c took up his radio again. ‘Sergeant I believe we may have yet more Replicators aboard’ he said.

By the time they dealt with the last of them the replicator ship was too far ahead for the Daniel Jackson to catch up. It would be now for the Asgard Fleet to try and stop them in orbit above Orilla.

As the replicator ship emerged from hyperspace it was engaged by six O’Neill Class warships and was quickly destroyed but large sections continued on into the atmosphere. By the time Thor arrived with the Daniel Jackson the replicators had reached the surface and were already increasing in number, starting to take over the capital city itself.

Thor could only think of one place where he might find some means of winning the battle. It was a good thing that although the science vessel was far from a match for an Asgard Warship in firepower it certainly did not lack for speed compared to its larger brethren, he set course for Earth at full speed and hoped Orilla would still be worth saving by the time he got back.





Orilla – Galaxy of Ida – June 2004

Penigal leader of the Asgard High Council had no idea what Thor was doing but Orilla was going to fall and the Asgard were not well suited or properly equipped to fight this kind of war. There were replicators in the city, more of them in the surrounding forests and since having the fleet blast the region into oblivion from orbit wasn’t much of an option he called for urgent suggestions.

Heimdall only recently returned from Earth immediately made one, the Asgard might not be able to fight this kind of war but they knew a race that could. After a moments deliberation Pengal ordered Aegir the senior officer commanding the Asgard Fleet above Orilla to immediately depart with his ship the Valhalla for the galaxy the humans called the Milky Way at full speed, his destination the world the humans called Terra Nova or the Omega Site once there he would make a plea for urgent assistance.

Thor arrived at Earth minutes before Aegir reached the Omega Site and after narrowly avoiding being fired upon as his unannounced arrival greatly agitated Colonel Chekov aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov he promptly beamed up what he wanted and headed back to Ida planning to apologise to the human leadership later.

By the time Colonel O’Neill regained consciousness onboard the Daniel Jackson, suffering from a splitting headache and utterly confused not only about how he ended up there but also why Daniel, Teal’c, Andianov and Thor were waiting expectantly for him to explain what the weird gadget they insisted he had made was, the Valhalla was itself half way back to Ida with Aegir pushing the engines of his own ship well beyond safe limits.

O’Neill was trying to make sense of the situation. According to Daniel Thor had apparently beamed him out of an Ancient Stasis Tube in Antarctica and whilst he remained comatose he had interfaced with the ships computer and had designed something virtually which the ship had then constructed according to his specifications. Since he had been filled up with Ancient knowledge Thor had hoped he might be able to come up with a means to fight the Replicators who had invaded the Asgard world Orilla and with any luck the gizmo was just the ticket the only problem was nobody knew what it was, how it worked or even how to turn it on.

Still none the wiser when they arrived back in orbit around Orilla Thor had decided to look for another exploitable weakness in the foe and had beamed aboard the inert body of a humanform replicator that another Asgard vessel had located floating in the wreckage of the enemy ship that hadn’t made it into the atmosphere. As he scanned it trying to sift through its memory banks Andianov made the not unreasonable comment that if they were going to be doing something like this then they should have picked up some elerium weapons on Earth given that elerium was not a substance that you could easily produce using Asgard beaming technology and only elerium plasma bolts had proven themselves effective against these things in the past. O’Neill pointed out it was easy to be smart in hindsight to which the Sergeant replied she was never travelling without full battle-gear again and would ignore any comments about the destination being “perfectly safe”.

The Daniel Jackson detected the arrival from hyperspace of the Valhalla but at the time Thor was too busy panicking about the apparently far from dead humanform replicator escaping and trying to kill them all to pay much attention. As the humans tried to bring it down ineffectually with buckshot Aegir was bringing his O’Neill Class warship into orbit above the city and he began to beam down his cargo.

The replicators were advancing unimpeded through the city like soldier ants, only slowed in their path because they were devouring technology and metal in order to make more of themselves. Having already begun to disable computer networks the Replicators prevented Asgard civilians from simply beaming away to safety and they were forced to flee as best they could on foot, most wishing they had cloned a body type better suited for running.

A group of Asgard found themselves cut off from possible escape as they headed towards a ship that had set down and was now loading evacuees. There were not remotely enough ships to take everyone and it was dangerous for the ship to even stay as long as it already had but the Asgard were not cowards and their Fleet would not abandon the population, they would rescue all they could before leaving and then they would raze the planet.

Being chased between rows of gleaming skyscrapers the group of Asgard knew the Replicators were chasing them down. They would be killed and some of the elements within their bodies would be used to make more of the things, it was not a welcome prospect. They had lived for centuries and now they would be ended by a soulless metal plague, a hundred thousand years of Asgard civilisation lost to creatures that were originally toys made by a copy of a human that possessed the mind of a child. There was little justice in the universe apparently, they thought as they found themselves being surrounded on all sides.

One of the Asgard noticed other sounds intermixed with the relentless skittering of the replicators across concrete, stone and metal, the sounds grew louder and intermixed with explosions as another aggressive species arrived on Orilla and began demonstrating once again the proven effectiveness of lead propelled by chemical explosions.

‘Just remember, we only kill the bugs that look like lego’ Colonel Rodrigues yelled into his radio as he led the first elements of what he liked to think of as the X-COM Expeditionary Force to the Ida Galaxy into the fray. He was justifiably concerned that when the adrenaline kicked in his soldiers might accidentally gun down a few Asgard given their resemblance to the old Sectoid enemy but for now at least they were taking out a lot more replicators and were surely saving orders of magnitude more Asgard than they might accidentally shoot.

Ever since they had learned of the Replicators X-COM had been developing weapons to fight them with. Since they were supposedly trapped all the hardware had been placed in storage but it was not disposed of because there could be more of the things out there somewhere and besides which what killed replicators effectively would work on plenty of other things.

The basic starting point was the X-COM autocannon, a large-calibre multi-barrelled gatling-gun like weapon driven by an electric motor. Originally equipped by an ammunition clip firing high-explosive, armour-piercing or incendiary rounds it was now belt-fed from a large back-pack and was loaded with tungsten buckshot. The whole package was of course inordinately heavy, and the recoil of the scaled-up shotgun shells was extreme, but that was rather less of an issue when you were wearing Powered Armour.

In addition to the three platoons in Powered Armour Rodrigues had bought with him on the Valhalla there were also another five equipped with the less effective AA-12’s and a smattering of Heavy Plasma Rifles just in case the humanform types turned up and needed the X-COM treatment too. They formed a skirmish line and began advancing through the city shooting up the Replicators as they went, occasionally taking out groups of them with grenades and generally enjoying themselves. Aegir had beamed aboard all the ammunition for the weapons stored at the Omega Site and as they moved he sent down additional stocks to replenish what they had already fired. It would take the Asgard ages to dig all the tungsten and lead shot out of the buildings afterwards but the inconvenience was a price well worth paying.

The Fifth Race had arrived to fight Fifth and unlike the Asgard the new leader of the replicators was not happy about it. He was starting to dislike the species more and more especially given that Samantha Carter was still stubbornly refusing to accede to his wishes, or even fall for the false realities he was placing in her mind. There was a narrow boundary between love and hate and he was rapidly starting to cross it.

O’Neill didn’t know how he knew the gadget his mind created was a gun, maybe it was a remnant of memory left when Thor had wiped the Ancient knowledge from his mind, or perhaps it was simply a recognition that regardless of circumstances the inner Jack O’Neill would be thinking about making “Big Honking Spaceguns” but no matter how he knew once the humanform replicator started to attack he had picked up the thing found what he guessed was the trigger and fired a blast of energy which turned the thing into dust.

Thor had realised right away it was a means of nullifying the bonds between individual replicator parts, either blocks or the smaller particles that made up the humanform types. The Asgard had attempted to create such a weapon previously but had failed but now that he had seen it was possible and seen it done the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet was confident he could build a far larger version and destroy the entire replicator legion at once.

Whilst interfacing with the humanform replicator Thor had found that Major Carter was still alive and on the surface and so whilst he built the scaled-up weapon SG-1 were beamed down to the planet near her known location. O’Neill still armed with the Anti-Replicator-Weapon soon found it was just as effective at destroying the original type, maybe more so, each discharge destroying large numbers at once, the path of SG-1 through the forest they arrived in carpeted with replicator blocks as they advanced towards where carter was, Teal’c, Andianov and Daniel using AA-12’s to deal with strays.

Tens of thousands of replicators which had been eating their way through the city now changed direction and began flowing in another direction. At first Rodrigues thought it was a trap or ruse but a transmission from Aegir informing him that Thor had advised the other Asgard Ships that SG-1 were fighting the replicators with a powerful new weapon over where the bugs were heading had the X-COM Colonel ordering his men to give chase.

As the human soldiers coming from the city ran down his more primitive brethren Fifth appeared to SG-1 telling them he would kill Carter if they did not stop killing his kind. O’Neill paused for a moment but eventually SG-1 began fighting again, Fifth fleeing the scene heading back to the escape craft which he had ordered constructed.

‘We must leave’ Fifth told Carter. ‘They've found a means to fight us’ he said. ‘One far more effective than your projectile weapons though even they have killed many’ he added regretfully.

‘The Asgard?’ Carter replied. ‘How?’ she queried.

‘Not them, the one you call O’Neill’ Fifth told her. ‘So many will have to be left behind, we cannot wait for them, they will be killed’ he said sadly.

‘Don't expect me to be sorry’ Carter responded.

Fifth seemed distracted. ‘Your friends are killing many, trying to stop us escaping’ he said.

‘Trying to save me’ Carter told him.

‘No! They do not care about you. I told them I would kill you if they did not stop’ Fifth responded sharply.

‘Then why don't you kill me?’ Carter asked. ‘You know why my friends won't stop, just to save me?’

‘No’ Fifth replied, he was genuinely confused.

‘Because they know when it comes right down to it I would rather be dead than be trapped like this forever’ Carter told him. ‘No matter what you feel for me, I will never love you back. Kill me if you want, but if you have even one shred of humanity in you and you really, truly love me, you'll let me go’ she said.

As they neared the replicator ship SG-1 heard more firing, and shortly afterwards they were amazed when dozens of Powered Armour suits appeared bounding through the forest from the direction of the city firing at the replicators they were chasing. ‘How the hell did they get here?’ O’Neill asked rhetorically as SG-1 found itself tactically the anvil to the hammer, the fleeing replicators being driven straight towards the new weapon, nicely bunched up so it could have maximum effect.

The Daniel Jackson was just moving into position when the replicator ship took off, hurtling skywards and entering hyperspace before it even cleared the atmosphere. Thor fired the new weapon sending a wave of disruptive energy right around the planet shattering every replicator on Orilla.

Thor had given O’Neill an Asgard communicator and it squawked to life just after the wave hit. ‘O'Neill, the weapon worked. Reports from the colony say, all the remaining replicators have been neutralised. While the ship did escape, at least we have an effective means of fighting them now’ Thor signalled.

‘Yeah, well, at least there's that’ O’Neill replied sounding less than enthused.

‘O'Neill. I am detecting multiple additional human lifesigns in your immediate vicinity’ Thor now advised.

‘Yeah they’re hard to miss’ O’Neill replied as the X-COM soldiers in Powered Armour started to mill about, some kicking replicator blocks around and one heading for SG-1, pulling off his helmet. ‘Captain Gaston’ O’Neill greeted the officer as the helmet came off revealing who it was.

‘Colonel O’Neill’ Gaston replied, ‘I don’t suppose you can explain what just happened can you?’ he asked. ‘One second we were smashing up lego and the next there was nothing to shoot at’ he said as another soldier in Powered-Armour joined them, also lifting his helmet to reveal it was an equally puzzled looking Colonel Rodrigues.

‘Okay, I’ll tell you what happened if you say how you got here’ O’Neill offered fairly.

Rodrigues was about to reply when Thor’s voice interrupted again. ‘O’Neill, one of the human lifesigns did not come from the direction of the city and is located where the replicator ship previously was’ he said.

‘Carter’ O’Neill exclaimed, starting to run.

Aegir had given chase in the Valhalla but the replicator ship had gotten away. It had been built for speed at the expense of all else and even an O’Neill class vessel was unable to keep up though Aegir attempted to follow until it had left sensor range.

The IOA was extremely annoyed that the Asgard had basically taken O’Neill without permission and then shortly afterwards co-opted a full company of soldiers equipped with millions of dollars worth of military hardware, but politically they knew it might work out beneficially in the end because the Asgard owed Earth big this time and since they no longer needed the Asgard Fleet to defend Earth they could pull out of the Protected Planets Treaty entirely removing the legal obstacles to being given more advanced technology.

A certain X-COM Colonel was very pleased to be told that the next Asgard warship to be completed would be named the Gomez Rodrigues by a grateful Asgard High Council but it was the news that the little grey guys would be providing Earth with designs for their hyperdrives and latest shield generators that was greeted with more general enthusiasm. The faster capital-ship engines were particularly important now they had an area of space some five hundred light-years across to try and patrol and defend now after all.

I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.

UN Building – New York – June 2004

Shen Xiaoyi smiled and there was something about it that made Elizabeth Weir fear the worst. In the theatre of diplomacy that usually meant you needed to start checking for daggers in your back. ‘The shrimp are very good aren’t they?’ Weir asked, turning towards the buffet table that took up this side of the conferance room. This was supposed to be a friendly, somewhat informal meeting over lunch and that only made Weir more concerned because if they were trying to make you relaxed that meant they were going to really stick the knife in deep and planned to twist it too.

‘I’d have another but honestly I’ve probably already had a few too many of the canapés’ the Chinese representative to the IOA replied, smiling again. ‘Monsieur LaPierre seems to be having doubts about the cheese selection’ she observed, indicating the French representative who was casting dubious looks at another portion of the buffet.

‘Wait until he samples the wine’ Weir responded, with a smile of her own. ‘I’m surprised to see that Vice President Kinsey didn’t make it’ she said.

‘I’m sure he’s doing good works opening a school somewhere’ the Chinese diplomat replied putting just a touch of sarcasm into her tone. ‘The United States is already well represented by Mr Woolsey in any case’ she continued. The American currently involved in what seemed like a fairly heated discussion with Russell Chapman from the United Kingdom on the other side of the room.

Weir popped a shrimp into her mouth, chewed daintily then swallowed. ‘Do we know when our new Committee Chairman might be arriving?’ she asked.

‘Unfortunately his regular briefing of the Security Council is expected to overrun badly this time around’ Shen Xiaoyi replied. ‘We were asked to go ahead without him if he wasn’t able to get out of there before two o’clock’ she said, checking her watch. ‘It’s a pity however, Mr Strom was looking forward to telling you himself’ she added.

‘Telling me what?’ Weir queried, trying to sound nonchalant.

The Chinese IOA member gave into the urge to have another canapé and reached for the platter holding them. ‘That with the agreement of the Security Council that your brief tenure as Head of the SGC is coming to an end’ she said, biting the canapé in half.

Elizabeth Weir tried not to show too much reaction. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘I thought I was doing a good job and was well regarded?’ she replied.

Shen Xiaoyi swallowed the rest of the canapé. ‘Oh but you are’ she replied, ‘you could think of it as a promotion’ she said, ‘I certainly would in your shoes’ she told her.

Richard Woolsey and Russell Chapman came to join them. ‘You’ve told her I assume?’ Chapman asked the Chinese representative.

‘Only the part about the SGC’ she replied, ‘not about the Atlantis expedition’ she said.

‘Atlantis expedition?’ Weir responded in surprise. ‘I thought that had been shelved as even a possibility?’ she queried.

Woolsey shook his head. ‘Certainly the idea that we would further deplete the only means we have at present to power the Ancient Weapons Platform is out of the question’ he responded, ‘but an alternate method of charging the stargate sufficiently to allow a long-distance intergalactic wormhole has presented itself and so the mission is now very much back on the cards’ he said.

‘Alternate method of charging the stargate?’ Weir asked in confusion. ‘The briefing I received subsequent to Doctor Jackson discovering the eight symbols that dial the Lost City indicated that only a Zero Point Module or perhaps several Asgard Neutrino-Ion-Generators working in conjunction could do the job’ she said.

Chapman chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t claim to understand the science but we received an offer through diplomatic channels from Joseph Faxon our Ambassador on Tollan for a device that could do the job’ he told her. ‘The Tollan Curia are willing to provide technical assistance and support and we’ve decided to take them up on the offer’ he said.

‘They named their price though’ Shen Xiaoyi added.

Woolsey shrugged. ‘The Tollan are concerned that if we managed to obtain more Ancient Technology without them there to supervise, or at least advise, we might get ourselves and plenty of others killed’ he said. ‘The Curia want at least one of their own people along to make sure that we don’t do what the Seritans did to themselves given access to radically more advanced science.’

‘Plus the Curia wants unrestricted access to anything we find of course’ LaPierre interjected, joining the group. ‘They’re not acting completely on altruism’ he noted wryly.

Shen Xiaoyi looked around at the other representatives. ‘It will be at least few weeks before we can organise the personnel and equipment’ she told Weir, ‘the Curia has also suggested we involve some of our other allies in the expedition and we’re considering it but as far as you’re concerned Doctor Weir the question is simple’ she said, ‘will you agree to lead the team going to the Pegasus Galaxy?’ she asked.

Weir was going to say yes immediately but then she paused. ‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘There are a number of reasons’ Woolsey began, ‘firstly the Tollan requested it’ he said, ‘they along with several of our other offworld friends hold you in high esteem...’

‘And they don’t want our military in charge’ Weir interrupted him, ‘particularly X-COM.’

‘Quite so’ Chapman confirmed.

‘It’s not just the Tollan either, the Tok’ra and Free Jaffa don’t like X-COM themselves and the Nox and Gadmeer have already stated that they would consider any military-led expedition as objectionable on philosophical grounds’ Woolsey told her. ‘They all like you though’ he continued, ‘they see you as a moderating influence on our barbaric ways.’

‘So that explains why the aliens like the idea of me being in charge what about the IOA and the Security Council?’ Weir asked.

‘Do you want the truth?’ Shen Xiaoyi responded.

‘As much of it as you’re willing to give me’ Weir replied sardonically.

‘In that case there is an element of doing to you what we did to Commander Sharp’ LaPierre told her, ‘send you off into the cosmos where you can do your job and not cause trouble for us’ he said.

Weir frowned. ‘Sharp screwed up, that’s why he was sent to the Omega Site’ she said.

‘And you don’t think that having Earth ally itself with a goa’uld faction wouldn’t be seen in some quarters as a bad thing?’ Woolsey responded.

‘Though oddly enough getting the High Council of the System Lords to accept Earth control over this region of space did drastically improve your image amongst certain sections of the military’ Shen Xiaoyi told her. ‘They seem to think of it as a diplomatic coup, some kind of machiavellian masterstroke rather than a miscalculation on your part.’

‘I was trying to keep Earth out of an internal goa’uld dispute’ Weir told them.

‘We know, not that we wouldn’t have gotten involved in any case, most likely in opposition to Baal as we are now anyway’ Chapman said, ‘but it would have been entirely on our terms.’

‘Unfortunately it’s just not good policy to back on an agreement once made’ LaPierre observed, ‘the last thing we want is for the galactic powers to think that Earth would sign a treaty and not stick to it’ he said.

‘Even the goa’uld understand the game well enough to have stuck by the terms of the Protected Planets Treaty for centuries’ Chapman pointed out, ‘we cannot sacrifice our future reputation as a world whose word can be trusted for short-term gains so whether we like the implications or not the treaty you negotiated holds’ he said. ‘Of course there are ways around it’ he added with a smirk.

The Chinese representative smiled evilly. ‘Whilst we cannot take military action against any of the System Lords allied against Baal the Tok’ra and Free Jaffa are in no such position’ she said. ‘With a little encouragement, and perhaps some additional supplies, they should be able to continue to press Lord Yu, Camulus and the others and prevent them re-building too much of their military strength whilst we’re otherwise occupied.’

‘No exactly in the spirit of our agreement with the High Council of the System Lords’ Weir responded disparagingly.

‘We knew you’d think so but the letter of the law is good enough for us’ LaPierre replied.

‘If you expect I might make waves about us being underhanded I’ll point out that while I made the agreement I was never that keen and I certainly don’t trust the goa’uld to hold to their end of the bargain for one second longer than it serves their interests’ Weir told them.

‘Whether you would or not it would be best for your reputation as an honest broker be unsullied in case we ever need you again, regardless of any other considerations’ Chapman told her. ‘With you in another galaxy you won’t be implicated in any shady business that occurs after you’ve departed so if the need ever arises where we need your services to treat with another power we can bring you back to do so with your reputation for honesty intact.’

‘I’m an asset’ Weir replied.

‘We’re all assets Doctor Weir’ Woolsey replied. ‘At the present moment you as a resource can serve your planet best by not being on it’ he said.

Weir sighed. ‘I feel like I’m being drafted’ she said.

‘To a job that you’ve said previously you would like to do anyway so please don’t overplay the martyr card Doctor Weir’ Chapman responded. ‘The military would prefer to be leading any mission themselves of course but after a few grumbles they can be relied upon to do as they’re told like good little loyal soldiers’ he said.

‘Do I get to choose my own personnel if I decide to accept?’ Weir asked.

‘Yes within reason, but you will have to accept that a reasonable proportion of your team will be military given the nature of the expedition’ Woolsey told her. ‘That includes X-COM who insist on having a role’ he added.

‘Being international and under UN Command the Security Council also desires X-COM participation’ Shen Xiaoyi told Weir. ‘We don’t want this to end up another United States dominated affair like the early stargate program’ she said, looking directly at Woolsey who shuffled uncomfortably under her glare.

Elizabeth Weir became lost in thought. Ever since Doctor Jackson announced his theory that the Ancients had departed Earth millions of years ago in their “Flying City”, a notion that might have been consider slightly absurd if you hadn’t ever seen the one the Nox had, the notion of actually going there had been lodged in her mind.

They already knew that the Ancients had been devastated by a great plague that ravaged the Milky Way long ago, though the lengths they had apparently gone to in order to escape it was rather extreme with those still uninfected simply packing up and heading to another galaxy. Examination of the Ancient Outpost in Antarctica had provided the gate address but they had then been presented by another problem, if it still existed at all Atlantis was a very very long way away.

The Asgard galaxy of Ida was much closer in galactic terms and even then you needed one of the Ancient power-boosters O’Neill had made the first time he had the Ancient database downloaded into his mind in order to get there. According to the gate address the Lost City had headed to the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy which lay three million light years from Earth, thirty times the distance from one side of the Milky Way to the other and the power needed to open a wormhole that far was staggering.

The power source O’Neill had fetched from Proclarush Taonas could do it but they had learned it was more akin to a battery than a generator and there wasn’t much left in it. Dubbed a ZPM, or Zero Point Module, by the physicists led by Rodney McKay who had studied the thing it still had enough charge to power the Ancient Weapons Platform one or maybe two more times but after that Earth would lose its most effective defence. Certainly draining it in order to send a few people across the universe on what could be a wild goose chase was never going to be allowed so Jackson’s discovery had been merely academic so far despite Weir lobbying hard to send an expedition.

‘If I do this then who gets command of the SGC?’ Weir asked the IOA representatives.

‘We had to throw the Americans a bone, their Pentagon in particular, so with one objection we’ve agreed with a recommendation from your predecessor’ Russell Chapman replied. ‘Vice-President Kinsey was not happy by any means but despite what he might think his voice doesn’t carry more weight than anyone else merely because he’s an elected official of the United States’ he said, the others nodding apart from Woolsey.

When she returned to Cheyenne Mountain Elizabeth Weir couldn’t help but be amused at how the newly promoted, and recently defrosted, Brigadier-General Jack O’Neill was taking the news that he now ran the place, admittedly he wasn’t the only one wearing a stunned expression at the prospect.






Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – June 2004

Brigadier-General Jack O’Neill looked in dismay at the pile of paperwork on his desk and wondered again why he had agreed to take the job. Sure he got a better parking space and getting a star on his collar was nice but the promotion didn’t come with a pay-rise because he was on the X-COM rolls and they paid everyone the same from Private on up. Admittedly they paid everyone a hell of a lot but it was the principle of the thing he thought ruefully.

The news from Cydonia Base had been a nice distraction which had kept him away from the office for a while this morning at least. Apparently one of the team combing through the wreckage of all those Ha’taks the Asgard had helpfully dumped on Mars had gone “loony-toons” according to witnesses before he jacked an Al’kesh which had just arrived with a load of naquadah from the asteroid mine in the Oort Cloud and flew off with it. Other than the weirdness of that in itself he wasn’t even a pilot, let alone trained to fly a goa’uld ship, so after failing to catch him before he went into hyperspace everyone was now thinking he must have been an infiltrator working for one of the System Lords or maybe the rogue NID.

X-COM was now in the throes of even greater paranoia than usual and was instigating a new round of compulsory screening of personnel. Everyone would be subjected to scan by Mind Probe as well as being checked with a Za’tarc Detector before being cleared to work again. This would cause days of disruption, perhaps weeks, and was the last thing he needed to add to the irritation of Elizabeth Weir running around trying to poach staff and those damn Tollan patronising everyone and complaining about the quality of the plumbing and the softness of the beds in the guest quarters.

O’Neill took another look at the stack of reports he was being badgered to read. ‘I’d better check on the Tollan’ he decided, standing up and heading out the door.

Everyone was treating him different now, O’Neill noted as he walked through the corridors. He always thought of himself as being the one that stuck it to the man but now he was the man and the likes of Lieutenant-Colonel Ferretti were out to stick it to him. There was something particularly insolent about the way that the commanding officer of SG-2 said “Sir” now that O’Neill was trying his best to ignore but it was difficult and he wondered how on Earth General Hammond had managed to cope with him all these years.

Carter was a very different problem. She had received a well-deserved promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel and was now head of SG-1 but O’Neill was finding it hard to let go for more reasons than he cared to admit, even to himself. Watching her lead the team through the gate while he stayed behind and drank coffee was painful, although Walter did make an excellent brew he had to admit. In his usual way Daniel had tried to help O’Neill through the trauma of change, Teal’c was full of sage advice whereas Andianov was complaining that she didn’t get a promotion herself and had no sympathy for the problems of those that had received recognition for their efforts. The latter had expressed this in front of a visiting Major Davis who looked like he might applaud for a moment before he stopped himself, opting to offer to buy her a drink instead.

The team of Tollan engineers had established themselves in a large room situated near the gate and after it was stripped out they had begun putting together what Doctor Bill Lee described as the mother of all capacitors. Arriving in one of their cruisers the Tollan had utilised an Asgard-supplied transporter beam to offload the parts and had been carefully assembling them in the three days since stopping periodically to reply to questions from Earth scientists most of which were answered with “You wouldn’t understand”.

The main body of the thing looked like ten Tollan stargates stacked vertically around a column separated by small blocks of what looked like obsidian, which was basically what the thing was. The Tollan had initially described them as being “half a gate” which O’Neill had imagined as a bunch of semi-circles until Carter explained that they meant they didn’t have the ability to open a wormhole, just the ability to hold a charge. Between them the stack of rings could store a staggering amount of energy but you had to charge them in a certain way and do so slowly in order to build up enough charge to open a wormhole to the Pegasus Galaxy and maintain it for a useful amount of time.

The Ancient “Stargate-Destroyer” device utilised two years before by Anubis had demonstrated that you could drastically over-charge a stargate if you did it the right way and the Tollan had figured out a means to replicate that effect. A large rack of Orbanian Naquadah Generators fed power into a transformer-like device which then transferred it to the stack, slowly charging them all to a level not far off the point where they would explode. It took days at minimum, the Tollan advised five or six in order to be safe and not overtax the system but once it was fully charged you could then dump all the accumulated energy into the actual stargate and hold an inter-galactic wormhole open for some time, at least until the stack ran down and had to be recharged again. The part of the device that transferred the stored energy to the stargate was itself in fact based loosely upon the Power Booster previously used to open wormholes to Ida, the Tollan having previously expressed an interest in studying the design.

It wasn’t ideal of course, once depleted you had to wait days to use it again, but the Tollan were confident it would work. It was a rather brute-force solution in some ways, not typical Tollan elegance of design, but they reasoned the Earth humans would appreciate that sort of thing anyway. There was certainly no way they were going to give them a couple of their own UFT Generators after what the Seritans did with them, the worst case scenario for the stack exploding wasn’t literally planet-shattering like a UFT Generator could do if misused. There would be a very impressive crater where Colorado used to be though but there were plenty of safeguards to prevent even that, the Tollan were deliberately making the system idiot proof because deep down many of them still considered the locals well qualified for the description.

When O’Neill arrived he carefully avoided talking to the lead Tollan engineer and struck up a conversation with her deputy instead. The woman leading the team was not happy about being on Earth, inside the SGC in particular, and when pressed on why she was so tetchy the previous day O’Neill had learned she had been one of the team led by Omac who had been rescued by SG-1 from their original homeworld years before. Given that the United States had attempted to enslave her as forced intellectual labour on her previous visit her attitude was perhaps understandable, Earth had not exactly made the best first impression there.

O’Neill had learned that before they had been pulled off their previous project and sent to Earth the engineers had been on Langara helping build one of the ore-processing plants the Curia was now constructing there. Raw materials from the star-cluster nicknamed “The Frontier” were transported from largely automated Tollan-built mining facilities to Langara via stargate to be refined there before dispatch to either Tollana itself or other worlds looking to purchase raw materials. The plants provided relatively high-wage jobs to the Langaran people and additional tax revenue to their governments helping them rebuild their economy. The Curia considered it a far more effective and beneficial way to help the Langarans than merely sending aid and Tollana itself would benefit from a better resource supply.

Although it had been a culture-shock being on a world like Langara at first, O’Neill was told as he talked to the engineer, it was hard not to become fond of a place where everyone seemed to want to shake your hand and thank you. The Tollan had of course declared war on Loki as a result of his invasion of Langara and more recently when the possibility of a goa’uld invasion had threatened Tollan warships arrived in orbit to defend the planet if necessary so it wasn’t surprising that the Tollan were greeted warmly. For that matter O’Neill suspected the engineer had found it very easy to get laid judging from a few of his comments regarding wanting to get back there.

Deciding that if he stayed too much longer it would look too obvious he was trying to avoid work Brigadier-General Jack O’Neill then headed to Daniel’s office to ask if he had made any further progress translating whatever artefact he was currently enthralled by. O’Neill didn’t actually know for certain there was such a thing but it was a reasonable bet there was and if he feigned interest for half an hour he could then justify a short break for coffee before looking for some other justification for not being at his desk.

The now very pregnant Doctor Janet Frasier carrying a box blocked much of the corridor and after being snapped at for offering to carry it for her “I’m pregnant, I‘m not an invalid” being very much her phrase of choice right now, O’Neill finally got her to relent and found a means to kill a few more minutes as he escorted her towards the infirmary carrying the box. The birth due only weeks away now she would be going on maternity leave very soon having refused to do so any earlier because the boredom of not being at the SGC would kill her.

‘So how are things with Cassie?’ O’Neill asked, making conversation as he put the box down where she indicated it was to go.

‘Very angry’ Janet replied.

‘What about?’ O’Neill queried. ‘Sit down if you want’ he told her, she had remained standing and he realised it might be because he had that star now.

Janet sat down gratefully, although not an invalid she was carrying around more weight now. ‘Did you know that Weir approached Captain Gaston and asked him to join her expedition?’ she asked.

‘No’ O’Neill replied, there might be something about that in one of the files on his desk though he suspected. Maybe he should read them, at least tomorrow maybe?

‘Well she did and Cassie has got it into her head that I had something to do with her boyfriend being sent to another galaxy’ Janet told him. ‘She thinks I got Russell to do it.’

‘How exactly did she think he’d manage that given he’s not exactly someone Weir would listen to?’ O’Neill asked. ‘Unless she thinks he told Doctor Weir “Under no circumstances will you ask Captain Jake Gaston to go to Atlantis” using reverse psychology.’

‘Cassie isn’t thinking logically she’s just upset’ Janet responded. ‘To be honest I am glad their relationship could be about to become the most long-distance in history’ she admitted. ‘One day he’s going to get killed, permanently I mean, and it would devastate her.’

O’Neill shrugged. ‘I don’t know what anyone would see in one of those X-COM guys anyway’ he said then realised his mouth had run away wit itself badly as Doctor Frasier directed a searing look in his direction that an elerium plasma-beam cannon could only dream of emulating.

‘Ah yes, Captain Jake Gaston’ Janet began, ‘early twenties, tall, better than average looks, athletic’ she said, ‘not only that he’s also a war hero who fights evil aliens for a job, a job that pays an obscene salary so he can buy her nice things, and in his spare time he writes poetry’ she continued, ‘why would any young woman be attracted to him I wonder?’ she asked wryly.

‘Okay, I see your point’ O’Neill conceded. ‘On the plus side unlike other guys she could date he probably thinks that if he hurt Cassie in any way he you’d have Commander Sharp send him on a one-way suicide mission’ he said before smiling. ‘I’ve got to ask, does Sharp play the intimidating father if Gaston visits Cassie while he’s there?’

‘No’ Janet replied, ‘I expected him to though and when I asked him about it later he told me that Gaston already knows him well enough to be scared of him so why bother’ she said. ‘Anyway he has the idea that any man who would date a girl that could read his mind and telekinetically beat him up if she didn’t like what she saw in there must have good intentions.’

‘Well it’s safe to say he won’t cheat on her at least’ O’Neill agreed, although thinking about it later he pondered if given the dubious sanity of much of X-COM that was necessarily the case.






Atlantis – Pegasus Galaxy – July 2004

The first reconnaissance had been made by MALP robots a week before. Four of the things had been sent through and finding themselves in the dark the remote-operators back on Earth had activated their lights and then the things had spent the next quarter of an hour crawling around what was clearly a much larger complex than the one in Antarctica sending back images and other telemetry until the gate shut-down.

Wherever it was the environment could support human life so the next time a wormhole to Pegasus was opened after several days recharging the Tollan Stargate Capacitor it was deemed time for the first part of the human expedition to be sent and along with three dozen soldiers, scientists and engineers Elizabeth Weir stepped through the event horizon of a stargate on Earth only to emerge three million light-years distant in an Ancient City that smelled like it needed airing very badly.

Although the city had ignored the robots it seemed to react to the presence of humans and the lights started coming on as the explorers started to scout around making it much easier to survey their new surroundings, discovering they were underwater was a revelation although Weir had been less happy at finding out why the Ancients had submerged the place and then left.

According to Carson Beckett, the teams head physician who had happily transferred from the Omega Site to join this mission when invited, the holographic recording now being projected standing on a platform in the middle of the room, had come on as soon as he entered. This was possibly because he carried what they now called the ATA Gene, the one responsible not only for how much psionic strength a human had but was also now proven to be needed to use certain Ancient technologies. He had already watched the automated recording right through himself when Doctor Weir arrived with her senior military staff and Rodney McKay her chief scientist in tow and judging by his expression it wasn’t all good news.

Presumably they were looking at the likeness of an Ancient woman who had left the recording to explain what had transpired to the next person that visited Atlantis and Weir couldn’t help but be transfixed at the very idea, they were so much like us, she thought as she listened.

‘...in the hope of spreading new life in a galaxy where there appeared to be none. Soon, the new life grew and prospered. Here...’ the hologram said.

‘What have we missed?’ Colonel Alexi Vaselov the Russian commanding the military personnel asked. A former cosmonaut and more recently a fighter-pilot who had flown an F-302X against Anubis during the attack on Earth he was ardently professional and came with the highest recommendations from both X-COM and the Russian Government. It had been a choice between him and an American Colonel named Sumner for the job but when Weir had personally requested that Major John Sheppard be on the expedition, both because of his known ATA Gene strength and the fact she already knew him, Sumner had been ruled out because the IOA didn’t want both of the highest ranked officers to be from the same country.

‘Not much’ Beckett replied.

‘...exchange knowledge and friendship. In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form. Then one day, our people set foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept’ the hologram continued as another image appeared, a depiction of the galaxy they were in. ‘Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered. The enemy fed upon the defenseless human worlds like a great scourge, until finally, only Atlantis remained’ she said.

As the stars being projected changed colour to red to indicate the systems being conquered the hologram continued to speak. ‘This city's great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years. In an effort to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean. The Atlantis Stargate was the one and only link back to Earth from this galaxy, and those who remained used it to return to that world that was once home. There, the last survivors of Atlantis lived out the remainder of their lives. This city was left to slumber, in the hope that our kind would one day return’ she finished.

‘Huh. So the story of Atlantis is true. A great city that sank in the ocean’ McKay observed.

‘It just didn't happen on Earth’ Beckett responded.

‘Well, the Ancient Greeks must have heard it from one of the surviving Ancients’ McKay reasoned.

‘I am more interested in finding out more about this enemy that defeated them’ Colonel Vaselov stated, turning to Major Sheppard stood beside him. They were both wearing X-COM jumpsuits and torso armour made of trinium/cydonium alloy. ‘Inform the troops of the possibility of hostiles’ he ordered.

‘Yes Sir’ Sheppard replied, turning away and reaching for his radio headset.

Another of the scientific team joined them and whispered something to McKay. ‘Don’t play it again’ he told Beckett. ‘Power levels thoughout the city are dropping like a stone’ McKay declared. ‘We need to find out why and until we do we need to stop wasting power’ he told them.

What seemed to be the control room for the entire city overlooked the stargate and McKay was working on a computer he had interfaced with the local systems. They were fortunate that the goa’uld had copied Ancient technology rather than inventing much of their own because it wasn’t all that different from doing the same thing to the computer core on a Ha’tak. Plugging into a goa’uld mothership was of course something they were well used to doing, having once owned two and still possessing the Kuznetsov though Enterprise had been lost.

‘From what we've been able to ascertain, the city is powered by three Zero-Point Modules’ McKay announced. ‘Two are entirely depleted, and the third is reaching maximum entropy. When it does, it will die too, and nothing can reverse that’ he said.

‘Meaning?’ Weir asked him.

‘The force field holding back the ocean has collapsed to its minimum sustainable levels’ McKay replied. ‘Look, you can see here and here where the shield's already failed and the city’s flooded. It could've happened years ago. But this section is likely more protected because of the Stargate’ he said.

‘All right, well, how much time do we have?’ Weir asked.

‘At least a week if we plug in all the naquadah generators we’ve bought with us’ McKay replied. Those were something they had plenty of at least but they weren’t up to keeping a shield that size powered for much longer whilst holding back an ocean.

‘So we need more ZPM’s right?’ Weir asked.

‘If there were more in the city we’d detect them’ McKay replied.

‘I think that Tollan guy had the right idea not wanting to come here until the next week’ Sheppard muttered.

‘Can we use the stargate to get home?’ Weir asked.

‘Not enough left in the ZPM’ McKay replied apologetically. ‘We can plug in a naquadah generator and get you to any other planet with a gate in this galaxy if you want to evacuate’ he said. ‘The shield should hold until the next time they open a wormhole from Earth and we can tell them where we’re going, ask for additional supplies and ask them to send a ship.’

‘Pity we didn’t come in a ship’ Sheppard remarked.

‘We would have arrived in orbit, found no sign of Atlantis and gone home’ McKay pointed out.

‘Yeah but I wouldn’t be worried about getting crushed by a billion tons of water’ Sheppard replied, ‘there was a reason I wanted to fly aircraft in the USAF not drive submarines in the USN’ he said.

‘A team with submersibles could come to this world and retrieve much salvage’ Colonel Vaselov suggested.

McKay nodded. ‘Not ideal but we could do that’ he agreed. ‘Even a few of those little ships we found in that hanger upstairs would be well worth hauling out of this place when it’s flooded’ he said. ‘I’ve found a library of gate addresses in the database which lead to habitable planets, I suggest we try the one at the top of the list first and look for somewhere we can wait for rescue he said.’

Vaselov nodded. ‘I will lead the scouting mission’ he said. ‘Put together a reconnaissance team Major’ he told Sheppard.

‘Want the Powered Armour and the P3-A1’s unpacked Sir?’ Sheppard asked.

‘No, if we meet anyone I would prefer not to scare them’ Vaselov replied. ‘Standard body-armour and light weaponry’ he told him. ‘With your permission of course Doctor Weir’ he added, turning to the expedition leader.

‘Go ahead, I don’t want to be here when all that water comes crashing in either’ Weir told him sincerely.

When the MALP they sent through to the first planet on the database reported back that the environment was safe, although it was night there unfortunately making looking around less easy than it would have been Colonel Vaselov led through his team. Fortunately one thing they did not lack for was equipment so the X-COM soldiers put on night-vision goggles and began scouting out from the stargate following what seemed to be a well-worn trail through the surrounding forest that at least indicated recent inhabitation.

Captain Gaston was the most experienced at visiting new worlds after his long secondment from X-COM to the SGC and he was paying for it now because the rookie on the team Lieutenant Ford was shadowing his every move. To the amusement of the rest of Gaston’s squad every time the captain stopped to look around or listen Ford did the same, and a few of them were trying not to laugh, especially the Israeli medic Nava Eitam who knew she had a tendency to giggle and not be able to stop once it started.

Sergeant Kevin Nash, veteran of X-COM and the Royal Marine’s elite Special Boat Service wasn’t happy with the people in charge. He had been on a good few missions with the young Captain and was confident he knew his business, having cut his teeth fighting Sectoids and Mutons up close and personal, but the Colonel and the Major were pilots not ground-pounders even if they did both have good records. If the shit hit the fan Nash and the other X-COM Troopers hoped Vaselov and Sheppard were smart enough to listen to the experienced professionals and wouldn’t think that rank meant ability. Nash respected Sheppard, the crazy bastard had flown him into several hot LZ’s during the Sectoid War, but that didn’t mean he was going to be any good in a fire-fight.

Nava heard a twig snap and suddenly charged into the trees emerging seconds later holding what appeared to be a young boy in her free hand who was yelling and hollering. As he struggled Sheppard was the first to reach them and told him to calm down as another boy appeared and begged the strangers not to hurt him or his friend as he pulled off a mask he was wearing.

‘Why didn’t you just zat him?’ Sheppard asked wryly as the medic released her hold on the boy and lifted her goggles as a few flashlights were turned on.

‘If he’s been taller I might have’ Eitam replied.

A man appeared running towards them. ‘Please!’ he called out. ‘They’re just playing’ he said as the oddly dressed newcomers pointed what he guessed were weapons at him.

Sheppard stood aside to let the boy the medic had grabbed hold of run to the man, the other boy doing the same.

The Russian Colonel approached, also taking off his goggles knowing they would look intimidating. ‘Hello’ he greeted the man. ‘We do not mean you any harm’ he reassured him, smiling. ‘I am Alexi Vaselov’ he introduced himself.

‘I am Halling’ the man replied guardedly. ‘Are you here to trade?’ he asked. ‘Did you come through the Ring of the Ancestors?’ he queried.

‘We call it a stargate and yes we came from there and would like to both trade and look around your world if we can’ Vaselov told him. ‘We are explorers and travellers.’

The man Halling nodded. ‘Teyla will wish to speak to you’ he replied now looking more relaxed as he turned to address the boys. ‘Now, how many times have I told you not to play in the forest after dark? I'm just glad you're safe’ he chided.

Detailing a couple of soldiers to guard the stargate and report back to Atlantis that they had found an indigenous human population Vaselov and the others followed Halling and the boys back to their village, Sheppard striking up a conversation with the boys who were fascinated by the night-vision gear he had. The boy who had been wearing a mask of his own explained it was “Wraith” when Sheppard asked about it and seemed very surprised the strangers had never heard the name.

The locals lived in tents suggesting they did not remain in one place too long and there was little evidence of technology Vaselov noted as Halling took them to a particular tent. The Russian introduced himself and Major Sheppard to a woman who gave her name as “Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tagan” and was justifiably wary of them given their appearance though not especially unfriendly.

Like many people who lead a nomadic existence the locals, who called themselves Athosians after their planet Athos, seemed to have a certain way of dealing with strangers and Sheppard and Vaselov tried to make a good impression accepting an offer to share the tea Teyla was preparing before the coming dawn. Whilst the Colonel and the Major played nice with the locals Gaston and the others did their best not to look too intimidating and continued scouting the local area until the sun rose high enough to reveal exactly the sort of thing they might have hoped for.

Not too far from the settlement on the other side of some swampy ground the remains of a city indicated that Athos had not always been so primitive. The Athosians called it a “City of the Ancestors” and warned it was not safe but Vaselov could not pass up the opportunity to investigate the site looking for somewhere to set up home or even technology that might even include a ZPM if it had been built by the Ancients and they were very lucky.

The Athosians were adamant that if anyone visited the ruins then the Wraith would come. They were all more than surprised that the strangers had no idea who or what the Wraith were and said that if they had never been to the world the strangers came from then they should count themselves lucky and go back there. Sheppard replied that wasn’t an option right now but asked to learn more about the Wraith if he could whereupon Teyla offered to take him to some caves to show him something.

Sheppard was surprised when Teyla used what appeared to be a laser to light a torch before leading him into the caves, it seemed the Athosians weren’t always the pre-industrial culture they were now and may have been ahead of Earth perhaps before the Wraith destroyed their civilisation, a story that was told in pictures on the cave walls.

‘The Wraith allow our kind to grow in numbers’ Teyla explained, ‘and when that number reaches a certain point, they return to…cull their human herd’ she said. ‘Sometimes, a few hundred years will pass before they awaken again. We've visited many, many worlds. I know of none untouched by the Wraith. The last great holocaust was five generations ago, but still, they return in smaller numbers, to remind us of their power’ she told him.

‘That's a hell of a way to live’ Sheppard replied.

‘We move our hunting camps around’ Teyla explained. ‘We try to teach our children not to live in fear, but it is hard. Some of us can sense the Wraith coming. That gives us warning’ she said. ‘We should go. It will be dark soon’ she said. Athos had very short days it was only a few hours since dawn and already the sun was going down as the planet quickly rotated on its axis.

Colonel Vaselov had performed a quick survey of the city, it was not in a good state and there were no power-sources to be found on cursory examination but he wanted to bring in a scientific team to check properly before giving up the notion entirely. He sent Lieutenant Ford back to the gate to collect a few additional personnel he had requested from Atlantis and pondered his next move. They could certainly set up camp here and wait for a rescue ship but he was curious about these Wraith wondering if they could be the enemy the Ancients spoke of. No matter anyway, he decided eventually, they couldn’t stay in Atlantis and Athos seemed as good a place as any right now to establish a temporary home.

It was dark again when Ford reached the stargate. He was about to dial the address for Atlantis when the gate lit up indicating an incoming wormhole and to his great surprise instead of people coming through three sleek aircraft shot out from the event horizon and after climbing and banking slightly headed towards the location of the city at high speed. They reminded him in principle of the chappa’nok’kek gate-fighters Apophis then Lord Yu employed that he had seen depicted in training manuals but they were much faster and less bulky and he reported that to Colonel Vaselov on the radio as the things streaked towards him and the others.

The Athosians panicked and scattered, the sound of a Wraith Dart familiar and terrifying as they ran for their lives.

Teyla and Sheppard were already running back towards the village. Somehow she had known they were coming even before she heard the Darts and he already had a suspicion how but for now his theory would have to be forgotten.

Without orders to fire as yet Jake Gaston watched as one of the alien ships swept overhead directing a beam of light at the ground which swept up a group of Athosians. ‘Transporter beam’ he reasoned, the Asgard had similar technology.

Colonel Vaselov watched the same craft bank sharply heading in for another run. ‘Open fire’ he ordered.

Halling watched as one of the strangers raised his weapon and aimed along it. They could not possibly hope to hit such a fast moving target he thought for a moment before a beam of light shot out from the strangers weapon and struck the Wraith Dart he was aiming at.

The Wraith Dart exploded and the wreckage showered the forest.

Vaselov was suddenly struck by the notion he was surrounded, there were monsters amongst the trees, they were everywhere. ‘They are everywhere’ he said, starting to panic firing wildly into the forest.

The Colonel got off three shots before a zat discharge hit him and he fell to the ground. ‘Psionic attack’ Sergeant Nash yelled out after dropping his commanding officer.

‘Fight it’ Jake Gaston ordered, pushing the attempt to attack his mind back like he had when Ethereals had done the same thing. ‘Knock those fucking fighters down’ he bellowed, firing his L2-A3 into the sky full auto along with the other soldiers.

A second dart was hit, the laser beam that connected going through a less vital system this time and instead of exploding it crashed into the ground in more or less one piece. As the canopy seemed to vanish the pilot stumbled out nearly managing to get two steps before Gaston hit it with a zat’nik’tel discharge putting it down. ‘That’s one for Alien Containment’ he said, rolling the comatose alien over with his foot.

The pilot of the third Dart decided that discretion was the better part of valour and he headed back towards the gate at full speed trying to use his culling beams to collect any other human he could on the way. Most scattered clear but he did manage to sweep up an unconscious Russian going past as he remote-dialled the gate address to his home.

‘Bugger it’ Nash swore as he watched Vaselov disappear. ‘Cease fire, it’s got the Colonel’ he called into his radio.

Lieutenant Ford still by the stargate had the presence of mind to memorise the symbols which had been dialled as the alien fighter returned at high speed shot through the event horizon of the outgoing wormhole and disappeared back from whence it came. The entire action had lasted only a few minutes.

Elizabeth Weir had not been expecting Major Sheppard to return with a number of refugees, still less an alien prisoner, a load of salvaged parts from some kind of ship and the news that Colonel Vaselov had been captured. According to the Athosians, who were still almost as shocked by the way the strangers had dispatched the Wraith as they had been the attack itself, the lost of the Darts would lead to massive retaliation so they had to leave their world.

The Athosians had claimed to know the addresses of many other worlds the strangers could look for a new home on instead and Sheppard had decided their knowledge could be an asset so he told them they come along with his people for now.

As the unconscious Wraith was carried away Weir went to meet the refugees, Sheppard introducing her as the leader of his group.

‘This is the Lost City of the Ancestors’ Teyla said in wonderment, looking around. ‘I thought it was just a myth that it survived’ she said.

‘We thought Atlantis was a myth too not long ago’ Weir replied. ‘Millions of years ago this city stood on our own homeworld until the Ancients, who I guess are the people you call the Ancestors, left to make their home here instead’ she told them.

‘From what world do you come then?’ Teyla asked. ‘It must be far away’ she reasoned.

‘We call our world Earth’ Weir replied, ‘the Ancients, the Ancestors I mean, called it Terra’ she said.

Teyla nodded. ‘So you are the Terrans’ she said. ‘I greet the Terrans on behalf of the Athosians’ she declared.

‘Beats the shit out of being called the fucking Tau’ri anyway’ Sergeant Nash muttered.

‘Ma’am the Colonel was captured and according to what I’ve learned about these Wraith he could still be alive’ Sheppard told Weir. ‘We’ve got the address where they took him, request permission to go get him back.’

‘Before I agree to anything I want to hear everything you’ve been told about the Wraith and I also want to talk to the one you captured’ Weir replied. ‘If these are the people that beat the Ancients I’m not going to do anything before I’ve had a chance to consider the situation’ she told him. If they could strike up a dialogue perhaps they might be able to negotiate she hoped.

‘Yes Ma’am’ Sheppard responded, bringing himself to attention. ‘Can I at least ready a team in case you authorise a rescue attempt?’

‘You can’ Weir agreed.

‘Captain Gaston’ Sheppard said loudly, ‘un-crate the Powered Armour and the Heavy Plasma Rifles’ he ordered. ‘If we’re doing this we’re going in loaded for bear’ he added.

‘Right away Sir’ Gaston replied. ‘You heard the Major’ he called out, ‘Gear up X-COM, I want us ready to go in thirty minutes’ he announced.

‘You cannot be seriously thinking about undertaking such a mission’ Teyla said incredulously. ‘’It is suicide to attack the Wraith’ she told them.

‘Ms. Emmagan’ Gaston responded in a calm tone, ‘you may think this sounds like hubris’ he began, ‘but if you think that we don’t know enough about these Wraith allow me to offer the counter-argument that for their part the Wraith have’ he paused, ‘no idea who they are fucking with ’ he bellowed resulting in a spontaneous chant of “X-COM, X-COM, X-COM” from the troopers around the room and a lot of rifles being brandished above heads.

‘Is anyone else reminded of the Satedans?’ a frowning Teyla asked the other Athosians after a minute or so of such nonsense.

I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.
 

 Atlantis – Pegasus Galaxy – July 2004

‘Not exactly an Avenger but it’ll have to do I guess’ Sheppard commented, familiarising himself with the controls of “Gateship” as McKay called it. Like the hybridised Sectoid/Goa’uld flight controls of modern Earth-built craft the small vessel utilised an element of pilot mind-control, albeit in what appeared a far more sophisticated fashion, and it was far easier to get the thing working than either man had dared to hope for. Radek Zelenka was watching from near the access port which led down into the room where the stargate was located.

‘As soon as we saw these things we guessed they were the local equivalent of goa’uld gate-fighters’ McKay told the pilot as Sheppard slowly lifted off and manoeuvred the craft around the hanger. He was getting used to how it handled, it was very smooth.

‘Think it’s armed?’ Sheppard queried.

‘Yes, it was the first thing we checked for’ McKay replied. Definitely been working for X-COM too long he realised. ‘Just don’t think about opening fire unless you really mean it’ he advised Sheppard. ‘You’re carrying a small number of the Drone Weapons, there’s a launcher on each side of the ship which open out when required’ he said. ‘The sub-light drive pods do the same.’

Sheppard nodded, he’d have to see what speed he could get it up to. ‘Hyperdrive?’ he asked.

‘No and no shield either’ McKay told him.

‘You’re kidding?’ Sheppard responded in surprise.

‘It runs on power-cells that recharge when it’s docked as far as we can tell’ McKay replied, ‘a shield would deplete those fast’ he continued, ‘it’s clearly not made for serious combat’ he stated.

‘Then why arm it?’ Sheppard wondered, ‘oh wait I’ve got an idea’ he continued, ‘Go invisible’ he said to the ship.

Zelenka watched as the ship disappeared. ‘Cloaking Device’ he noted, not too surprising he thought reaching for his radio headset. ‘I do not know if it was deliberate Major Sheppard’ he said, ‘but you just vanished’ he continued. ‘I apologise we do not have time to upgrade the craft before the mission’ he added, a couple of naquadah generators, an Electro-Plasmic Shield and some laser cannon and it might pass muster he decided, pity about the pilot’s narrow field of view though, as a dogfighter it was inherently poor on that basis alone.

Using the gate coordinates Lieutenant Ford had memorised they had determined where the alien fighter had taken both the Colonel and the Athosians it had abducted but it turned out to be a stargate floating in orbit above a terraformed world. Fortunately they had sent a MALP not a person ahead to scout but regardless it had initially appeared that the rescue mission was scrubbed until McKay advised them of what they had found in the hanger above.

Weir wasn’t completely convinced this was a wise course of action but Sheppard had persuaded her to approve the rescue attempt eventually. He had helped by the firm belief of the Athosians expressed forcefully by Teyla that seeking a peaceful resolution as Weir suggested simply wasn’t an option. Humans were nothing but a prey animal in this galaxy, the Wraith being at the top of the food-chain and not likely to negotiate in good faith with their lunch.

This was not to say that the Athosians considered trying to get those taken back from the Wraith any more sane than seeking dialogue with them and Teyla Emmagan their apparent leader was still trying to convince Weir of this in the control room when a number of the children who had been exploring what little of the submerged city was still protected by the shield came running back screaming.

Teyla spun around to face what she assumed was an oncoming threat, incredibly heavy footsteps echoing off the metal deck and walls, when two metal figures each a third again as tall as a man pounded into sight only to be ignored by the Terrans. ‘Machines?’ she asked Weir in shock.

‘Powered Armour’ Weir replied. ‘You climb into them’ she explained as Captain Gaston arrived, still wearing his normal body-armour. ‘Not going along Captain?’ Weir asked him.

‘Not wearing one of those I’m not’ Gaston replied, ‘great for shooting your way out of a situation but not so good for getting in quietly’ he noted. ‘You asked for another tactical edge?’ he asked her rhetorically. ‘How does this do?’ he asked. ‘Show them’ he addressed thin air.

Teyla almost jumped out of her skin when a figure suddenly appeared from nowhere next to her, the female soldier who had been with the ones that went to Athos pressing a control on a device clipped to her belt. ‘Personal Cloaking device, sorry if I scared you’ the woman said.

‘They’re only good for a little over two hours between recharging’ Gaston told Weir, ‘and we’ve only got four of them unfortunately but I’d say this qualifies as a nice edge wouldn’t you?’ he asked. ‘Only enough room on one of those dinky ships for two PA suits though if we want to leave space for the Colonel and the other abductees on the way home.’

Teyla was still staring at the device the female soldier had used to vanish from sight. ‘Is this Ancestor Technology?’ she asked in wonder.

‘No, this is Earth Tech, based on Goa’uld Tech which was based on a phase-shifted species called the Reetou’ Gaston told her. ‘Sergeant Nash and Corporal Hafner are in the suits Ma’am, they’re my most experienced Troopers’ he said. ‘Eitam here is a sneaky bitch even without the cloak so she’ll lead us in.’

‘It’s true, I am’ Nava agreed, grinning. She had been originally taught her trade by Sayeret Matkal, the elite Israeli Special Forces unit who hadn’t exactly lacked for practical experience over the years.

‘What’s the plan?’ Weir asked Gaston.

‘Get in there, get our people and bring them home’ Gaston replied. ‘Kill, maim and otherwise do considerable harm to anything that tries to stop us’ he continued. ‘Ideally I’d have liked to capture more prisoners too, maybe grab some more Wraith tech to analyse’ he said, ‘but we can always do that another time and we’re short on cargo space this time out.’

‘You’re very confident Captain’ Teyla told him.

‘This is what we do’ Gaston replied. ‘With permission Ma’am if we have a definite go now we should make final preparations’ he addressed Weir.

‘Go to it’ Weir replied and the two X-COM soldiers saluted, turned and headed off to collect the rest of their gear and join the others.

The Wraith had beaten the Ancients because the latter were overconfident in their abilities, secure in the knowledge that they were too powerful to defeat. Fortunately for the Atlantis Expedition it seemed that the Wraith were just as arrogant, if not more so because not only was it ridiculously easy to get to the planet and land the cloaked gateship, or “Puddle Jumper” as Sheppard preferred to call it, but getting into what they assumed was a large Wraith facility would have been a breeze for Sheppard, Ford, Gaston and Eitam even if they hadn’t been invisible.

Most of the alien technology seemed organic in base, even more so than that of the Nox perhaps Gaston considered as they searched through the structure. There were hardly any Wraith to be found wandering the corridors and avoiding them was easy as they picked up the pace, realising that time was ticking down for their personal cloaks.

The gateship had provided some kind of portable life-sign detector which helped matters considerably although only Sheppard could use it. Between that device and their own motion-trackers they had little trouble locating the Athosian prisoners whilst keep a good distance from the opposition.

Dispatching the single guard near the cell where the abductees were being held was as simple as Eitam walking up to him and shooting him twice in the back with the zat’nik’tel discharger fitted to her P3-A1. As he slumped to the ground dead she turned off her cloak as did the others for now and greeting the three astonished Athosians in the cell they determined what had happened to the Colonel who wasn’t with them.

Some distance away Colonel Vaselov was proving a surprise to the Wraith Queen, not reacting as any human she had encountered before did. For a start he was stronger willed than most and resisted her attempts to get into his mind for a while before she finally managed to break through his mental barriers.

‘What do you call your world?’ she asked him, Vaselov forced to his knees before her by psionic influence.

‘Earth’ Vaselov replied eventually, still trying to resist her.

‘It is not among our stars’ the Wraith Queen stated.

‘No’ Vaselov confirmed through gritted teeth.

‘Tell me of Earth. How many more are there of your kind?’ the queen asked. ‘Thousands?’ she queried. ‘Millions?’

Vaselov tried to think of something else, anything else but in vain.

‘More’ the Wraith Queen read from his mind in triumph. ‘Our feeding ground has not been so rich in ten thousand years’ she said.

‘Feeding ground?’ Vaselov repeated, he had already witnessed what that meant. One of the Athosians had been consumed by this alien, it had sucked the life right out of him somehow. ‘You’re telling me you would travel to my world to feed upon my people?’

‘Of course’ the Wraith Queen replied.

Once again the human she now knew was from another galaxy surprised her. Instead of looking distraught he started laughing. ‘We might have just gone home’ he said, ‘but now we’ll have to do something about you’ he told her. ‘You just signed the death-warrant for your entire race’ he declared.

There was a certainty in his mind that concerned the Wraith Queen for a brief moment but she soon dismissed it, the Lanteans had believed they would defeat the Wraith too at first but look at what happened to them. ‘You will tell me the location of your world’ she told him.

‘Don’t worry about looking for Earth’ Vaselov replied. ‘You should be worrying about Earth coming to look for you ’ he told the alien.

Already stripped of his body armour the Wraith Queen had no problem feeding from him and knowing the process was indescribably painful she slammed her palm against his chest and began to do so. ‘Tell me’ she insisted as he seemed to be visibly aging, screaming as he did.

The Wraith paused for a moment to give him a chance to reply. Vaselov had always wondered if he would break under torture and he was pleased to discover that the answer so far was no. ‘Eat me’ he responded with a snarl although he doubted the American phrase he had learned from the movies would be as insulting to one of these monsters.

‘With pleasure’ the queen replied with a sneer and began again.

Such was the agony it took Vaselov a moment to realise that after another two seconds the screaming was no longer his own, he forced his eyes back into focus and saw the alien writhing on the floor with an X-COM stun-baton pressed against her. Adding the guts of a goa’uld torture rod into the thing looked like it was paying off as the creature howled in pain, light seeming to be spewing from her mouth and eye sockets.

Vaselov looked around and saw that the Wraith guards who had been nearby were now lying dead or unconscious where they had been previously standing, Captain Gaston kneeling covering the exits with his P3-A1. ‘No offence Colonel but you look like shit’ Sheppard told Vaselov, removing the rod from the queen. ‘You’ve got a date with a sarcophagus Sir’ he said, the Colonel looked like he was forty or fifty years older now and frail for even that age.

‘She read my mind’ Vaselov gasped.

‘So we guessed’ Sheppard replied, moving to help him up. They had left Ford and Eitam with the Athosians, getting from there to here had been simple with the cloaks.

‘You need to get out of here’ Vaselov told them. ‘You can’t move fast with me in this condition’ he said, barely able to stand, grimacing against the pain in his chest.

‘Give him a couple of shots of stimulants and a dose of painkiller from your medikit’ Gaston advised, ‘it’ll either kill him or get him mobile.’

‘Do it’ Vaselov ordered as Sheppard looked at the medikit doubtfully.

The Wraith Queen was starting to recover as Sheppard obeyed orders, injecting the Russian Colonel with enough drugs to make a crippled narcoleptic sloth run a marathon. ‘We can’t carry this bitch with us and I don’t think she’ll come quietly’ Gaston observed, indicating the wraith queen who was now trying to get up again.

‘Shoot her’ Vaselov ordered sounding less strained. Sheppard had given him the painkiller first which had helped considerably.

‘You don't know what you have done. We are merely the caretakers for those that sleep. When I die, the others will awaken’ the wraith hissed at them. ‘All of them’ she added.

‘Great’ Gaston replied, ‘Can’t make Commander one day without plenty of kills’ he said blowing a hole through her chest the size of a football with his plasma-rifle. ‘What?’ he asked the other two now looking at him. ‘I’m thinking long-term career prospects’ he said before Vaselov took a few tentative steps and decided he was now able to move under his own steam.

Sheppard’s life-sign detector started to go nuts, he stared at it for a moment. ‘I think about a million Wraith just woke up’ he said with concern.

‘We’ll need a distraction to get out of here’ the Colonel replied, taking a plasma-pistol he was offered. His heart was pounding in his chest and he hoped he wasn’t about to go into cardiac arrest.

‘We planted charges Sir’ Gaston responded, gunning down a pair of Wraith in bone-like face-masks that came charging into the queen’s chamber. ‘We really don’t want to still be inside this place when we trigger the big ones though’ he added, getting ready to move.

‘What yield?’ Vaselov asked.

‘Naquadah/Pottassium Heavy Demolition Charges, two kilotons apiece’ Sheppard replied, reaching for his radio headset. ‘Ford blow the C4 in thirty seconds, Nash we’re still probably going to need some help getting out of here’ he said.

‘Good, I was getting really bored waiting out here ’ the sergeant replied just before Lieutenant Ford remote triggered the charges of plastic explosives they had placed in a few spots as they went.

The Wraith were terrible soldiers, their strength, resilience to physical damage and the lack of decent opposition had led to too much headlong charging in and not enough tactics. The sheer stupidity of their average grunt didn’t help much either and as they went through the ship P3-A1 fire slaughtered every hostile alien in their path. The detonation of the C4 had caused added confusion so that even the brighter ones couldn’t get organised and when something resembling resistance to the escape was put together the Wraith were horrified by the arrival of two metal clad titans in their midst coming from the other direction. The Powered Armour suits smashed them aside through brute force as much as they mowed them down with obscenely powerful energy weapons. Wraith were strong, far more so than humans, but they weren’t remotely strong enough to go hand-to-hand with something like that.

Wraith hand-weapons were designed to stun, not kill or cause much material damage. X-COM Powered Armour was conversely designed to provide protection against weaponry that could destroy heavily armoured vehicles. Soon dozens then hundreds of dead Wraith littered the ground wherever Nash and Hafner strode providing fire-support to the others, an L2-A3 Laser Rifle running straight off the suits naquadah generator in one hand and a P3-A1 Heavy Plasma Rifle in the other as they ruthlessly cleared the exit route. In different circumstances the Wraith would have resorted to using grenades but this was not an option given where they were. After enough of their ranks had fallen a decision was taken to let the humans leave and just let the Darts deal with them, there was only one way they could be headed after all. As the fire-fight ended Eitam took the opportunity to utilise her available source of labour and the Athosians found themselves being handed as many Wraith weapons to carry as they could manage as they were led to safety.

Reaching the Puddle-Jumper unmolested Sheppard and the others headed skywards, Ford remote-triggering the next set of charges. These ones were rather more impressive than C4 as an enormous fireball brighter than a thousand suns lit up the surrounding area. ‘Serious secondary explosion Sir’ Sheppard declared as a blast wave rocked the jumper.

‘Bring us around’ Vaselov ordered and as the jumper circled miles off a massive mushroom cloud reached for the sky, it was much larger than the demolition charges could have managed. ‘I feel better already’ he declared, ‘nice ship’ he added appreciatively as Sheppard pulled up the nose and headed for orbit.

They found numerous Wraith Darts waiting around the orbiting stargate. The Wraith couldn’t see the cloaked puddle jumper but as soon as the escapees remote dialled the gate the fighters would know where they were going and could lay down fire along its approach route. ‘Dumbshits’ Sheppard said, laughing as manoeuvred close enough to dial the gate from above and behind and sent a signal once the wormhole was established. The Darts were firing where they assume he would be but he had no intention of trying to go through the stargate yet, he needed to thin out the opposition first and they watched the firework display for a while. ‘We need to capture one of those fighters’ Sheppard observed, ‘remind me to put in a request to get a Zat-Cannon shipped from home’ he said.

Five minutes after the outgoing wormhole closed again the tell-tale splash of an incoming one preceded something emerging from it. Sheppard had requested some assistance from the other side and had been waiting patiently at a safe distance for it to arrive. If in doubt resort to the nuclear option, it was the X-COM way.

It took a multi-megaton thermonuclear detonation to destroy a stargate but Wraith Darts were far more fragile and when the naquadah reactor set to overload which Atlantis had thrown through from their side exploded with a mere twenty kiloton yield the gate was undamaged although the unshielded Darts and Wraith pilots nearby did not fare very well. Nuclear explosions in the vacuum of space are not really very impressive to see, there’s no long-lasting fireball or much real blast to speak of but the hard radiation they put out still makes it inadvisable to be anywhere near them.

Sheppard dispatched most of the few remaining Darts with Ancient Drones, the firing controls being as simple as thinking “kill that” he was glad to find out as the cloaked puddle-jumper took out the enemy fighters. ‘Anyone that wouldn’t want to do this job is insane’ he declared as they made another high-speed run at the stargate, dialling Atlantis and sending the GDO code to tell the city to drop the gate shield on their side before going through at an inadvisably fast velocity. A couple of Darts tried to pursue but splashed against the re-established shield on arrival. “Like bugs on a windshield” as Sheppard put it.

The Terrans had come to the Pegasus Galaxy and so far the Wraith were not happy about it.





Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – July 2004

Brigadier-General Jack O’Neill was re-reading the equipment request that the Atlantis Expedition had radioed over after confirming that the second batch of personnel and supplies should be sent through. It was a pain in the ass that they could only send things through one way for now, and then only once a week because of how long it took the Tollan Stargate Capacitor to charge, but at least the people in Pegasus weren’t completely cut-off.

‘Three F-302X Fighters with full weapons load-out’ O’Neill read aloud for the benefit of Lieutenant-Colonel Carter sat across his desk. ‘One Avenger Assault Transport with same’ he continued. ‘Twelve Heavy-Weapon MALPs, Twenty-Five P3-A1 Heavy Plasma Rifles with thirty clips each, Twenty-Five L2-A3 Laser Rifles with five liquid-naquadah power-cells each, Twenty-Five Stinger Missiles with nuclear warheads, ten crates Staff-Rifles, ten crates concussion grenades, ten crates fragmentation grenades’ he said, pausing to sigh. ‘One-hundred and twenty Goa’uld Shock-Grenades’ he resumed, ‘forty Naquadah/Potassium Demolition Charges and twelve Mark VIII high-yield naquadah-enhanced thermonuclear warheads.’

Carter laughed. ‘On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...’ she started to sing then stopped as he directed a look her way that said making the jokes was his job.

‘That’s just the weaponry they requested for delivery next week ’ O’Neill told her incredulously once she stopped kidding around. ‘Long-term they want another five Grim Reapers, two more Avengers, Laser Cannon and Staff-Gatlings on Air-Defence mounts’ he said. ‘And if we can manage it they’ve asked for a complete AEGIS System, assuming the Navy will give it up and we can fit it all through the stargate for assembly like the aircraft.’

‘Looking at the diagram they sent back the central tower would be a good place to mount the radar arrays at least’ Carter observed. The Atlantis Team had managed to figure out how to return the city to the surface before the power for the shield ran out, it was the obvious solution given that the Ancients had submerged the thing to start with but that wasn’t going to stop McKay crowing about it she knew.

‘I don’t like the sound of these Wraith’ O’Neill said, putting down the list. ‘If these guys beat the Ancients then we’ve got to assume they’re a lot more dangerous than our initial encounter with them indicates’ he said.

‘If they haven’t fought a proper war against decent opposition in ten-thousand years it’s not surprising our people caught them off-guard’ Carter responded, ‘but unless we’ve been drastically overrating how smart the Ancients were then I agree the Wraith represent a serious threat Sir’ she concurred.

‘I’ve got to sign off on this request’ O’Neill complained, at least it wouldn’t be coming totally out of his budget though, X-COM and others would have to share the financial burden. ‘They asked for fifty more naquadah generators and two more sarcophagi as well’ he muttered, ‘those things don’t come cheap you know’ he added more loudly.

‘We only sent them out with one Sir and according to the medical report from Doctor Beckett it’s likely that Colonel Vaselov will be enjoying several hours a week in the thing for the next two or three months’ she noted. ‘The Wraith feeding process caused severe damage to his physiology.’

‘Space Vampires’ O’Neill said, rolling his eyes at the cliché. Unfortunately for Vaselov you had to minimise exposure to a sarcophagus and ideally space out your time spent in one as long as possible because it would screw up your mind as it repaired your body. The Russian would spend the next eight to twelve weeks getting progressively younger until he was back to his correct physical age, or maybe a little younger if he was lucky. For now he apparently looked a well-worn eighty-five, was walking with the assistance of a cane and some strong pharmaceuticals and it was theorised that the Russian he kept spouting in an angry tone were vows that when he was better and sitting in the cockpit of an F-302 then a large number of Wraith were going to be made to pay for the fact he currently had to get up three times a night to take a leak.

The situation in the Milky Way Galaxy itself was less of an unknown although it was extremely fluid with several competing factions vying for supremacy. Only the day before news had come of a three-way battle being fought on P2X-887 between the forces of Baal, Camulus and the Free Jaffa as they each tried to seize control of an underground facility that had once belonged to Anubis. In the end the Free Jaffa had won the day, though only because they had the advantage of orbital superiority, bringing up the Ha’tak they had seized on Erebus and blasting the opposition into oblivion from above.

Camulus had come off worst. He only had a few remaining Jaffa and those not killed by Kull Warriors serving Baal had been blown to hell by capital staff-cannon hurtling down from the sky. Trying to take the base had been a desperate move which had ended badly, he was now down to a single Ha’tak carrying less than half a full inventory of deathgliders, three Al’kesh and less than five hundred troops.

As for Baal, although this was another tactical defeat he could absorb the losses far more easily thanks to greater strategic depth and a still recovering and expanding military. Being largely pragmatic he was now not only fielding greater and greater numbers of Kull Warriors as shock-troops his second-line Jaffa soldiers were also starting to wield increasing numbers of Staff-Rifles too, greatly increasing their own combat effectiveness. Moreover he had both Thoth and Nerus reluctantly cooperating in a project to back-engineer a chappa’nok’kek gate-fighter captured from Lord Yu in preparation for making an improved model and he was hoping eventually to equip all his non-Kull forces with the zat’nik’tel proof and plasma resistant body armour originally developed by Sokar. The Tau’ri had repeatedly demonstrated the advantages of equipping their forces with the full panoply of the best available weaponry and Baal was resolved to field an army that could finally take those upstarts on and beat them.

The Free Jaffa had technically won the battle but to their annoyance found the base had been stripped out already, making it a waste of what resources they had devoted towards the fight. With most of the available Free Jaffa and their Tok’ra allies and advisors fighting what had become a battle of attrition with Moloc and his fanatically loyal armies they couldn’t afford to waste their efforts winning victories that meant nothing and as they left the planet they vowed to be more careful in picking their targets next time.

After O’Neill signed off the supply request from Atlantis he and Carter headed for the gate room where he wanted to have a final word with SG-2 before they headed out to P8F-809. It was only supposed to be a routine exploration mission but these days those frequently turned into firefights, even if it was only with the armed Reconnaissance Drones doing the same thing for the opposition. Although technically they were only at war with Baal, Bastet, Kali and Amaterasu not the other System Lords at the moment skirmishes with supposedly allied Jaffa loyal to Lord Yu and the rest were still taken place sporadically too although the Tau’ri tried not to start them.

‘Just remember, if they look like they’re going to shoot, shoot them first’ O’Neill advised Ferretti who had just finished checking over his team. ‘I don’t care what mark is on their forehead’ he said then paused. ‘For the sake of diplomacy you could try and just zat them unless they’re with Baal or one of his chicks’ he added after thinking about it.

‘Yes Sir’ Ferretti responded. ‘Any other final orders Sir?’ he asked.

‘Try to get back well before the President is due to arrive for his tour’ O’Neill replied. ‘Judging from the pictures the MALP sent back P8F-809 is swampy and you might need more than one shower before putting on your dress uniform’ he said.

Ferretti sighed, never should have called tails when he and Reynolds flipped to see whether SG-2 or SG-3 would get this mission he thought regretfully. While he and his USAF team got to wallow in the mud those damn lucky jarheads were right now escorting a team to the near-paradise world of Argos. The goa’uld Pelops had been inducing rapid aging with nanotechnology there until SG-1 ended the experiment a few years back and it was wondered if a detailed cellular analysis of the people there might show a resemblance to what had been done to Colonel Vaselov.

‘Watch out for mosquitoes’ Carter told Ferretti. ‘I thought the camera on the MALP was zoomed in for a second until I realised the one that flew past it was really that big’ she said, holding her hands apart like she was a fisherman describing the one that got away.

‘You might want to zat those things too’ O’Neill advised SG-2 who were collectively looking less and less enthused about the mission every second.

‘Okay I’ve done my job, got them raring to go, so now I’m thinking a nice brunch’ O’Neill told Carter, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. ‘Carry on Lieutenant-Colonel’ he told Ferretti before heading off with Carter in tow.

The rest of SG-2 were directing accusing looks at their CO as the gate dialled up. ‘Alright, alright’ he conceded, ‘I’ll pick up the tab at the bar for the next month’ he offered by way of apology.

‘I hear that all the women on Argos wear skimpy outfits and put out’ one of his team complained to another. ‘Even the General got laid when he was there and he’s old .’

‘He got a lot older and nearly died the way I heard it’ another replied as the wormhole engaged and they dejectedly stomped up the ramp. Those safe-sex lectures about using precautions should include warnings about nanotech STD’s when you joined the SGC he thought.

‘Yeah but he didn’t and the chick was supposed to be really hot though’ the first pointed out. ‘Marines like to wallop in mud, they should be there dealing with mosquitoes the size of vampire bats’ he added.

‘Mud is good for the complexion they say’ the other one said more brightly.

‘Getting laid cleared up my acne when I was sixteen too and I know which treatment I’d prefer’ the first stated as they stepped through the gate.





Atlantis – Pegasus Galaxy – July 2004

‘For the last time I am not a ghost’ Tesserarius Travoc insisted as the Athosian children, a boy and a girl both under ten cowered behind Elizabeth Weir having run to tell the person in charge what they had found. He had only recently arrived in Atlantis with the second batch of personnel and hadn’t dealt with the Athosians yet having been running from place to place trying to help out the Earth scientists who were in over their heads given the sophistication of much of the technology here.

‘He walked through a wall, he’s one of the spirits of the ancestors that haunt this place’ the little girl insisted, tugging on Weir’s jacket.

Weir was trying her best not to laugh at the expression on the Tollan Officers face. ‘Did you walk through a wall?’ she asked him.

Travoc sighed. ‘Doctor Grodin reported they had found a room with a broken door mechanism’ he replied, ‘he asked if I could see what was in there before they bothered to try and force the door open’ he explained. ‘I checked it out and when I came back out these children were there and then they started screaming about the Ancestors.’

‘So you did walk through a wall and then chased them trying to explain you’re not actually a disembodied spirit that has dwelt in Atlantis for the last ten-thousand years’ Weir checked.

‘They wouldn’t listen’ Travoc replied, starting to feel extremely embarrassed by the situation. Children on Tollana were used to seeing people phase-shift through solid matter and they didn’t believe in the supernatural either.

‘Don’t look in his eyes, he’ll take your soul’ the little boy informed Weir, trying to pull her away from the apparition.

‘He’s not a ghost he’s another person from my galaxy who came here in the stargate like I did’ Weir told the children.

‘But he’s not dressed like you, he’s shiny’ the little girl pointed out.

‘It’s a Tollan Hazardous Environment Suit’ Travoc responded indicating his silver one-piece outfit. ‘I had no idea what was in the room’ he explained. ‘It’s just special clothing honestly’ he told the children.

‘But he walked through a wall’ the girl pointed out again, that was a slam-dunk argument for him being a ghost as far as she was concerned.

Travoc looked around and picked up a pen that was lying on Weirs desk. ‘See’ he said ‘not a ghost’ he told the children.

‘Spirits can move things with strange powers like Wraith can’ the boy declared.

‘I’m not telekinetic’ Travoc responded in exasperation, the Tollan were still trying to figure out how both that and telepathy even worked, they didn’t think it was a real phenomena at all until the Tau’ri demonstrated Psi-Amps to them causing Tollan physicists to go back and take another long hard look at their equations.

Weir realised that this could go on for a while if she didn’t try something more dramatic. ‘Travoc there isn’t from Terra like I am’ she said. ‘He comes from another world in my galaxy that is very advanced called Tollana’ she told the children. ‘They invented machines which mean they can walk through walls’ she explained, ‘that’s all he did, he used a machine to do what you saw.’

‘Really?’ the boy asked doubtfully. He had seen the Terrans use some amazing machines but this was something else entirely.

‘Yes, and if someone holds his hand when he uses the machine they can walk through a wall with him’ Weir said patiently. ‘He’s going to walk me through a wall to show you and then if you feel brave you can try it too’ she promised.

‘I’m not a children’s entertainer’ Travoc responded quickly, if these two got to try out phase-shifting then every damn kid in the city would want a go he knew.

‘No but you are a soldier and the Curia placed you under my command for the duration of your assignment here so you can consider it an order if you like’ Weir told him.

‘I doubt the High Chancellor saw my role here as being other than providing technical assistance’ Travoc replied evenly.

‘Do you like the idea of children running away screaming from you?’ Weir inquired, pulling away from the children and holding out her hand.

‘No’ Travoc replied reluctantly, before taking it and using his free hand to touch the controls on the device on his arm. ‘We’ll start out by shifting through your desk’ he told her, better to just get this over and done with he realised.

As it turned out Trevoc wasn’t the only person providing great entertainment that day. After volunteering to try out Doctor Beckett’s ATA gene-therapy Rodney McKay found he was now able to activate Ancient Devices and he promptly tried out a prototype Lantean Personal Forcefield he had discovered in a laboratory. After testing the thing in a number of other ways, including getting shot by projectile weapons and an L2-A3, McKay started delighting the crowd by throwing himself off balconies, the forcefield cushioning against inertia too.

Not much more than a locket-sized green crystal the personal forcefield was far more effective than the goa’uld ones they had encountered before. Nothing could penetrate the shield but air regardless of velocity and although this proved to be an issue because he couldn’t eat or drink either Zelenka was confident that once McKay died of thirst they should be able to retrieve the device for analysis because it would drop off his corpse.

Knowing that they could readily bring him back in a sarcophagus was not however improving McKay’s mood at the prospect of a drawn-out painful death. A suggestion by Sheppard that they speed up the process by putting him in a sealed chamber and pumping all the air out was not greeted any more favourably however and after a few hours he was really starting to get on everyone’s nerves.

Now resting on the surface after a careful voyage from the bottom of the ocean Atlantis was truly a wonder to behold. It had taken over an hour to gradually raise the city because McKay wanted to avoid causing structural damage to the areas not protected by the shield, but when the towers slowly pierced the surface water gushing from them it was still an amazing sight if not as dramatic as it could have been at a faster pace of ascent.

Atlantis wasn’t all that large, smaller than the flagships of Apophis or Anubis had been and the population couldn’t have ever been more than a large town but what it lacked in volume it was already making up for in discoveries. Small rooms first believed to be mere elevators were soon found to be transporter booths similar in principle to Aschen designs indicating that after millions of years the Ancients had finally done better than the Rings. There were several laboratories full of fascinating though so-far utterly unknown technologies, Beckett had a large infirmary and had recruited a small team of scientists to try and figure out how most of the equipment there worked and Colonel Vaselov was pleased to find that the city had a nice secure holding cell which was currently the dwelling place of the Wraith prisoner who had been shot down on Athos.

The Wraith had been extremely uncooperative and had done little more than sneer when asked questions. This attitude had changed more than slightly when he was forced into a chair by two Troopers in Powered Armour, strapped down and then subjected to the painful but highly effective X-COM interrogation technique generally described as “Mind Rape”. Weir wasn’t too happy but it was standard operating procedure and she did spend an hour before extreme measures were employed trying to persuade the Dart Pilot to be more forthcoming because it really was in his best interests not to be stubborn.

Unfortunately they soon learned that the Wraith had a caste system and although not one of the lowest caste the pilot was nowhere near as intelligent or well-informed as a Wraith Queen or one of the senior military or scientific ranks in the aliens hierarchy would have been. He had moderate psionic power, this being neutralised for safeties sake after a brain-scan by the simple application of some electrodes into his skull, and a reasonably high IQ but if they wanted to find out more about the enemy they were going to need to capture someone higher up the chain of command.

Vaselov was surprised to discover that the large facility he had been held at was in fact a grounded Wraith starship. These ranged in scale from what the pilot described as “Scout Ships” through “Cruisers” which were over two and a half kilometres in length to the largest “Hive Ships” that measured in at an astonishing eleven kilometres end-to-end dwarfing even the flagship of Anubis. The only saving grace was that the Wraith didn’t use protective shields on their vessels so destroying the things with the relatively diminutive Earth warships might still be possible, just throw enough gigaton-plus warheads at the big bastards until they come apart seemed the best solution if it came to a fight.

The Ancients, Ancestors, Lanteans or whatever you wanted to call them had primarily relied on their shield-penetrating Drone Weapons for anti-ship weaponry which was why the Wraith had adopted armour not shields as capital-ship protection. Why waste reactor output keeping a barrier charged which the enemy could shoot through easily anyway? Far better, the Wraith had realised, to use what power generation you had to increase your own offensive capabilities or when not in combat use it to drive the ludicrously sized engines you needed to push heavily armoured ships the size of a large asteroid through space.

The Wraith were not interestingly a completely united group however which surprised the Athosians who had considered them as being less divided than they actually were. In reality the Wraith were divided into several clans, each having several lower-level queens ruled over by a dominant one and each clan controlling a certain territory. A shortage of available food meant that the vast majority of Wraith from each group hibernated for centuries between periods of mass culling, the human population being allowed to recover in number afterwards. The survivors would be watched over by a small number of caretakers than would make sure that no human world ever advanced enough to become a military threat whilst the majority of Wraith slumbered. The next mass cull was not due for several more decades although it was possible the destruction of a Hive might mean cranky Wraith waking up early wondering what the hell was going on and who was making all the noise outside.

Leaning on his walking stick Colonel Vaselov turned from the Wraith towards Major Sheppard stood beside him. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think we should find out where as many of the Hives and Cruisers are as we can, sneak up on them in cloaked Puddle-Jumpers and nuke the ever-loving shit out them with the biggest warheads we can get hold of before they realise there’s a new sheriff in town Sir’ Sheppard replied. ‘Once we’ve knocked them down to size then we deal with what’s left.’

Vaselov smiled viciously. ‘I told the bitch we would be coming for them’ he replied nodding his agreement with the plan.

Sheppard smiled back. ‘You know at first this guy thought we were the Ancients returning’ he told Vaselov. ‘The Wraith have always expected it one day he said.

The Russian Colonel laughed and turned back towards the prisoner. ‘You wish’ he told the alien.

Omega Site - PX0-999 (Terra Nova) - September 2004

Professor Able Standard would have much rather been spending his time on his own sorely under-funded pet project but if he didn't show some willing to do the work they actually wanted him to prioritise then X-COM might kick him out completely and then where would he be? Why they had still insisted on continuing to develop the next generation of Powered Armour rather than leap straight to a fully-fledged AI robotic soldier Professor Standard couldn't begin to fathom but the limited minds without vision ran the show and he was forced to perform what they wanted him to hence he was now half way across the galaxy doing last-minute diagnostic checks on the shiny new toy that the military drones wanted to see. Although he had done most of the work on the project he wasn't really all that comfortable at speaking in public so Doctor Markov would be doing the talking fortunately, she was stood nearby going through her notes in preparation for any tricky questions and Standard hoped he wouldn't have to field any of them in she couldn't.

Brigadier-General Jack O'Neill was yawning already as he watched the geeks go about their business next to the thing with the sheet thrown over it, though the yawn was mainly due to the extremely tedious briefing he had received on current goa'uld political manoeuvrings back at the SGC before coming here rather than an expectation the demonstration was going to be dull. In his experience new X-COM hardware being put through its paces was anything but boring, you had to admit they produced awesome equipment.

Later on they would be heading for the surface to see a demonstration of the new shield-penetrating missiles, which had been named the AIM-200 Mongoose in honour of their intended task of chowing down on the damn snake-heads, but for this first part of the days itinerary they were still deep underground in one of the caverns that had been carved out to hold the bunker complex. The seating was fairly rudimentary, half the guests had found themselves perched on old ammunition crates, but given his rank O'Neill had of course been accorded the privilege of a chair, albeit it a moulded plastic one taken from the canteen.

Once everyone had taken their seats, there were about three dozen visitors from the SGC, Area-51 and Yamantau, the team running the demonstration began their introductory spiel. Commander Sharp was sat to O'Neill's left with Colonel Rodrigues on his other side while Carter sat to O'Neill's right holding a notebook on which she had already scribbled a few questions she wanted to ask later. O'Neill hoped the Q&A session wouldn't last too long as he didn't want to have to rush his lunch, there was nothing less civilised than bolting your food.

'Good Morning' Svetlana Markov began, smiling at the group. 'I believe you have all already been introduced to each other and I am sure you do not want to hear about the background to the project so I will get right on with it' she said.

'I always liked her' O'Neill observed quietly, Carter looking up from her notepad and directing the briefest of unreadable looks his way.

Markov glanced at her own notes again before proceeding. 'As you all know it has been over two years since we introduced the Mark I Powered Armour suit into service' she said. 'Originally Doctor Zelenka, the project lead at that time, intended to upgrade to the Mark II well before now but changing priorities caused some delays and then the development of new technologies we decided were worth integrating into the suit caused others but I am happy to say that after a few teething troubles the Mark II Powered Armour suit is now ready for field testing and serial production' she declared, giving the nod to Professor Standard who pulled the sheet from the prototype.

'Bitchin' Sharp said enthusiastically, I might have been around Cassie too much he thought to himself afterwards.

Bulkier than the Mark I the new version of the Powered Armour suit looked considerably more menacing, the image helped by the fact it had been painted up in red and black. 'Firstly I would draw your attention to the bulges under the forearms' Markov told them. 'The left arm carries a built in heavy laser and a zat'nik'tel discharger whereas the right holds... something special' she said.

'Must be good' O'Neill decided, the Russian scientist was employing some showmanship.

Svetlana Markov looked pleased with herself, as well she might because this was her part of the project. 'As you know the Plasma Repeater weapon used by the Kull Warriors has proven itself to be far more effective than previous goa'uld weaponry' she noted. 'In fact the only drawback was its tendency to overheat resulting in only short bursts being possible rather than continuous fire' she continued, 'we've done better' she declared, moving towards the suit.

'Improved cooling?' Carter wondered to herself.

'Instead of one Plasma Repeater the Mark II carries three of them firing sequentially using the same gatling-gun design as we used to increase the rate-of-fire for the earlier Staff-Weapons' Markov explained. 'Added to other refinements we can achieve double the original fire-rate and still fire bursts of five-hundred bolts at a time without overheating' she announced.

'Sweet' O'Neill said appreciatively, at least it was better than "bitchin" he decided.

Markov was pleased by the expressions on everyone's faces and basked in the glory before continuing. 'As well as the built-in weaponry we have also designed the Mark II in such a way that additional modular weaponry can be carried as well' she told the audience. 'It takes less than three minutes to add either a bolt-on rotary shotgun or a 40mm automatic grenade launcher to either arm' she told them. 'Both of these are fed from large ammunition hoppers which would be mounted on the back of the suit.'

'What if we wanted both?' Colonel Rodigues asked to laughter.

'Unfortunately you can only carry one ammunition pack but the free arm can be fitted with a modified version of our Heavy Plasma Rifle if additional firepower is required' Markov replied. 'We were originally intending to demonstrate the suit and its weaponry in action at this juncture but decided it would be too hard on the complex' she said. 'You will get to see it in action later on the surface however.'

'I'll take ten right now' O'Neill declared, 'show me where to sign' he said to more laughter.

'But surely General you wish to at least hear the rest?' Markov responded, amused.

'I doubt I can afford more than ten with my budget but go on anyway' O'Neill replied.

The Russian rapped her knuckles on the suit. 'Trinium/Cydonium alloy laminated with tungsten and ceramics' she said. 'Fifty-percent more resistance to enemy fire than the Mark I' she told them. 'But that is only the start of the defensive capabilities of this suit' she said. 'You have a built-in personal cloaking device, full ECM system, passive and active sensors plus, thanks to our back-engineering of the robot reconnaissance probes developed by Anubis, an energy shield.'

'It's got a freaking shield ?' one of the other visitors, a Major from Area 51, asked incredulously.

Markov nodded. 'Although a far less capable unit that the ones fitted to our fighters or Hover Tanks the shield has been rated to stand against at least three hits from a Staff-Cannon or Heavy Plasma Rifle in quick succession' she announced. 'We would still suggest getting out of the line of fire as soon as you get hit the first time however' she advised with a chuckle.

'If it can take three hits from a Staff-Cannon it would take a hellacious number of Plasma-Repeater or Staff-Weapon bolts Sir' Carter told O'Neill.

'Yeah but I'm beginning to thing the price-tag might put ten of them out of my reach' O'Neill responded with a frown.

'I can see one obvious drawback Doctor Markov' Colonel Rodrigues observed. 'That thing probably weighs a ton and a half, that could hurt mobility as well as being a pain in the ass when we're on certain terrain' he said. 'For that matter I've seen plenty of rickety floors and bridges out there in the galaxy, the goa'uld aren't great with transport infrastructure' he added.

'Fortunately, although the Mark II is indeed considerably heavier than its predecessor, this new model does have a mitigating advantage' Markov replied. 'The Mark I was not fitted with an elerium powerplant giving it the ability to fly' she said flatly.

'Jesus, I thought Zelenka was joking about that' O'Neill said in surprise when he recalled being told back in 2002 that the next suit would have that ability.

Fortunately most of the group were now staring at Markov incredulously so Sharp didn't have to quiet them down. 'Okay, are we talking like Iron Man here?' he asked semi-seriously.

Markov didn't understand the reference and turned to Professor Standard in case he might. 'No Commander' Standard spoke up, 'the flight abilities of the Mark II are limited to the ability to hover and move through the air at about the same pace as a Sectoid Cyberdisc because they share the same elerium propulsion system' he told him, trying not to look away as everyone looked at him. 'In fact you only have fifteen to twenty minutes worth of elerium fuel so in terms of mobility you would still be better off walking in most cases, only using the flight ability sparingly' he said.

'Could you use the flight module in a series of short bursts' Rodrigues asked, 'say to jump forwards, I mean bound along' he explained.

Markov looked puzzled. 'What do you mean exactly?' she asked.

'You know, like a kangaroo but higher and further' Rodrigues told her.

'We would have to check if the servo mechanism and shock-absorbers in the knees could take it but perhaps so' Markov replied. 'It would require some modifications though I would think.'

'It would be more fuel efficient' Professor Standard observed thoughtfully, elerium would only be used up as the suit jumped and then the unit could be shut down letting inertia and gravity do the rest.

Sharp turned in his seat to look at the Colonel. 'I think you've taken the notion of "Rodrigues's Roughnecks" way too seriously' he told his second-in-command.

'When the Jaffa see fifty of those suckers bouncing towards them firing grenades and plasma as they go they're going to re-think their loyalty to the goa'uld right away mark my words Sir' Rodrigues replied, grinning. 'Pity the Mark II's aren't nuclear capable as well' he joked.

'Actually the grenade-launcher has a range of over a kilometre so naquadah/potassium projectiles with a nuclear yield equivalent to a few tons of TNT are practical munitions' Markov told him seriously. 'Nirrti is already designing them' she added.

'We are going to kick so much goa'uld ass' O'Neill said happily, the "supersoldiers" Baal was so pleased about were going to get stomped into the ground.

'We are going to destroy so much of the galaxy in the next few years' Carter muttered to herself sadly.





Planet Hoff – Pegasus Galaxy – September 2004

Major Sheppard was thinking it but wasn't anywhere near blunt or undiplomatic enough to actually say it, the same was true of Captain Gaston, Sergeant Nash however wasn't so inclined towards behaving like a polite guest. 'These people are fucking retarded' he opined none too quietly as the Hoffan Chancellor Druhin finished explaining his people's great work.

'Thank you Sergeant' Sheppard told Nash sardonically as the Hoffans in the room adopted a mix of hurt and angry expressions. 'I'll have to apologise for the Sergeant' Sheppard told Druhin.

Druhin looked none too pleased but for his part he was rather more politically adept. 'I'm sure you could find plenty in our own military with a similar lack of social niceties' he replied, not entirely sincerely.

Trying to improve the atmosphere Teyla put on a winning smile, it was her idea to come to Hoff after she had been asked if she knew of any worlds which were technologically advanced so she was hoping that she hadn't made a mistake. Although perhaps a century or more behind the Terrans the Hoffan people were at least industrialised which put them ahead of most societies in the galaxy but they were also more than a little blind to the likely consequences of their great project it seemed.

Not quite as blunt as Nash McKay nevertheless was also thinking along the same lines. 'So the plan you've been working on for centuries is to perfect a drug that will ensure that the next time the Wraith come here to cull you they won't leave anysurvivors and will blast this entire planet down to the bedrock after they commit genocide on you?' he asked.

The Hoffan Chancellor looked confused. 'I'm sorry?' he responded.

'Let me handle this' Sheppard told the others. 'Look what we're all thinking is that if you succeed in developing a vaccine that prevents the wraith feeding on you then all you'll be doing is guaranteeing that they will kill you all' he told Druhin in as polite a manner as he could. 'The Wraith can't risk you spreading the knowledge to other worlds and they can't risk you continuing to advance to the point where you might be a threat so they'll destroy you from orbit.'

'We are no threat to the wraith' Druhin responded.

'They need to feed on humans to live so you're a threat to their entire existence as a species' McKay told him flatly. 'If they thought for one second you were doing this then there wouldn't be any more Hoffans' he said.

Teyla nodded. 'The wraith have destroyed worlds for far less' she agreed. 'I have seen the ruins of civilisations they destroyed merely because they were becoming too advanced and might be able to fight back' she said. 'Your plan... is suicide' she told them awkwardly.

'You mock the life's work of countless Hoffans' Perna one of the scientists on the project spoke up indignantly. 'A hundred and fifty years ago ten thousand of our soldiers laid down their lives so that Doctor Ferrel could have but a few more minutes to try and complete his work we now continue' she declared.

'And if he had succeeded before the wraith came that time this planet would be a barren wasteland' Sheppard told her. 'Surely somebody here considered this?' he asked rhetorically.

Druhin frowned. 'There were and are always naysayers but...'

'We have wraith prisoners, we know how they think' Sheppard told the Hoffans. 'You're making a big mistake here' he stated. 'We're going to beat the wraith and all you need to do is survive until we have, but if you provoke them into destroying you before we can... well all the effort your people have made to preserve their culture and knowledge is going to be wasted.'

'Major from what I have heard their entire society has been working towards the development of this drug for generations' Teyla told him. 'We can hardly expect them to abandon it on our say-so' she pointed out. 'Perhaps Doctor Weir might be a better choice to try and persuade them of their folly?' she suggested.

'Can I make a suggestion Sir' Captain Gaston requested, addressing Sheppard. 'The Hoffans have already shown us their geothermal power-plant' he noted, 'they need power sources to maintain all the underground bunkers they've constructed , perhaps as a gesture of good faith we could give them a few naquadah reactors?'

'Naquadah reactors?' Druhin queried.

'They're about this big and generate enough electricity to run a small city' Sheppard explained, holding his hands apart to demonstrate the size of the unit. 'We can provide you with designs for better weaponry too, ones that you'll be able to make yourself' he said. 'If you really want to protect your people from the wraith we can help you do that but we won't help you perfect something that will guarantee your own destruction.'

'We're not interested in the scraps from your table' Druhin responded. 'We only told you of our great work because it seemed from what Teyla Emmagan said of your medical knowledge you might be of assistance.'

'Not going to assist you bringing the entire force of the wraith down upon you' Sheppard told him. 'Like I said, we know how they think.'

'I suppose you've looked into their souls?' Perna asked sarcastically.

'Not sure if they've got one of those but we do have devices that mean we're able to read their minds' Sheppard replied. 'Fact is thanks to plenty of in-depth interrogation and a little psionic investigation we're well on the way to having an extremely in-depth understanding of their psychology and abilities' he said, Doctor Heightmeyer was already compiling notes for a thesis on the subject he knew. 'Did you know that the wraith can actually put back the life-energy they take out of you?' he asked rhetorically. 'Surprised us too but they can' he said.

'And you expect us to believe in such witchcraft?' Druhin responded.

'No faith required, we can show you' Sheppard told him.

In some ways the Hoffans were extremely impressive as a culture and society. They had refused to bow down to the wraith, preserving their accumulated knowledge in bunkers across the planet so that they could quickly rebuild after each culling, and they had a praiseworthy devotion to the cause of not giving up but they had really picked a bad idea to fixate upon as a goal. Just before the last culling, one-hundred and fifty years ago, it had been discovered that one of their people was immune to being fed upon due to a random mutation that had resulted in a freak protein within the man's system. Ever since they had strived to create a drug that would render all of their population so immune, not really thinking through the inevitable consequence when the farmer discovered that the herd wasn't edible and might do the same thing to all the other livestock if it wasn't dealt with. The Hoffan drug wasn't a protection, it was an invitation to be slaughtered, you might not want to eat a cow suffering from Foot-and-Mouth disease but you couldn't let it live to infect others either.

'Have you not heard the stories of what happened to the Satedans less than ten years past?' Teyla asked the Hoffans. 'According to the tales I have heard they sought to protect themselves by making it too costly for the wraith to attack them by building up large, well-trained and well-equipped armies' she said. 'Instead they bought down the wrath of the foe upon themselves because the wraith cannot afford to permit defiance' she continued. 'Simply the idea that others might seek to emulate the Satedans if it worked was enough to provoke the wraith to act' she explained.

'We're not making any headway here Major' Captain Gaston remarked to Sheppard. 'As Teyla said perhaps Doctor Weir might be able to talk these people out of metaphorically slitting their own wrists' he said.

'Yeah' Sheppard agreed. 'Look we're genuinely hoping to have a good relationship with you and your people' he told the Hoffan Chancellor, 'we've got a lot to offer each other and we could be great allies against the wraith' he continued, 'but for now we'd better go home' he said. 'Please just give what we've said some thought okay?' he requested.

'We're a democracy Major, the will of the people is paramount here and I doubt the words of a few strangers will sway many but we will of course give your arguments due weight' Druhin replied in such a way that Sheppard hoped Weir would be able to make some headway with these people because they had a cultural blind-spot that was going to get them all killed if they didn't realise it soon.

As they headed back to Atlantis via the Hoffan stargate Sheppard wished that every mission could go as well as the one they had undertaken only two days before. Using their Avenger as transportation to get there they had not only found the Lantean Weapon Satellite in a repairable state they had picked up a signal from a nearby planet and discovered the wreckage of a wraith supply ship left over from the war which they were now eagerly taking apart. Astonishingly they had even found a live wraith survivor who had survived the last ten millennia by feeding on the supplies (human beings kept in stasis as rations) and the rest of the crew. After an almost amusing initial attempt by the wraith to feed on the scouting team, he hadreally underestimated his "prey" who nearly killed him with a laser hit through the chest before he fled and was hunted down by motion scanners, the new prisoner was now sitting in a cell in Atlantis wondering what the hell had happened to the natural order of things while he was away.

The weapon satellite itself had proven as expected to be a huge particle-beam cannon which was designed to burn through the thick armour and immense hulls of wraith capital ships. It was surprisingly energy efficient according to the specifications they had found in the Lantean database, leading McKay to wonder how exactly it could produce so much raw firepower for so little power input, but figuring out the how was a lesser priority than just getting the thing operational again and just as importantly moving it to somewhere more useful. Originally dozens of the satellites had defended the approaches towards Lantea but the remaining one was only useful if the wraith happened to follow a course that went near it which was not ideal.

Weir had wondered how on Earth, or perhaps Lantea, they expected to move a multi-million ton satellite into geosynchronous orbit above the city and had been slightly annoyed when the response from her scientific team was amusement. Eventually Zelenka explained that all they needed to do was get it moving in the right direction and then the Avenger could open a hyperspace window ahead of it. Compared to moving the vast bulk of the naquadah asteroid now in the Oort cloud of the Sol System relocating the Lantean satellite was not exactly an insurmountable problem, they just needed time to get all the math right before trying it. A larger problem was going to be fixing the satellites shield which would need considerable work according to Zelenka, in fact he had even suggested it might be easier to have a copy of a Ha'tak shield shipped from Earth in pieces and fit that instead.

As she listened to Sheppards report about the Hoffan's and their extremely inadvisable plan to bring certain doom down upon themselves Weir wondered how she had ended up in a position where the fate of a galaxy and its millions of inhabitants seemed to rest on her shoulders. He was right that they badly needed to be talked out of it because as yet she was in no position to protect the Hoffans from their own idiocy.

Colonel Vaselov, still often to be seen carrying his stick though he was now at least two or three decades younger in appearance than he had been after his encounter with a Wraith Queen, was sat beside Weir as Sheppard gave his report. As he listened himself the germ on an idea began to form, an idea that he wondered might be a little too ruthless and opportunistic for Weir but he thought he should suggest it anyway. 'Since we know that the wraith will attack Hoff as soon as they learn of the drug it does offer us a very useful opportunity to spring an ambush' he said. 'We could be destroying hiveships right now if we just knew where the things were.'

'Use the Hoffans as bait you mean?' Weir replied disparagingly.

'They're putting themselves on the hook Ma'am' Sheppard reminded her, 'we'd just be clubbing the fish over the head when it bites' he said.

'If it's all the same to you I'd rather persuade them to stay off the hook' Weir told the military men.

'Good luck with that' Sheppard replied, 'I mean it, good luck' he said. 'They're nice people... they've just latched onto an insane idea.'

After they had left Elizabeth Weir contemplated her next move, it might be wise to give the Hoffans a few days, or perhaps a week or two to consider what Sheppard and his team had told them, and after that she would resume contact with them herself. The nagging thought bothering however was that Vaselov's plan to use the Hoffan's as the cheese in the mousetrap had actually sounded like a very good idea and she didn't used to be anywhere near this calculating.

Weir got up and headed for the balcony from which she could look down at the city. Down on one of the piers she knew that Travoc was determining the best placement for the first of the Tollan Heavy Ion Cannon that would be shipped here in pieces starting in a few weeks time and she hoped it wouldn't spoil the idyllic view. A work crew was already starting to fit the first of the panels to the central tower that would make up the radar array for the cities new Aegis missile defences but at least those didn't really draw too much attention to themselves. 'We found a gleaming city of dreams set in a perfect ocean and we're turning it into a fortification' she said to herself regretfully, 'damn the wraith for making us do it' she added. 'Damn me for not being able to see an alternative' she added quietly to herself.





Underground Facility – P3X-989 (Altair) – September 2004

Brigadier-General Jack O'Neill stepped out through the stargate leading SG-1, he didn't get out as often as he used to but this wasn't the off-world mission he would have picked for himself, for one thing he hated getting summoned and if it had been anyone whose opinion he trusted less there wouldn't have been a chance he would be here right now. 'Okay RobO'Neill what's so all-fired important that you dialled the SGC and told me to get my ass here PDQ?' he asked his double stood at the bottom of the ramp.

'Better I just show you' his android copy replied. 'Carter please bring out our guest' he called out.

'Son-of-a-bitch ' the flesh and blood O'Neill exclaimed as the android copy of Carter emerged with the replicator known as fifth holding him at the point of a Heavy Plasma Rifle. SG-1 had already raised their own weapons and were pointing them at the humanform replicator, Andianov looking like she was a hairs-breadth from pulling the trigger.

'I want to claim asylum' Fifth spoke up nervously, 'I came here because I hoped your robotic doubles would be more accepting... but they weren't.'

'Yeah, no shit' the android Jack O'Neill responded. 'Good thing you kept us up-to-date with what's going on out there or we wouldn't have known what to do with this little bastard' he said.

'What the hell does he mean he wants to claim asylum?' the other O'Neill asked incredulously.

'Apparently there's yet another Sam Carter around these days and this one is a real bitch' the robot version of the woman herself spoke up. 'Oh and congratulations on making Lieutenant-Colonel and getting Jack's old job' she told the original.

'There's another one of us?' Carter responded in dismay, any pretense she had to being a unique individual was continuing to vanish.

'From what our friend here tells me he made a replicator copy of your Carter because he wanted something to snuggle up with but unfortunately he didn't quite get it right' the android O'Neill told his human visitors wryly. 'One successful coup later and he's sending us a radio signal from a planet on the edge of the galaxy asking for asylum.'

'You're kidding?' Daniel asked.

'No he's quite serious' the other Daniel replied, entering the room with the other Teal'c with him.
'Hello' Reese said brightly, joining them and putting her arm around the android Daniel's waist cuddling up to him. 'Please don't hurt Fifth' she requested, 'he's not bad he's just silly' she said before giggling. 'He called me his creator which is true sort-of but I don't feel like a god' she said.

SG-1 still had their weapons trained of Fifth. 'So let me get this straight, assuming I'm understanding the situation correctly' Brigadier-General O'Neill said slowly. 'Our replicator friend there made a duplicate of Carter and she booted him out on his ass and made herself the queen of the lego robots?' he checked.

'Yup' his double confirmed. 'I guess Carters everywhere are always on the lookout for promotion' he suggested, earning a glare from both of them.

'Well isn't that good news?' the human Daniel asked. 'I mean I can't imagine Sam being a threat.'

'Unfortunately from what Number Five tells us he didn't quite get the design right' the gears and wires Carter responded.

'Emotions' the human Carter said with a obvious groan, 'he doesn't understand them very well' she realised.

'Daniel who's like me says that I'm more emotionally mature than silly Fifth' Reese declared, hugging him tighter.

'Not a ringing endorsement sweetheart' the android O'Neill told her receiving a scowl from Reese in response. 'Harlan took a look into our guests psyche using some of our gear and figured out what went wrong but it's not something that can be fixed' he said. 'RepliCarter is out there and we thought you'd better be told.'

'Aw for crying out loud' the original O'Neill responded, he loved the name "RepliCarter" though. 'If he copied everything our Carter knew and put it into his artificial girlfriend she'll know almost everything about us' he said in dismay. 'Procedures, equipment everything' he said.

'This is extremely grave O'Neill' Teal'c opined.

Fifth looked as much embarrassed as anything else. 'Samantha, I mean my Samantha considered me weak' he said, 'she believes herself more fit to command our brethren.'

'Well she's still got her smarts at least' the human O'Neill observed.

'According to Numero Cinco RepliCarter thinks the Milky Way is chock-full of all kinds of wonderful technology and resources and she's about to come calling' the android O'Neill told them.

'But we've got the Anti-Replicator guns now' Daniel pointed out.

'And if she could capture one she might be able to figure out a counter-measure' the robotic Carter responded. 'The replicators would be willing to sacrifice billions of their own kind in order to win right?' she asked rhetorically. 'For that matter the weapons are based on Ancient knowledge that was downloaded into your Jack's head' she continued. 'This galaxy is full of artefacts the Ancients left behind, maybe the solution is just buried somewhere waiting to be dug up.'

'Could she interface with an Ancient Repository if she found one?' the human Daniel wondered.

'Maybe not but if I was her I'd stick some poor schmuck into it then stick my hand in his head to get around that problem' the Carter who had arrived with him from Earth replied. 'If I was her' she said when everyone looked at her suspiciously.

'Careful, I think they're starting to realise our hidden depths of evil' her robot copy joked.

'I made a serious mistake creating her' Fifth said despondently.

'A blow-up rubber doll would have been a less risky alternative when creating a sex-toy' Andianov said. 'Well what do you think he created her for?' she added when both Carters appeared to blush. 'Companionship?' she asked sardonically.

Fifth tried not to look guilty. 'I wanted a friend' he defended himself. 'Someone to love that would love me' he said.

'That's just what the universe needed, a whiny emo replicator' Brigadier-General O'Neill said, rolling his eyes.

'Just kill me now, get it over and done with' Fifth responded. 'I haven't got anything to live for any more anyway' he continued. 'Coming here was my last resort.'

'Altair, final destination of emotionally immature artificial humans everywhere' the android O'Neill observed. 'At least Reese is fun to be around most of the time, this guy is just depressing' he said.

Fifth rounded on the mechanical O'Neill. 'I've been betrayed by everyone I loved and trusted' he said angrily.

'My hydraulic pump leaks for you, really it does' came the sarcastic reply which caused the other O'Neill to laugh. 'I woke up one day and found someone had turned me into R2D2 but I just got on with my damn life' the robot added.

'Don't be mean' Reese chided. 'He's sad and he needs a hug' she said.

'He needs disintegration or a kick up the ass' android O'Neill replied. 'Either way he's your problem' he told the original version of himself. 'We don't want him' he said.

'Fine' Brigadier-General O'Neill replied. 'Who wants to shoot him?' he asked SG-1.

'We can't just shoot him' Daniel replied immediately.

'Yes we damn well can' O'Neill responded curtly. 'Just because something mopes around and feels sorry for itself is no good reason not to shoot it if it's a freaking replicator' he said forcefully.

'Go ahead, I haven't got anything to look forward to anyway' Fifth said dejectedly.

'Listen to the man, it's not like there's such a thing as replicator prozac we can put him on' O'Neill said, 'Sergeant, blow his head off' he told Andianov.

'Sir we might still be able to learn something from him' Carter interjected quickly. 'Fifth is a valuable intelligence asset.'

'He's a pain the ass if you ask me but if you want to take him with you feel free' the android O'Neill said. 'I suggest you radio ahead and have a couple of those anti-replicator guns and some Heavy Plasma Rifles ready on the other side just in case' he advised.

'I don't think it's safe to bring him to Earth though' the human Carter said.

'Okay before this ends up where I think it's going, like I said last time this is not a home for orphaned robots' the gears and wires O'Neill told the flesh and blood version sternly. 'We agreed to look after Reese because she was annoying at worst, this guy wanted to conquer the universe.'

'The desire to replicate is part of me' Fifth said.

'Maybe you could find a way to remove that part of his program, maybe even remove his ability to replicate completely' human Carter suggested, despite everything that had transpired since she still felt pangs of guilt at leaving him behind on Hala. 'We know they still use the original base-code Reese built into the first replicators and that the human-form type like Fifth were modelled on the copy of her the Asgard made to use to bait them in.'

'This thing is dangerous Carter' O'Neill told her.

'You know we could put Fifth somewhere safe while we figure out what to do with him' the robot Carter said.

'What are you thinking?' the human Carter asked.

'We put him in low-orbit using a teleporter, it's not like the lack of air will kill him and it's not like he can do anything up there other than float either' the SG-1A Samantha Carter suggested. 'If we crack his program and decide to salvage him for a software update we can, if not he'll just burn up eventually when his orbit decays.'

'So one day he's planning to conquer the universe and the next he gets turned in Sputnik' human O'Neill observed. 'How the mighty have fallen' he said.

'That would be about two hundred miles if we let him come back down the hard way' his robot double responded, laughing. 'Just remember to go "beep" every few seconds while you're up there' he told Fifth. 'For that matter you could give us a weather-report if we fit you with one of our radios.'

'Chances are he would go inert very quickly Sir' the mechanical Carter told her boss.

'Okay then just go beep as long as you can' android O'Neill told Fifth.

'I don't want to be dumped into space' Fifth protested.

'Right now it's either that or get shot and dumped in the recycling bin' the robot Jack O'Neill told him seriously. 'Just look on it as an opportunity to reflect on your choices in life' he added before turning to SG-1. 'We'll give you a copy of all the data Harlan got out of him on RepliCarter' he said. 'I suggest you start making plans because we all know how dangerous a threat she represents.'

'I'm still trying to adjust to the idea that there's three of me now' Lieutenant-Colonel Carter said, shaking her head.

The O'Neill's didn't simultaneously have the same thought about what they'd like to do with three Samantha Carter's in an ideal universe but only because the mechanical Jack O'Neill had a brain that got there quicker.