SG1 2003: Chapter IV

[Chris OFarrell]

BC-303 Prometheus. Outer orbit, Saturn. Sol. 24:40 Zulu.

It would prove to be an interesting day around the second largest gas giant in Earths solar system. For the first time since the Goa’uld claimed Earth as their own, warships were engaging each other in local space. Thousands of years ago when various Goa’uld exchanged harsh words (and high energy plasma) in orbit above Earth, primitive societies had looked up in fear at what they perceived to be rival Gods fighting on the supernatural plain. Fortunately, Ra had tended to frown upon open warfare over the crown jewel in his empire and such battles were rare, less the ire of the Supreme System Lord be brought upon them.

The Aschen however were under no such constraints.

In a scene reminiscent of David squaring off against Goliath, Prometheus accelerated steadily into the enemy formation, her shields flaring a brilliant gold as they soaked up the barrage directed at her. The Aschen let her come, delighting in the ease at which their opponent appeared to be heading into the crossfire, moving their harvester force into an englobement /flanking manoeuvre…completely ignoring her fighter screen which cruised unnoticed around the extreme flanks.

Harris tapped his throttle, cutting his velocity ever so slightly to match the pacing of his squadron with Jacks on the other side of the Aschen formation. In the vacuum of space of course, reducing power would ordinarily only reduce acceleration…but the F-302 didn’t play by the same rules of physics as a conventional aircraft.
Well that wasn’t exactly true. The F-302 was as bound by physics as any aircraft, but thanks to a little knockoff Goa’uld technology it was able to bend them somewhat. The F-302’s inertial compensation system didn’t simply protect against G forces, it in fact, redirected momentum. A skin-tight subspace bubble surrounded the craft, allowing the inertial energy of the craft to be applied directly back on itself, in essence, the craft was able to ‘push itself’ in any direction it chose. There were limits of course, but it meant the F-302 could manoeuvre in a vacuum like it was in an atmosphere… and that was something Harris had no particular problem with, as he reached the execution waypoint, dead on time.


With lifeless eyes, Warmaster Ancaris watched Prometheus push into the Aschen formation. At a signal from him, the Harvesters leapt forward, then englobed Prometheus on both sides, catching her in a crossfire, hitting her shields from all angles to test for stress points or weaknesses. The larger command ship he kept back with its heavy escorts, content to let Prometheus expand herself against his screening force for now. The neural interface in his head linked him directly with the sophisticated tactical systems on his ship so nothing escaped his watch, including the enemy fighter craft casually moving up and around the Harvester force. In milliseconds he scanned and disregarded them; no shield technology, chemical engines, no detectable energy weapons. More likely then not, they were attempting a diversionary attack on his command ship to draw pressure off the Prometheus. He multitasked part of his mind to keep a watch on them then focused his attention back to the main battle.
“Impressive how much damage that ship is absorbing, isn’t it Warmaster” Boren noted in a conversational tone as the blue glow of the battle bathed the command centre in an eerie light.
“Yes” the Warmaster replied, slightly irritated at the distraction. Anticipating the next question, sensor readouts shimmered into view of the main battle view, highlighting certain hull sections of Prometheus. Molum walked forward, studying the readouts with interest.
“Their shield technology is far beyond our own in most ways. Their reactor is also unusually powerful for a ship of that size, much greater then our Cruisers. We also must not discount the possibility of their computers records containing what we seek…” the Ambassador frowned at the readouts. “I would suggest capture over destruction, its technology may prove valuable. Have the Harvesters wear it down, then engage it directly and capture it. Hold the drones and cruisers, let’s not show our hand too early”.
The Warmaster like all Aschen was quite skilled in hiding his true thoughts. Which was good, because he was rather tempted to cause irreparable bodily harm to the Ambassador for his micromanaging.
Not that he had any choice in the matter.
“Warmaster, we shall leave this battle in your most capable hands”.
After you tie them behind my back Ambassador?
Boren and Malloc retreated to the darkness, the Warmaster deleted their relevance from his calculations, turning his full thought back to the still raging battle…frowning ever so slightly as the fighters reformed and swung around.
What are you doing now?


“Lead to group, break by flights. Your targets are uploaded, good hunting!”

Harris brought his F-302 around to port onto a new course, the three other fighters of his flight copying his manoeuvre perfectly. Flanking him left and right, second and third flight were also starting their attack runs. Directly ahead, the brilliant light show was continuing as the Aschen continued to unload onto Prometheus shield grid, he wondered if her complete lack of return fire was confusing them by now. Mentally he shrugged; they would understand why in a few minutes according to his rangefinder, which was winding backwards like a possessed stopwatch past forty eight thousand meters.
“Rob, you ready?” Harris called into his intercom.
“All set. Time to launch is twenty seconds”. Behind Harris, his Weapons System Officer (affectionately known as a ‘Wizzo’) was methodically arming the most expensive air-to-air missile ever deployed on a US aircraft.

And the fact that the missile was a modified Russian AA-9 ‘Amos’ had confused Harris to no end when he saw it in the hanger.

The missile was in fact one of those strange outcomes of international treaties that happen all the time, but are rarely heard about. Last year, when the Americans had negotiated lease of the Russian Stargate, Russia had demanded complete technical data from the X-302 and X-303 programs (in addition to a significant wad of cash).

The US had pointed out (quite reasonably) that while those projects did have much alien technology the Russians were entitled to, they were also crammed full of state of the art US military technology (from third generation stealth materials to next generation radar technology) that the US wouldn’t give to their closest allies, let alone their cold war sparing partner. So if the Russians wanted the 302/303 plans, the US would have to be able to track where the technology was going AND was going to need the equivalent in exchange, fair being fair.

At this point, everyone expected the Russians to back off, compromise with technical readouts on the alien technology alone…and everyone was wrong.
Two days of the polite haggling (known as diplomacy) later, an agreement had been reached. The US would give a yearly wad of cash, technical readouts for the X302 and X303 and employ a Russian Stargate Team at the SGC. In exchange, the US would get a lease of the Russian Stargate, to be operated as Stargate Command saw fit…and access to any Russian military technology that could be used against alien hostiles, no questions asked.

The CIA had leapt for joy and sent a ‘shopping list’ to the pentagon, which was promptly lost in the bureaucratic black hole at the centre of the building.

The successor to the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm, the SVR, had leapt in rage and sent a scathing memo to the Kremlin, which was promptly lost in that bureaucratic black hole.

The dozen technicians and designers at Vympel who, with the Kremlin’s blessing, were offered six figure contracts to work for the Americans had leapt for their passports.

The massive missiles were actually variants of an advanced prototype Vympel had been tinkering with for a few years. Thrusters replaced the guidance fins and a passive IIR sensor backed up the active radar system. At Area-51, the technicians had (somehow) shoved a prototype shield frequency modulator inside next to the 50-kilogram fragmentation warhead, now Naquadah enhanced.

Of course Harris thought to himself as his squadron screamed towards the battle, no one even knows if the damn things will work!. The green box around the harvester went yellow as the fire control system chewed on the solution, then flashed red. A block of text saying SHOOT jumped up and Captain Richard Harris went to war.

“Snake lead, fox four two!”

Prometheus rocked under Colonel William Ronson as another salvo of the strange blue energy weapons collided with her defensive shields. The hissing of overloaded circuits shorting out and alarms demanding attention drowned a steady chatter of voices across the bridge. Ronson ignored all of it, none of the alarms were critical as yet and his crew had damage control teams working efficiently.

“Vampire, Vampire! Missiles away from Snake and Red squadrons!” Major Gant shouted as a new set of fast moving icons were updated onto the tactical displays.

“About damn time” Ronson muttered. “Major, estimated time until impact?”
“Fourteen seconds till first impact Sir”.
“Weapons, get me firing solutions for each of these harvesters. Helm, on my mark swing us three hundred sixty degrees through port, hold the inertia forward”
“Yes sir!” the enthusiastic Major at the helm said as Prometheus viciously rocked from yet another salvo and another alarm started to sound.

“Carter, you ready?”
“Yes sir, data link is up. You can start the music”
“Rooger that” Jack drawled, keying a sequence of keys. “Squadron, lead is going active”

In the nose of each F-302 was a British Aerospace built laser designator system. Designed to direct laser-guided weapons (which it remained perfectly capable of doing), today it would serve a different purpose. Hitting the shield boundary of the harvester, the laser beam was reflected away…allowing the Improved Infrared sensor in the head of the missile to happily read off the shield oscillation and pass it back to Carter and the other ‘Wizzos’ controlling the inbounds.

“Modulation locked, they’re not rotating it” Carter announced, a hint of relief in her voice. Trying to time that would have been near impossible and they were outmatched more then enough for her liking. The ‘Time to Die’ counter on her screen flashed red. “Impact in Ten….Nine….Eight”

“…Seven…Six…” the Fighter control officer called as the missiles homing radars went active to confirm the laser lock. Ronson winced, praying none of them would see Prometheus and start thinking ‘gosh what a big target!’
“Helm, execute manoeuvre, guns, lock em up!”

“…Three….Two…” Rob counted down as the missiles closed in.
“Group, pitch back Z plus fifty degrees” Harris curtly ordered and almost in perfect union, the 24 fighters climbed up ‘above’ the plain of the battle…not wanting to be in the path of what was about to come. The gimballed laser designators kept their beams on target, the missiles homing in unerringly on the delightfully unmoving targets.

Ancaris raised an eyebrow as the fighters loosed their salvo and scattered in well-executed volley fire manoeuvre. The laser beams were quite visible to his sensor displays, linking each fighter with a harvester. In a second he had one of the missiles floating cross section in front of him in holographic form. The Naquadah charge was impressive, but a quick calculation showed the detonation yield wouldn’t breach the shields.
The venerable Warmaster unfortunately didn’t realise that the warhead wasn’t MEANT to breach the shields.


The fist missile pair, fired by one Lt Colonel Cameron Mitchell, bored in unerringly towards their chosen target at close to three kilometres per second. Studying the laser reflections and reprogramming its microprocessor head thousands of times a second. When the radar proximity fuse decided it was a second from impact, an internal liquid Naquadah fuel cell came to life, dumping its total power directly into a miniaturised shield generator…that cost enough to feed the average Western family for life. The power flowing from the Naquadah cell into the field generator was high enough that the generator would probably be vaporised in thirty seconds…but a few seconds turned out to be more then sufficient time, as the shield generated around the missile destructively combined with the Aschens own, cancelling out and letting the missile sail right through to detonate against the harvesters hull with multi kiloton force.

Jack whooped as a series of brilliant white explosions engulfed the harvester lines, sending most of them spinning wildly in place. Their shields flared a brilliant azure for a half second before imploding as the engine block was shattered by the detonation-

And Prometheus opened fire.

Manoeuvring thrusters blazing, Prometheus turned sharply to port, bringing her bow and stern missile launchers to bear on the lines of temporarily stunned harvesters. Fire erupted from the missile ports as Naquadah enhanced SM-3 missiles rippled away, pushing free with high pressure decompression before their solid fuel boosters kicked in, streaking unerringly in on the stunned (and often wildly spinning) harvesters. Only one ship recovered fast enough to try and shoot down the missiles heading for it, a desperate volley of plasma lance energy curving around and intercepting two warheads. The other three however impacted, their trinium-titanium penetration heads tore through its hull like it was tissue paper, the high explosive warhead shredding the ships interior. The rest of the squadron were killed in rather more impressive explosions, the swarm of warheads tearing huge chunks of the ship away before their neutrino-ion engines detonated.

Cheering broke out on the bridge of Prometheus as she completed her turn back to face the Aschen flagship, Ronson rejected his first instinct to join in and got back to work.
“Cancel that” Ronson snapped, the bridge crew instantly got back to work looking somewhat abashed as he hit his armchair comm. “Engine room, status report”
“The shield grid is holding at one hundred percent, but the reactor can’t keep up with this strain for much longer at this output”.
“Captain, the main event is about happen, I need every single bit of power to the shields and primary weapon-”
“And you’ll get it sir…but we’ve got shorts all over the ship from that bombardment. Secondaries are holding for now, but I can’t guarantee shields will say this high if-”
“Just get it done, Bridge out”


“Warmaster this is completely unacceptable!” Molum blurted as the Earth ships reformed and advanced on C-03. “You have lost our entire harvester force in exchange for nothing!”.
The Warmaster silently debated if he could simply use the point-to-point transporter systems built into the ship to send the Ambassador back to his quarters and out of his ‘office’…but in the end the cybernetic tactical/strategic programming inside his head decided it would just cause more problems in the long run. It however annoyed him to spend time conversing with a being who didn’t have the first clue about military strategy, simply because he was nominally in charge of this expedition.
“Ambassador, I could have destroyed their ship in the first salvo, but we want it intact. Their fighters have used their ordinance on completely expandable ships. I am more then ready to disable-”
“No! I am not going to risk any more ship losses. Deploy the drones and eliminate the threat! We proceed as planed!”

“Snakes, we have a new target. That cruiser designated C2 is our target. Red will take C1, hopefully we’ll break a hole big enough for Prometheus to punch through and engage their flagship”.
“Lead, seven. We’re Winchester on the shield hoppers. What can we do against a target THAT big?”
“Prometheus will lay down cover as we approach. Just keep fast and try to exploit any shield damage”. And do a lot of fast praying Harris didn’t say over the line.

Ancaris watched as the enemy fighters approached, clearly planing to hit the two lead cruisers and open up a direct attack on C-03 by Prometheus. The fighters couldn’t do much to a Cruiser of that size by themselves, but with their supporting capital ship they might succeed in opening up a hole. He noted they could afford to concentrate their fighters so heavily as there was no direct threat to them. A slight turn of his head changed that problem.

Thick hull plates on the ventral side of C-03 suddenly unlocked and retracted. From inside the brightly lit bay, small triangular pyramids started to detach from tightly packed docking clusters. Each only four meters in height, each corner capped with a polished black hemisphere. Like a swarm of insects, the tiny attack ships streamed away in pairs.
In flights.
In squadrons…

Another alarm sounded on Major Gants tactical board among the half dozen others warning of weapons locks and power system reroutes. Entering a command on her keyboard, her monitor changed to a radar display forwarded by the sensor officer at the front of the bridge. The ships bow AN/SPY-(X) radar was focused on a diffuse radar source coming from the enemy flagship. At first glance she was about to dismiss it as some kind of debris…then noticed the ‘debris’ accelerating towards the front formation.
“What in the hell…” she muttered, taking control of the radar and ramping up the power until ten megawatts was being blasted out…revealing dozens upon dozens of contacts skipping and manoeuvring towards Red Squadron.
”Colonel! Bandits! Vector three two eight, forty plus inbound!”
“What?!”

Captain Richard Harris dove into an attack run on the lead Cruiser. A blinding white glare half obsecured the target as a salvo of Naquadah enhanced nukes was flung from Prometheus and towards the two Aschen warships, but he could see the Cruisers were staggering back under the shear firepower. If the fighters could just pop enough firepower of their own into the-

“INCOMMING!” Rob suddenly shouted, loud enough that he heard him through the cockpit as well as his intercom. A hoard of spinning, fast moving black shapes rocketed up around the edge of the cruiser right for them. With unhesitating precision drilled by years of combat training, Harris brought up his gun sight and switched over to his cannon.
“Snakes, break and engage!” he shouted as he stabbed down on his trigger.
Hundreds of depleted uranium rounds spat downrange, the cockpit vibrating as the weapons huge recoil pushed against the fighter. One, two three of the contacts shattered as the golden tracers ripped through them with ease, but there were so many, too many-

The two formations crashed into each other at a combined velocity of over a kilometre and a half per second, a snails pace for spaceflight but terrifyingly fast for a dogfight. The Aschen attack drones bobbed and weaved amazingly, sometimes dodging the fusillade of slugs until they closed, moving with a precision that stunned the Earth pilots. As the formations merged, rapid-fire red bolts of partial weapons shoot from the black hemispheres almost non-stop, the ships spinning and weaving to keep up a constant barrage of firepower, often directing fire against four craft at the same time. Each bolt had a minimal effect upon the trinium-titanium alloy the inner skin of the 302 was made with…but with thousands of shots flying, the effect was horrific.

Harris went into the shortest dogfight in history in command of the greatest fighter the human race had ever built. He came out in a flying wreck, trailing blazing fuel from the wrecks of his two engines, a slow air leak from the back of his cockpit, a Naquadriah reactor threatening to explode and his back seater a fried corpse. The almost surreal atmosphere of his crippled cockpit abandoned him as an F-302 detonated to starboard; rocking his craft and poring smoke into his cockpit. Over the alarms screaming in his ear, the proximity alert suddenly started to demand attention. Squinting out his scorched cockpit window, Harris saw the huge bulk of an Aschen cruiser moving in front of him. With two seconds to react, Harris flicked his control stick and activated the solid booster rocket.
Captain Richard Harris and his F-302 accelerated directly into the dorsal shields of the lead cruiser, his unstable Naquadriah reactor instantly detonating in gigaton scale hellfire that shredded the Cruisers upper decks and sent it spinning down towards Saturn’s rings.


Jack O’Neill watched in stunned disbelief as Snakeskinner squadron was torn apart. Only three of the twelve F-302’s had made it out, all three hitting their boosters and pulling into a slingshot around the base of the cruiser to get the hell out of there. A half dozen of the bandits were shattered or vaporised in Harris funeral pyre, the rest regrouped and hurtled almost unbelievably fast towards Red Squadron, ignoring the three survivors who fled towards Prometheus.
“Reds, give me a three flight line right here” Jack barked as he pulled out of the attack on the second cruiser. “Slow it to six hundred meters a second. Prometheus, we could use some help here”

“Prometheus has your six Jack” Ronson sent back, as the silver-grey ship rolled and dove in what had to be a stomach churning manoeuvre, inertial dampeners or no inertial dampeners, putting itself directly between the bandits.
“How the hell can those things move like that?” Ronson asked everyone. “Hell how can you even fit a person into one?” Although technicaly a rhetorical question, not many people were surprised when Jacks Wizzo spoke up.

“I don’t think they are Sir” Carter broke in over the group channel.
“Come again Major?”
“Sir I think these are unmanned combat drones, nothing but engines and weapons inside”.
“Based on…?”
“Some kind of subspace transmission from the flagship. It started at the same time these drones appeared, I’m passing the frequency over to Major Gant now”
Major Gant’s hands flew over he keyboard, bringing up the frequency, Prometheus’s much more powerful EW gear quickly narrowed down the signal.
“Got it, Sir. It looks like a command and control signal from the flagship”.
“Kill it” Ronson curtly ordered. Gant nodded and powered up Prometheus’s huge, but seldom used, ALQ(S)-01 electronics warfare package powered up and blasted noise all over the subspace spectrum.

Ancaris sighed as static hissed through his link with the drone force, the massive jamers on Prometheus flooding the narrow subspace band left open by the interdiction field with random noise, making it impossible for him to get a clear line. It was of little consequence he knew, the drones were already no doubt switching over to their internal tactical programming and they outnumbered the remains of the Earth fighters four to one.

“Enemy bandits still incoming, we’re moving more or less directly into their path” the helm officer warned.
“They’ll be in effective close in range in ten seconds” Gant added as she studied her displays.
“Ok, find something to hang onto” the Colonel muttered under his breath, then turning to the weapons officer. “Guns, activate point defence”.

The 45 remaining attack drones continued on their last instructions, cruising towards the enemy fighters, which slowed and spread out. Moving to counter, their crystal computer brains came up short as Prometheus pulled in between them. While a hostile on their targeting systems, it was a secondary target not their primary, so they accelerated and split, aiming to evade right by and come down on their primary targets.

Prometheus however carried a close in armament of twelve, 25-millimetre point defence Gatling guns, up gunned versions of the ubiquitous ‘R2D2’ Phalanx systems on navel ships. Laser guided, the eight mounts that could track the inbounds, swung around, elevated and opened fire.

A hailstorm of depleted uranium cored, trinium rounds ripped right through the formation, golden detonations highlighted the hull of Prometheus as an entire squadron of craft were detonated. Reacting amazingly fast given that no computer co-ordination was active, the drones spun wide and scattered, rolling up and over the Prometheus and returned fire. The shear number of shots pumped into the shield grid caused a cacoon of golden energy to engulf the ship, scrambling the laser guidance of the point defence mounts as they zipped around on every side. Switching back to the radar and Goa’uld based sensor systems; they re-engaged and shattered another fifteen targets. As they closed on Red Squadron, the Prometheus guns fell silent for fear of friendly fire.

Excellent Ancaris nodded. The reactor on Prometheus was really starting to fluctuate from the constant attacks. The shield grid was still at full power…but the reactors ability to keep supplying maximum power was redlining rather quickly.

As the drones also ceased firing and the gold light poring through the view ports faded, Colonel Ronson dared to think the worst was over.
At least until Prometheus heaved and sent him flying to the deck.

“Whoa” Carter muttered as a huge energy salvo from the command ship pounded Prometheus, visibly pushing her backwards.
“Nothing we can do right now Carter” Jack said. “Focus on the drones”.
Carter recognised the tone. The icy focus. Jack was in soldier mode, clearly the loss of half the fighter force had affected him deeply, but he would never let it show, especially in combat.
“Shoot list is up. Ready to engage”
“Roger that. Reds, open up!”

Dozens of AIM-9Z and AIM-120-D missiles rippled off the rails as the drones closed. Responding with no hesitation, but without the deadly co-ordination of their attack against the Snakes, blasts of red fire lanced out to intercept them, detonating half the missiles before reaching their target. Of the ones that made it, only half impacted or came close enough to proximity detonate, but they cut the numbers down almost to even as the two sides entered gun range and started to trade projectile and energy weapons fire.

Prometheus rocked again, to starboard this time as another massive salvo, this time from two of the cruisers Prometheus had been duelling in an ‘on again – off again’ fashion for the last few minutes. This time Ronson managed to stay in his seat, courtesy of the five point restrains he had strapped into.
“Shields down forty perfect! We’ve expended all high explosive anti ship rounds; we’re down to four Goa’uld Busters only.

Ancaris highlighted Prometheus and enhanced the cross section view as another salvo of high-energy plasma thundered towards Prometheus. He had to hand it to her crew, the reactor was on the verge of overload trying to keep the shields up at high power, but despite the power fluctuations it was kept running. Still, it was only a matter of time. Two more salvos, perhaps three and the shields would fail, opening the way for a direct strike to cripple them and board them.
He made a mental note to have the commander of their engineering section held to be modified into a cybernetic engineer for their own uses. He would be a useful addition, clearly a calm and professional person under fie.


“What the hell is the matter with you, you stupid piece of…”? Rodney McKay ran out of words to curse the wildly fluctuating reactor, settling instead on a swift kick to the control console in the engine room. The trinium/titanium bulkhead didn’t so much as dent from the impact, but he was the lucky receiver of a throbbing ache to his foot for his efforts.
Grunting in disgust the Canadian turned, ducking under a waterfall of sparks as yet another system shorted out. Fortunately the triple redundancy on the electrical systems meant the damage control teams all over the ship were having an easy time of it so far.
Unfortunately the one system that had no redundancy was almost played out. The Naquadriah buffer the regulated the huge power surges from Prometheus’s main reactor had almost burned completely out from the repeated surges. It was still happily providing power to the ships systems…but if he didn’t stop pushing it, they were dead.
“Jonas! Where the hell is my secondary pathway!” McKay demanded as the starboard electrical grid flashed red.
“Its coming, its coming!” Jonas shouted back from the cramped utility tube a few meters from the engine room, where he was trying to reroute the power flow around a half melted section of Naquadah superconductor. “Yeah Jonas, why stay home and fight paperwork when you can repair a battleship in the middle of an interstellar war” he muttered to himself as the ship pitched back violently enough to overload the inertial dampeners. Finding no-one bothering to answer him in the chaos of the engine room, he continued his own conversation.
“But hey, you missed the excitement and all the wonderful chaos!”. Grunting, Jonas heaved and the replacement conducting section snapped in, lights flashing green to red as powered flowed once more, allowing him to start crawling out.
“If we win this, I am SO going fishing with Jack. For a week!”

“Sir two on your six!’
“I see them,” Jack acknowledged. “Mitchell, where the hell are you?” he demanded as red bolts stitched past his cockpit.
“Right here sir. Break right on two. One, two-”
Jack hauled his stick around, pushing the inertial drive to the limit as a battle scared F-302 hurtled down, flame licking from its nose as tracers streaked though where Jack had been a second ago. The drones returned first for a split second, splattering some of Mitchell’s framework to molten slag before they were both turned into scrap.
“Thanks Colonel” Jack comed. Mitchell had probably violated a return to base order to duck back into the dogfight, but as technically command devolved to him in any event of what was left of the Snakes, he wasn’t going to argue. Jack was completely out of weapons, excepting fifty rounds in his cannon he was saving until he absolutely needed them. He had lost two ships, one was able to eject and was being towed back to the dubious safety of Prometheus. The rest of his unit was in the same shape, he was holding them back from the battle for now…he simply didn’t have a clue what to do.

“Colonel the reactor is going critical, shields are collapsing, we’re going to have to SCRAM the reactor in the next sixty seconds unless we get the hell out of here, RIGHT NOW!”
Ronson wasn’t accustomed to being addressed in such a tone by anyone, let alone a civilian scientist. But he knew enough about McKay’s reputation to know he was probably right.
“Alright, we’re going to get out of here. Weapons, target that flagship and show them what a little Asgard inspired weapons technology can do. If McKay is right and its powering the interdiction field, we’ll only get one shot at this. Stand by to drop shields and engage the hyperdrive on my mark, direct course back to Earth. Signal the fighters likewise”
“Yes Sir!” the officer at weapons console said, happy they were finally letting him unleash the big guns. “Flagship targeted! Firing!”

The power surge of a directed energy weapon about to discharge was unmistakable. Ancaris reacted instantly, overriding escort 04’s navigation systems and swinging it up and around…but he knew it wouldn’t be quite fast enough-

A brilliant blue-white spear of light shot from the bow of Prometheus, impacting on the underside of the flagship, its shields not even touching the beam as it ripped apart the hull at the molecular level. The hull turned red, then white, then simply vanished letting the beam push deeper.
And deeper.
And deeper, steadily chewing towards the ships engines. Desperately, an escorting cruiser lurched upwards putting itself in the path of the beam. Massing far less, the beam hit and annihilated the Aschen warship in five seconds, but it succeeded in absorbing what would have been a killing blow to the command ship as the weapons power was expanded.

Sensing blood, the other four active cruisers which had stoically stayed in reserve started forward while the command ship fell back, power systems fluctuating wildly. Pivoting, the lead cruiser turned and opened fire.

“Shields have collapsed! We’ve lost the port radar, numbers two and six point defence mounts- “
“Outer hull compromised!”
“Airlock seven breached!”
“Internal hull holding-“
“What about the hyperdrive” Ronson shouted over the hissing of steam from burst life support conduits and the chattering of damage control reports from the CIC. “Can we jump? Is their field down?”
“Partially, but it’s regenerating” Erin shouted back over the din. “We can only jump out system”
“Flash dump our logs to Vandanburg if you can, then jump before they finish us off!” Ronson turned to his fighter operations officer. “Tell the fighters to jump to rally point omega, NOW!”

Blackened and with sections of her port hull glowing orange and engulfed in a glowing nimbus of vaporised hull plates, Prometheus turned away from the oncoming cruisers, whose hulls started to glow a brilliant blue as they all charged their weapons. A split second later a volley of fire shot forth that would have crippled the ship easily, but was a half second too late as Prometheus hurtled into hyperspace.

“Congratulations Warmaster on a spectacular failure” Molum snapped as the holographic view screens reactivated, as power was restored. Finally having had enough, the massive cyborg wheeled and advanced upon the surprised Ambassador.
“I could have obliterated their ship in the first salvo, but you demanded it be taken intact. I could have had the drones screening us from the first moment, you however insisted on keeping them as ‘a surprise’. So instead of defeating their fighters and saving the harvester force, we lost he harvester force AND the first drone unit, for half their fighters. Even despite this, we lost seven ships; six modified farming systems that were irrelevant to our invasion and one which sacrificed itself to save your life. Stay out of military matters Ambassador, you are as bad with it as politics”

Saying no more, but inviting no comment with his icy glare, the huge warrior stomped out of the light leaving Molum fuming with a neutral, but inwardly grinning Boren as the fleet reassembled for the jump in system.

[phongn]

Woohoo, much asskicking, though you didn't seem to unleash the big missiles, only the SM-3s

[Crazedwraith]

Sweet. Liked the inclusion of mitchell. Pity you killed of Harris, but then again I couldn't stop thinking 'xander' when he was invloved...

[Shroom Man 777]

Kickass. Who're the aschen? The guys from 2010? Whatever. That'll teach them to wag their dicks at Earth. Cuz' we'll bite 'em off if we hafta! Biotch!

Word.

[Crazedwraith]

Kickass. Who're the aschen? The guys from 2010? Whatever. That'll teach them to wag their dicks at Earth. Cuz' we'll bite 'em off if we hafta! Biotch!

Word.

my my, a little hyper are we Shroom?

Yes the Aschen are from 2010 in season 4 and also the season 4; 2001. In which they tried to wipe us out with biological weapons during treaty negotiations. Luckily we already knew they were badies and the gate adresses we gave them were all very unpleasant: eg) Black hole planet

[NecronLord]

Of course, if they have decent hyperdrives, there's no reason they couldn't make the next attack appear right next to Earth, and do a Drakh attack...

[phongn]

Of course, if they have decent hyperdrives, there's no reason they couldn't make the next attack appear right next to Earth, and do a Drakh attack...

/me whistles innocently to himself

[Shroom Man 777]

my my, a little hyper are we Shroom?

Yes the Aschen are from 2010 in season 4 and also the season 4; 2001. In which they tried to wipe us out with biological weapons during treaty negotiations. Luckily we already knew they were badies and the gate adresses we gave them were all very unpleasant: eg) Black hole planet

What does the Black hole planet do?

[Crazedwraith]

my my, a little hyper are we Shroom?

Yes the Aschen are from 2010 in season 4 and also the season 4; 2001. In which they tried to wipe us out with biological weapons during treaty negotiations. Luckily we already knew they were badies and the gate adresses we gave them were all very unpleasant: eg) Black hole planet

What does the Black hole planet do?

?

It a planet that's being sucked into a blackhole. Extreme gravity and time dilation transfers back through the wormhole and generally fucks things up. Seen in Season 2's A Matter of Time.