The Thirteenth Tribe (nBSG/SG Crossover)

[Eternal_Freedom]

You make some good points, and they dovetail nicely with some idea's I'm toying with.

[Eternal_Freedom]

More fun and games:

Hunting Season
Atlantis Briefing Room

The scene inside the city’s main briefing room was jubilant. Exactly as promised Task Force Nemesis had arrived and utterly destroyed the Wraith force. The fact that this destruction took barely forty seconds was a very welcome bonus; it was clear that the Terran and Colonial ships could fight the Wraith toe to toe without much issue. The Warstar Nemesis was clearly in a league of her own, no other ship in the three galaxies could match her.

The celebrations had settled down, and now Jellicoe, Mace, O’Neill, Thor, Weir, Caldwell and Sheppard were discussing the next steps. Weir though had a question for the Admiral.

“Forgive my ignorance Admiral, I’m no soldier, but given how easily you just annihilated the Wraith, why are you so pessimistic about our long-term chances?” There was genuine curiosity in her tone.

Jellicoe smiled. “We went into this fight with every possible advantage. We knew precisely where the targets were and could plot our jumps to put us in the best possible position. Thanks to our FTL drives we had complete tactical surprise, coupled with total strategic surprise as well, they had no idea we even existed, never mind were on the way. Finally, between my six Battlestars and Nemesis, we outmatched them by at least five to one.”

Weir nodded, absorbing that. It sounded very reasonable. “And you won’t have those advantages in future?”

“Some of them Doctor. Strategic surprise is probably out at this point but tactical surprise is still possible. We can concentrate our forces to overwhelm any individual Wraith force, but it’s the numbers that worry me. There are anywhere from sixty to a hundred Hive ships in the galaxy, meaning we’re the ones facing ten to one odds suddenly.”

Caldwell leaned forwards. He felt slightly out of place in this company. For one, he was an Air Force officer, not Navy, so he had a different set of traditions and expectations. Add to that the fact that the Terrans, and Jellicoe in particular, had vastly more space combat experience than he did. Despite this, he commanded the Daedalus, and was determined to prove himself worthy.

“Why do you think strategic surprise is lost Admiral? No Wraith ships survived the battle, the other groups won’t know of your existence.”

Captain Mace leaned forwards, he had spent most of the intergalactic journey learning everything he could about these Wraith, combining the knowledge Atlantis had sent, what little the Asgard knew and some references in the Book of the Word.

“While we did wipe them out, all available data indicates the Wraith possess some form of telepathic connection to each other. The range and limits of this connection are unknown, however we just blew away two Hive ships and eight cruisers in seconds. I’d say it’s a safe bet that some other ship heard the echo of the battle and will investigate.”

Sheppard joined the dots together rapidly. “And they’ll know where those ships died, roughly, and they know Atlantis is the only interesting thing in the neighbourhood and come looking.”

Jellicoe nodded. “And since they know whatever is here killed three Hive ships in rapid succession, they know either someone has Atlantis and her defences back at full strength, or someone else as powerful has arrived. Either way, that’s something they need to investigate. I would be very surprised if they don’t have a larger force on the way very soon.”

Weir buried her face in her hands, the thought of even more Wraith approaching to renew the siege was terrifying. “And since we’ll see them coming well in advance, what do we do when they come?”

Jellicoe’s smile turned into a feral grin. “Why Doctor, we go hunting of course. Our FTL drives give us a tactical mobility the Wraith can’t possibly understand or counter. We want to keep our forces more or less concentrated, and that favours attack over defence. We take the fight to them, kill as many as we can, then withdraw and face what’s left.”

He took a sip of his tea, a truly excellent blend from Earth called Darjeeling. It wasn’t quite up to the standards of his favourite Scorpio blend, but it made an acceptable substitute until new crops could be cultivated on Terra. That too was worth a smirk; one thing he had rescued, in addition to the remaining survivors, was the contents of the Virgon Seed Vault, so the crops and plants of the Colonies could live on.

“This is where you, Colonel, and you Supreme Commander come in. Your ships are not suited for sustained combat against other capital ships, though I will admit the two Asgard ships make very effective raiders. What we need from you is reconnaissance. The city’s deep-space sensors will tell us where Hives are, but we need to know more than that. Where their ground bases are, where Hives are built or grown, new warriors, new darts and so on. Also, you’ll be deploying a network of navigation and sensor buoys in deep-space locations around the galaxy.”

At the blank looks he was getting Jellicoe explained. “The weakness of our FTL drives is that we need precise coordinates for both the start and end point of the jump, like your Stargate address in fact. Without those coordinates already available, it takes a lot longer to plot jumps as we have to calculate them.”

Thor nodded in understanding. “But if you had these navigation buoys, you could either lock onto them as you did with our ships during the intergalactic crossing, or use them to triangulate your exact position.”

“Precisely Supreme Commander. Since we’d need several hundred of these around the galaxy, we might as well combine them with sensors to give us greater coverage.”

O’Neill spoke next. “And where exactly are these buoys coming from?”

Mace smiled. “From Terra General. We had the idea a couple of weeks ago. Olympus Base has been working around the clock to get them ready, they’re also going to have the Endeavour and her sisters start deploying them around the home galaxy as well. They’ll be shipped through the Stargate just as soon as the Supreme Commander can arrange for one of his fellows to open another intergalactic wormhole for us.”

Thor nodded and moved some stones around on his console. “I have sent a message to the High Council, they will send the required equipment to our Ambassador in Lemuria as soon as possible.”

Jellicoe bowed his head. “My thanks Supreme Commander. Now, we should move on to whether we need to deploy additional Marines from Nemesis along with the extra set of air-defence batteries…” He was cut off as Colonel Carter walked into the room, her expression grim. Jellicoe took a moment to evaluate her expression before reaching a conclusion.

“Let me guess Colonel, we’ve detected more Wraith forces on the way to Atlantis.”

Sam nodded. “Yes Admiral. Twelve Hives plus escorts are approaching at best speed. They’ll be in orbit in four days.”

The cheer that had filled the room evaporated. Weir sighed and cradled her head in her hands again, Sheppard wore an expression that was a curious mix of anger and nausea, and O’Neill looked resigned. Sam brought up a hologram showing the Wraith fleet’s position and course.

Jellicoe studied this briefly, noting the three points the Wraith would have to drop out of hyperspace and thus be vulnerable. Their first waypoint was due in seven hours, and was well within range of his ships. A plan formed in his mind, a spoiler attack was needed, and something the late Captain North had worked up to use against the Cylons seemed very fitting here.

“We need to hit them hard, and as soon as possible. We have the advantage here, despite the numbers. I think, however, that we need more people. Supreme Commander, could I prevail upon you to beam the Battlestar CO’s as well as Captain Davies and Commander Wallace down here?”

The Asgard nodded and sent the requisite messages, and barely a minute later the eight officers were transported into the room. They all looked shocked at the speed they had been summoned, but almost as one they saw the hologram and the news it presented and their expressions rapidly shifted into grim determination and calculation.

Jellicoe stepped up beside the hologram. “Gentleman, lady, we have a dozen Hive ships en route to Atlantis, arriving in four days. We’re going to hit them first. We were planning on going out hunting anyway, this just moves up the timetable.”

Saul laughed, the aggressive instincts of an old veteran Viper pilot coming to the fire. “It’s about frakking time we went on the offensive.”

Jellicoe smiled at the older man. “I agree with you Saul. Now, due to limitations in Wraith hyperdrive technology and their lack of shields, they need to drop out of hyperspace on a regular basis to regenerate their hulls. This will leave them weaker than usual and thus vulnerable to a surprise attack. I have a rough plan. We will move our seven ships to this point” he indicated the first Wraith waypoint “and deploy cloaked sensor buoys. Once the Wraith drop out of hyperspace, we will plot our jumps and attack.”

Lee Adama likewise remembered the Battle of Terra that had given Jellicoe the idea. “Just like we did to the Cylons.”

“Precisely Commander. This time however we’re going in mob-handed. Depending on what formation the Wraith adopt, the Victorious, Excalibur and Republic will jump into position on one flank, you’ll focus fire on one Hive at a time to ensure a kill. The Galactica, Pegasus and Warspite will do the same on the other flank though Lee and David, I want you to salvo your missile tubes at a second target at the same time. We might as well spread the hate around.”

He took a breath and continued. “The Nemesis will do the same as she did in the last battle, jump into position to engage multiple Hives, one with the superlaser, one with missiles, and another with the megalasers if they can bear. Finally, before we jump we’ll launch all our Scimitar squadrons, they’ll pick four targets on the inside of the formation, jump-shoot-jump, just like against the Cylons.”

He looked around at the nodding faces of his officers and smiled again. “If we’re lucky we might be able to kill most of these Hives in a single stroke, if not we’ll certainly hurt them. All secondary batteries are free to engage cruisers and darts but again, no Vipers or Cobras are to be launched. We may need to jump out in a hurry. Keep them in the tubes and ready though, just in case we get the chance for a general fleet action. Same with the Scythes on Nemesis”

Privately, O’Neill marvelled at how quickly Jellicoe could come up with a solid plan for bleeding the enemy. Then he recalled how often he or Sam had come up with seat-of-the-pants plans in the past, and how they usually either worked brilliantly or failed dismally. He hoped the Admiral’s plan fell into the first category.

Jellicoe looked back around the room. “For this to work, we need to get moving as soon as possible. General, Doctor, the Leopard Dropships on Nemesis are currently loading up all the air-defence batteries we brought with us, they’ll deploy before we jump out to boost your AA strength. Colonel Caldwell, Supreme Commander, as soon as those nav/sensor buoys are shipped through, please begin deploying them. We need that sensor coverage as soon as possible.”

He turned to his Battlestar Commanders. “Allright then, hunting season just opened and there's no bag limit. Let’s get to work.”

[fnord]

Wow... and here I thought Frankie's Wild Ride, Round 2, would be rejected as not crazy enough.

Instead, the Wild Ride and Screaming Fist ride again. Rock on.

[Sky Captain]

Yeah, Wraith are in for some nasty surprise. At least this time there is a chance that a cruiser or two manage to escape if they can reengage hyperdrive really fast and tell other Wraith what exactly happened.

Given the capability of jump drives I think at some point down the line Terrans should develop something like Arsenal ship that can do jump shoot jump attack on a much larger scale than Scimitar bombers. Something like Battlestar with flight pods replaced with missile pods capable of spamming thousands of missiles. With compact high end megaton to low gigaton warheads possible in SG verse a warship with planet killing missile firepower is easily possible and nearly impossible to defend against especially if enemy lacks shields.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah it's gonna be bloody.

The Arsenal Ship idea is an interesting one, but I'm not convinced it would work in-universe. We've already seen that effective missile defence can greatly neutralise threats of massive salvos - the initial jump-shoot-jump attack against the Cylons shows this, with barely ten seconds to act 60% of the missiles were shot down. When Nemesis jumped in, again, 22 of 80 missiles shot down with barely five seconds warning. When Daedalus attacked a pair of Wraith Hives at the end of season 2, she salvoed all her missiles at once, and scored only one hit.

Jump-shoot-jump is very effective against single targets or groups of targets that are not expecting an attack. But after this next battle, they will be expecting it. A hypothetical Arsenal Ship has a powerful alpha strike certainly, but if that initial strike relies on missiles which can be intercepted or otherwise reduced the ship is in trouble. The Terrans build ships that can slug it out,which works better than, say, Asgard-designed ships which are "run in, open up with everything and hope the enemy is dead before they fire back."

The Wraith are used to adapting to fight superior technology - witness how quickly they adapt to Asgard beaming systems. Those jammers will have an effect on missiles too, the only reasons that 80 missile salvo was so effective were a) they jumped in to minimum range and fired immediately and b) all 80 were targeted on a single ship. Also consider that they only have so many missiles, and suddenly relying on turbo/mega/superlasers makes more sense.

Now, a version of an Arsenal ship that might work in-universe is one built around a superlaser and nothing else - a starship version of an assault gun or tank destroyer in other words. But designing, building and testing a whole new class of warship will take far longer than just building more Lionhearts and refitting Eridanus.

On that note, has anyone guessed the reference in Eridanus' motto, "We shall flow a river forth to thee"?

EDIT: Also consider that the Terrans have no idea what threats they might face in future, so building single-purpose ships is not cost-effective - an arsenal ship would be useless on the defensive, as would the superlaser ship-killer I mentioned. They want general-purpose ships, and the Battlestar paradigm, in-universe, is brilliant at this. It can do offense or defence equally well, it can operate alone, or with escorts, or as part of a fleet. It's a jack-of-all-trades design. Sure, ships could be built to do any one function better (more missiles, more area-defence, more fighters, more alpha-strike etc) but then you've got ships that aren't useful 90% of the time. Since Terra can only support 12 or 13 Battlestars, escorts and Nemesis at once, single-purpose ships are not the best use of hulls.

[fnord]

The Kobolian crew are (to me) coming off a bit as "more Tau'ri than the Tau'ri" - take established assumptions, jam a battlestar or two up them, let rip, and see what happens afterwards.

Will we (eventually) be seeing Tau'ri battlestars, or is that too much of a stretch?

Going to be fun when the Kobolian mob run into other advanced human societies (even if not in this particular story) - such as the Aschen, Tollan, etc.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Probably not on the Tau'ri Battlestars, mostly because they'd only be able to keep them in orbit, which means they can be seen. And since the IOC is still hell-bent on keeping the stargate program a secret (for some reason), no ships much bigger than Daedalus.

Plus, while Terra gave the Colonials a complete Battlestar and are refitting others, there's a much closer bond between the two, and the Colonials did pay them back with training and so on (and that bigass loan they'll be paying off).

Earth is in an awkward position in that it doesn't really have anything of value they could trade for Battlestars. Naquada? Terra's got that. Technology? Earth's fancy stuff comes from the Asgard and is not necessarily superior, and Terra could trade directly with the Asgard. Gold or precious metals? Possible but unlikely, and it would be difficult to ship enough to Terra without it being noticed by everyone.

[Sky Captain]

Yeah it's gonna be bloody.

The Arsenal Ship idea is an interesting one, but I'm not convinced it would work in-universe. We've already seen that effective missile defence can greatly neutralise threats of massive salvos - the initial jump-shoot-jump attack against the Cylons shows this, with barely ten seconds to act 60% of the missiles were shot down. When Nemesis jumped in, again, 22 of 80 missiles shot down with barely five seconds warning. When Daedalus attacked a pair of Wraith Hives at the end of season 2, she salvoed all her missiles at once, and scored only one hit.

Jump-shoot-jump is very effective against single targets or groups of targets that are not expecting an attack. But after this next battle, they will be expecting it. A hypothetical Arsenal Ship has a powerful alpha strike certainly, but if that initial strike relies on missiles which can be intercepted or otherwise reduced the ship is in trouble. The Terrans build ships that can slug it out,which works better than, say, Asgard-designed ships which are "run in, open up with everything and hope the enemy is dead before they fire back."

The Wraith are used to adapting to fight superior technology - witness how quickly they adapt to Asgard beaming systems. Those jammers will have an effect on missiles too, the only reasons that 80 missile salvo was so effective were a) they jumped in to minimum range and fired immediately and b) all 80 were targeted on a single ship. Also consider that they only have so many missiles, and suddenly relying on turbo/mega/superlasers makes more sense.

Now, a version of an Arsenal ship that might work in-universe is one built around a superlaser and nothing else - a starship version of an assault gun or tank destroyer in other words. But designing, building and testing a whole new class of warship will take far longer than just building more Lionhearts and refitting Eridanus.

On that note, has anyone guessed the reference in Eridanus' motto, "We shall flow a river forth to thee"?

EDIT: Also consider that the Terrans have no idea what threats they might face in future, so building single-purpose ships is not cost-effective - an arsenal ship would be useless on the defensive, as would the superlaser ship-killer I mentioned. They want general-purpose ships, and the Battlestar paradigm, in-universe, is brilliant at this. It can do offense or defence equally well, it can operate alone, or with escorts, or as part of a fleet. It's a jack-of-all-trades design. Sure, ships could be built to do any one function better (more missiles, more area-defence, more fighters, more alpha-strike etc) but then you've got ships that aren't useful 90% of the time. Since Terra can only support 12 or 13 Battlestars, escorts and Nemesis at once, single-purpose ships are not the best use of hulls.

My idea was a Battlestar with flight pods converted to missile pods not a completely new design just a modification. Energy armament would remain the same or even slightly increased so the ship would not be useless when missiles run out. Having only missiles and nothing else is bad idea, kind of like Ancient warships which when out of drones were useless. Essentially trade the fighter capacity to huge missile alpha strike capability. Against Wraith it should work rather well. Fighters are not of a much use against Hives and similar heavy warships. Kind of like attacking a tank with 9 mm pistol. Terran point defenses are good enough to wipe out thousands of darts in half a minute, much faster than Vipers and Cobras could do it and with no risk to pilots. At least when fighting against Hives and similar capital ships fighters and Battlestar tonnage devoted to hangars, launch and retrieval systems and maintenance shops are just along for a ride. It would be a more specialized design and if Terrans insist that every capital ship also must be a carrier then they may not like it

You are right that missiles can be jammed and shot down, but that is why launch a huge spam of them so some manage to get through. With 500 megaton warheads few direct contact detonations against Hive is mission kill at minimum.

Fighters make sense if you expect to fight someone who is stupid enough to build capital ships like ancient satellite weapon with powerful primary weapon, but no heavy armor, shields and point defense. Then sure use fighters and bombers instead of risking a whole Battlestar getting blown up.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You make some good points, and while the idea makes sense to me out-of-universe I honestly don't think it would make sense to people in-universe - having every capital ship carry a strong fighter complement works for them and gives the ship a strong multi-role aspect that it wouldn't have if you swapped Viper/Cobra launch/retrieval bays for missile tubes.

This is actually why I think such a design would be rejected - as I said, Terra can only support 13 Battlestars or equivalent at once, and every specialist hull built is one that is useless most of the time. Plus, all those thousands of missiles will need a lot of fissile material (which since they use naquada reactors not fission plants, requires specialist manufacture) and a lot of refined naquada. Terra has a good supply, but not that much of the stuff. This is one reason why energy weapons not missiles are the main armament.

Oh, and that part about Terran PD systems being able to swat a couple thousand Darts in under a minute? Tht's because the darts were blinded by nuke flashes and the Nemesis alone carries 2000 point-defence emplacements. As with the entirety of that battle, the Wraith got hit by what they didn't expect in the worst possible way.

[fnord]

I suspect what E_F's trying to warn us against, both in- and out-universe, is extrapolating from that little tussle over Atlantis to further operations in Pegasus. Yes, there was much wtfpwnage, but that's an upper bound on performance, not a lower one. As Jellicoe said, surprise on both strategic and tactical levels was complete, the enemy were pinned against a fixed point, and said enemy were outnumbered 5:1.

Like the Ancients, this mob have shiny technology, etc etc. Unlike them, they lack the near-total military incompetence - say the Wraith see that as an existential threat and mass sufficient heavy ships to flip that ratio, so what happens when Jellicoe et al are the ones being outnumbered 5:1, or more?

On the battlewagon side of things, given Terran resource constraints (13 battlestars or equivalent, plus both resource-based and tactical constraints pushing them to favour beam weapons over missiles), they are forced to value optionality (a hull that can easily swing roles) much more highly than specialisation.

Frinstance, a hull specialised for area defence sounds damn good in an all-out fleet fight, being able to thin out the incoming missile barrage before it reaches various ships' point defences, but that both goes against TCN doctrine (according to Word of E_F, each capital vessel needs to be able to handle its own defences, hedging against Dread God Finagle turning up) and, as said above, has an opportunity cost of losing at least one generalist hull. And what happens when that area-defence hull gets bushwhacked on its own?

If that area-defence hull has to be specifically escorted so it doesn't get caught alone and minced, that's an additional constraint on fleet deployment, which I doubt the Kobolian crew want to subject themselves to.

The two Warspite-class hulls set that inter-role balance a bit differently than the flight II Lionhearts. Poh-tay-toe, pah-tah-toe.

If the resource constraints where a lot looser (say to point that Terra could easily support a hundred-plus battlestars without breaking stride), then the balance swings back towards specialisation somewhat.

The Tau'ri are similarly constrained, which is why their battlecruisers are similarly multi-roled.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Pretty much that. I put the resource constraints in to make it a bit more plausible, to avoid a long-term curbstomp and to make each ship valuable enough that any losses both hurt in-universe and make for a nice dramatic chapter out of universe.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It's been a while...

Interlude: Ghost Ship
Battlestar Eridanus, outer edges of Helios-Beta system

Boarding a derelict vessel was never an easy task. So many thousands of things could go wrong that even the most hardened spacer often balked at the idea. There could be fuel leaks, unexpected hull breaches, highly combustible material just waiting for a compartment to be repressurised to ignite into an inferno. And that was just some of the problems one could find on a civilian ship.

On a warship, things could be even worse. Automated internal defences might still be operational, armoured bulkheads were much harder to open than civilian versions, spare ordnance may be scattered around waiting to kill the foolish or the careless.

Among those who regularly boarded such derelicts, there was a saying: “In this job you’ll only ever make one mistake.”

So when the time came to board the lifeless hulk of the Constellation-class Battlestar, the assembled crews from the Explorers Enterprise, Endeavour and Endurance were as paranoid and cautious as any deep-cover spy. They were acutely aware of the risks they were running.

The lead officers on the mission, Commander Rachel Garrett, commanding officer of the Enterprise and Commander Mikhail Kirov, soon-to-be commanding officer of the Eridanus, had briefed the crews extensively. Detailed scans of the ship provided a set of schematics that let everyone know their intended goals, while Kirov added his own personal insights; he had been a part of the Committee that designed this ship, and had overseen the initial construction of her older sister Constellation before his angry retirement. His tone was hard, his accent distinctively that of Libran which sounded decidedly odd to the Terrans, something the man himself found hilarious, given that the Terrans all sounded like Virgons to him

“This ship is the biggest Battlestar we ever built and probably the most advanced. You’ve all been aboard Pegasus or Warspite, so you have some idea, but this ship was the next step up. The ship contains sophisticated internal defences against boarders that in simulations proved quite lethal, though those should have been disabled along with the rest of the ship.”

The man had paused then, thoughts he did not want to think surfacing. “Given what we know about the Cylon virus from the surviving ships, the Eridanus should be completely powered down and vented to space. That means all internal bulkheads should be wide open. We can expect to find no artificial gravity and lots of bodies.”

That brought a grimace to everyone present. Kirov ruthlessly pressed on. “You need to be ready for this. The Eridanus had a complement of just over 2,500 men and women and they should all still be there, most probably at their posts since we believe the ship was at Action Stations when she was disabled. Those bodies will have died from vacuum exposure, which is not a pretty way to go. With not atmosphere and no heat they’ll be well-preserved too. A secondary goal of this mission is to recover those bodies for burial in New Delphi.”

And so the mission had begun. The boarders, nearly four hundred of them were assembled at the main docking ports of the three Explorers. That they wore pressure suits was hardly a surprise, the fact that Kirov had insisted that they use Terran Marine-issue suits that were armoured and rated for zero-g combat was more unusual. Mikhail was taking no chances.

The Enterprise docked at the ports on the Eridanus’ bow section, their group, including Kirov and Garrett, would disperse throughout the forward section, securing CIC, the forward magazines and Damage Control stations. The Endeavour docked along the port flight pod, as far aft as possible, that group would head for the engineering spaces and attempt to get the main reactors up and running again. Finally, the Endurance docked on the Battlestar’s starboard side, her boarding crews, mostly computer technicians, would head for the midships section to secure the network hubs, the sickbay and the ship’s main fuel bunkers.

Every group was being led by armed Colonial Marines, all of whom had been part of Kirov’s resistance group on Libran, and all of whom would serve aboard this ship once she was restored to service. Kirov felt that having Colonial troops leading the groups was essential for several reasons, one was a reminder to the Terrans that this was a Colonial ship. He liked the Terrans, he was grateful for all they had done, but he was determined that the Colonies would retain an independent culture, and a vital part of that was maintaining an independent Colonial Fleet.

A more practical reason was that, in the extremely unlikely event they encountered survivors, having Colonial personnel on hand would be a lot more reassuring than the complete strangers that were the Terrans. Not that anyone expected survivors of course, but it was a slight possibility that they had to consider.

The ships docked and achieved hard seal. Kirov and Garrett stood at the front of their group, suits sealed and lights switched on. The outer door of the Battlestar’s docking port was already open, as was the inner door, and the corridor beyond. Kirov looked at the woman next to him, who nodded and gave him an encouraging smile.

“After you, Commander” she said.

Mikhail smiled back. “Not the way I wanted to board my new command, but I guess Fate is a cold-hearted bitch. All right, let’s move.”

The group, led by the huge bulk of Commander Kirov, began pushing off the deck and floating down the corridor into the ghost ship. They continued deeper and deeper into the huge vessel, occasionally teams breaking off to head to their own objectives. There was a smattering of wireless chatter from the other groups, so Mikhail knew they were making progress. His own group stayed largely silent, save for the occasional muttered curse as someone misjudged a corner and tumbled into a team mate. Zero-g conditions made the trip slower than simply walking, and it made them all far more anxious.

Encountering their first bodies didn’t help with anxiety either. They had rounded a corner and were preparing to ascend up three decks and reach CIC. There, in front of them was a hideous tableau. Eleven bodies floated in the compartment, their poses stiff and frozen, both from the low temperatures and rigor mortis. The faces were reduced to a rictus of pain and terror, the eyes frozen over, crystallised blood floating around the eyes, nose, mouth and ears as capillaries had burst in the low pressure. One crewman was still holding on to one of the railings, evidently he had grabbed it as the gravity failed and the ship decompressed. He was a young man, barely eighteen and perhaps only just finished basic training, which explained his fate. He had tried to hold his breath and suffered a fatal embolism, the damage to his torso standing as mute testament to his painful end.

Kirov could hear the reactions to these sights over the suit wireless. He felt them too, but a lifetime of service and eight months of warfare on Libran allowed him to silence those reactions. This was hardly the first violent death he had encountered, or even the hundredth. He looked around at his team and noted the slightly green tinge on more than one face.

“Everyone who needs to take a moment, turn around at stare at the walls. Deep breaths. I will clear the path for us.” His team did as instructed, and gratefully. Mikhail turned back to the bodies, deciding which ones he would need to move and where. Normally he would at least try to lie them down with some dignity, but that was not possible now, not in zero-g and eight months after rigor mortis had set in.

Instead he settled for gently pushing the frozen remains over to one side of the compartment, away from his team. He might have supressed his own feelings on the subject, but that did not mean he lacked respect for fallen comrades. He turned off his wireless so no one else would hear what he said to the bodies as he apologised for moving them, for the fact that military necessity trumped dignity in this case.

The worst was the young man gripping the railing, it had taken some considerable force to pry the fingers away, and Kirov apologised time and time again when he felt the finger bones break under his armoured gloves. He was glad there was no air and the others were spared the sounds.

Finally, after about five minutes, the way was clear and the team ascended the ladders to the deck that held the CIC. Two corridors later they arrived at the sliding doors of the ship’s command centre, surprised to find them sealed shut rather than wide open as every other hatch had been. The Marine sentries were absent as well, which was troubling to Kirov. Then he remembered a detail of the ship’s design and sighed. He had an awful feeling he knew what they would find on the other side of the door.

Several wireless calls came in shortly after they arrived, saying that the network hub, Main Engineering, Damage Control and sickbay were all similarly sealed off. Kirov sighed again before activating his wireless.

“This is Scorpion.” The babble of confused voices died away. “The ship’s vital areas are all sealed. This is an emergency feature designed to protect the ship in case of boarders and sabotage. The CIC, Damage Control, Sickbay and Main Engineering all had independent life-support systems and backup battery power supplies. The doors will not open with vacuum on our side. You will need to set up the emergency airlocks and repressurise the corridors first.”

The technical crews did so while Garrett stepped up besides Kirov. She selected a private channel. “You think there might be survivors Mikhail?”

“Unlikely Rachel. The independent systems would have prevented them dying in the initial attack but they would have had only a few days of air and water. Part of me hopes the systems failed and they died quickly with everyone else rather than slowly of asphyxiation.”

Rachel could only nod bleakly at that. “But there is a chance?”

Mikhail nodded. “I suppose there is, a very faint one. Sickbay or Engineering may have survivors, CIC almost certainly won’t. But still…” his voice trailed off. He stepped forwards, raised his armoured glove and smacked it against the sealed hatch as hard as possible. He smacked the door again and then a third time, before laying his hand flat against the metal to feel any possible vibration from within. He waited long enough for the techs to finish setting up the emergency airlock and begin pumping air into the corridor. He looked around and saw one technician reaching for his helmet as if to unlatch it.

“Stop!” the technician halted, as did everyone else. “Their air out here might be good, but in their the air will be stale and the smell will likely be horrific. Believe me, you do not want to smell decaying bodies.”

The technician in question looked like he wanted to vomit but managed to contain that impulse. He looked apologetically at the Commander but Kirov just waved it off. He turned back to the hatch and pulled open the access panel. There was a brief flicker and the panel lit up. Kirov was surprised and optimistic about this.

“Battery power is still holding. Probably not enough to open the doors fully but enough to unseal them. Get the prybars ready.” He leaned down and placed a small Terran device on the access panel. It was designed to quickly cycle through every possible emergency override code, a process that took exactly forty-six seconds.

The door moved slightly with a now-audible thunk as the locking latches disconnected. The technicians moved forwards and inserted the prybars into the tiny gap to begin hauling the doors open. This was surprisingly difficult in zero-g, but soon the CIC was opened again.

Kirov pulled himself inside. The room was larger than his last CIC had been, on the Mercury-class Cerberus, though nowhere near as large as the almost cathedral-like CIC’s on the old Jupiters. As expected, there were plenty of bodies here too, but there were no signs of vacuum exposure this time. The missing Marine sentries were huddled by the doors, evidently they had been ordered inside when everything went wrong.

There, lying over the plot table, or rather floating slightly above it, was the ship’s Commander, Paul Svenson, his hands clasped around a pen and the ship’s logbook. His eyes were closed and his face was peaceful, almost as if he’d been sleeping. Kirov pulled up his sensor data and saw why there had been so little decomposition, the atmosphere had cooled to well below zero degrees. He was puzzled for a moment, knowing that the compartment would have cooled down over the last eight months, but this had to have happened soon after the command crew had died or less the bodies would look far worse.

He heard the other technicians move around him, gently moving bodies as needed to try and activate some of the stations. Kirov instead focused on the logbook, delicately pulling it out of Svenson’s hand and opening it to the last page.

”Battlestar Eridanus Ship’s Log, Final Entry: It has now been four days since the ship was disabled. I can only assume that the Cylons have returned in force given that no one has come looking for us by now. We have had no contact with anyone else outside the ship, not even our Vipers or Raptors. I assume they’re dead too. We still have some contact with Sickbay and Engineering, but Damage Control and the Network Hub went silent eighteen hours ago. Our air supply won’t last long either, the air is already stale and getting worse and the temperature is dropping. So we’ve decided to go out on our terms. The medics say they have enough morpha to give everyone a painless end, and I’ve shut down the life-support systems so it will get very cold very fast. Hopefully our bodies will be preserved enough for our families to bury if we’re ever found.

To whoever finds this ship and this log, please tell the Fleet and our families we’re sorry we weren’t there in the fight. We’re sorry we couldn’t defend our loved ones. Please forgive us.

Commander Paul Svenson, Battlestar Eridanus.”

Kirov felt a single tear roll down his face as he read Svenson’s last entry. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply to regain his composure. He once again switched off his wireless before reaching down and laying his hand on the dead Commander’s shoulder.

Then, his voice barely a whisper, he spoke to the dead. “You’re forgiven Paul. All of you. This wasn’t your fault. Hopefully you’re with your loved ones now and they’ll tell you the same.”

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Rachel Garrett looking at him with concern. Kirov simply showed her the last log entry before turning away, reactivating his wireless and he did.

“This is Scorpion, all teams report in. Ship’s status only please, I don’t need to know if you found any notes with the bodies.” His tone made it clear that he expected there to be such notes and knew what they would say.

”This is Jacobson in Main Engineering. Reactors are cold, so we’re rigging up the spare generator we brought with us. Should give us enough power for a single jump to Terra.” There was emotion in the man’s voice, deep and raw but under control.

This is Holloway in the midships section, Network Hub is cold and dark, completely powered down. No point even trying to power it back up until we can make sure no Cylon virus is lurking in there. The fuel bunkers are dry, they got vented as well.” The woman’s voice was normally warm and happy, this time it was clipped, dry and betrayed no emotion at all. Kirov supposed it was a good way to deal with the situation.

Kirov spoke again. “Jacobson, see if you can get artificial gravity back up, that’ll make it a lot easy to move around and gather the dead.”

There was silence for a moment, then a subdued: ”Yes Sir.”

Things proceeded quietly for another half hour until Jacobson reported that the gravity field would begin powering up in ten seconds. It would be gradual, starting at one-tenth standard before moving up to the full one-g environment. They were making a conscious choice not to repressurise the entire ship however, as this would prevent any of the crew’s remains from beginning to decay before they could be gathered and stored properly.

With gravity restored, litter teams began gathering up the dead crew and placing them respectfully on the hanger decks, the only areas large enough to contain them all. It was a long and grim task, but no-one complained.

A day passed as the crews of the three Explorers rotated on and off duty aboard the empty Battlestar. Everyone was needed, even if only to help clear the corridors and compartments of bodies and other waste that was floating around after the decompression. Finally, the engineering crews were ready, the ship’s jump drives were powered up for the first time in eight months. The temporary generators strained to the limit as the nav system accepted the coordinates to the Terran system.

The three Explorers undocked and assumed formation around the much large Battlestar and plotted their own jumps. The clock counted down and the four ships vanished, to reappear five and a half thousand light-years away over Terra.

The Eridanus had left the Helios system for the first and last time, she would never return. But she would re-join the Colonial Fleet and her mission would continue, even if the world she defended was nothing but a legend to those who built her.

================

-Yup, another interlude, but this idea was kicking around upstairs and I figured it would serve as a good way to introduce Mikhail Kirov. Rachel Garrett as CO of the Enterprise was suggested by fnord as a nod to the awesome but short-lived Ent-C in TNG. In-universe, I'm tihnking she's realted to Captain Garrett of the Battlestar Republic.
-I'm going with the map of the Colonies that Ron Moore publish at one point (I think), showing the Colonial system was two pairs of double stars, hence Helios-Alpha, Helios-Beta and so on.
-I'm alos going with fanon ideas that Galactica was a Jupiter class Battlestar, which sounds cooler than Columbia-class (to me anyway).
-Finally, I'm going with the other fanon idea that Virgon was the "British" Colony, hence why Kirov mentions that the Terrans all sound like Virgon natives to him, and prior mentions of Boskirk and the Royal Palace. With that in mind, if Virgon can be the British colony, then I'm making Libran the Russian/Eastern European/Scandanavian colony, hence Mikhail Kirov and Paul Svenson,

[Eternal_Freedom]

Since I'm feeling kind, and I like writing battles, enjoy!

The Hunt Begins
Unnamed star system, Five thousand light-years from Atlantis

It was an unremarkable star system. A typical, boring G-type star, five typical, boring gas giants orbiting fairly close in and a handful of airless rocky bodies further out. No habitable worlds, no particularly valuable resources, nothing of interest whatsoever.

This was of course why the huge Wraith fleet heading for Atlantis chose to stop here to regenerate their hulls from the strains of hyperspace travel. This system had been undisturbed since the dawn of time, no living being had ever entered it and once the Wraith departed in a few hours, none would ever return. As star systems went, it was so forgettable that it hadn’t even been assigned a number on Ancient star charts, never mind a name.

Hyperspace portals opened and twelve Hive Ships flew back into realspace, slowing rapidly to a relative crawl. Around them, no less than forty cruisers emerged to form an outer perimeter. They did not seriously expect an attack, but every Wraith in the fleet had felt the psychic scream as those rival Hives were obliterated a day ago. The only thing of interest in this part of the galaxy was the home of the ancient enemy, making it the most likely location for where those ships died. What killed them was a mystery, one this fleet would discover.

Despite their expectations, they were not alone. Several cloaked sensor buoys floated in space in the area where the Wraith fleet emerged, watching and waiting, silently cataloguing the new threat and reporting targets back to the fleet that waited in ambush. The plan had changed slightly, at the express request of General O’Neill, Colonel Caldwell and Supreme Commander Thor, almost the entirety of Task Force Nemesis was assembled for this strike; only the Daniel Jackson remaining behind to receive the first shipment of nav/sensor buoys from Olympus Base.

The Task Force waited at an arbitrarily chosen point, fifty AU above the plane of the ecliptic, far out of Wraith sensor range. The ships were all fully manned and ready, their crews at their stations, the pilots in their planes ready to launch. The exception to that were the eighty Scimitar bombers which were airborne and holding formation, ready for their own jump.

In Fleet Ops, Admiral Jellicoe examined the formation and chose his line of attack. The Wraith had emerged in two loose columns of six Hive ships on parallel courses, while the forty cruisers were divided up into four columns of ten, one each above, below and to either side of the Hive ships. It was a sound formation for station keeping but a poor battle formation, it restricted the arcs of fire and prevented any concentration of force without significant manoeuvres. He picked his targets and sent the signals.

He felt vindicated in his decision to not immediately deploy fighters after jumping in. Between the Nemesis, the Daedalus and the six Battlestars, he had 1,680 Vipers or Cobras, eighty Scythes and just sixteen F-302’s, which would have to square off against more than twenty-two thousand Wraith darts. He knew his pilots were good, but twenty to one odds were impossible. He needed to minimise casualties as much as possible given the long time it would take for replacements to arrive from Terra.

The Wraith continued serenely, utterly unaware of the hammer that was even know swinging down on them. This was a carefully coordinated strike that would inflict massive damage for minimal loss, the Wraith would bleed like they had never before, even during the war against the Ancients.

The strike began. The huge bulk of the Nemesis appeared in front of the Wraith columns, missiles launching barely a second after she appeared. On the Wraith’s port flank appeared the Victorious, Excalibur and Republic, their megalasers already charged and acquiring targets. On the other flank came the Warspite, Pegasus and Galactica, their own batteries seeking he enemy and missiles launching from the two Colonial-built ships. At the rear of the formation, three hyperspace windows opened and the Daedalus, Samantha Carter and Teal’c of Chu’lak short forwards, their engines straining to maximum as they executed a perfect cavalry-style charge into the rear of the enemy, striking and stinging and moving onwards, never letting themselves be pinned down.

Eighty smaller flashes heralded the appearance of the Scimitar bombers. Their missile bays immediately began spewing their lethal payloads, each twenty-strong squadron targeting a single Hive ship, giving them two hundred and forty missiles each to try and intercept.

The Wraith reacted with commendable swiftness, their plasma cannons opening fire and the cruiser lines turning outwards and racing to envelop and surround the two Battlestar groups even as the Hive leading the left hand column shattered under the fearsome power of the Warstar’s superlaser.

Shields began to flare as they absorbed the Wraith salvos. Small sparks could be seen as missiles were intercepted and downed, but luckily the eighty bombers had all successfully jumped away after their launch, they re-appeared behind the Nemesis and raced in to the landing decks as quickly as they could.

Brilliant flashes lit up the system as missiles began to strike their targets. With so many Wraith ships and escorts, relatively few missiles got through, but the bomber strike claimed two Hives destroyed and two more damaged, the Nemesis added another kill to her tally and the Pegasus and Warspite jointly shared a fifth kill.

Seven Hives remained, two of them wounded, but that was still a lot of firepower. The ships near the front of the formation pushed their engines to close the range against the huge Warstar, their guns firing as fast as possible. The ships on the flanks split apart to batter the Battlestars in concert with the swarm of cruisers. Any guns that couldn’t bear on the Terran ships vented their own fury at the three darting ships that still raced through their formation.

The Daedalus was in her element, acting more like a ground-attack gunship than a battlecruiser. She flew as close as she dared to the hull of one Hive, her railguns blasting trails of fire along the surface, her own Asgard plasma cannons punching through the hull and deep into the interior of the huge living ship. Her missiles also flew, but did not detonate on impact, the Tau’ri ship was far too close to survive such detonations, instead the missiles penetrated the outer hull and buried themselves metres deep, their warheads set for a delayed detonation.

The Daedalus finished her run, racing past the Hive ship’s bow, a salvo of plasma bolts splattering on her shields as she went. The helmsman, unable to resist temptation, threw the ship into a victory roll even as he turned to head towards another Hive, one of the group attacking the Terran Battlestars. The reason for this jubilation became clear when the damaged Hive erupted into multiple nuclear detonations as the delayed warheads finally detonated. On the bridge, Colonel Caldwell wore a vicious smile, now he could show this Colonial Admiral how the Tau’ri could fight!

The Terran Battlestars were having a harder time than their Colonial counterparts. The two Hives and twenty cruisers their faced were undamaged by the bomber strike or the Tau’ri and Asgard attack runs, and these Wraith were angry. The repeated salvos began to drain the three Lionheart’s shields at an alarming rate; no matter how easy the initial ambush over Atlantis had been, it was clear that the Hives were powerful warships, and the sheer number of cruisers assaulting them meant the turbolaser batteries had to concentrate on a few ships at a time to cause any damage.

In the CIC of the Excalibur, Arthur Pendragon stood resolute even as the deck shook under him. His weapons crews announced that their turbolasers were less effective than hoped against the Wraith hulls, something in their construction, or growth, made them more resistant to energy weapons than the Cylons had been. Luckily, he had some bigger guns to play with. A firing solution was achieved, and all three Terran Battlestars fired at once, their twelve megalasers ripping into one of the Hive ships.

The huge ship was, amazingly, not destroyed outright by this fearsome onslaught, though it was crippled. Great rents were torn in its armour, the port engines were immolated completely and massive secondary explosions consumed every single Dart stored on the ship’s starboard side. Only her strong construction and design prevented these explosions breaking the ship in half.

The other Hive wanted vengeance, and an order went out. Every gun and every cruiser would target the lead human ship. The Excalibur began to take a real pounding now, even as the other two ships got a brief respite as they were ignored, their turbolasers began ripping into the cruiser force in earnest now. Pendragon’s ship was beginning to suffer, her guns fired slower than usual as more and more power was diverted in a vain attempt to shore up the shields protecting them.

Arthur was just ordering them to prepare an emergency escape jump to the rally point when the shields finally failed. A massed salvo of nearly a hundred plasma bolts slammed into the armour, causing the entire ship to glow blue as the energy was either vented into space or absorbed into the new capacitors. The system worked as advertised, as did the isolation shielding around the FTL drives, and the ship quickly jumped away to escape the hell storm of Wraith fire.

On the far side of the battle, the three Colonial Battlestars were having a much easier fight. Their two Hives had already been damaged by the bomber strike, one severely so. That ship had quickly died to the four missiles the Battlestars had managed to get past the defences. The less-damaged survivor found herself surrounded by the three smaller ships, the inboard turbolasers ripping into the sturdy hull even as the outboard guns began blasting cruisers into scrap metal.

The real drama was happening at the head of the formation. Nemesis stood alone but resolute. One Hive ship was already dead, cut down by the huge superlaser, and another battered by the massive missile salvo the Warstar had launched at the outset. But that left her facing two Hives that were closing in on the Terran behemoth. The bow megalasers fired, hitting in a concentrated pattern on the damaged hive, gutting the huge vessel right down her centreline, burning through almost half the ship’s length before the energy was exhausted. This did little to the slow either Hive though.

In the CIC, Captain Davies and Commander Wallace were increasingly concerned at the surprising resilience of the Wraith ships. There were only four Hives remaining now, and twenty five cruisers, but the shields on every ship were strained. The Excalibur had already jumped away, while the two Asgard ships and the Daedalus had similarly retreated into hyperspace. They had reached the limits of what even the mighty Battlestars could handle. Nemesis herself was in good shape, since she faced only a pair of damaged Hives and no cruisers, but neither the Captain nor XO wanted to take on the entire remaining fleet single-handed.

A call came in. “Galactica reports their last target is breaking up, but their shields are too weak to continue the fight against the twelve remaining cruisers. The Colonial group is withdrawing.”

Another call came in, this time from the Victorious. “Sharpshooter, Bad Wolf, we’re bugging out. Our last Hive is damaged but it’s still got teeth, mine and Abraxas’ shields won’t hold for long against it and all those cruisers. Sorry.” The display updated as the two remaining Terran Battlestars likewise flashed away to the rally point.

Wayne looked at his XO. “Well Fireman, looks like we’re on our own after all.”

The display updated again, showing the third remaining Hive moving up at full speed straight towards the Warstar, along with the twenty-three remaining cruisers. The Wraith fire continued, even as the heavily-damaged Hive ship began to break apart under the relentless fire of the turbolasers and a pair of cruisers were speared by the dorsal megalaser turrets and shattered.

Wallace looked at his friend. “We’ve doing pretty good sir, that’s two Hives and two…sorry, three cruisers downed on top of our score over Atlantis. I think we’re winning the betting pool.” That was said with a wry grin that quickly disappeared as a massive thump rocked the vessel.

One of the damaged cruisers had turned towards the Warstar and activated its hyperdrive. There was too short a distance to safely enter hyperspace before impact, but that was the point. The cruiser shot forwards at blinding speed only to slam into the Nemesis port shields, depleting them considerably and causing minor shock damage and casualties throughout the vessel.

Wayne staggered back to the plot table and barked an order. “Prepare FTL jump to rally coordinates, quick-charge the drives!”

The order came not a moment too soon. The Hive that had driven off Stewart, Garrett and Pendragon had closed in enough to open fire as well. With two Hives blasting the Warstar at point-blank range and eighteen cruisers still active surrounding them firing with all they had it was clear they needed to escape and soon. Another cruiser lined up for a similar hyperspace ramming, only to be foiled by the four ventral megalasers reducing the offending cruisers to dust and debris.

The jump clock began counting down even as one of the damaged Hives turned to ram the Warstar as well. The Hive’s engines flared and she shot forwards, for a moment it appeared both ships would be caught in a collision that neither could survive, but at the last millisecond the jump drives activated and the Nemesis departed the battlefield, the spatial distortion ripping away a four-hundred metre section of the Hive ship’s bows as she did.

=======

Well I think that nicely established that Wraith ships are indeed powerful adversaries. The Task Force crews won't be getting complacent after this.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ghetto edit: Incidentally, when I was going through my master Word version of this story, I realised I'd somehow lost about six chapters after I posted them on here - everything between Jellicoe telling Adama they have a Cylon defector to Part Two of Barham's Last Stand was missing from my master file. I've now copy/pasted it back in, which gives me a pleasant surprise - this story is now at 95,313 words, nearly ten times my previous longest work.

Maybe I should begin cross-posting this elsewhere, possible Fanfiction.net. Anyone else got any suggestions?

[fnord]

Yeah, maybe post it to fanfiction.net and (maybe) twisting the hellmouth - that's where X-SGCOM is posted.

Dumb question - does Nemesis have the drive-linked supercaps that the Excalibat got swung around in this last segment?

[Eternal_Freedom]

If by that you mean does Nemesis have the same emergency capacitors linked to the superconductive armour as the Flight II - Lionhearts, then yes it does, but the ship has enough power anyway to quick-charge the FTL's in thirty seconds, so it's not such an issue as it is for a Battlestar.

[B5B7]

Yeah, maybe post it to fanfiction.net and (maybe) twisting the hellmouth - that's where X-SGCOM is posted.

Dumb question - does Nemesis have the drive-linked supercaps that the Excalibat got swung around in this last segment?

I thought of recommending TTH, but it has strict conditions on story posting, as it is a Buffy-crossover site.
These include that one's first posted story must be a Buffy-crossover story, and that your number of Buffy-crossover stories exceed in both quantity and combined word length non-Buffy-crossover stories. The conditions are much less restrictive if you are a donor-member.
So unless Eternal Freedom is also a Buffy/AtS fan, then that would not be a good option for him.

[fnord]

Ok, so tTH ain't so hot an idea.

Hasn't it been, in-story, roughly thirteen months since Volcano Day? The story opened ~8 months after the Fall when Warspite dropped in on Galactica, it was a month or so getting to Terra, three months of frantic training montage, then the BoT, and this is maybe a month later.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think I'll stat putting it up on FanFiction.net this week or so. TTH is a no, I couldn't care less about Buffy.

As for time-wise, it's actually more like 15/16 months since The Fall - there was at least two and a half months between the Battle of Terra and the message from Atlantis - it took that long to finish Nemesis, add another 3 weeks getting to Pegasus.

So yeah, it's the Fall - 8 months - Warspite arrives - 1 week - arrive at Terra - 3 months - Battle of Terra - 2.5 months - message from Pegasus - 3 weeks - kill Wraith Fleet. So 15.5 months, thereabouts.

[fnord]

This jumped out at me (bolding mine) and prompted my question (and perhaps a fix for the FF.N version):

A day passed as the crews of the three Explorers rotated on and off duty aboard the empty Battlestar. Everyone was needed, even if only to help clear the corridors and compartments of bodies and other waste that was floating around after the decompression. Finally, the engineering crews were ready, the ship’s jump drives were powered up for the first time in eight months. The temporary generators strained to the limit as the nav system accepted the coordinates to the Terran system.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good catch, I'll amend it in my master version.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Task Force Nemesis Rally Point
50 AU Above the plane of the Ecliptic, Unnamed Star System
Ten Minutes Later

The meeting was tense. Jellicoe had summoned his Captains and Commanders to the Fleet Ops Briefing Room on the huge Warstar, once again aided by the Asgard beaming system. Faces around the room were grim; everyone involved knew how close to serious losses they had come, despite the magnitude of their victory.

Jellicoe stood at the podium while the huge screen behind him showed a set of damage-control schematics from several of his ships. He looked around, took a sip of water and began.

“Ok everyone. Let’s start with what worked. The jump into position was flawless. The Warstar’s superlaser continues to frighten me with just how damn powerful it is. The cavalry run from our lighter ships was also effective. Gunnery accuracy was very good as were the missile salvos.”

He paused briefly. “Now, what didn’t work out as well. The bomber strike did not do as much damage as we hoped, although we suffered no losses. The Wraith ship’s hulls are more resistant to our turbo- and megalasers than anticipated, and this is when those hulls were already weakened from a long hyperspace flight. Multiple megalaser hits did not reliably destroy Hive ships as we would expect. And we have considerably underestimated the Wraith determination to win. Near the end of the battle, one Wraith cruiser rammed the Nemesis at near-lightspeed by activating it’s hyperdrive too close to safely enter the hyperspace window. This impact drained the port shields by approximately forty percent, forcing our withdrawal. At least one other cruiser and a damaged Hive ship attempted the same thing before we escaped but were unsuccessful.”

The long litany of bad news did not help the morale in the room one bit. Jellicoe continued.

“The Nemesis suffered mild internal damage from the shock of the impact. Initial estimates suggest our shields could withstand no more than two such impacts from Wraith cruisers, while one ramming from a Hive ship would almost certainly annihilate both vessels. I have no doubt the Wraith will use this tactic in future. The Daedalus, Samantha Carter and Teal’c of Chu’lak have also suffered mild to moderate internal damage, though I believe they are still combat-effective and can be repaired in short order.” That got an agreeable nod from Thor and Caldwell.

“The Excalibur lost shields and took approximately twenty Hive-grade plasma cannon hits, plus a further forty cruiser-grade hits before jumping away. The armour capacitor system worked as planned and no internal damage was sustained, although the engineers tell me the armour would rapidly lose effectiveness under sustained fire of this power. I am forced to re-evalute our estimates and say that a Battlestar is not an even match for a Hive Ship, they’re just too big, too strong and too bulky to be easily disabled by a handful of hits like Cylon ships.”

Captain Pendragon looked particularly annoyed at this dry, clinical analysis of how close his ship had come to joining her lost sister Barham. Jellicoe continued once again.

“At the outset the Wraith had twelve Hive Ships and forty cruisers, a notable force. Our cloaked sensor buoy records that they now have two Hive ships, one heavily damaged, and seventeen cruisers. We did a lot of damage and killed a lot of ships, but there are a hell of a lot more still out there. Strategic surprise is definitely gone now, I’d wager cubits to doughnuts that those Hives are even now screaming at every other Wraith ship in the galaxy, telling them exactly how many ships we’ve got and how powerful we are. We have no choice but to withdraw to Atlantis and form a new plan.”

No one could disagree with that, and so the meeting broke up rapidly as Captains returned to their ships to plot the jump back to base. Shortly only Jellicoe, Davies and Mace remained. All three men knew how closely they had skirted taking serious losses and all were realists enough to once again begin doubting whether this war was winnable, the heady excitement caused by the annihilation of the Wraith force over Atlantis fading into memory.

Davies was the first to speak. “Everything we had against a tenth of what they’ve got. We can’t win this thing can we?”

Jellicoe nodded. “Short of some insane plan or a miracle, no I don’t think we can. We can keep ambushing their fleets but eventually we’re going to lose ships and people. They’ve got enough forces that they can just drown us in hulls and bodies and there isn’t a single damned thing we can do about it.”

Mace, trying to be optimistic, voiced an idea. “Well if we need an insane plan, maybe we should ask the crew from the SGC? From what I’ve heard, insane ideas seem to be their strong suit.”

Jellicoe and Davies nodded in agreement. It was all they could do for now.

Elsewhere in the Pegasus Galaxy

Jellicoe was safe in his bet. The surviving Wraith ships immediately realised they faced a powerful enemy, one that would need the entire Wraith species to defeat. All thoughts of rivalry or competition were forgotten – not having enough food to sustain the whole population was irrelevant when they faced such a threat.

And so the call went out, to every corner of the Pegasus Galaxy. Every Hive ship, every base, every cruiser would hear the message. It was rich with detail, describing every ship that had attacked them, their size, their strength and their powers. But the main body was a simple call to arms, and a summons to a meeting.

Within hours, every Wraith faction had heard the call. Just as with the battered survivors, thoughts of competition faded away. They turned away from the worlds they were harvesting and jumped into hyperspace, heading for a point on the far side of the galaxy from Atlantis. They did not know for sure that the home of their ancient enemy was involved, but it was a safe assumption to make.

The message also contained word about Earth, the rich feeding ground that lay beyond this galaxy. Rumours of this place had been heard for a year now, but only two factions had taken them seriously – the two factions that had been attacked and all but destroyed. This presented the Wraith species with the chance of a double triumph – they could smash this powerful new enemy and find a new food source in one stroke.

It would take weeks for every faction to meet at the designated point, and weeks more for the massed Wraith Fleet to reach Atlantis afterwards, but the long journey would be worth it given the tantalising prize waiting at journey’s end.

For the first time since the end of the war ten thousand years ago, the Wraith species would be united behind one goal: destroying their common enemy. The sleeping dragon had woken.

The Edge of the Pegasus Galaxy

The long journey was finally over. It had taken months rather than weeks as he had expected, the scarcity of navigational markers making the exacting jump calculations even lengthier and the range reduced. The drives themselves were showing the strain, in the last month he had been forced to cut back to one jump a day to avoid burning out the delicate and irreplaceable components.

Already one of his six ships had been lost, the drive system shattering into a thousand pieces that caused considerable damage to the engineering spaces. He had taken the loss with surprising equanimity, evacuating everyone and everything he could before setting the stranded ship’s reactors to overload. Even there, in the void between galaxies and half a million light years from the nearest world, he had decided not to leave any evidence behind. No one must be able to follow his trail if he was to rebuild his shattered empire.

And so Ba’al, Last of the System Lords and God of the Cylons, arrived in Pegasus to begin his long exile. He had supplies aplenty and one of his remaining ships carried cloning and resurrection systems to allow his Cylon followers to recover with him. His previous self’s doubts about their loyalty was easily fixed, a few tweaks to their mental programming would see them utterly loyal to their God. There would be no rebellion this time.

Strangely, Ba’al was almost relishing the challenge ahead. For the first time in eight thousand years he had an empire to build, but this time there would be no interference from rival Goa’uld, no internecine politics. He intended to find an isolated but habitable world and begin slowly, he needed resources and industry if he were to truly regain his former glory. It was a task he looked forward to.
It would take years, decades even, but decades were like a snap of the fingers to a Goa’uld. Eventually, the Last of the System Lords would send an armada more powerful than any the galaxies had ever seen back to his homeland and reclaim it. The Tau’ri, the Colonials, their Terran allies, even the Asgard would fall to the wrath of the Goa’uld. It was an inevitability.

The smaller cargo ships that had been carried aboard the Ha’taks began to disperse to find his new throneworld. Sitting on his throne on the bridge of his flagship, Ba’al smiled.

============

So, Ba'al is back, the Wraith are uniting, and Jellicoe and Co realise they can't reliably go head to head with the Wraith unless they've got surprise or a sufficiently large concentration of force.

To those who say I'm making Hive Ships too powerful than they are in canon, yes I am. I want this to be a proper fight, a gruelling struggle. Several chapters in a row of "Task Force appears, blasts Wraith ships with no damage, rinse and repeat" will get boring very fast, both to read and to write. This is why the Hives are getting a boost in combat power, and why they are uniting. I don't want an excuse to have the Task Force constantly ambushing smaller groups if I can help it.

Yep, the Task Force is turning to the SGC for an insane plan, and I have one in mind. It combines a couple of things seen in the series, so nothing totally new. Just a new application

[LadyTevar]

Ba'al in Pegasus. Idjit. Hope the Wraith find and eat him.

[fnord]

Yipe. Gambit pileup, much? No good deed goes unpunished?

Are toasters close enough to human for Wraith to get anything from nomming them?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yipe. Gambit pileup, much? No good deed goes unpunished?

Are toasters close enough to human for Wraith to get anything from nomming them?

That...is actually something I hadn't considered.

I think however there is a precedent. We know from one of the Atlantis episodes (I think late S4/early S5) that the Wraith have cloning tech, and since it never occurred to them to clone humans to feed on, it wouldn't work. Perhaps it's something about needing to be a unique consciousness, or a "soul" for lack of a better term that regular humans possess but clones don't.

Or maybe the Wraith are really hipsters and insist on "free range" humans, which is basically what we see in the series.