The Undiscovered Galaxy (SG:A Crossover)

[Perseid]

Very nice, I can just see the faces of the reporters as the Prometheus, Daedalus and Odyssey dropped in. And Daniel looking up all the people who laughed at him is just priceless.

Sorry I thought of this almost immediatly
[Mastercard add]Laptop:£1500, Internet connection: £30, Gloating at all of the people that laughed at your not so crazy theories about Egypt: Priceless[/Mastercard add].

[NecronLord]

I'm waiting to get into the heart of the conflict.

Well the Wraith-human conflict will come to a head over the next few chapters, and then the Orii... well, my current thinking is to take quite a dark direction there.

[LadyTevar]

God... just the idea of the Ships hovering over The Mall... and the F302s buzzing the Smithsonian and the Washington Monument...

[Chris OFarrell]

God... just the idea of the Ships hovering over The Mall... and the F302s buzzing the Smithsonian and the Washington Monument...

You know a little thought on that....the Daedalus and Prometheus class ships have a sort of similar length to a Nimitz class carrier, give or take. And they are 'buzzing' the capital, probably subsonic.....but Jesus H Christ the slipstream they would pull.....


Oh and lots of fun Necron, keep it up! I love the story....but one tiny thing I noticed in this chapter...

"and incomprehensible at the time, the government took custody of it at the request of Professor Langford, the government took custody of the object. "

[NecronLord]

Oh and lots of fun Necron, keep it up! I love the story....but one tiny thing I noticed in this chapter...

"and incomprehensible at the time, the government took custody of it at the request of Professor Langford, the government took custody of the object. "

[Coalition]

Good thing they didn't bring in one of the Asgard as a guest speaker. Can you imagine the reactions?

[Singular Quartet]

As I recall, they might have pulled a rather hefty lie about the Asgaurd. Whether or not that occured in this timeline, I'm not sure...

[Chris OFarrell]

Damnit I thought this was an update!

*pouts*

[MikeL59]

Just happened across this story; very intriguing idea ...

Curious about the effect this is having on the Federation's universe.
The Klingons, Romulans, etc. can't be very happy; I wonder how far
they would go to express their displeasure. Also, the Feds have access
to information that may or may not inform them about potential
enemies (the Cardassians and the Borg to name but two). I'm curious
to see what if anything they do about it.

Please continue...

[Xon]

Barring the Borg and the various superpowers(which ignore the Federation for the most part), no one will have the ability to touch the Federation.

Oh, and the Romulans are virtual nobodies at the moment (This isnt TNG...). And the Klingons arent stupid enough to attack someone with a FTL drive thousands of times faster than thier own and weapons which can one-shot thier most heavily shielded ships.

The Federation, with assistance from the SGC, is at the brink of transforming into a true pan-galactic civilization. After the SGC is public revealed, they would be almost eligible to join the Federation

Chris OFarrell, there is an update somewhere in the pipeline. This story is almost complete and I remember NecronLord indicating he was planning a sequal.

[NecronLord]

I'm afraid there's an exam next week, progress is halted. Will resume soon. The concluding mega-chapter is about 60% or more done.

[Crazedwraith]

Dammit! I thought there was an update !

Shame on you Necronlord! Good luck with the exam though.

[NecronLord]

Chapter Thirteen – Triumph and Culmination

“And now we’re joined by Lieutenant General George S Hammond and Jonas Quinn, both veterans of many years on the stargate programme,” the anchor said, “General, could you please tell us what you did in the SGC?”

“Certainly,” Hammond said, “From nineteen ninety seven to last year, I was the commander of the SGC, I was essentially responsible for overseeing the recruitment of the SGC and evaluating its missions for potential benefits and risks, as well as occasionally planning major off world operations.”

“That’s certainly very impressive,” he said, “and Mister Quinn?”

“In your terminology, it’s Doctor Quinn. Anyway, I spent a year on SG1,” he said, “before returning to my homeworld.”

“Wait, so you’re an alien?”

“That’s correct,” Jonas said, “I come from the planet Kelowna, we’re essentially, at the moment, an ally of Earth’s, and provide crucial, essential to some models, materials used in the construction of hyper-drives. We actually went through an experience rather similar to the one you’re presently undergoing quite recently, though the situation surrounding our public disclosue was rather more dramatic and indeed traumatic…”

Ten Thousand Years Ago…

The city was besieged. Its towers stood stark against a dark sky filled with the baleful fire of wraith weapons. Nemesis felt as if she could see the wraith ships high above as more than bright lights in the sky, but as the harsh angular shapes she knew them to be. She grasped the banister of the balcony and continued looking up as they attacked her city, bolts of compressed fire exploding against the impenetrable barrier of its shields.

The Council of Atlantis’ ineptitude had lead to this farce, and she could not forgive it. At the beginning of the war with the Wraith, she had warned them to take aggressive action. Even before, she had known that the Wraith creatures were rising to power among the outer stars of Pegasus, learning from their erstwhile creators and feeding upon the ‘cattle’ of their creators.

Nemesis had been one of the first among the Ancients to react against the Wraith threat, and had been ejected from the high council because of this militaristic approach. She and her followers had even been working for centuries on retaliation against the creators of the virus that had so decimated ‘Alteran’ civilisation to the point where the survivors had been able to fit into a single city-ship.

“Ma’am,” one of her people said as he stepped onto the city’s tower balcony, watching the turquoise shield ripple under the strain of Wraith bombardment, “we still can’t contact Atlantis. Our stargate is locked out. We’ve tried dialling through an intermediary, but we get the same response…”

“Then they’ve fled,” Nemesis said, sighing deeply and turning to regard him, “as I expected they would. That leaves us with only one option, we must break out,” she sighed, “power the engines.”

“Ma’am, the power sources are reaching maximum entropy, we will not be able to make an intergalactic journey safely,” he said.

“I know, but I would rather be somewhere the Wraith aren’t when they fail. Attend to your duties.”

“Yes Ma’am,” he said, stepping hurriedly back into the control room, and Nemesis followed, her black robes – symbolic of mourning, she said to all who asked, although she had worn variants of them long before the Wraith had made their war – fluttering in the percussive breeze under the shield.

“Inertial dampener power at fifteen percent power and rising,” one of the city’s anaemic and war-depleted staff called. “Twenty percent,” he added, as Nemesis strode down the text-less steps of the control room, into the shadow of the stargate in the control room’s centre. She shook her head sadly at the flashes visible in the window beyond, and crouching, waving her hand over the join at the centre of the stargate platform, resulting in the segments of the floor sliding apart, and a control chair ascending from below.

With ceremony she rose and turned, sitting down and leaning back into the chair, which glowed from within. Holograms shimmered into place over her, and she could finally see the wraith ships directly, hanging over her in translucent form. “Eighty percent,” the voice from the balcony called, and Nemesis waited for him to reach one hundred.

“Initiate take off, shields to maximum,” she said, and closed her eyes, pressing her hands down into the yielding gel control pads of the chair. It was a mind-expanding experience, and Nemesis could feel everything, the restless, destructive minds of thousands of drones, squid-form creatures waiting and longing for release and direction, wanting only to bring destruction to her enemies. She could feel the wraith ships, angular vessels with the prickle of energy traces and lancing heat of weapons fire streaking down from them.

As the city rose from its blasted surroundings, she released the remaining drones, hundreds at a time, the yellow squids phasing through the solid matter of the city and leaping forth at hundreds of thousands of gravities to plunge towards the wraith antagonists, slashing through their hulls like stiletto knives through the vulnerable flesh of an assassin’s mark. Nemesis counted the ships she destroyed, counted as she murdered thousands of Wraith. One ship after another flashed into a fireball as its reactors were destroyed, but there were too many, she thought she could clearly discern hundreds.

The shield operator cried out in alarm and Nemesis could feel that her beautiful city of silver stripped of its defences and laid bare before the enemy guns. Releasing another brace of drones, and screwing her eyes shut, she screamed in sympathetic but purely psychosomatic distress as she perceived one of the city’s towers breaking off, falling from the city ship to smash into the ground below. “Hyperdrive,” she demanded, pressing her hands deep into the gel.

The hologram flashed as a titanic hyperspace portal opened in the sky above it, and the city ship disappeared into the safe embrace of hyperspace. She closed her eyes slowly and wept. She had destroyed thousands, and worse, knew that her people had once again been driven out of the responsibilities they had taken on themselves. They had failed once to protect the people of their home galaxy from the Orii, though millions of years ago that had been before even her time, and now they had failed once more to protect the people they had created in the Pegasus Galaxy from the Wraith.

The hubris of the Alterans, in seeking to culture life like themselves wherever their feet fell, weighed heavily on Nemesis’ mind, she was no goddess, and no matter the aspirations of her fellow Atlanteans, she knew that she never would be. No one who could fail so completely was worthy of any of the veneration she felt her fellows, in their hearts, wanted.

----

Answers in Genesis.org, Frontpage:
Today’s Article: Evolutionism Disproved!

Today the United Nations admitted what we have known for many years, the fraudulency of Darwinist theory. On Page 282 of the ‘report into the operations of Stargate Command’ it indicates that an alien device was used by the ‘Ancients’ to create life on Earth, around three million years ago. Obviously, this isn’t in line with the cutting edge of Creation Research, but we at AiG are of course, enthused by this publication’s disproof of the Darwin Hypothesis…

----

Admiral Kirk sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Remind me again, Ambassador, why we’re here.”

“Because your presence makes our claims seem infinitely more convincing? It would seem like some kind of massive prank otherwise.”

“That’s reassuring,” McCoy said, adjusting the turquoise collar of his casual “bomber jacket” uniform. “So it’ll be us being laughed off the stage instead of you…”

Fox nodded, “Precisely. But more seriously, ‘Wormhole X-treme’ would seem to be a godsend in making this revelation go down smoothly…”

“Wormhole X-treme?” McCoy asked.

“Oh you’ve got to see it, it’s a hilarious parody of the stargate command…”

“Anything like Star Trek?” he asked.

“A bit less accurate,” Fox replied.

“Oh dear,” McCoy said, “I don’t know how they ever thought I was so much of a cantankerous curmudgeon.”

“Through impartial observation?” suggested Spock and McCoy glowered, a retort on the tip of his tongue.

“You’re on,” one of the technicians said, and gestured to the stage. McCoy took a deep breath, and walked out onto the stage.

The bright lights of the TV studio didn’t help McCoy avoid sweating, and he soon decided that he shouldn’t have waved the instant make-up boy away.

The city landed on a nearby world, verdant and rich in minerals, but without a large population. Nemesis couldn’t find it in her heart to blame the remaining crew of the city for wanting to leave, the high council at Atlantis had deserted Pegasus, and all but one of the power sources had reached maximum entropy.

The stargate was active, its rippling surface a calm event horizon that lead to Earth. As she spoke to Janus, she found herself more and more bemused by the story he had, predestination to failure, and the inevitability of Atlantis being found by the humans of Earth, distantly descended from the high council, which would one day achieve their goal of ‘ascension’ to energy.

The history of the future contained the wraith despite this power, and Nemesis was unsurprised, but dismayed once more. The council of Atlantis had always been indifferent to the people they created, she had known, but when they had it in their power to wipe the Wraith from existence without effort. It was hard to believe that even they would do nothing to help.

Below her, the last of her people disappeared into the stargate. “I plan to build another,” Janus confided, “I will see the future for myself, and if I am able, contact you in the future and tell you more.”


“This dust is awful,” Zelenka said, taking off his glasses and rubbing at the red rimmed eyes under them, “It feels like breathing flour!”

“You get used to it,” McKay said as they navigated the long deserted passageways of the second city-ship. Dust did indeed hang everywhere, and as the three interlopers stepped through its narrow, decrepit corridors, great avalanches of chocking dust dropped from ceiling girders.

“Atlantis wasn’t like this,” Aidan Ford said, coughing slightly as he escorted the two scientists.

“Yeah, watch your step,” McKay said, “Atlantis had been shielded for ten thousand years, this place has been buried underground for the same amount of time. No doubt all sorts of animals have gotten in the same way the dust did and left little gifts…”

“That explains the smell,” Zelenka said, coughing a little.

McKay looked at Ford, “Let this be a lesson to you, before you complain about me, next time, remember who you’d have to put up with if I wasn’t on the team.”

Aidan grinned, “I’ll remember that.”

“Shit,” Radek said as he turned a corner, and staggered back from the smell and sight before him, at what was supposed to be a wide-open hall in the city.

McKay and Ford hurried up behind him. “I’m, surprisingly, no expert, but I believe,” McKay said, “the technical term is ‘guano.’” Ford flicked his light over the roof, above the titanic mound of dung, revealing a roof covered in black shapes like dark barnacles on the underside of a ship. McKay reached over and switched the taclight off, leaving them only illuminated by the dull lighting of the city ship’s idling systems.

“Let’s not be disturbing them,” McKay said, “They look pretty huge…”

“Just let me guess,” Ford replied, “we’ve got to go through that…”

“I’m afraid so,” McKay said, “The teleport booth by the power room is offline for some reason.”


“I’ll never be clean again!” Zelenka lamented, as they finally entered the power room.

“Oh stop complaining,” McKay muttered, “at least they didn’t pay you any attention. I’m amazed they didn’t bite me…”

The familiar triangular plinth was there, of course, and McKay couldn’t resist, practically jumping over to it. Zelenka followed him with an evident mixture of puppy-ish devotion and concern at the prospects of McKay over-reaching again. Ford wandered over to an upright capsule on the wall, covered in dust and some kind of frosting on the inside of the glass bubble. It was cool to the touch, and Ford’s hand almost stuck to it as he wiped clean a section at around eye level.

“I think you guys had better see this,” he said. Inside, staring back, was a woman, high cheek boned, with her eyes fixed open in the stasis bubble, staring out of the container. She was black haired and dark eyed, and her garments were made of a mixture of some black fabric, and silvered jewellery. She looked as though she’d been frozen in ice and preserved miraculously. And it wasn’t far from the truth.


Years passed, but she never heard from the exiled Ancients again. Although Nemesis felt an urge to return to her ‘own kind’ there was an innocent population on the world she’d been left on, and she would not abandon the helpless. Years passed and she arranged for the city to bury itself, and for its stargate to be deactivated in favour of the one placed long before in the world’s major settlement, eventually soliciting some aid from the locals to move it out of the control room.

They feared her, she learnt, and found it a secret and ironic delight. The people of the world that had been culled by the wraith a mere decade before feared their protector, and she found it secretly amusing, wondering if she would feel the same in their place. But she did nothing to rectify that image of her, nursing instead her grief in long isolation for weeks and years of waiting, occasionally being called to destroy Wraith ships that dared to enter her domain, but otherwise wandering far across the world with the city’s remaining jumpers.

It was easy to forget, Nemesis felt, the sheer size of any individual world, and it had a thousand mountains and hundreds of different and unique forests, teeming with life. But none of it mattered to Nemesis, compared to the preciousness of precarious human life.

In time, she took lovers from the local populace, at first to pass the time, and later from love, but this proved a source of more pain as they aged at a thousand times the rate she did, growing old in mere decades. She had never been privy to the motives of her brethren for seeding humanity wherever they went, and although she bore three children, they aged far faster than she did, and Nemesis had no intention of remaining to see the inevitable slow death of generation after generation of her descendants.

She left instructions for the use of the drone weapons, and fled deep into isolation, leaving the central tower of the city to her children. Stepping into the stasis alcove in the power chamber at the base of the tower, Nemesis let the years flash past. Either the humans from Earth that Janus spoke of would find her in the end, or the long passage of years would eventually let her join all those she had loved in death.

Doctor Beckett walked into the room, carrying a heavy bag over his shoulder, and looked at the stasis pod. Like its duplicate on Atlantis, the pod was oval shaped, almost like an egg, It was an interesting metaphor, thought Beckett, reaching out to touch the cool glassy surface of the pod. It had a distinct pulse, just at the level of perception, that Beckett could feel, like that of a patient, but with each soft pulse – his instinct was to count them, and they seemed to be at a rate of about one every two seconds. Each pulse had a strange tingle to it, as though it conveyed some form of power beyond his comprehension. Once the Ancients had seemed like that, remote and powerful figures of myth and legend. Now, they were humanised by learning about them. They’d lost the Ancients, but discovered the Alterans.

“Is she alive?” he asked, looking at McKay, who was working at one of the ancient terminals, a console of lights and dark lines that Beckett usually had difficulty making any headway on.

“I know, you’re the doctor, you tell me,” he blurted out, obviously frustrated by something, “but there are revival controls…”

“Well then,” McCoy said as he, accompanied by his pointy-eared nemesis, entered the room.

“How’d you avoid that giant pile of… guano?” Ford asked, looking at McCoy’s shoes.

McKay looked over at Spock, “Rocket boots… I’d love to know how those work…”

“The principle is an application of thrust technology developed for the…” Spock began.

“He doesn’t want to know right now,” McCoy said, hurrying over to the pod and looking at the scanner Beckett had unpacked, and quickly taking out a compact tricorder to make his own scans – from force of habit. “Alive,” Beckett proclaimed, and McCoy nodded, “perfect health,” the first doctor added.

“Well then,” McKay said, “how about reviving her? Did Weir say we could?”

“If it looks safe, yes,” Spock said, hovering near McKay.

“Well then,” McKay said, and stabbed one of the buttons.

The pod flashed, a glow seeming to emanate from every particle inside it, before it dulled once again, a shimmering curtain of luminescence passing through its contents, everything within seeming to become less crystallised and more; ordinary.

The capsule hissed softly, and Beckett stepped back from a column of gas as it depressurised. The woman within stirred slowly, her chest rising as she took in a deep breath, and her fingers, with glacial slowness, moving against the padded backrest.

Nemesis closed her eyes, and opened them again. The room seemed to have decayed around her, it looked fine to ordinary sight, but to Nemesis, subtle things in life seemed obvious. Pieces of decorative steel that had been whole when she had closed her eyes a moment ago were pitted and scarred with the immeasurable weight of centuries. She looked around, and took in the faces, and uniforms, of those with her. Greens and blues, mostly, two of her rescuers were wearing rather less practical looking grey outfits and black trousers with crimson lines on the sides.

“Hello,” she said.

Of course, what the others heard was ‘Salwae,’ McKay grinned a little, “Well, it works,” he said, “Salve,” he said, and proceeded to stammer his way through a dubious sounding Latin sentence. The Ancient woman blinked slightly, obviously being unable to make much sense out of what McKay said, which wasn’t that surprising, given that his Latin knowledge essentially came out of various short courses on biology and the ‘informal handbook of alien-language-recognition’ that Daniel Jackson had circulated around the SGC once.

“Hey, don’t you guys have a universal translator?” McKay asked as he was confronted by a look of incomprehension that suggested he’d accidentally told the Ancient that he thought she was a hamster.

Spock took a small device, about a hand’s span long, by the same width, but with only a few controls, which it shared with the communicator, out, flipping it open and began adjusting several settings on dials, causing the small circular screen on its surface altering into psychedelic patterns as they flexed between one setting and another. “Ah,” he said, “try now.”

“That works quite well,” Nemesis said, “I take it you’re from Earth? Good, I’ve been waiting quite some time…”


The Man, A.K.A. General Jack O’Neill, sat behind his desk and looked at the stack of reports marked for his attention, there was of course, a large pile, there always was these days. Increased BC-304 production was the major concern of Homeworld Security these days, as thousands of groups and companies were prepared to offer supplies at a considerable loss in order to gain access to advanced technology and techniques. It was no surprise, but it did mean that they could now build F-302s and battle-cruisers as fast as off-world mining operations could produce the required materials, indeed, one ship was essentially complete already, waiting only on a trinium space-frame and armour cladding before it could begin trials. Some groups were working on reducing the number of off-world materials needed to make a 302, though they couldn’t eliminate the naquadah (or Naquadriah, for hyperdrive) requirements to operate the propulsion, nor the need for some trinium to alloy into its structural supports. The design suffered from removal of the hyperdrive, but that did remove the need for asgard or tok’ra supplied processor crystals in the fighter’s computers.

O’Neill paged through various files marked with dire warnings about their secrecy and sighed, being a general was far less fun than it looked when you weren’t one.


It was depressing to see the changes age had wrought on the city, Nemesis felt. Here and there areas had collapsed, or been blocked shut by in-falls of dust and dirt. The air filters were offline, and the musty smell of age and animals that lived in the cave-system the city had become was omnipresent. But the tower was at least maintained she discovered, it was interesting to see the heraldry and finery of a surprisingly primitive culture. She supposed that the birth pattern on her world had never allowed a sufficient intellectual capital to develop to allow a universal application of high technology. She wondered if the policy that had been adopted so long ago of seeding human life on every world was as wise as it could have been.

Nevertheless, it was somewhat pleasing to see that the city was mostly still intact, although it meant she had to endure an incessant barrage of questions from the short one who was one of the ‘Macs’ – she mentally labelled him ‘the egotist’ and smirked about it every time he talked about how fantastically clever he was, which was… every other word, it seemed. His questions varied between the shockingly obvious, like the arrangement of stargate encoding crystals to the inscrutably arcane, such as the arrangement of the city’s structural stress buffers. Much as she would have liked to tell him to be silent and ask less annoying questions, she decided not to, their cause appeared noble, and working well with these humans was the key to victory, it seemed.


The Excelsior sat in the vast space of Earth’s – its own Earth – space-dock, surrounded by hordes of smaller vessels. From the overlooking gallery of Spacedock’s premier restaurant and refectory, Captain Sulu could see the terrible rents in the ship’s side for the first time. He’d known they were there since the ship’s progressive run-ins with a few Al’kesh and other goa’uld ships, but they were more difficult to look on than he’d expected. They said space combat was serene, and sanitized. That was a popular argument of the New Men, and their ideological kin, that it was easy to perform violence at a thousand kilometres, when really one shouldn’t be prepared to deal death at all.

But anyone actually in Starfleet could tell you that it wasn’t like that. Space combat was utterly terrifying, especially for lower ranks – the true fragility of ships was always in the forefront of your mind as the tin can you flew in exchanged kiloton energies with another such tin can. Most crew wouldn’t even know what enemy they were fighting until the battle was over, instead only hearing the call to battle stations and preparing as they had been trained to man a small part of the ship’s operations.

It was always terrifying and depressing to see the outside of a starship after battle. Starships were designed to be smooth, graceful structures, with most of their apertures designed purely as airlocks and lifeboat release systems. The rips and burning from the energies of disruptors – or in this case, plasma weapons – were like ugly scars on their once beautiful forms. And they were a visible reminder of the deaths a ship had sustained among its crew, burnt to death or allowed to suffocate in vacuum.

Yet Excelsior was not destroyed, and at last, her shields were being refitted with one attached to new inertial buffers, which it was hoped would allow the ship to survive far more punishment from alternate universe weapons than it presently could.


The stained glass doorway of Doctor Weir’s office slid open, sighing around on ancient mechanisms. Nemesis sauntered in, and paused to smile at Weir, who, she felt, was a considerable improvement on the Superintendent of Star-Gate Operations who’d been there in her time. She chided herself for thinking of it of ‘her time’ and sat down. “Hello,” she said, surprising the woman with her abrupt mastery of the English language, she’d had a short time to learn it since her awakening and she still didn’t have all the verb tenses right. Nemesis lowered herself into the seat opposite Weir, then looked up, “Oh yes, may I have a seat? I’m far too used to having my own city…”

“Certainly,” Weir said, “So… welcome to… back to? Atlantis. Let me just say…”

“Before you start, please don’t tell me it’s an honour to speak with a living ancient or anything like that. I’ve had plenty of that sort of thing already, and to be honest, it’s annoying. My people weren’t half as clever as they thought they were, and the massive failures they managed to produce aren’t worthy of respect. From what I’ve heard, your people have achieved far more in a few short years than we managed to in a century of war. If anything, the honour is mine…”

“Well… okay…” Weir said, “but I should warn you, a good portion of the city’s population consider you a Living Ancestor…”

Nemesis sighed, “Superb, they got to be gods after all…”

“For that matter, so did you. In our history you’re a Greek and Roman goddess.

“Really?” she said, raising one of her eyebrows in a Spock-like mannerism. “of what?”

“Depending on interpretation, Nemesis was the goddess of justice or vengeance… I recall her being described as a goddess of ‘indignation at unmerited advantage’ too.”

“Kind of flattering, if annoying,” Nemesis concluded, “So anyway, I’ve heard that there are some crises afoot…” she said, “may I ask what they are?”

“Well, apparently the Orii plan an invasion of the Milky Way.”

“That’s your name for the Earth galaxy, yes?”

“Right.”

“Well, that’s… bad news. I take it my lot didn’t ‘take care of’ the Orii when they ascended.

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Typical…” Nemesis, “Well, I only know so much about the Orii…”

“Anything would help. We don’t even know where their galaxy is, or how many inhabited planets it has…”

“Well, that’s easy enough. If you can get me a star chart…”


The sumptuous and ergonomic seats of the Captain’s Quarters on the Enterprise were always a joy to sit in, McCoy felt. The admiral had spent some time redecorating since the Wraith attack had blown half of his nik-knacks out into orbit, but the chairs were still there, comfortable as ever. “So,” McCoy said, what’s this about?”

“One moment,” Kirk said, and the door hissed open. Spock, dressed in the long white robe he sometimes favoured when he was off-duty, stepped into the room, and it closed behind him.

“Greetings Admiral,” Spock said.

“Hello,” Kirk said, “we’ve just received a message from the surface, I had Chekov put it through down here. Apparently that ancient you brought back has identified the Orii galaxy for us…”

“Well, that’s progress,” McCoy said, “where is it?”

“It’s ESO 548-63, in the Eridanus Cluster.”

“That’s a long way…” McCoy said.

“One hour twenty five minutes or so for the Asgard…” Spock said, demonstrating infuriatingly accurate mental mathematics.

“If their ships even carry the fuel to get that far,” McCoy said.

“Apparently they’re asking the Daedalus’ expert to find out now…”


Sheets of water trickled, steaming as they did so, across Atlantis’ shield. The great city ship was once more on the surface of its world’s vast ocean, waves spreading out from the shield bubble – intact this time – that had burst from beneath the surface like the boss of an old Anglo-Saxon shield being thrust forwards. The shield glowed brightly in an iridescent green for a moment, before snapping off. The water that had yet to trickle off it flew apart, falling as rain on the city beneath. Atlantis had risen once more.


“I am well aware of the fuel constraints,” Heimdall said, tilting his over-large head to one side and narrowing his eyes at the annoying human questioning him, “and the dissemination rates of the hyperdrive coolant systems aboard an O’Neill class battleship. That is why I have factored in a total rest time of thirty minutes to prevent engine overheating…”

“I just don’t think it’s possible…” Kavanagh was saying. It was surprising (and to Heimdall, depressing) that the man was still around.

“Doctor Kavanagh, have you ever actually been on board an O’Neill class battleship?”

“Well,” he spluttered, “not as such…”

“How many centuries have you worked in hyperdrive systems analysis and design?”

“Err, that’s not the issue!”

“Yes, it is. Now, please, go away…”


McKay grumbled as he and Sheppard entered the derelict city’s power room. “You realise I’m going to have to buy new boots now,” he demanded, “I’m so under-appreciated by you lot…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sheppard said, “your life’s a real Shakespeare tragedy Rodney…”

McKay gave an unsympathetic glower to the major, and sighed, “Just pass me the zero point modules…”

The shimmering, humming crystal devices were brought out of Sheppard’s backpack one at a time, each in an individual packaging of wide-bubbled bubble wrap packaging and duct tape. McKay tore the wrapping off the first one, “Do they have to wrap these things up? You could hit them with a sledgehammer and you’d break the hammer…” He placed it reverentially into the first of the sockets on the triangular platform. Clamps locked onto the glowing device and it descended into the socket. McKay attached the hexagonal cover that fitted snugly over the socket, and then did the same with the second and third modules.

“Right, now what?” Asked Sheppard.

“Now, we go up to the control room and begin running diagnostics. This place is wrecked, and if we want to make it do anything we have to get some automatic repair and structural integrity systems online.


Two days later, the valley around the Tower was shaken by an earthquake; this wasn’t uncommon, the Tower was often plagued by earthquakes an cave ins, but those who could see the Tower as it shook soon knew that this earthquake was quite unlike the others. This one was causing entire swaths of forest to fall, shaken loose from the roots of the world. Earth was transmuted to mud and ran like water down the hills of ageless stone, into the valley. But the landslide was no artifice of nature, and didn’t stop there, as the forest and the hills were washed away into a stream of boiling mud.

The mud burst upwards as if a god’s hand had scooped it up and tossed it up into the air, droplets of mud and trees – and more than a few stags, boars and badgers too – an act of cruelty that had seemed unavoidable – fell on the surrounding area as the shimmering bubble of the downed city’s shield cascaded outwards, driving all before it.

The city emerged in the vast crater its shield had carved. It didn’t stand particularly resplendent, of course, still caked in much of the mud, its half-broken spires stabbing up at the sky like massive stalagmites encrusted with sods of earth and slippery mud.

The city rose slowly from the depression in the ground where it had, until recently, rested, casting a brilliant light onto the ground beneath it from the glowing engine elements that propelled it skywards. They gave a burst of powerful acceleration, and the city rose up faster, air shimmering against its shield and glowing as the bubble almost seemed to buckle under the pressure.

Pulse after pulse came from the drives and the city was propelled through consecutive, thinner, layers of atmosphere and into space. In its control spire Rodney McKay cheered. He had most of the Atlantis technical crew with him, busily working on the ship’s systems.

The ancient, crumbling city ship shuddered, one of its towers falling free, and the blossoming flower of a hyperspace window burst open before it. The city’s engines pulsed once more, and the bloom collapsed behind it as it vanished into hyperspace.


As usual the Enterprise’s bridge was a picture of calm, crew going about their duties, many science related, with the quiet efficiency of those truly absorbed in their tasks. The poised white-hulled starship streaked through space on the ethereal wings of its warp drive, leaving iridescent trails of radiation behind it as it cut through the interstellar medium like the proverbial hot knife through butter. On the screen ahead of the starship, there was a star, slowly growing from a pinprick of light to a disk as the Enterprise approached. Admiral Kirk watched, leaning to one side in the bridge’s central chair and watching the screen as the star-field rushed past at tremendous, inconceivable speeds.

“Final approach in five seconds,” Spock said from the science station.

“Screens up,” Kirk ordered, “drop out of warp in two…”

The ship’s chronometer ticked twice and the star lines were reduced to a perfect star field, a blue nebula appearing around the ship. “Scanning,” Spock said calmly, “the stargate is in orbit, five hundred kilometres off our starboard, bearing fifty mark negative ten…”

“Good, prepare a workbee for…”

“Wraith cruiser, two thousand kilometres, forty nine mark five.” Spock interrupted,

“Red alert,” Kirk snapped, “forget the workbee, get a tractor beam on the stargate.”

The bridge dimmed and the magnified image of the dark cruiser came on the viewer, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, as they’d deliberately chosen a wraith world to steal the stargate from; rather than deny any other world the dangerous benefits of the stargate. “Starboard batteries, lock on, full charge,” Kirk added, and the viewer lit up with a solid red circle around the cruiser’s form.

“Locked on… Batteries at full charge,” Chekov said, leaning forwards at the tactical station, holding the console with one hand.

“Enemy coming about, they’re preparing to jump to hyperspace…” Spock said, “retreating.”

“Fire,” Kirk said with a grave nod. A rapid cluster of blue bolts lept from the top and bottom sides – above and below the camera – of the viewer, one larger than the others, the pulse of a cantankerous field-refit. They splashed into the Wraith cruiser in a fraction of a second and blasted a part of its hull away, edges flickering with the after effects of a dozen phaser pulses.

“Bring us about, one normal torpedo volley…” Kirk said softly, as though being quiet on his own bridge could increase the surprise of the stricken enemy vessel. Now that contact had been-re-established with the federation, however tenuous, he no longer had to be frugal with the torpedoes, though the Enterprise still only carried a few of the multi-gigaton weapons.

Below decks, enlistees scrambled out of the way of the loading mechanisms. Despite appearances, the Enterprise did have a largely automated loading system, but the torpedo room, unlike its cousin Miranda class, harked back to an older time when weapons of such power had to be armed and loaded by hand. Six elongated ovoids of black metal were laid out on tracks and moved forwards, one at a time, into the pressurised mass-driver tubes that fired the weapons.

The torpedo launchers shook with recoil being transferred into the heavy structural members that formed the neck pylon, and the hatches of the torpedo tubes opened once more with a rush of equalising air pressure, tracks driving two more torpedoes into the tubes.

The glowing flares of torpedos powered their way into the stricken cruiser, and in an instant it exploded, immolated into flying debris. On the bridge, Kirk smiled grimly. It wasn’t particularly challenging to destroy an isolated ship, but it was necessary. Letting them go would simply mean that they could live to raid others another day.

“Tractor status?” he asked.


The second city ship loomed above Atlantis, on the surface of the ocean, descending like a colossal snowflake falling from a cloudless sky, it hit the water hard, though of course, it was bound to, as massive city ships were not truly capable of doing anything softly. Two of the Atlantis series city-ships had for the first time in thousands of years, met one another. It was of course, a portent of great events on the move, and those that called themselves The Ascended watched closely.


Corporal Jason Bennet, USMC, SGC, watched from the tower as the locals squabbled. To be fair, ‘squabbled’ was something of an understatement. The wraith captives they’d shipped through the stargate had been becoming increasingly tetchy over recent months. Technically they were starving, he supposed, but he couldn’t manage to feel sympathy for them – the only way they’d be eating would be if they were eating someone like him, or someone more vulnerable. Occasionally they even tried to storm the ‘gate compound on P3E-292. That was however, usually a fast way for them to get gunned down by one of the intar-firing .50 cals.

Unfortunately, that meant they’d lately taken to eating one another. It was a disgusting sight. Bennet had heard that the eggheads were developing some means of turning Wraith into humans, which was rather frightening in its possibilities, but he was certainly hoping they got around to it soon.


Doctor Weir leaned out of the balcony, on the high central spire of Atlantis watching the sea lap gently against the city’s outstretched arms. The door behind her slid open but she did not turn; footsteps, Major Sheppard’s, she wagered, came over.

“I’d been told you’re out here…” he said. She scored.

“Mmm,” Weir said, nodding, looking out over the sea.

“Something on your mind?”

Doctor Weir sighed, “I never expected to have to do this…” she said, “it seems wrong.”

“I know,” Sheppard said, “But the freedom of the galaxy,” he chuckled a little.

“I know, that sounds like something out of Star Wars…”

“Still, it’ll be a shame to lose all this.”

“A necessary shame,” Sheppard said, “to eliminate the Wraith.”

“I suppose so,” Weir sighed, turning, “let’s do this then…”


The vast city ship shuddered, but unlike its broken compatriot, Atlantis didn’t break or suffer from any of the problems of age, it had been stored safely beneath the waves, and was hardly damaged by the long slow ravages of time at all. Her shields shimmered into existence, and the vast city ship lifted from the sea, waves rushing inwards towards the titanic spike that emerged from its base, the structure that bound it fast to the clamps on the ocean’s floor.

Water poured down the spike as the city rose into the air, leaving the world it had rested on for tens of thousands of years behind.


Aboard the USS Daedalus, Colonel Stephen Caldwell closed the door of his quarters, sliding bolts across to hold the airtight seal. He carefully looked around his cabin. It was a fairly small room, with a rectangular window at one end showing the stars and white blur of hyperspace. A small attached toilet, a bed, desk and other minimal comforts adorned the room. He took hold of a chair, rolling on castors and moved it in front of a small shaving mirror. He sat down and looked into it, smirking to himself. “Well,” he said, “That was easier than I suspected. I guess they won’t be checking for me just yet, so I’ve got some freedom of action. That’s gratifying,” he mused.

“And they’ve found a living ancient. What a wonder that is. I wonder what kind of host she would make for me,” he said, watching his own face. An interesting opportunity to be sure,” he said, “and if I can’t get to possess her, then I may have to kill her. I can’t have them learning too much, after all. The Tau’ri are dangerous enough already. But how to do it, and how to make this Kirk’s plan come to my benefit, I wonder…”

He was broken off from his soliloquising by a strong resistance from his host, struggling against his control. His eyes flashed with luminescence and he quelled it forcefully, “Oh no, my friend. But don’t worry, you may yet be rid of me quicker than I had expected.” The goa’uld smiled into the mirror, and chuckled in his host’s voice, hideously distorted. “Perhaps a more ambitious plan than my Trust friends have is in order. I shall have to ingratiate myself more with Weir, she still commands influence there, and Everett is already your friend. But what else,” he said, opening a drawer at the table, taking from it a device that looked like the offspring of a dagger and a syringe, a handhold with a glass vial marked for doses in it, an opal button, and a spike that terminated in a small hole. “Seven doses,” the snake muttered, studying the green liquid within, “perhaps I can make things run according to my directions with just one…” The parasite chuckled, and stared at its stolen face in the mirror, no longer spelling out its plans for its host to hear, but instead deep in thought.


Atlantis blasted out of hyperspace over a planet that was both familiar to and entirely new to many of its inhabitants. The Athosians crowded around the windows of the city ship to see their homeworld from space for the first time. In the control room, Nemesis appeared to be in one of her annoyingly rare chatty moods, happily explaining that the city on Athosia was one of the earliest ones established in Pegasus, hence its prime place in Atlantis’ directory. The city had been, according to Nemesis, the production centre for the mark seventeen stargate that was used in Pegasus, though it had been heavily bombarded and the factory was unlikely to remain there now.

The planet was a jewel of a world from space, surprisingly heavy on rolling grasslands and blue-green ice-slush at the poles, where strange algae made their homes. Nemesis said she had no idea whether those particular species had been designed, and a sample had been taken. It was apparently a remnant of the Alteran Terraforming process that consumed carbon dioxide at a staggering rate and converted it to oxygen, doing the work of aeons in mere centuries. For once, the microbiological science department of the expedition (namely, Doctor Ackerman) had a breakthrough of great magnitude on their hands, the cure, evidently, to global warming.

The hunt for the factory had been far less successful, merely unearthing blasted ruins from the war, where what few signs of industry that remained were mostly around stripped out machinery, long ago removed by the conquerors.


In Atlantis’ meeting room, Caldwell watched Colonel Everett, Doctors McKay and Weir, Sheppard, Admiral Kirk and his first officer leaning back in their chairs, all were looking at one another with the familiar manner of comrades in arms, and Caldwell was careful to blend in and swallow his contempt. The admiral was talking about how the second city was in readiness for its part in the plan, and that, because he’d recently delivered a stargate to it, everything should be in order.

“I’m thinking,” Caldwell said, “about how we can lure them into making the discovery of our crippled city,” he said, “At the moment, there’s a lot of wraith activity in the area. Last estimate, about seventy percent of their civilisation wasn’t it?”

Colonel Everett nodded. The wraith activity in the area of Atlantis had increased as the enemy had headed towards the city for a year, and though they’d begun spreading back out, they still remained cautiously optimistic in their flight plans, harvesting planets closest to Atlantis most heavily in case the city reappeared.

“Right,” Caldwell said, “and we know they monitor some ancient ruins. So what we could do is arrange for their long-term drones to detect our activity in ruins on some of the surrounding planets. Then, when they investigate, we make it seem as if we’re out to cannibalise the ruins for parts. It’s risky, but it gives them the feeling that they’re being clever and working out what we’re up to.”

“I’d just like to say,” McKay put in, “that this has got to be the most dangerous and suicidal plan we’ve had so far…”

“It also happens to be only plan,” Sheppard added.

“Well, we could just wait for the Wraith to show up,” Caldwell said, “but that’s not exactly a sure-fire plan, and we want to have a sufficient number drawn into the system over the next few months to make this plan worth our while.”

The meeting continued for about half an hour, with McKay eventually giving up and deciding that whatever kind of demented ruse the military types wanted to use was their own business.


The Daedalus dropped into real-space accompanied by a show of pyrotechnics that seemed almost like a flash of boiling water bubbling to the surface of a pool. The ship swung out of its previous trajectory and into a lower orbit. On her bridge, her commander leaned back in his seat to look over the shoulder of his sensor operator.

“Two Wraith cruisers in low orbit,” she confirmed, and Caldwell couldn’t resist a thin smile.

“Action stations,” he said, “helm, bring us down out of line of sight and stand by all rail guns.”

The ship moved, as its opponents began to move up out of the orbit they’d been in to a more optimal position, out of a ‘harvesting’ orbit and into a position they could reliably fire from. The battle was short, and intentionally, a poor showing of the Daedalus which deployed a few missiles at half their optimal acceleration in order to ensure they’d be intercepted, and pummelled one of the cruisers’ undersides liberally with its rail guns before jumping back into hyperspace.


Days later, the first Wraith cruiser dropped out of hyperspace over the ocean planet that had forever been the centre of resistance to the Wraith race. Its scans found the city-ship on the surface once more, still protected by its shield but heavily damaged. Though the ship was driven off in short order by the Daedalus, it had the chance to thoroughly scan the planet. Its report created consternation among the Wraith, who eventually surmised that the humans operating the city-ship had made some mistake in its operation and lowered the shield while it was underwater, causing extensive structural damage, presumably preventing them from submerging the ship once more.

And so, the city would be vulnerable once more.

The ‘call’ went out throughout the galaxy, and although many Wraith hives would not be able to respond to it, the vast majority were in range once more. Across the vast gulfs of space, hundreds of ships reset their courses, entering hyperspace once more and heading for their destination at what was, by the standards of the Earthers, both a stunningly high and very low speed.


Meanwhile, in the Milky Way, the intolerance of Origin spread like a plague across the galaxy. The Tok’ra, Free Jaffa, the Asgard and the Tau’ri worked to stem it. But they had one great disadvantage. There was a strong need among humans to believe in something. Be it a false god with glowing eyes, freedom, or in this case, the gods of freedom. Priors came to spread the word and bring healing, and tales of the vast rewards that awaited all who accepted the embrace of the Orii. To those who had lost one set of gods at the hands of the Jaffa rebellion, it was quite literally a godsend, for the Priors did not just bring healing, but new ways of thinking. They taught many things to those who had worked under the heel of the goa’uld. Secrets of irrigation and of steel and steam, but slowly, and rarely was this more benevolent side of the Priors seen by unbelievers.

On Earth, a similar technological renaissance was underway as the planet girded itself for war, two, then three more BC-304 cruisers, the Earth Ships Churchill, Liberté, and Agamemnon rising from the ground, and a new design of superiority-figher, the F-305 interceptor was bred. In place of rocket engines, it used impulse drive, which combined with the inertial dampening technology stolen from the goa’uld, allowed it to travel at nearly ten times the acceleration of a Death Glider.

The first few civilian ships were also being produced as technologies trickled into the public market. The first men had landed on Mars, Ceres, Europa, Callisto, Enceladus, Titan and scores of other moons. Some even housed fledgling permanent settlements, at that.

In the face of an obvious external threat, the Orii, many conflicts fell by the wayside. However, new breeds of terrorist and malcontent emerged. There had been a rather nasty incident where a shipment of naquadah had been ambushed, only averted by the fact that the thieves didn’t realise that naquadah was easily tracked from orbit – they soon found themselves in custody courtesy of the Prometheus.

While this was going on, the operations of the SGC continued, and rumours emerged of the once and future king still at large in the galaxy, a strange and bizarre hope for the galaxy indeed.


Admiral Kirk watched the main viewer of the Enterprise, he didn’t think he’d ever seen such a massive fleet. They were bombarding the diminutive dome shield below, and he had his doubts that it could conceivably hold out for more than a few seconds. But it had, the engineering of ancient shields was truly remarkable. The bombardment had been almost continuous for two months, and the science station showed the neutrino emissions of the city’s heat-sinks as off the scale.

“Still no indications that we’ve been deteted?” he asked, watching the awesome assemblage of firepower. The surface of the planet was now completely wreathed in clouds as energy reflected by the city’s shields into the atmosphere had evaporated trillions upon trillions of tons of water, storms covered the great oceans and

“None,” Spock said, turning in his seat. On the viewer, a flash in high orbit betrayed the arrival of another hive ship “Indications are that excluding seconded supply ships and long-range harvesting efforts, we have the majority of the Wraith race in the system now… I estimate we now have sixty eight percent of all Wraith assets.”

“That’s less than we hoped for,” Kirk mused.

“Our initial estimates overestimated the Wraith’s ability to field forces against us. Their logistics are not as good as I predicted.”

“You made a mistake?” McCoy asked from the other side of the captain’s chair.

“They made the mistake,” Spock said, and McCoy laughed. “They have not unified their logistics train as effectively as they could have. Each hive group or alliance of them appears to be using some of its cruisers to bring food to the battle rather than creating a force-wide logistics column. It is not logical…”

“Well, it’s the best we’re going to get,” Kirk said, stepping back and sitting down, “Engine room, stand by for warp speed. Uhura, get me the city control…”


The city was shaking with each shot now, the decrepit shields barely able to keep up with the firepower arrayed against them. Nemesis could feel the city shaking beneath her. The control room was essentially deserted now, as the appointed time approached, the second city’s skeleton crew had been slowly pulled out to Atlantis. Only five people remained now, Herself, Doctor McKay, Teyla Emmagan a solitary guard from Colonel Everett’s marine detachment. And, curiously, Colonel Caldwell. Ever since Nemesis had met him, she’d distrusted him. She didn’t quite know why she did so, but something about him that she couldn’t put her finger on was ‘wrong’ about him. It was though he was perpetually troubled, as though he had some sort of mental problem, but she said nothing and pushed no further – if she had, she would have been detected - than a little passive empathy.

The communications terminal flashed on, and she turned to watch Admiral Kirk, “City command. We appear to be ready. The Enterprise is preparing to leave the solar system…”

“Just as well,” McKay said behind her, “We’re down to one and a half Zee-Pee-Emms,” he said, passing a PDA to Nemesis, who nodded. “Right,” McKay said, “Let’s get ready to do this then,” he said, “Is Camulus’ module ready?”

The marine guard – Sergeant John McNeil – watching over the impromptu device nodded. It was a metal cage holding the glowing cylinder of a zero point module. The SGC had been (in a gamma site, of course) experimenting with ways of using the device as a weapon, after the goa’uld Camulus had sabotaged it so that its energy could not be used safely. Ultimately, the theory was that by passing a massive electrical charge through it for a microsecond, the ‘dam’ that was the module itself would be destroyed, allowing the subspace-singularity to dump its energy into real-space in a titanic shock that would obliterate the entire star system. “Sir,” he said in positive acknowledgement.

“Activate it. Five minute countdown,” McKay said, and Teyla watched him walk over to the dialling device, reflecting on how much he’d changed over the previous two years. He was “Secondary explosive systems online,” Caldwell said, “Six minute countdown.”

The city was far too important to trust its future to an untested weapons system, and as well as already having overloaded the hyperdrive in a way Hermiod and Nemesis had developed, reducing it to slag, the city carried a gate-buster warhead, and several lesser naquadah enhanced weapons placed strategically.

The stargate flashed into life – another trick they’d learnt from their resident Ancient was locking out stargates. The one on Earth could now only be successfully dialled from a few planets, which saved them the effort they’d otherwise have to go to in a siege to keep an outgoing wormhole active continuously. “Standing by to shut down the shields,” Rodney said, watching the large LCD screen of the machine attached to Camulus’ ZPM tick down to read 4:37.

The shields didn’t perform their characteristic flare before shutting down, for they were drawing all the available power already, instead, they simply vanished. The plan had been contingent on wraith foresight, and for once, this paid off. The wraith had been anticipating the failure of the shields, and their effort would have been in vain if they were to destroy the city.

Bolts of energy the size of skyscrapers lashed into the oceans in the gaps of the snowflake shaped city, sending palls of steam into the clouds over it as the vaporised water from outside the shields poured in shuddering with crackling energies rained down from the Wraith fleet. Artificial tidal waves and cyclones tore at the outlying sections of the city, toppling million-year old skyscrapers like so many matchsticks.

In the Atlantis-class city’s control room, the entire planet seemed to lurch, the immensely strong structure of the city taking intense stresses as the water it rested on roiled in an immense torrent. Teyla fell from her feet and slid several yards down the floor, with McKay and several of the others clinging on to consoles for dear life. “Brace yourselves!” he screamed.

The city fell as though it were a book toppled by a stiff breeze. Mercifully, someone had had the foresight to duct tape the booby-trapped zero point module to the table it rested on. The rest of the contents of the room – which is to say the people in it - weren’t so lucky, bouncing with greatly reduced force thanks to the residual energy stored in the city’s inertial dampeners. McKay swore loudly as his thighs hit the lip of the stargate console, and winced as he saw Teyla bounce across the floor as though she were a grain of salt on the stretched surface of a drum as it was struck.

“Four minutes,” he said, looking at Sergeant McNeil, “Follow me!” He slid the chair back and winced again as he stood up, limping over towards the teleportation booth.


A scant few miles from the city, as percussive shocks rippled through the oceans – the waves across a pond created by pebbles entering a pond, but millions of times greater in magnitude, and magnified in numbers in corresponding degree – hundreds of fighters tore into the statically ravished clouds.

Teyla clutched a gun to her chest and grimaced, watching as the doors shut behind McNiel and the windows flashed with energy as the two inhabitants disappeared. She reached for her radio, “Err… Rodney?” she asked.


“Yes?” he asked, walking through the derelict antechambers of the power room. Fortunately, the transport adjacent to the zero-point-module room had been cleared at last.

“I think we might have underestimated the Wraith. They are,” she crouched by the door leading onto the tower’s balcony, carefully checking her weapon, she could hear the familiar whine of darts on the wind, “coming.”

“I hope you can hold them,” McKay said, fiddling with the catch of his sidearm’s holster as he drew the weapon, and took off at a run, “We’ll be as quick as we can…”


The darts fell towards the city, grey beams spreading from their undersides and depositing troops onto the city’s shattered corpse. The balcony flashed, and a squad of Wraith materialised. Submachine guns barked in unison as Caldwell and Teyla opened fire, bullets ploughing through thick but ultimately useless body armour and passing through the flesh of the invaders.

Bolts of stun energy like strange greased smears in the air shot back, earthing themselves on the metallic walls of the city. Though there were many Wraith, they were forced to attack through a small doorway, and automatic weapons were terrifyingly effective in defence. As soon as the first squad was stopped, another, under the cover of Dart firepower skittering off the wall above, forcing the defenders to duck away from their posts.


McKay watched the zero point module rise on its platform, resisting the urge to pull at it and sling it into his satchel, but instead he restrained himself, watching the second one join the first as they slid out of the interface table. He reached out and took hold of the shining crystal housing, and slung the power source into his bag with no trace of reverance. Sergeant McNeil did the same with the other and McKay spared a glance at his watch. He took the last of the zero point modules – already out, too, and began running. “This way,” he said, “Quickly…”


The transport-lift flashed, and Teyla barely spared it a glance. It was Nemesis who raised the alarm, and Teyla turned to face her, then saw what she was looking at. The staccato bark of her weapon felled three Wraith, and Caldwell barked for her to keep a watch on the elevator. He stepped out a little way onto the balcony, eyes shining, gun crunching its way through ammunition. One of the massive Wraith warriors remained, and the weapon clicked uselessly as the last of its ammunition was expended. The Wraith charged him, wrapping its clawed hand around his neck and making feral grunting noises as it hefted its free hand high.

Caldwell smiled coolly, and his hand shot out to grip his captor’s wrist at the last moment, giving a sharp jerk to the side. Something had to give, and for a moment he thought that the Wraith’s superior build would carry the day, but his captor let out a bellow of pain as they struggled atop corpses slick with blood. He dropped the gun and it hung from the cord around his neck as the Wraith’s wrist went limp, and he stole the beast-man’s sidearm, jamming it up under the Wraith’s chin. He snarled in a guttaral, inhuman way, and pulled the firing stud back, sending pulse after pulse of energy into the staggered Wraith’s head.

Nemesis ran onto the balcony, taking a moment to figure out that the cessation of rattling gunfire probably meant that the weapon had exhausted its fuel. The familiar noise of Wraith darts screeched through the air and she reached out behind her, absorbing the scene of massacre on the balcony in a single instant; Caldwell stood atop a pile of corpses, an earth weapon in one hand and a Wraith pistol in the other, held high.

He worked his way slowly over the slippery dead and dying. A hand snagged his foot and he didn’t even bother to look simply firing the Wraith pistol downwards once, twice, and thrice until the survivor’s hand bonelessly flopped on the floor. The Wraith were relatively weak now, hungry, yet they were still a strong race, and he chided himself for momentarily forgetting that.

A dart angled towards the balcony, and he scurried towards the doorway, “Get down!” he cried.

“Or…” Nemesis said, as the dart lined up its guns. Her left hand contained a pistol that looked more like an elaborate crystal flashlight than a weapon. She squeezed the handle with meaning, and the Dart blossomed into a fireball, with no hint of a beam or projectile, simply exploding as though its fuel cells had overloaded, which wasn’t far from the truth.


The invaders were all around, and McNeil’s weapon was, he would willingly swear under oath, hot in his hands as bullet after bullet shot through the air and felled Wraith. McKay stood by his side pistol in his hands as yet unused, as he stabbed and hammered at the transporter booth’s screen with desperation. In his mind he could almost see the counter on the bomb in the control room ticking towards oblivion.

“Come on!” Screamed McNeil, as the vampiric aliens clambered over their fallen towards him. He was dimly aware that his legs were numb from stunner fire and that he’d sunk to the floor.

“I’m trying!” McKay snapped, “What do you think I’m doing? They must be jamming it or something…” in actuality, rather unglamorously, they had been placed in a queue by the city’s dilapidated computer, as Wraith all across the city vied with one another to enter the control room first.

McNeil fumbled for a reload, and then, as he realised how close a tall wraith dressed like the epitome of gothic chic was, for his combat knife instead. And he’d imagined that he’d never actually have to use that in anger. Grasping hands reached forwards, and he lashed out, opening a deep wound that slashed through arteries in the forearm of his assailant. Dark Wraith blood gushed out over him, and the enemy screamed and recoiled. Another, undaunted by this, casually batted his arm aside with wrist-breaking strength and slammed the heel of his hand into McNeil’s chest, tilting his head back in a sickening pose that seemed almost sexual.


The creature possessing Stephen Caldwell allowed itself smile on stolen lips as the Ancient downed another Dart as though she was practicing in a shooting range rather than fighting a battle against a mortal foe desperate to survive. He couldn’t have asked for a more provident situation - alone with his next host, in a situation that would allow him to easily dispose of his present body once he had shed it. He raised the stunner, but realised that paralysing her body would prevent him escaping before the city was destroyed. He started towards her.


Wraith blood shot out in another fountain as McKay shot McNeil’s assailant twice in the chest and then in the face, staggering him and then killing him instantly as the third shot ploughed a ragged hole through brain tissue. McKay leaned down and hauled the marine into the elevator, firing off a shot at the Wraith that stumbled towards them, clutching at its mortally wounded arm, doubtless desperate to feed in order to bolster its body enough to allow it to heal. The doors slid shut at last, and the appallingly familiar feeling of freezing numbness and rigidity that accompanied being broken up followed.


Stephen Caldwell, the real Colonel Stephen Caldwell, USAF, stopped. It was a twisted parody of normality that he had to expend immense effort to hold still and do nothing. His every muscle, even his tongue and his eyelids felt like it was being attacked by motorised cheese graters, but still he remained steady, as outwardly inert as one of the Wraith corpses beneath him but for a strangled gasp that came from his throat. Nemesis turned toward him as he toppled forwards involuntarily, and grasped him by the shoulders, the whine of yet another dart could be heard, and she pulled him back towards the doorway frantically.

[Continued Below]

[Crazedwraith]

I take it this means you won't need me to proof read it then? I think you've met a word limit as well.

[NecronLord]

I take it this means you won't need me to proof read it then? I think you've met a word limit as well.

Yeah. Xon did it, and if you can't do it 'til Monday...

And oddly enough, I thought it went in fully. I'll put the rest in now.

[NecronLord]

Teyla’s finger tightened on the trigger as she kept her P90 trained on the doors as they flashed again. Yet more dead Wraith were strewn all around. The doors opened, and McKay limped out, supporting a larger man by the shoulders. “Help me!” he said with a gasp, sweat covering his face. Colonel Caldwell staggered backwards, pushed by the Ancestor woman into the room. “Let’s go!” McKay cried.

She could hear the ring of booted feet nearby, and casually put a few rounds through the flexible screen of the booth, and it froze up. She took the marine sergeant’s other arm and ran towards the steps, looking down at the serene puddle of the active stargate. “Wait!” Rodney cried, and unceremoniously dropped McNeil’s full weight on Teyla’s shoulders.

He dashed over towards the rigged zero point module and prised a part away from the apparatus below the large LCD screen. It was the control unit, if he’d left it, it was conceivable that the Wraith would deactivate the device. He could hear Teyla asking what was wrong with Caldwell, and turned to see him vomiting on the floor.

It was a trick, of course, the only way the goa’uld could think of on the spot to explain his previous behaviour.

McKay could see something else too, “Shit, down!” he cried, and flung himself to the floor. Wraith warriors were streaming towards the stargate below them, he could see them hustling across the floor, some were already ploughing through the stargate, though he had no idea why, he supposed they were carried away on whatever passed for adrenalin among their kind.

He wondered how they would ever get past, but McNeil provided a solution. He saw an object sail over the balcony into the crowded wraith, and remembered to open his mouth a split second before the ear-splitting detonation of a fragmentation grenade tore through the crowded Wraith like the scythe of Death himself.

“Atlantis command!” Teyla screamed into her radio, “We’re still coming through, hold them there for us!”

Nemesis darted out with the unnatural grace of genetic tuning and opened fire before any of the Wraith could respond. Rodney desperately wanted to know how the device worked, from its effects, he could only call it a telepathic flamethrower. Wraith soldiers writhed and twisted in spasmodic poses as she swept the weapon over them, running down the steps, so like those of Atlantis, three at a time. “Quickly,” she cried, and Rodney pulled himself to his feet, his legs reluctant to obey his mind’s bidding.

It appeared that Nemesis wasn’t able to use – whatever it was – the weapon on all of the Wraith simultaneously, and the staccato rattle of Teyla’s sub-machinegun emptying itself into those that remained.

The counter ticked down to 0:10 and Rodney ran as fast as he could towards the event horizon, heedless of the surviving Wraith in the way, apparently uncertain of whether they should try and stop the humans, and having rethought their plan. A dozen stunners came up at once, and everything went black.


In the Atlantis Control room, practically a mirror image, guns blazed by the hundreds as security rushed to gun down the Wraith as they poured through the portal. Every thought in Doctor Weir’s mind said that they should just raise the shield and end this bloodbath in a more sterile, risk-free way. “Five seconds!” Radek said from behind her, hand hovering over the shield control, “Four, three, two…” The portal rippled and regurgitated human figures in amongst the Wraith. The military uniforms of McNeil and Caldwell, not to mention Teyla’s pseudo-military dress, were first. She turned watched as Rodney was pushed thorugh the stargate, and Nemesis followed.

Weir wasted no time, and the shield flashed into existence. Wraith hit it as drumbeats and flashes of light. She could hear Everett behind her, hear him shouting some order, and see the fire redoubling below. Nemesis cried out in pain as she pulled her arm back, everything below the elbow vanished behind the shield.

The shield blazed once, and lightning shot out across the stargate’s surface. For a brief moment Weir though it might explode in sympathy for the city that had just been obliterated, but it did not. The lights on its chevrons died, and smoke coiled from them in mute testimony to the destruction that had been wrought so far away. Wraith danced and shuddered from bullet impacts as the guards closed in.


An hour later, the serene bridge of the Enterprise seemed a million miles from the destruction, and it was. In fact, it was a light hour away. On the main viewer, the planet known informally as Atlantia exploded. The blast was mere whiteness; one moment the vast Wraith armada was there, the next, it was gone. The sun was snuffed out eight minutes later like a candle in a hurricane, simply blasted away with such force that it couldn’t stand, and the closer planets were obliterated. The crew watched all this in mute silence. No one spoke, no one dared to disturb the silence.

Chekov, Kirk, McCoy, Scott, Spock, and Uhura, as well as younger members of The Enterprise A’s crew, were glued to the main viewer. “Terrifying,” Chekov said at last.

“That’s not everything,” McCoy said, “There’s an enemy out there who has the know-how to build those things.”

“How many Wraith, how many people did we just kill?” Kirk asked.

“Sixty eight percent, including all but three hive ships, I estimate around one to two hundred million.”

Kirk gulped audibly. “Uhura, send to Atlantis Command…”

“We can’t Sir,” she said, “Subspace interference from the destruction...” it didn’t seem necessary to expand on her explanation any more.

“Very well,” the Admiral turned to Scotty, “Do we have warp speed?”

“No higher than factor five until we get out of immediate range of the blast, but otherwise, no problem Captain.”

Kirk stood up and laid a hand on the helmswoman’s shoulder, as much for his own comfort as for hers, “Miss Whitelaw, lay in a course for Atlantis, warp factor four.”

“Aye Sir,” she said, and Kirk turned towards one of the turbolifts.

“Mister Spock, you have the bridge.”

McCoy quickly followed the ship’s commander into the lift.


Two days later the slender shape of The Enterprise slid into orbit over Athosia. It turned out that Doctor McKay had been killed, and Nemesis had had a limb severed. Neither injury, of course, was permanent thanks to the new technologies uncovered in Atlantis. It was a potent reminded that there had been great progress out of this accidental mission.

Kirk had explained that The Enterprise had played its role in the campaign, and was now in serious need of returning to the Federation for repairs, as well as rest and relaxation for its crew – “while your worlds are fine and good, they’re not home,” he’d said by way of explanation. But he wasn’t prepared to abandon the battles remaining in Pegasus to be fought, either.

“I’m going to send the Saratoga out here,” Kirk said to Everett and Weir, who’d settled down reluctantly into a regime of effective joint control over Atlantis, “Captain Alexander’s a good woman, and her starship is somewhat more aggressively designed than The Enterprise.”


Ambassador Fox sighed as he leafed through sheaves of paper reports on the progress of the Federation Proposal for the West Bank. It was actually working remarkably well (he was reminded of his previous assignment with then-Captain Kirk and his crew, where the situation had born considerable similarities) and he felt this was in no small part due to the apocalyptic threat hanging over all heads, not to mention the obvious Neutrality of the Federation (He’d managed to find ethnic Palestinian and Jewish envoys in the diplomatic corps to dispatch to both parties) on the matter. He dropped the ‘Middle East’ file and picked up the ‘Taiwan’ one. With the completion of the first Chinese BC-303… well… They had two apocalyptic threats to worry about.


It was no less than four weeks later when the Enterprise arrived in the Milky Way galaxy. As the majestic ship swept past the outlying stars in transwarp drive (which Scotty still complained about the inherent unreliability of) Uhura frowned a little. The board in front of her had been clear for most of the trip, few subspace signals had the power to reach them. But now the signals board was beginning to become active again. No surprise there.

She tapped a key and brought up the text-display of one of the signals. An unencrypted transmission between two Free Jaffa mother ships. She skimmed the text, and frowned, looking over at Captain Scott, “I think you should see this,” she said.

He rose from the captain’s chair, skimmed the transcripts and nodded, “You’re right. Get the captain. Try and raise an Earth Ship.”


Kirk was in bed, asleep when the call came through. “Admiral Kirk to the bridge,” it was Uhura, and she sounded serious. Which was always a bad sign, she tended to be pretty easygoing even when on duty. “On my way!” Kirk said, hauling a pair of trousers on, and snatching up a turtleneck and one of his red uniform waistcoats, throwing one and then the other on as he walked down the corridor and into the turbolift.

“What’s the problem?” he asked as he entered the bridge.

“We’ve picked up transmissions,” Scott said, “We’re trying to get a confirmation now.”

“Contents?” asked Kirk.

“It appears that an Orii super-gate has been discovered, and that the invasion of this galaxy is about to begin.”

“Helm!” Kirk said, “lay in a course…” he looked at the screen, “For galactic coordinates two eight one mark seven ten, maximum transwarp factor.”

“Aye sir,” he helmsman replied, and the ship shot off on a tangential course.

“How far are we?” Kirk asked.

“About twenty minutes at this speed sir,” he replied,


The stargate ring hung before the small armada of Jaffa and Earth ships. Three Earth ships in all hung before the ring and its artificial black hole, accompanied by a dozen ha’tak vessels and a massive O’Neill class battleship. On the bridge of the Earth Ship Prometheus, Colonel Pendergast watched the ring, as determined as though he could stop the thing with force of will alone.


“Sulu,” Kirk said, leaning back in his chair, “We need you and the fleet to rendezvous with us at galactic coordinates two eight one mark seven ten.”

Kirk’s former helmsman nodded once to someone offscreen, and the sound of the Excelsior changed subtly.

“What’s the problem Admiral?” Sulu asked.

“They’ve found another Orii super-gate. You’ve read the reports?”

“Yes,” Sulu nodded, “A beachhead. I’ve left the Grissom, Wasp and the Lexington behind. The Hornet and Copernicus are with me. I can have my communications officer recall the Saratoga too, it’s only an hour out.”

Kirk nodded, “Your ETA?”

“Seventeen or eighteen minutes.”

“See you there Captain.”


Aboard the Earth Ship Odyssey, Colonel Carter watched a wall mounted screen showing the ring of interlocking super-conductive units that made up the Orii beachhead gateway. Each one was large, built using technologies she barely understood to allow them to fit through a stargate. They had six glowing locking clamps between them that merged the whole apparatus into one unit that drew energy at an immense rate from the already rapidly decaying singularity ‘below.’

She had no idea how they contained that power, either, but she suspected it was, just as in a zero point module, some kind of subspace effect that dammed the energy to provide a relatively small trickle of power to the gate apparatus. If the word ‘small’ could ever be applied to energy consumption equivalent to absorbing the detonation of hundreds of naquadah laced nuclear weapons every second.

“There it is,” she said, and zoomed the display in to show where the scanners had located the dialling device. Vesir, the asgard scientist who’d recently been assigned to SG operations in the Milky Way nodded, and the door yawned open to admit Colonel Emerson. He strode across the room, “Colonel Carter.”

“Sir,” she said in acknowledgement, “We’ve managed to locate the dialling control crystals on one particular section of the ‘gate. Now Vesir’s already programmed a replacement crystal so it’s just a matter of somebody getting out there and installing it.”

“And I suppose you’d like to volunteer?”

“Yes Sir,” she confessed.

“I would go, but you do not have a space suit that would fit me.” Sam smiled a little: Vesir didn’t seem to, from their encounters thus far, to have the same bravery as Thor or Heimdall, but she didn’t mind that much, such things were crazy anyway, and one had to be a little mad to put one’s self on the line in such a way. She felt Vesir was reliable enough, in a truly dangerous situation, anyway. She didn’t ask if the massive Asgard battleship (she knew that there were space suits aboard some of their vessels) had one, though the thought did occur to her.

“No one’s going. We just got word from the Korelev, Mitchell and Jackson didn’t find the device.”

“Sir,” she protested, “Even without Merlin’s device dialling out is still our best bet because at the very least it will prevent them from dialling in.”

He looked sceptical.

“It’s possible that with the power generated by the singularity we can maintain this connection indefinitely.”

At last, Emerson nodded, “Right,” he said, “let’s get you suited up.”


The Enterprise’s chronometer ticked towards their arrival. Kirk wasn’t a religious man at all, but he had an urge to pray, to do anything to arrive faster at the fateful beachhead. He stabbed at the intercom button on the armrest of his chair, “Torpedo rooms. Load enhanced yield weapons…” he lifted his finger, “Uhura, relay that to the rest of the fleet.”

He looked at the chronometer again: fifteen minutes to go…


The process of fastening one’s self into a space suit hadn’t changed much, even if the manner of deploying such suits had. Every seal had to be triple checked, though this time, they were being rather lax, against the received wisdom: the NASA scientists who’d developed these things had never imagined a situation like this one she’d bet. Trousers first, top section – connection and safety check. Gloves, two more safety checks, and then at last the helmet, which had to be put on sideways and turned to lock while another crewman checked her backpack. She quickly tested the intercom, and sighed at the cool air as it was pumped in to the helmet. Almost ten minutes in all.

“The coordinates are set,” Vesir said, “are you ready Colonel Carter?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, giving a slightly worried look as various lights on her helmet were turned on.

“Initiating transport,” he said, and the same cold numbness swept over her.


Away behind the defending fleet, another three BC-303s dropped out of hyperspace.


Carter appeared next to one of the massive segments of the super-gate. It was difficult to believe the size of the things. She pushed herself off on one segment until the wide feet of her suit made contact with the ridge no the segement. “Engaging magnetic lock,” she said, almost to herself, and punched a button on her forearm. A clunk echoed through her suit as she was pulled down into contact.

She walked a short way over to the control circuits, “I’m removing the panel now,” she intoned and revealed a host of control crystals that looked as though they’d been built by the Ancients. After a moment’s contemplation, she reached out and levered one of the weightless crystals away.

“I’m putting in our control crystal,” she added, and removed the device from a pouch on her thigh, biting her lower lip as she placed it in the place of the one she’d removed. “It’ll just take a few minutes to initialise,” she said, tapping at the wireless computer, made with goa’uld technology, in the suit’s arm again.


Aboard the bridge of the Odyssey, one of its crew interjected as Colonel Emerson listened to Carter’s step-by-step progress report, “Sir, we’re picking up increased energy readings from the gate…”

“Something’s happening,” she said over the radio link, and then, more urgently, “I’ve lost my magnetic lock!”

“It’s an incoming wormhole,” the crewman added.

“Get her out of there, now,” Emerson ordered.

“It’s not working, there’s too much interference.

“Sam, Report,” Emerson said, pressing down on a radio-key on his chair. “Sam,” he repeated, but only received static.


Samantha screwed her eyes shut as the glowing puddle swept out from the edge of the ring and twisted in the centre. Ordinarily she’d relish the chance to observe the stargate’s operation slowed down so, but she was painfully aware of what this meant. Aside from her failure, it meant that hundreds of people, at the best, were about to die.

As the titanic kawoosh snapped back, she waited for the pulse of radiated energy to kill her. Which would perhaps be a mercy, but nothing happened, and she was dimly aware that she’d need to refine her theories if she survived.

The super-gate’s event horizon lay there like an immense lake of who knew what? She looked on it and whispered to herself, “My god…” and of course, that was precisely the effect the Orii wanted in their undertaking. It was easy to convince one’s self that anyone capable of building such a monstrosity was a god.


Aboard the Enterprise, Kirk watched the chronometer with the intensity of a obsessed eagle. Five minutes until they arrived. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair with knuckle whitening intensity.


Aboard the Korelev, Daniel listened to orders being given in Russian, subconsciously translating them as they were issued. Some premonition drove Cameron Mitchell to say ‘here they come’ and true to form, the first of the massive Orii ships burst from the super-gate’s suface. They were flying nose to tail, four of the massive vessels. He could swear he saw some sort of gas pouring from them, too, and a strange radiance inside them.

“I only count four ships.” Mitchell declared.

“It’s probably their first wave…” Daniel replied.

“Should see what we can do about discouraging a second one,” Mitchell, ever the optimist, replied.


Carter watched, unable to hear any of that, nor the transmission sent by one of the Orii ships, wondering instead if the Orii vessels were outside the shield that protected the super-gate, and if the fleet could overcome such massive ships, hoping fervently that they could.


“And those who are prideful and refuse to bow down shall be laid low and made into dust…” Daniel read.

“Is that all it says?” asked Colonel Chekov.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Mitchell said.

“Open a channel,” Daniel demanded, walking over to the other side of Chekov’s chair. Checkov said the same in Russian, and Daniel leaned down towards the microphone. “Then did Tailas say to the people of the low plains: Seek not the wickedness amongst your neighbours lest it find purchase in your own house.”

“What was that?” Cam asked.

“Book of Origin…”

“Think it’ll help?”

One of the Russian officers declared that the enemy ships were powering their weapons, then said that the Odyssey was firing. Ha’taks joined in, then the other Earth ships, and finally the O’Neill class battleship, massive azure bolts of fire shooting from its forward weapons emplacement, like those fired being fired by the Prometheus but much larger. The Orii ships returned fire, long pulses of fire streaming from their noses and immolating ha’tak vessels in single shots. The Odyssey took a pulse on its shields, which blazed like a miniature sun, but held. A similar shot barely dented the Asgard ship’s defences, only provoking it to step up its rate of fire.

Ha’taks made strafing runs like oversized al’kesh bombers against the relatively sluggish Orii ships, but they could not affect the extragalactic ship’s shields except where the Asgard battleship had already weakened them.


Samantha could barely look at the battle, not just because her own side seemed to be losing, but because such energies created brilliant pulses of light that were difficult to look upon. She tore her eyes away and looked downwards, shielding her eyes with the gauntlet of her suit. She thought for a moment that the golden-red lights beneath was an after image on her retinas, but then she discerned the moving objects for what they were, more ships.


Sulu watched as the viewer revealed the battle disintegrating as the Orii ships pushed outwards from their gateway. “Lock on all torpedo tubes. That one,” he said, pointing to the leftmost target duelling with an equally vast Asgard ship, “Fire…”

The deck shuddered beneath them as the Excelsior’s torpedo tubes coughed once, twice, thrice and a fourth time.


Sam watched four, eight, then twelve pulses of brilliant red light shoot up from below, and realised what they must be. Naquadah enhanced photon torpedos. She scrunched her eyes shut and covered her faceplate to avoid being blinded by the explosions.


The Orii ship shuddered as massive explosion after explosion pummelled it from an unexpected angle, its shields struggling to cope before collapsing. A naquadah explosion tore its engines away, and a pulse from the Asgard battleship slammed into its heavy forward armour, like a knockout blow delivered by a heavyweight boxer, there was nothing left afterwards but collapse. The ship’s forwards sections disappeared into a gout of vapour, and a moment later it broke apart with a brilliant flash of light.


Sam couldn’t see much of the battle, merely a series of brilliant flashes reflected off the bottom of her helmet, red through her eyelids. Against her better judgement she risked a glance at the Orii ships. One of them was broken and spiralling away in pieces. She couldn’t help herself. She cheered.


The Orii tried to counter, but their commanders were no match for the Asgard or Federation captains. Sulu saw two of the ships pitching down and ordered his fleet to split off in different directions. The third ship tried to turn to engage the Asgard ship, but Thor had other ideas, in the moments when no weapons were turned on the vast ship, it disappeared into the white bloom of a hyperspace window.


“Where the hell are they going?” Colonel Emerson demanded.

“Two hyperspace windows opening… Above us,” the answer came quickly…


The first window disgorged a trio of ha’taks, and one of the Odyssey’s screens lit up with the familiar visage of Teal’c. “Apologies for my late arrival,” he said.

“Better late than never…” Emerson replied.

“Indeed,” Teal’c said.

“Concentrate your fire on the…” he considered the angles of it for a moment, then gave up, “One Thor’s shooting at.”

“Understood,” Teal’c gravely intoned.


The second of course, was the Asgard battleship, repositioning itself so as to force the forward-gunned Orii ships to chose between firing at itself or firing at the rapidly spreading federation ships.


A bolt of fire tore straight through a ha’tak without slowing – Sam hadn’t imagined she’d ever grieve at such a sight until today – and another ship appeared two hundred kilometres off, to Samantha’s eyes, merely a dot. A blue beam shot from it and obscured its form completely. The beam hit the ship that Thor was attacking, and moments later, every ship in the fleet opened fire on it. Its shields flared and died spectacularly, and Sam once again turned away inside her helmet to protect her eyes from the destruction.


Kirk watched as the Enterprise finally dropped out of warp, star-streaks becoming solid and revealing chaos around an open super-gate. “Chekov, lock on to the most damaged Orii ship. Uhura put me through…” he said, and she didn’t need telling twice.

“This is Admiral Kirk, I’m taking command of the fleet,” it was an arrogant statement, he supposed, but he knew that Thor was wise enough to know that the Asgard weren’t nearly as adept tacticians as they were technologists, and he only hoped that the jaffa would follow his lead, “All ships, maximum power, route all fire on the target designated by this phaser beam… Chekov, fire!” he snapped.

The phaser bank shot a double beam at the Orii ship, skittering along its shields, and a moment later, it exploded brilliantly as the Asgard ship fired, accompanied by half a dozen naquadah torpedoes and trice as many enhanced nuclear weapons from the remaining Earth ships. The Orii ship wasn’t just destroyed, it was atomised.

“Chekov,” Kirk said, rising to his feet and striding over to the tactical station, “Next target, that one,” he gestured.

“Locked.”

“All ships, reload and fire on my mark…” he waited to a count of three, watching the invading ships lash out and destroy a Earth battle cruiser, “Mark!” he snapped, and a second Orii ship disappeared completely.


Aboard the Orii command ship, in the chamber that served as its control room, a ring of priors stood around a central pillar of flames that served to interface with the ship’s systems.

“The infidels are defeating us,” one proclaimed, as the third ship exploded brilliant.

“Agreed,” another said, “We must withdraw within the world-shield and call for reinforcements.”

“Withdrawing,” another said.

Though the Priors knew little of combat, they had been wise, and essentially placed the tails of their kilometre long ships against the shield that surrounded the planet and enclosed the oversized-stargate, it was a trivial matter to pass back through it, with the inertial manipulation of their masters at their disposal it took a fraction of a second. A third combined volley shot towards the ship, and space seemed to boil with energy. But as the energy dissipated across the world-shield, the last Orii ship was still there, unharmed.


“All ships, stand by…” Kirk said, “does anyone have a means of getting through that shield?”

The viewer switched to display Colonel Emerson, “Asgard teleporters get through it,” he said.

“All ships with Asgard transporters, get as many bombs on that ‘gate as you can…”

“Wait!” Emerson snapped, “We have a crew-woman there…”

“Too late…” Spock said, looking down at one of the scanner screens.”

Kirk turned, and watched another quartet of Orii ships roar through the gateway. He swallowed as a fifth passed through the gateway, then a sixth… “All ships, withdraw to,” he turned again, “Navigator, get us a fall back point!”

The navigator worked furiously, “Sent Admiral,” he said.

“All ships, withdraw…” Kirk confirmed, looking at the dozen Orii ships arrayed behind their protective world-shield. “We can’t win this battle.”


The Priors watched as the fleet began to disappear into a multitude of hyperspace portals and special twists of warp-drives. “We have carried the field,” the first proclaimed.

“They are cowards,” another said.

The doors flew open, and they bowed reverentially. The figure who stepped through the doorway was like them, but white haired and taller, his robes more elaborate, including a burnished copper neckpiece that rose high behind his head. “Docii,” the intoned in ritual unison.

“Cowardice is in the hearts of all evildoers,” he said, and his eyes flared with flames, his voice was a thundering tumult of voices, each majestic and awesome, “The children of the Orii shall always triumph.”

“Hallowed are the Orii!” the priors and their guards, kneeling in the presence of this terrible figure, cried.

“Hallowed,” the Orii said through their representative, “are the children of the Orii. You!” his hand swept out and indicated one of the Priors, “There is an evildoer who has attempted to tamper with Our portal. Bring her aboard and imprison her.”

He genuflected wordlessly, and strode out of the room. The simplest way that occurred to the Prior was to stand by a view-port and pull the evildoer aboard with his powers.


McCoy was surprised by the size of the Asgard conference room, but he suspected that it was designed to serve multiple purposes, not least of which would be keeping the vessel’s mass down with a large void space. It was large enough to accommodate the commanders and staff of every vessel in the fleet, and it seemed to be about three-dozen in all. Another Asgard ship had joined the assemblage of the Jaffa, Earth, Lucian Alliance and Federation ships. The Asgard had furnished chairs for all, but there was no table. He suspected this was to avoid drawing attention to their relative sizes.

“The Orii vessels are moving off,” Thor said, “We have determined their course. They are on a direct course for Earth. They will arrive within the day....”

The room dissolved into chaos immediately as everyone tried to discuss the matter at once. At last the representative of the Lucian Alliance spoke out clearly. “We cannot match that speed.” Thor nodded to his subordinate, and reached out to hold a quartzite stone on the armrest of his chair. The view from the window behind him changed, stars and hyperspacial windows rushing past.

“What’s happening?” demanded the Lucian representative.

The familiar sphere of the Earth appeared behind them, the ships of the fleet still in the formation they had been seconds before.

“I trust that solves that dilemma?” Thor asked, “we have a more serious one to contend with. Our present analysis of the Orii invasion force suggests that even if we were to assemble the entire Asgard fleet as well as the forces gathered here, we would be unable to defeat it. It is too numerous.”

Admiral Kirk spoke up, “Then our only hope is to concede the planet and let it surrender to the Orii, then try and liberate it at a later date.”

“Cowardice!” snapped one of the jaffa leaders.

Spock stood, “Practicality. If we’re outgunned, then we will be destroyed in any kind of stand up battle against ships like that. And if only one of their ships survives to the end of the battle, they’ll be able to conquer, or at least destroy Earth. There’s an example in your history of just what a single starship can do. The planet Delmak once had a moon I believe… We are not afraid of battle, but throwing our lives away like that is useless if it will not stop the Orii.”

“We must act quickly!” Kirk said, “While we are here we can evacuate as many people as possible, and destroy records and remove equipment we don’t want the Orii capturing. If we purge records of where we take people, of where the SGC has explored, there’ll be no way the Orii forces can learn of them. We can take as many military resources from Earth as possible in order to carry on the fight, but we must do so quickly.”

Colonel Pendergast interrupted, “We’ll need to get permission from our governments before trying anything like that…”

Kirk nodded in understanding, “We had better work quickly anyway. The faster we work, the more people we can move offworld. And this would be a good opportunity to test Orii sensors too, if anyone has a cloak-capable ship. Teal’c nodded, “I have one.”

“There is one weapon that might just be enough…” Daniel Jackson said.


“Chevron seven encoded,” Walter said, watching the stargate flash into life. Just when they’d expected the alpha list to become redundant, this happened. The people who went through the stargate were subdued, and he sympathised with them all. The months of positive results from the stargate programme had been hideously brief, and now riots had broken out across the globe as news of the impending doom broke. An alien invasion force too strong to be defeated was on its way.


Carter hit the floor of the Orii ship, a sharp pain shooting through her jaw. She winced, and slowly rolled over to see the two armoured guards who brought her in kneeling on one knee, a look upwards revealed a tall prior in a strange headdress, she remembered Daniel’s description of the Docii, the representative of the Orii among the Priors.

“Leave us,” he said, his voice distorted in a way that she could only assume indicated his possession by the ascended beings – she wasn’t sure if she whimpered aloud at that, and rather hoped that she didn’t, pushing herself up onto her feet slowly; she’d been roughed up before, doubtless to soften her up for interrogation.

She looked into the eyes of the Docii, irises seeming to burn within his eyes. “You will tell me of the defences of Earth…” he said.

“No chance,” she laughed, then coughed, uncertain if one of her ribs had been broken.

“I did not give you a choice…” the Docii replied.

“Why do you need me to tell you? Some all seeing deities you are…” Sam sneered.

Her captor took a long staff, like those carried by the ordinary priors, but made of a black metal that the eye seemed to slide off, with a pure white stone in its cap, and lofty spikes cradling it. He took a step forwards, and Sam tried to back off, only to run into an immovable wall of force. He stood practically nose-to-nose with her, and she found that she couldn’t reach out to push him away. It was disconcerting in itself, but it paled compared to what he did next…


“I can’t be sure what he did to her,” Tomin said, sitting down and watching the swirling whiteness of hyperspace pass the window on the bow section of the command ship. Other Orii vessels could be seen through the window. Vala listened from her bed, she’d managed to persuade a gaggle of maids to leave her, even though she was expecting her child in the next forty eight hours. Normally she’d have relished the attention, too.

“But I think he burnt her. From the smell, at least.”

“She’s dead then?” Vala asked, trying to keep the horror out of her voice. Trying not to reveal that she’d been in that position herself, the pain of it was indescribable. Vala could barely imagine a worse way to die.

“No, we took her back to her cell – she was a wreck… sobbing all the way. I think he burnt her over and over again… I mean killing unbelievers is one thing… but that is…”

“Sadistic and twisted?” Vala said quietly.

“I was going to say, too cruel, but yes… The Orii are not cruel…”


General O’Neill watched the mesh doors of the lift open. He’d been here before, but he didn’t remember the first time he’d been to the Antarctic outpost. The Orii ships were due to arrive in a mere half an hour, and O’Neill had drawn the short straw of being the one to try and use the outpost to eliminate them. They had sent to Atlantis to ask about their Ancient, but it turned out that she was in no condition to use the throne-chair.

He sat down and leaned back in the chair, which lit up under him. The ceiling of the chamber changed as he concentrated on the planet’s orbit. He could see the Earth ships and their allies hiding in the shadow of the Moon. They were waiting to see if he was successful, if the Antarctic outpost could winnow the invading fleet down to a small enough number to make battle practical, they would engage.

He didn’t have to wait long. The Orii vessels emerged around the planet in a spherical formation, hovering roughly equidistantly in orbit. O’Neill pressed his hands down into the gelled rests on the chair and felt the press of thousands of drones on his mind, eager for orders. He gave them.


The Docii stood in a ring on the floor of the Orii command ship, accompanied by a pair of priors. transporter rings swept up from the floor around them, and they were broken down to atoms, and fired down towards the planet. Other rings received and reassembled them. A horde of glowing golden squid creatures surrounded them, and the Docii held out his hand, stopping them in their tracks.

Of course, ancient drone weapons are more than simple missiles. They possess a certain intelligence, on the level of a dog’s. In fact, they were very much like dogs in more than one way. They had a strong loyalty to their operators, especially ones they were accustomed to.

The drones seethed against telekinetic force, then it seemed to dawn on them that there was another way to destroy these intruders. They passed through the walls, the ceiling, the floor, phase-shifting devices carrying them through solid matter effortlessly. They gripped one of the Priors in their own fields, and he exploded a moment later into mass-less particles that passed through the ice above them with no more difficulty than through the vacuum beyond.

The drones eliminated the second in the same manner, and rallied around the leader, whose abilities seemed to be beyond those of the others. The drones swept through the floor towards him, and he punched out a hand towards the throne chair that controlled the drones. He closed his fist and pulled.

O’Neill was aware of their presence, and smiled as one then another prior died. Suddenly, he was elsewhere, among a horde of fallen drones, lying on the floor. Gunfire blazed, and bounced off a shield around a tall figure striding towards the chair. He reached out with casual flicks of his free hand, as if administering playful slaps, and the marines guarding the chamber died with each effete blow.

He laid his staff down and sat down slowly in the chair, reaching out and pressing his hands down onto the gel-controls of the armrests.


The Quintet – the five Orii who collectively controlled the Docii’s actions – could feel the reluctance of the drones as they reactivated. The Drones had intelligence enough to understand that the world they had been designed to defend was under attack, and that the invaders were now giving their orders. Their machine intelligences raged and fumed in anger and anguish at the corruption, yet they had never been designed with the capacity to disobey orders, no matter who gave them. The Quintet found the idea of using the Ancient Enemy’s weapons to destroy their abhorrent progeny a deliciously pleasing prospect.


“The drones are powered again!” cried one of the Odyssey’s sensor operators, and a cheer went up from the bridge. The drones had raced up from the planet towards the Orii ships, but then lost power. It seemed as though the Mark Two Naquadah generator powering them might have failed. But a few moments later, they’d sprung back to life.

“Wait…” he said, a moment later, “They’re on a new course. They’re headed straight for us.”

Colonel Emerson turned, “Shit. Shiel- forget that. Hyperdrive now. Get us out of here!”


Jack O’Neill could see this on the hologram spread out above him, drones charging towards the fleet lurking behind the Moon. He wasn’t sure what he’d broken in his brief and unwilling flight, but he knew he had to move regardless. His muscles screamed protests at him as he reached for his sidearm, pulling it free and taking shaking aim at the smug figure reclining in his chair. The gun barked, and the bullet skittered off a translucent blue shield.

There was no despair for O’Neill though. He’d banished that emotion long ago. He reached for his knife, and crawled across the floor slowly, dragging himself towards the Docii.

The ships on the hologram were vanishing, they’d figured it out, they were escaping. He was glad, but it didn’t stop him. O’Neill reached the shield’s perimeter, and pushed the knife against it. It slid off the impervious barrier. The enemy leader issued a recall command to the drones, and sat up in the chair, opening his flaming eyes and looking at O’Neill.

The bastard didn’t even laugh. You’d have thought he’d have had the decency to have a little gloat, like Ba’al... O’Neill thought as he passed out. Ba’al…


Ba’al sat watching the chaotic news reports on the television with half a dozen of his clones. “What now?” one asked.

“Now? We embrace the religion of Origin, publicly at least…”

“And privately?” another asked.

“I believe there’s some Resistance organising to be done.”


Henry Hayes sat behind his desk in the Oval Office. The Orii were coming to demand surrender from him. They certainly had a taste for grandstanding, their invasion force had consisted of one man on a white horse riding into Washington, laughing off everything anyone had thrown at him. In one of the drawers of the desk, Hayes had what was loosely termed ‘an anti-Prior device’ waiting for the arrival of this representative.

The doors of the office shattered into a thousand splinters, and the tall figure that Hayes had been told was the leader of the Priors stood on the other side, his staff shining before him. Hayes looked into his eyes and saw merely human brown. The Docii stepped into the room, and strode across the carpet. Hayes had a flashback of his arrival in the office, pressing his bare feet into that carpet.

“You are the leader of this world?” the Prior demanded, expending a tiny amount of energy to activate one of the inert cameras in the room, and Hayes had another recollection.

“Henry Hayes, President of the United States of America. One nation among many.”

“No more…”

Where do they get these phrases, the book of intergalactic clichés? Hayes wondered. “You’re not the first to say that. You won’t be the last.”

“You are all children of the Orii. Embrace Origin, and be saved.”

“I don’t think so…” Hayes said with another pang of déjà vu.

“Then you accept the price of disobedience to the call of the Orii?”

“We have other ideas…” Hayes said, and activated the device in the drawer, and was rewarded with a fleeting look of disturbed confusion passing over the Prior’s face. Then his eyes flared with a brilliant flame.

The Docii’s voice changed to something far more dangerous and malicious. “We are Orii. We see all things! Do not think to deceive us! The Day of Retribution is at hand!”

He lifted the staff high and its jewel shone a brilliant orange, the light becoming, in a matter of seconds, too bright to look upon. Hayes’ bodyguards opened fire, to no effect, and the room began to shake. Plaster fell from the ceiling, and the floor rumbled tumultuously. A loud crash erupted from outside the building, and Hayes turned to see the Washington monument collapse. Buildings fell like so many sandcastles as the earth moved beneath them. A heavy piece of the ceiling struck Hayes, and he fell.

Half an hour later, the Prior leader was the only thing standing in Washington D.C. He smiled with grim satisfaction that no stone rested upon stone in the boundaries of the city. Hills had been levelled and entire districts of the city had slid into the sea. The destruction that had taken so long for the Ancient Romans of this world to visit upon their arch enemies, replicated in a matter of minutes by his hand, or rather, by the hand of the Orii acting through him.

If the sight was even half as humbling to the inhabitants of Earth as it was to him, their resistance would soon come to an end.


“Commodore Probert,” Kirk snapped, “You can’t be serious. The Federation is needed more here than it ever was before.”

“My orders come direct from the President,” Probert replied, “Admiral. The Enterprise and the rest of the expeditionary force are to withdraw in the face of this new threat, then the gateway is to be sealed.”

“So we slink off with our tails between our legs just when we’re needed most?”

“Those are your orders, Admiral. Look, don’t blame me,” Probert sighed, sinking back into the chair on the scout-ship that had been dispatched to the portal. “I agree with you. These orders don’t come from me. I’m merely a messenger…”

“I know,” Kirk sighed, “Very well, I’ll recall my ships. But I will make damn sure I get to see the President himself about this…”


The Vatican was quite appropriate for public executions, the Priors felt. They’d taken over this place, Mecca, Medina, and a dozen other holy places besides, toppling statues and burning artwork, moving in their own ritual objects. Saint Peter’s square was now home to one of the ritualised incineration blocks that every village in the Orii galaxy sported.

There were many prisoners there, and Carter recognised many of them as religious and political leaders, not to mention military leaders. It was difficult to push your way through a crowd when your arms are bound around a wide pole, and hands chained in front of you, she’d discovered, but eventually, she’d found the SGC’s people. The Priors had mostly done this out of spite, it seemed, as they actually kept their prisoners fenced in with a shield. “General!” she said, and O’Neill, Landry, and Hammond turned as one. “Err… Generals,” she corrected herself.

“Carter,” Hammond said, “Get you too did they…”

The kowtowing of the assembled Orii army as their now-infamous leader entered the square interrupted the reminiscence. He walked up an avenue of velvet carpet, around the stone object in the centre of the square, and ceremonially lowered himself into the papal throne that had been brought out of the basilica and placed beside it. He looked around, and pointed his staff directly at O’Neill. “Him first,” he proclaimed, and a part of the shield dropped to allow a pair of armoured troopers to drag O’Neill out of the impromptu prison, towards the bench.

The General was stoically silent, but Carter couldn’t help herself, knowing what was about to happen. She screamed and cried curses, implorations and insults, but it didn’t seem to move any of the Priors. Hammond stepped a little closer to her and tried to calm her, even though he too knew with terrible certainty what was about to happen.

Jack O’Neill’s execution was remarkably quiet, he managed to avoid screaming in agony until the very last. All throughout, the Docii sat unmoved but for that same sadistic little smile and evil mirth in his flaming eyes. When his first victim finally perished, he held his staff forwards, snuffing out the flames. The staff shone once more, a beneficent, soothing and innocuous blue light shining from it. His voice rang out without need of amplification, carrying far more easily than it had any right to as the leader of Earth’s many-time saviours twisted and writhed as his carbonised flesh returned to life.

“The Age of Fire has come!”

[LadyTevar]

You Killed O'Neill! YOU BASTARD!

[phongn]

You Killed O'Neill! YOU BASTARD!

And then resurrected him. And it looks like he'll die again ... and this is much worse than what Baal did.

[Chris OFarrell]

Hehehe I see your moving into dark places and away from the relativly comedic switchover. Good show.

A couple of questions though, why didn't the Ancients use the Ori actualy flexing their muscles in this Galaxy as an excuse to intervene? Or are you having them as very much NOT the good guys we think just waiting for the excuse?

And I love what you've done with Ba'al, the villian becoming a future hero

[NecronLord]

A couple of questions though, why didn't the Ancients use the Ori actualy flexing their muscles in this Galaxy as an excuse to intervene? Or are you having them as very much NOT the good guys we think just waiting for the excuse?

Well, technically, they've not done much of anything, other than tell their followers what to do; and Daniel got away with that in Full Circle. Of course, they might very well intervene now. Or at least, one group of the Milky Way Ascended might...

[phongn]

And I love what you've done with Ba'al, the villian becoming a future hero

Ba'al is a pragmatist at heart. He'll do what he has to do to survive.

[NecronLord]

And I love what you've done with Ba'al, the villian becoming a future hero

I was also working out the detail of the sequel, too...

Can we say... General Chang?

[ElPintoGrande]

Jesus Jumped up Christ on a Pogo-Stick! It's back! The Orii and their burning circles... Makes you wonder if the played their version of The Sims by filling a house with wooden chairs and fireplaces along the walls...

[Chris OFarrell]

A couple of questions though, why didn't the Ancients use the Ori actualy flexing their muscles in this Galaxy as an excuse to intervene? Or are you having them as very much NOT the good guys we think just waiting for the excuse?

Well, technically, they've not done much of anything, other than tell their followers what to do; and Daniel got away with that in Full Circle. Of course, they might very well intervene now.

Oh? I thought that the Ori had posessed the Docii on several occasions in this fic, thereby technicaly 'stepping foot' in the Galaxy. Dito when the anti Prior device was used, the Docii *appeared* to have the Ori take control directy to counteract the effects, then they leveled Washingon...

Still that was just my read

Or at least, one group of the Milky Way Ascended might...

Heh I can just see it in Saint Peters Square as Thunderstorms start to form overhead from a clear sky. Yet again the Abydonians are willing to 'back them'....this time with a little more omph

[Chris OFarrell]

And I love what you've done with Ba'al, the villian becoming a future hero

Ba'al is a pragmatist at heart. He'll do what he has to do to survive.

Oh I know. I just love how villians can switch to heros if the time is right for them. Like the French Resistence in WW2 often having hardcore criminals become patriot heros