AN: This is for triplesnap, who wanted to know why there is no Samantha Carter in the Asgard Fleet.
Thanks to eldanna for the beta. Actually, "beta" probably isn't a strong enough term for her contribution to this story. It's probably verging on co-author.
Spoilers: er…all the Asgard episodes.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Still. Sigh…Also, the title is taken from a Rudyard Kipling poem called "The Song of the Dead".
Rating: Kid-Friendly
Summary: They didn't mean for ships to act like people.
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The Price of Admiralty
The Teal'c had stood nobly in defense of Halla until the final moments. It was known well by all the Asgard as soon as the first Replicator ships appeared in orbit that the fight for Halla would be fought in vain. The Asgard people were numerous and the Replicators had mowed them down on previous incursions, and they all knew that a similar fate would befall them as their enemies lit the sky on fire.
But the Teal'c took to the air and fired his guns at the coming horde of Replicator ships and did not back down even though it was assured that there would be no victory. The ship seemed determined to persevere until the last, willing and ready to give itself in sacrifice even if only a handful of Replicators went down with him.
The crew was confused at this determination as the ship himself fought with everything it had to give and then more still. The crew strengthened their own resolve to the fight; and it could perhaps be said that the battle would have been lost far sooner had it not been for the resolve of one ship.
Thor was privately impressed by the whole thing and contemplated building a Teal'c II.
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Everyone knew the fate of the Jack O'Neill. How he had made his last flight in sacrifice, allowing the Replicators to board him and then self-destructing to save the day.
What was not so well known was the extent to which the Jack O'Neill had annoyed every Asgard who attempted any kind of work on him. The O'Neill was a new ship, and the fight with the Replicators meant that every aspect of him had to be designed like nothing the Asgard had ever tried before. And O'Neill resisted every step of the way.
Always, it seemed O'Neill wanted it to be simpler. The ship designs were theoretically sound. They should work. But some kind of barrier existed between the Asgard and their project and it kept pretending that it didn't understand. Finally the engineers made a break through and discovered that if they packaged the schematics and coding into small enough pieces, the ship would operate in a way that satisfied them. As long as The O'Neill thought he had the upper hand, he was quite willing to cooperate.
Thor was privately amused, but for the sake of his crew he pretended that he wasn't.
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Thor had never intended for the Daniel Jackson to be anything other than a research vessel. To name a combat ship after a scientist seemed distasteful at best and irony at worst. Thor had great respect for Daniel's love of history, despite having written some of it himself, and chose to honour his friend in a way the thought was appropriate.
When the plan involving the destruction of the Replicators in a black hole did not work entirely as planned, Thor had a moment of reconsidered whether it would not have been better to have included weapons on ship…just in case. Even as a solely defensive ship it was useless to protect against the machines.
However, Thor was not at all surprised when, in the end, it was because of the Daniel Jackson that the homeworld of Orilla was saved. Armed or not, he had always thought that Daniel Jackson had been underestimated one too many times.
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Thor never could bring himself to name the ship Samantha Carter, after the disaster and destruction that had been the doom of all the others.
But sometimes he thought of her as Sam.
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finis
GravityNotIncluded, January 12, 2007