Stargate Atlantis

04x12

Prisoners of War

John Shepperd felt pain like he never felt before as he returned to consciousness he saw one of the Asurans standing over him wearing one of those Ancient military uniforms, his hand still extended were John's forehead used to be.

"Take him to his cell; prepare the other humans for probing,"

The Asuran turned to the two guards who picked John up and dragged him through the ship till he reached a cell into which he was thrown with quite some force, his head was ringing, he could barely make out the figure of someone walking towards him. John's eyes adjusted a little and he could tell that the person walking towards him was a woman.

Thousands of light years away on the most well protected planet in the galaxy an Asuran fleet liaison officer walked into the underground command bunker. Inside the compound there were no doors, only thick metal blast doors only accessible due the ability of the replicator nanites to pass through solid materials, in other words Oberoth's personal bolt hole. As he walked through the compound he nervously looked at Oberoth's personal guards, even for replicators they looked completely lifeless, there consciousness had been entirely deleted. The liaison officer suppressed a shudder, was that the fate of all Asurans, after the war…

"Liaison officer Hossack, report," Oberoth focused his eyes on Hossack, had he been human he would have nervously swallowed, however Hossack was not human, he was an Asuran, the true heirs of their creators the Lanteans or Alterrans known throughout the galaxies as either the Ancients or Ancestors.

"We have failed to capture any of the rebels, but we were able to capture the copies of the Tau'ri reconnaissance team and Dr Weir." Hassack didn't let his nervousness show, he commanded fleets against the wraith for Ori's sake, Oberoth was just an electorate of the collective.

Oberoth's eyes narrowed and his glare intensified.

"Then you have failed," Oberoth surged forward and shoved Hossack into one of the crystal conduits that supplied power from the two potentia at the base of the compound. "Although I suppose the capture of the other team may allow us to track down Atlantis…"

Oberoth stopped, he could feel something probing the edges of the collective, he saw Hossack gaze at the ceiling, and clearly they all felt it too. Whatever the awareness was it was invisible and had the capability to passively probe the collective without revealing anything of itself and was capable of the infiltrating the most secure location on Asuras.

The entity knew it had been observed, but it didn't react, for it knew that the Asuran replicators couldn't do anything to affect it. It continued to observe, the Asurans were able to repeatedly put up highly advance digital defences, all of which the entity was able to pass through without effort. Further and further it pushed into the collective, deeper and deeper than any other Asuran till only the entity and Oberoth were present.

Oberoth felt the entity push deep into the collective, even into the secure area of the collective that insured his control over the collective, then it left.

"High councillor?" Hossack hesitantly asked, he had also felt the entity force its way into the collective then leave. Oberoth still hadn't moved from when they'd detected the probe.

"Yes… well done on capturing the copies of the Atlantis reconnaissance team, I will send a specialist to deal with them."

Hossack looked confused.

"What expert?"

Oberoth similarly looked confused till he continued to speak.

"Commander Talus, of course, he successfully probed the minds of the Lanteans there and has experience to deal with the team, I will divert his warship to retrieve them. Liaison officer Hossack, you are dismissed."

Hossack nodded and tried not to look relieved and hurried out of the bunker to the military command city-ship. He used the secured ring arrays to get to the base of high command city.

Back in the bunker Oberoth seemed puzzled by his decision to send Talus; after all he had failed to secure Atlantis from the Tau'ri. As he mussed he didn't see his security drones leave, however he did notice the entity reappear, not in the visible universe but inside the collective.

"What do you want, what are you?" Oberoth asked out loud, as his collective access was being disrupted by the entity.

That is of no consequence, Talus is the person that needs to go to be set free.

"Set free, what do you mean?"

The military city-ship was different to the others in the city and was designed and built completely by the Asurans and was not a known Lantean design. While other city-ships were powered by three potentia the military high command city-ship was powered by nine of the power modules, and was installed with a far more powerful shield and vastly increased drone storage bays and housed the Directed Energy Transmission Beam fired through the stargate to drain Atlantis' shield. Hossack entered the control room at the centre of the tower, the area included a control chair rather than a stargate and the control room was more like the bridge of an Aurora class warship, except instead of the white wash walls of Auroras the walls were darker and featured bronzes and golds along with blues in a similar manner to regular city-ships.

Hossack headed towards the imposing figure of General Korceanat, he was seen and Korceanat took him into his side office, here the walls were white washed, the bulkhead closed behind Hossack, however as ever the one thing that drew Hossack's attention was drawn by the hologram of the Lantean General Hippoforalkus. He always noticed the General's hazel eyes and dignified wrinkles and proud military features along with what must have once been jet black hair with only some greys.

"I've deactivated the collective monitoring systems and have partitioned your consciousness from the collective, Oberoth won't be able to peak, what's wrong?" Korceanat asked.

"Oberoth was berating me until some kind of entity infiltrated deeply into the collective; it seemingly caused Oberoth to send Talus to take custody of the duplicates of the Atlantis reconnaissance team."

"Talus interesting,"

"Why is that interesting?"

Korceanat merely smiled before continuing to question his officer.

"What can you tell me of the entity?" Korceanat was at his control console cutting through Oberoth's firewalls like a hot knife through butter, unknown to the rest of the collective high command was part of a completely separate partition of the collective.

"I don't know but it was able to override any defences we had in the collective with ease."

"When did this occu…" Korceanat trailed off as he examined the readings. "Something is still inside the collective and is interfacing with Oberoth as we speak."

Korceanat looked up at Hossack with a puzzled expression.

"This is my collective and I will control it as I see fit!" Oberoth was unused to opposition; everything on the collective could be controlled by him whether they knew it or not.

The reply came back almost sarcastically which would of course be impossible as it was only a data stream inside a subspace network.

This is your collective is it? Then why do you have to keep erasing the memories of those who have a new idea. Do you honestly think you've got all those who are discontent with the status quo, Talus is just the tip of the iceberg soon there will be civil war Oberoth, an uprising.

Oberoth calmed down despite the taunting of the entity.

"Why are you telling me this," Oberoth then looked around the control room of the compound to see his drones were gone. "Where are my drones?"

I've restored them, returned their memories and consciousness to them. Oh and do you remember Niam, well he'll be back, but that will be a pleasant surprise as you won't remember this conversation.

As soon as the voice was gone a high pitched wail started, Oberoth futilely held his hands over his ears as he doubled over in pain.

For once in his existence his firewalls broke down and he became just another Asuran, emotions like that of any other Asuran or human broke through, Oberoth was scared, he wasn't like other Asurans. He was the controller, he was the heir to the Ancients, he held the power and technology of the Alterra and Lanteans, he could not afford to be influenced by emotions only cold hard logic. He raged against the voice of the entity till his awareness faded into white nothingness and his memories faded.

Korceanat and Hossack watched the entire thing through the subspace link, Korceanat smiled; at last he knew why Oberoth was different to the others.

"I'll add you to the high command partition of the collective; Oberoth will be unable to reach you inside the partition, you have my word," Korceanat told Hossack while gesturing to the door.

Hossack nodded knowing that he was being dismissed before leaving the officer, the door slide neatly shut behind him. Korceanat used some of the controls to triple lock the bulkhead before opening a subspace channel. A holographic screen appeared before him, on the screen the image of a city-ship control room formed, directly in front of the video feed stood a blond haired woman who was wearing the outdated Atlantis expedition uniforms, Korceanat had to admit the form she had taken was beautiful by human standards.

"Why do you still use that form?" Korceanat had to ask.

"Because I like it General." The Asuran with Dr Keller's shape smiled and winked at the Korceanat before continuing. "And to what do I owe the pleasure of this message General."

Korceanat pressed some more buttons transferring the information.

"You duplicates of the Atlantis reconnaissance team survived and are to be taken for interrogation on board the Asuran Aurora class ship Celestis under the command of Talus. I presume their resistance to mind probes is due to the nanites inside them."

"Yes, the nanites are set to offer a high level of resistance, they could be over written by repeated probes."

"I've sent you the ships trajectory information and your new city-ship was personally designed to act as fully operational factory city with facilities to produce your own potential to replace the three of the four I smuggled to you."

"Yes and we thank you for your efforts on our behalf, and when we achieve ascension know that we shall offer a place for you."

Korceanat nodded in thanks for the offer.

"I've sent probes to investigate the remains of the city-ship where you created the duplicates; I'm begin to clandestinely salvage components of the shields and stardrive systems, if anything is useful I'll send you the pieces by the same courier."

Korceanat adjusted the controls to show a land based Lantean outpost.

"Construction on the outpost for your cities new homeworld is complete and I'll leave the fabricator ship nearby for you to locate."

"Once more thank you,"

The Asuran nodded before shutting down the link.

A light flashed on Korceanat's desk, he brought up the message that appeared, it consisted of advanced coding in Lantean characters and at the end a single message flashed.

May it serve you well.

Korceanat quickly analysed the coding and realised exactly what it could do, it was a virus that would completely and permanently remove Oberoth's firewalls from the collective, which meant it could only have been sent from one being…