My second contribution to Stoff's character tournament (forum-misc-X-overs-character tournament)
Behemoth-class battlecruiser Hyperion
Vs
Daedalus-class battlecruiser USS Odyssey
A hyperspace window opened near the edge of the Mutara Nebula, letting out split seconds later the SGC's flagship, Odyssey, before closing back.
"We've arrived at the designated coordinates Colonel." Samantha Carter announced from one of the tactical station next to the ship's captain, Colonel Emerson.
"This is the place, the Mutara nebula?" Emerson asked looking out the bridge's bay window at the interstellar cloud before them.
"Indeed, it is a region of space that was commonly avoided by the goa'uld system lord when they were still in control of the galaxy. Interferences within it cause most ships to malfunction, mainly shields, radars and weapon locking systems." Teal'c commented from behind the captain chair. Emerson had to say he was thankful to have been assigned the best the SGC had to offer as far as military personnel went, Teal'c, Colonel Samantha Carter and Colonel Cameron Mitchell, to assist him on this mission.
"Sounds like a great hiding place if you're on the run in open space…why are we here again?" Mitchell asked.
"Tok'ra operatives told us they chased a former system lord, Kali, here where they lost track of her mothership because of the interferences. They then sent Al'kesh to scout out the nebula and they were able to find her visually and take it down while it was shieldless…" Carter reminded him.
"…The ha'tak vessel commanded by Kali was very large and its weapon system could not be targeted manually, a single al'kesh was able to destroy it without taking a hit because it could outmanoeuvre its opponent and unleashes its energy bombs manually." Teal'c concluded.
"Good to see the tok'ra are taking care of hunting down what's left of the goa'ulds while we take care of the ori…" Mitchell commented.
"That's precisely why they told us about the nebula, the ori's army doesn't know this galaxy and if we could ambush their ships inside this nebula…" Carter kept on.
"Then their superior shields and weapons would count for nothing and a fleet of F302's backed by the Odyssey's railguns could destroy them since we have manual targeting systems." Mitchell concluded.
"This is precisely our mission, lure out the Ori Battlecruiser in the nebula with the subspace beacon the asgard gave us and engage them there." Emerson reminded them.
"Sir, there's something inside the nebula…" Carter said, pointing out the bay window toward an object that looked very much like a ship, similar in design to that of the Odyssey in fact.
"And it looks like it's coming our way too…" Mitchell added, as the unknown vessel had indeed set a course straight toward the Odyssey.
This other ship was in fact the rebel hijacked ship "Hyperion" commanded by former confederate marshal James "Jim" Raynor and his men. They had been using this nebula, standing on the very fringe of terran space, to hide from the many enemies they had, and a ship like the Odyssey tended to fit that very description. Still, Raynor wasn't above avoiding a fight if it could be done, the other ship had clearly seen them and it was no use hiding, but at least he was going to try and talk them out of fighting. To do that however, he had to get out of the nebula's interference range.
"We are being hailed Colonel Emerson." Carter announced back on the Odyssey.
"On screen." The ship's captain ordered, finding them sounding so much like a star trek crew he didn't find it funny anymore.
Jim Raynor's face appeared on the communication monitor.
"Hey, don't you people look like the military type, to whom do I have the honour?" the rebel marshal asked.
Emerson opened his communication channel and answered as procedure demanded when faced with unknown extraterrestrial life (including off-world human like these peoples)
"This is Colonel Emerson of the USS Odyssey…" he started.
"Colonel, heh, thought as much, never heard of any battlecruiser called "Odyssey" though, come to think of it yours doesn't look like confederate design either, what sectors are you peoples from?" Raynor cut him as he was, ironically, going to answer that very question.
"We're from Earth…" he said.
"Oh…from earth you say, well if there's one thing I hate more then uptight protoss judicators, ravening zergs or imperials lapdog it's you UED bastards who think you can just come here and impose your law on the dominion, I was hoping I wouldn't have to fight but now I find myself very eager to send you to the scarp heap." Raynor said before shutting down communication. The rebel leader had had to concede a lot of ground to its many enemies in recent years after the self proclaimed queen of blades, Kerrigan, had taken over dominion space and Raynor had been hitching for a fight he could win to blow off some steam, a remnant ship from the United Earth Directorate seemed like the answer to his prayers.
Of course, the SGC ship wasn't from the same earth as the UED, unknown to both opponents there were actually two planets in the universe called earth, one of them the one who had evolved in a goa'uld controlled galaxy and another in one that had seen the rise of both protoss and zerg. Both planets had been colonized and named by the alterans, the race the SGC had come to know as the ancients and who eventually either evolved into human beings or ascended. The two colonies had lost communications millennia ago and had developed in similar ways, but never had any contacts with each others, as they live in very distant point of the universe, until now.
Of course, Jim Raynor neither knew nor cared that the humans he was attacking had nothing to do with the UED, he had learned to associate "earth" with "Shoot on sight" and so, he ordered the laser batteries aimed at them to fire at will.
The SGC, for their part had associated "Strangers shooting at us" with "raise the shield and shoot them back" and thus the battle began.
The problem with energy based weapons was that it needed to heat up a few seconds before it could fire, giving opposing vessels with decent sensors array (like the Odyssey) enough time to raise the asgard designed energy shields and stop the worse of the laser attacks.
"The shield seems to be holding well." Teal'c announced.
"This is crazy, we told him we were from Earth and he just snapped and started shooting at us, we can't have made ourselves THAT bad a reputation." Mitchell said.
"He talked about zerg, and protoss and imperials and he called us UED, I think he just has us confused with someone else…" Carter suggested.
"Confusion or not, the shields won't hold forever and I certainly won't sit tight and watch them put their threats to execution, shoot them with forward railguns and lock two mark III missiles on their helm." Emerson ordered to Mitchell who was manning the tactical station.
"Yes sir!" the colonel answered.
Back on the Hyperion, Jim Raynor did not like the damage report he was getting.
"Sir, our lasers are hitting an energy shield similar to that of protoss vessels, and they just shot missiles at us, two of them, heading for the helm. Oh, and their main guns are tearing the hull apart!" The engineer announced.
"Shoot down those missiles, with the forward laser batteries, evade their main gun fire and circle us around, keep firing with the side cannons, aim for their weapon systems…what are they shooting us with anyway!?" he asked.
"Giant metal spikes fired repeatedly at a speed of mach 5…it's like getting shot by giant impaler rifles!" the engineer shouted.
"I've never seen a ship like this, no laser weapons, yet with shields and missile launchers, UED sure made some upgrades since last time." Raynor noticed.
"Maybe they're not UED, they just said they were from earth, we don't know how things are back there, for all we know they might be rebels like us…" a young marine commented.
As the two missiles were shot down before reaching the helm, all hands on deck including Raynor turned to him.
"Well it a little late to point that out NOW isn't it boy!" The commander shouted.
"Right…hum…their aiming for our weapon systems too and shooting more missiles…" he said, turning back to his station.
Back on the odyssey, Colonel Emerson was quickly loosing his smile form what had seemed like an early advantage.
"Their evading the railguns and circling around us, they seem to have a lot of laser batteries, they can shoot us from all side and still gun down our missiles before they hit them…." He cursed.
"The railguns do seem very damaging to their hull, but it seems very thick, lacking shield technology I guess it's the best defence, that's what we did on Prometheus." Carter commanded.
"We can't afford to waste ammo over this with ori battlecruisers lurking around the galaxy, get a nuke down the teleportation room and beam it on their ship!" Emerson ordered over the ship's communication network.
Little did they know a technician on board the Hyperion had hacked into their communication frequencies.
"Sir, I think they're planning to teleport an explosive directly inside the ship." He announced, quite alarmed.
"What? Can we stop them? How the hell are they going to do that?" Raynor asked, starting to feel a little stressed himself.
"The nebula should keep them from locking on to us with any kind of weapon, most likely including their teleportation technology, it's GOT to require some kind of locking mechanism, but we won't be able to hear them either." The technician announced.
"We won't need to, I plan to end this now, take us deep enough into the nebula to jam their locking systems and start loading the big gun."
As he saw the Hyperion retreat into the nebula, Emerson ordered as cease fire.
"Their retreating…guess they didn't want to fight that bad either" He commented "Keep the nuke down there though, if they come pick another fight, they'll never know what hit them."
"Oh I think they knew just what was about to hit them sir, and that they don't intend to stop the fight…" Carter said.
As everyone turned to her, she explained: "I recorded a major energy build up near the helm of the ship just before we lost track of them in the edge of the nebula…and now, well, I think we should divert as much power to the shields as we can…NOW!" She said as she pointed the far away Hyperion and the large ball of orange energy building up in front of it.
"Oh…my...god. All available power to forward shields, NOW, all hand brace for impact!" Emerson shouted in the communicator.
"FIRE!" Raynor ordered on the bridge of the Hyperion as the yamato gun finished heating up.
They couldn't aim properly because of the nebula's interference, but the beam was so enormous and powerful the glancing blow it struck on the Odyssey still left it crippled.
"Damage report!" Emerson ordered.
"Shields are offline, section 8 and 9 are depressurized and section 10 to 14, that's the whole left side of the ship, are…gone…subspace thrusters are just barely working, enough to go in a straight line but not much else and…" Carter began.
"What's STILL working Sam?" Mitchell asked.
"Teleportation, life support in the most populated sections, sensors and…well hyperspace window generators still works but I doubt it'll allow more then one jump, we got to make it count, and that mean I need time to plot a proper course to the nearest friendly to neutral planet with an active stargate…"she explained.
"Well, we can't lock missiles on to them while they are in the nebula and without proper subspace propulsion we can't properly aim the railguns, any more bad news?" Emerson asked.
"They seem to be powering their weapon for another shot…" Teal'c said.
"Crap." Mitchell said, rolling his eyes.
"Indeed."
"Carter NOW would be a good time for one of your brilliant plans…" Mitchell urged her.
"What, you want me to blow up the nearest sun?" She asked sarcastically while running her hand through her hair, trying to think of something.
"Colonel, how close to them can we lock a teleportation beam." Emerson asked, not having lost is composure one bit.
"Well, just at the edge of the nebula I'd have to estimate anything we beam there would still be 30 to 40 miles away from the enemy ship." She answered.
"Good." He brought a hand to his ear to open in ship communication channels "…this is Colonel Emerson, get every wounded personnel to the infirmary, seal off compromised sections and get a nuke down the teleportation room ASAP, our survival depends on it." He ordered through the ship intercom.
"Sir…there already is a nuke in the beaming room." A technician answered him through the earpiece.
"Yeah but this one wont do, we only got on shot so I'm making it count, deploy the mark IX and put it on a 10 second timer." He said.
There was a moment of silence in the entire ship.
"Yes sir!" the technician answered.
"Sir…Isn't that a little…excessive?" Carter asked.
"Another shot of that beam weapon will blow us all to hell, we've already lot 6 crew members so right now colonel, I'm thinking: "better them then us." and if that mean blowing a "gatebuster" bomb in their faces then so be it! Mitchell, get ready to fire reverse trusters at maximum as soon as the bomb leaves the ship." Emerson replied.
No one else dared to argue, Emerson was sole master on board as long as he lived and the right to order the deployment of the stargate-destroying naquadria enhanced nuclear warhead was his alone.
Back on the Hyperion, the colossus reactor was done recharging and ready to fire again, Raynor ordered the front of the ship aimed as well as they could toward the enemy and get ready to finish them off. He had for a moment considered getting out of the nebula to offer them to surrender…but the though of having a bomb teleported on board as soon as he did kept his ship rooted in the nebula's interference range.
"Alright boys and girls…we came this far, let's finish this…" he started.
He was interrupted when the attention of the crew on the bridge and his was attracted by a blue flash of light out in space in front of them. He had no idea what that could be, but from here it looked like a metal cylinder drifting through space…
Then, all he saw before his ship was vaporised was the crippled enemy retreat backward at high speed and a bright flash of light.
The soundless nuclear detonation, exponentially magnified by the naquadria, barely missed the firing ship, which flew backward as far as its damaged thrusters could allow as soon as it dropped it out with the teleportation beam. The Odyssey was not further damaged by its own weapon only by a few miles.
The Hyperion crew never knew what it them. The explosion, which was powerful enough to blow up the nearly indestructible stargates and everything within a hundred mile radius, left nothing in its wake but a few stray pieces of metal, all that was left of the group once known as the Raynor raiders, their leader, the only "true hero" the human race of the terran dominion had ever known and their flagship, the Hyperion. All that, had been wiped out of existence for the sake of a dumb misunderstanding by people who, had then got to know Jim Raynor better would have probably liked him a lot and offered mutual help against their respective enemies.
But this would never come to be, having won this battle but behind severely crippled, they were in no shape to carry out their original assignment. The Odyssey's crew plotted a course for the nearest planet from which they could contact stargate command and ask them to have another ship tow theirs back to earth for repairs. They left the edge of the Mutara nebula, near the edge of Terran space, leaving behind what was probably their only chance to meet their long lost cousin from another galaxy.
Winner: a very damaged Odyssey