Chapter 1
Preface
The sapphire sphere of the Earth was visible in the lower-left quadrant of the viewport. The terminator was a sharp, black line cutting through the Mediterranean, the craters of London and Paris only visible as gaps in the glowing web of light that was the cities of Europe. Snow on the Alps was painted with the faint rosy hue of sunset. All this moved visibly below as the Jacob Carter shot past in its low, fast orbit, leaving behind, too, the vast spidery framework of Miolnir, Earth's first orbital construction yard, far above them.
Crew members moved in and out of the instrument-lit space of the Bridge with purpose but no great hurry, carrying reports or checking readings. Technically, they were on watch while the (rebuilt) Antarctic weapons platform was offline for maintenance, but, since no one else was supposed to know that, they expected no trouble. General John Shepherd sat in the newly installed Chair, working through a sequence of exercises to troubleshoot one of the first ever Earth-made chimeras of Ancient, Asgard, and Tokra technology. He was bored, tempted to clandestinely switch to a display of the communications feed from planet-side, which included live coverage of the 2028 Superbowl.
Tempted that is, until a swirling vortex opened and disgorged a fleet of armed vessels. The giant pyramid-shapes rapidly deployed squadrons of death gliders and began directing fire toward the planet below.
He dumped his hot coffee into his lap and the ship shuddered as the Ancient interface misinterpreted his reaction. Muttering several choice words, he ordered the ship to Action Stations and to prepare for launch of the ready X-305 attack planes.
Once again the ship shuddered, this time when three of the Ha'Tak motherships turned their main batteries on the Carter. The Earth ship's shields flared white-hot as they turned the enemy beams aside. Instantly, Shepherd was aware of the shield strength and energy reserves in his mind. Everything was holding, but concentrated fire would wear them down before too long. Responding to his thoughts once more, Carter began firing its Asgard beam weapons at one of the motherships and a spread of missiles launched from its underside.
"Miolnir, Miolnir, you have enemy gliders inbound. Repeat, gliders on CBDR for attack run."
Shepherd heard the report from his tactical officer and checked the status of his attack wing. The four ready X-305s were just clearing the bay and heading for the stream of gliders. More would be ready to launch in minutes, but they did not necessarily have minutes. A fresh set of impacts from staff blasts made up his mind for him.
"Alright, enough of this: I'm missing the kickoff. Hold on, people, activating the Miagi program!" That was when things began to change quickly.
Another blue vortex opened up in front of them and Carter accelerated into it. Their view of Earth vanished to be replaced by a black starfield and a sliver of the moon. Then the ship rotated underneath them, bringing the edge of North America into view, spinning rapidly away. They had passed entirely through the Earth in an eye-blink and put themselves in an eccentric, elliptical orbit. Miolnir passed beneath them against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean and the broad sweep of death gliders were now in front of them. Asgard beams sliced out again, enemy gliders hemorrhaging air and flames. Some of them jinked back and forth against their base vector to avoid the sudden menace.
Now they were coming up on the three motherships which had been firing at them. Asgard beams lanced out just as the missiles launched earlier were reaching the end of their flight path. Far short of the Ha'Tak vessals, they exploded in a naqueda-enhanced nuclear inferno, eye-achingly brilliant but harmless against the enemy shields. Small devices at the tip of each one flared bright as they vaporized, a human design from the 1950s made with Goa'uld and Asgard technology. Energy from the explosions was channeled into invisible but powerful gamma rays which drained energy from already stressed enemy shields. One Ha'Tak vanished in an incandescent cloud while another rolled away with its hull glowing from the heat.
The remaining Ha'Tak from that group spun quickly to bring its guns to bear and a red tongue reached for the Carter... which was already gone again, passed through hyperspace and right past the enemy, hurtling at the second group of motherships. The Carter spun like a top as it came out of the vortex, focusing its beams first on its remaining attacker and then on the cluster of ships bombarding Earth. Once again it vanished before the enemy could respond, leaving several more missiles behind, and now it was bearing down on an isolated ship, tearing into it with bright blue coherent particle beams.
The Lucian Alliance attackers, deciding they had had enough, opened hyperspace windows of their own. Only a few minutes after the attack began, all but two of the vessels, damaged and leaking air, as well a shattered squadron of eager-to-surrender gliders, was all that was left of the enemy in orbit. Shepherd scanned the Chair's mind-link quickly for damage reports, secured the ship from General Quarters, and brought himself back into the physical world. He blinked for a moment at the sudden intrusion of the now bustling activity of the bridge and then headed into the main corridor, leaving Colonel Snoodgras in charge of cleanup operations.
A legubrious man with a crooked smirk and a receding hairline was already there, walking toward the lift.
"McKay! I didn't know you were onboard, how's it going, Pal?"
"Still dead, thanks so much for asking."
Shepherd made an annoyed grunt and walked straight through the scientist to hit the lift controls. The doors came open of their own accord before he could reach them. The two of them got into the lift.
"Asgard Core, I presume?" entoned the late Rodney McKay in a porterly voice. The lift started moving "downward".
"Yeah, I figured I would see how the new systems are holding up seeing as we just took them into combat the first time, since I'm missing the game and all, anyway."
Rodney smiled smugly. "You're not missing it, I started recording it when the Lucian Alliance showed up."
"Rodney, how thoughtful, but since when do you care about football?"
"Since I have a bet with Snoodgras on the Giants. Two cases of twinkies and a pound of really good coffee. I had the Asgard systems crunch all of game statistics since the dawn of football and come up with the spread: I can-not lose."
The lift stopped, the door opened, and Shepherd walked out of the lift, calling over his shoulder, "and what in hell are you going to do with twinkies and coffee if you win?"
"Sure, rub it in why don't you." Rodney McKay said sulkily under his non-breath. The hologram vanished.
McKay was already there when he got to the Asgard Core. He, General Samantha Carter, US Air Force (ret.), and a diminutive Air Force Major Jennifer Hailey were all staring at a holographic schematic which hovered over the computer core. It seemed to show patterns of light passing in and out of a luminous hermit crab.
Sam Carter turned as he came in and smiled, her grey hair longer than it had been when she was in the Air Force and held back with a hand-carved Athosian clasp made from a wood with deep gold tones. She was wearing a generic SGC uniform with a contractor badge. "As you can see, the UMP held up during the entire engagement. Of, course, if it hadn't, none of us would be here to know it."
"Probably end up in the Earth's mantel or something. You'd all be dead and I'd have to go back to my last backup. Course, then I could forget about that weird dream I had involving Jennifer Love Hewitt, a row boat, and a bucket of fried chicken... oh, and a whale. The chicken ended up having lemon in the batter and I started breaking out in hives in the middle of..."
"Rodney," Carter interrupted him, "not now."
"Uh, right, well, anyway, Sam's right, the Miagi program worked flawlessly, even if I had to find out by going through the logs after it was all over, having been rudely swapped out when it suddenly sucked up all the computing resources in the ship..."
"I didn't even know you were here. Besides, it was rather important," Shepherd interrupted him, "But what concerns me more is that the shields seemed to be drained more by our hyperdrive than by enemy fire. A little bit longer and they wouldn't have needed to shoot us."
"Well, we were opening back to back hyperdrive windows while maneuvering, firing beam weapons..." Hailey reached into the hologram and switched it to a display of energy usage which made even less sense to him than the space crab diagram they had up earlier.
"...not to mention the Universal Multi-Processor," McKay gestured grandly to the array of pulsating equipment taking up one wall of the Core room, "which, I might add, made the whole Miagi-thing possible: 'Best defense, no be there.'"
"So you're responsible for the stupid name... but don't suck up all the credit old HAL, the Asgard built the micro-jumping technology into the O'Neill before their homeworld got Replicatored."
"Actually, Sir," Hailey said with a hint of annoyance, "I came up with the stupid name, but the O'Neill was just a prototype. The Asgard never got the technology working. Even with the newest Computer Core they gave us there wasn't enough processing power to calculate precise hyperspace windows one after another in combat, close to a big gravity well, dumping exactly the right amount of inertia to change orbits and so forth. In fact, there wasn't enough processing power in the whole universe to do what we just did..."
"Enter," said Rodney triumphantly, "the UMP, which uses multiple universes, an infinite number actually, to do the calculation for us without blowing up any solar systems in the process: 100% environmentally friendly, non-cataclysmic computing. But it does use a lot of juice."
"The bottom line is that it did work, even if we weren't intending to test it for another month and I think we can fine-tune from here. How did the Ancient-interface work?"
"Not bad. I ended up having to choose pre-selected attack patterns because it was too much work to tell the Core what I really wanted it to do, but it did a good job of fitting the pattern to the tactical situation. I think we can work up a better selection of patterns with some sim-time and training. I might even be able to teach Major Smurfette here to fly it."
Major Hailey glowered at him. General Shepherd had been inspecting an off-world outpost when she had been turned bright-blue by an alien plant. Given her size and color, the General had come up with the nickname and it had unfortunately stuck.
General Shepherd suddenly became thoughtful, "How did we do ground-side?"
"Not great, Sir," Hailey answered pulling up another hologram. This one he did understand, being a view of Africa with a disturbing number of flashing red circles, "They were targeting IOA headquarters in North Africa. The shield held off most of the bombardment, but there were civilian casualties in surrounding areas, especially families of personnel outside the Green Zone. Their orbit," the display zoomed out and showed a track cutting across the equator and toward Antarctica, "would have taken them past IP-COM and McMurdo, which they clearly knew was offline or they would have taken it out first. The IOA estimates two-thousand dead, maybe that much again in wounded, mostly people blinded or burned by the flash.
"The other interesting thing is that the attacking Ha'Taks had significant upgrades in the last ten years, both in shields and firepower. If they hadn't cut and run, they could have taken us and destroyed Earth's defenses. My question is: how did they know?"
Carter switched off the display and crossed her arms, leaning back against the console, "This isn't the first time the Lucian Alliance has shown up out of nowhere. The IOA rooted out three highly placed moles in the last twenty years, including a zatarc. Apparently we haven't gotten them all. I have a feeling, whatever their source is, that they are going to be very interested in 'Miagi'."
Shepherd's earpiece chimed, "CIC to General Shepherd."
He subvocalized, "Shepherd here, go ahead CIC."
"Have FLASH traffic from IP-COM: Lucian Alliance troops on the ground at McMurdo, the Carter ordered to provide X-305 support. You are requested to return to base, immediately."
"Well, folks, it's been fun," he said aloud and, through the comm, "Major, Tell the Colonel for me he officially has his ship back. Ready to transport."
With a flash of light and the sharp smell of ozone, the ship vanished around him.
