Stargate: The Guardian's Order Chapter 1: Prologue, a stargate: sg-1 fanfic

Author's notes:

Hi everyone. I started writing this story for fun and to learn to write in English a little better. I have already written many more chapters besides this one, but I would like to find a beta reader before posting them all. Since English is not my native language, I suppose there will be a lot of mistakes inside. So, whoever is a beta reader and has some spare time, please contact me.

Also, if you like the story, please feel free to write a review. If you don't like it, even write a review, but be kind and most importantly do so by using constructive criticism. I always love to hear what people liked and what they didn't and, who knows, maybe you can give me some ideas on how to make the story even better.

This first chapter and the next one are mostly to explain how things have turned differently in season 8 of SG-1 and season 1 of SGA since, in this story, there is a new player on the galactic scene that will change things quite a bit, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I don't have to mention how it would be a good thing if you watched the show first, before reading the story.

That's all from me. Here the story begins.

The chapter has been cleaned of grammar errors after a very long time (10/24/18)

Andromeda Galaxy – Unknown Nebula

Liam tried to open his eyes, but it was hard. He was feeling cold and disoriented, and for some reason, he couldn't remember where he was. He tried again to open his eyes again and, this time, he partially succeeded. Everything was still blurry, and the light was hurting his eyes, giving him a slight migraine, but at least this time they didn't close again. There was some progress, even though what he wanted right now was to close them again and go back to sleep. But he knew he had to wake up.

He needed to find where he was.

As his sight somewhat cleared, he made a few uncertain steps before he felt his legs give out. For some reason, his legs were unable to hold his weight. He slumped to the hard and cold floor, immediately finding out that his hands were not in any better condition, and unable to stop his fall. He turned and saw the stasis pod engraved into the wall behind him. He suddenly remembered where he was, and why his body was feeling so weak. He cursed, thinking on the possible reasons why his race had always been so stubborn in making stasis pods standing upright and usually engraved inside walls, instead of lying them down in a more horizontal position. It would have been much safer to get out of it, and he wouldn't now have a bleeding nose either. Well, now it was too late to think about that, and he had work to do. He still thought it would be a good idea to remain on the floor for a few more minutes, knowing the weakness he was feeling would last for only a little while longer.

He looked around the large room, recognizing the various consoles only meters from where he was lying. It was the central control room of the space station he remembered having hidden when the war with the Wraith had first started. If he was right, more than ten thousand years have passed since then, but he would have to check that out to be sure.

As he felt his strength returning, he started the slow and challenging crawl towards one of the close-by consoles, only five meters in front of him. It took several minutes to reach it, and he knew it would take even more time to sit in the chair standing in front of him. He was glad nobody was here to see him, while he was in such a compromising position.

Finally having reached the chair, he sat, quickly glancing around the room one more time. The Stargate, on the opposite side of the room, caught his attention, especially since it didn't resemble the usual Stargate he was accustomed in seeing. This gate was purple and had 46 symbols on it, as opposed to the 39 or 36 symbols on those in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies respectively. He then remembered why the gate was different. He recalled how, when the war with the Wraith had started, he hadn't felt safe to go into a stasis pod and sleep for such a long period while staying in the Pegasus galaxy. He'd then decided to tow the massive space station on the long journey to the Andromeda galaxy where he'd felt it would be much safer and where he could start other projects, without the constant threat of the Wraith. He had hidden the station in a remote location, inside a dense nebula that should be able to conceal its location from prying eyes. His plan had worked since he was still alive and no aliens were crawling anywhere on the station.

The rest of the room was the same as he remembered it, with the usual Alterran style of building things. The station was made entirely of metal, and it could easily withstand the passage of time without turning into old junk. His race had always built things to last, and it wasn't strange at all that the station looked the same as it did the day he went into stasis.

Liam took another deep breath before leaning forward, closer to the console in front of him. It was time for him to continue with his long overdue work.

'Let see what happened in the universe while I was asleep,' Liam thought.

As he touched the console in front of him, the display automatically came to life. It was a good sign too. There was always the possibility of something breaking in the time he was in stasis, and he didn't feel like going around the station to do repairs, at least not until he got his strength back. After he tapped a few keystrokes on the console, the display switched to show the Milky Way, Pegasus and Andromeda galaxies, all filled with small dots evenly spread inside them. These dots were representing all the satellites the Alterran had placed a very long time ago as part of an old project, too early to even remember for what the satellites were initially intended. The project had never been finished, but the satellites remained, never knowing if or when they would become useful again. The dots in all three galaxies started to change color from their current dull gray. Some were turning into a beautiful green color that Liam was pleased to see, while others were, regretfully, turning into a red color, indicating that the satellite had been damaged during the long wait. Liam waited patiently until all of the working ones registered to his system. There were thousands of them in each galaxy, and many had thankfully turned green. He pushed a few more keystrokes on the console, and the satellites began feeding the station with a staggering amount of data that they had collected during his long absence. When he was satisfied that enough data had been received, he focused his view on the Milky Way galaxy and further zooming in until the display showed only his long-lost home planet Terra. It was amazing how, no matter the fact that millions of years had passed since the last time he had been on the planet, the planet was still his birthplace and had special meaning for him.

Liam read the data, with his eyes growing larger with each sentence read. He was stunned at learning about the people that now inhabited the planet. Humans had progressed immensely during the time he had been asleep, much more than what he believed they would. They were already traveling the stars, something that wasn't easy to accomplish, but the thing that intrigued him the most was that Terra had been visited frequently by the Asgard and he was shocked to learn that they'd made contact with the humans there and that they had befriended them in the last five years or so.

'It looks like they've made friends.'

Liam spent the next few hours reading the large amount of data he'd received from the satellite network. He'd learned quite a bit about the state of affairs in the two galaxies that intrigued him the most. He couldn't believe that the Goa'uld could have become so strong in the ten thousand years while he was asleep. Even more stunning was the fact that humans from Terra were able to go toe-to-toe with them, successfully fighting their tyranny and lust for power. From what he was reading, it appeared as if the Goa'uld terror was finally coming to an end. He was grateful for that. He knew his people were, in no small part, responsible for the current state of the galaxy and especially the rise in power of the Goa'uld. The Stargate was a marvel of technology, allowing people to travel on so many planets with incredible ease, but it had also allowed the Goa'uld to leave their birth-planet and spread across the stars. Combined with his people's bad habit of leaving their technology lying around everywhere just to be found, someone could rightly state that what happened was in large part their fault.

Liam sighed, continuing to read the various reports he could now access. His satellites were more than capable of hacking Earth's primitive systems, and he knew that the documents from something they called 'Stargate Command' would give him most of the information that he needed. He was fascinated by the heroics these people had displayed in the past. In less than ten years since they'd started using the Stargate, they'd accomplished quite a lot. As he read the reports, though, he also found something that made him very perplexed. It was the little fact that the people on Earth didn't know about the Stargate program or the fact that they weren't alone in the universe. How they'd managed to keep it a secret, or why, eluded him. He knew that this would, one day, come to bite them in the ass.

He was sure of it.

As he turned to the Pegasus galaxy to see what was happening there, he found there was another problem there. He had planned to wake up just before the ZPMs in Atlantis were depleted entirely, and to inhabit the city. As it had turned out, the city had already been taken by the humans from Earth, and it seemed as if things weren't going so well for them. The Wraith had also awakened, and they were furious at the new people currently residing in Atlantis. Also, the city didn't have the much-needed ZPMs to be adequately powered and, to make things even worse, Earth had no way of helping them. They only had one operational ship, Prometheus, and another one still months from completion. The Daedalus looked like a much better ship than his predecessor, with shields and propulsion systems having been made by the Asgard from the grounds up, but their offensive capabilities were horrible. With missiles that could easily be intercepted and railguns that could only be useful against smaller ships, the Earth vessel didn't stand a chance against a ship like a Wraith Hive.

'Well, I think I should do something about that,' Liam thought.

They were going to need help, and fast, if he wanted them to at least have a chance of survival. He noticed that their R&D back on Earth was developing a plasma energy weapon based on Goa'uld technology, but they were a long way from having a working prototype ready. Liam thought about it for a minute before deciding that this would be an excellent way to start helping them. Liam retrieved some weapon schematics he had in his database and, in conjunction with their current designs he retrieved from their database, he created a hybrid system that the humans would be able to understand and, most importantly, produce. Their manufacturing capabilities were a problem. Several critical systems in the Alterran original designs couldn't be built without energy based matter converters or at the very least a nanite assisted production line like those the Alterrans and Asgard had been using for as long as he could remember. Because of it, he needed to simplify the weapon's design, but without affecting its efficiency by too much. He worked for another hour, and when he was satisfied with the result, he sent the data of the new weapon, as well as a few other things he thought they would much appreciate, to Earth. The humans on Earth would now have something to keep them busy, and it was now time to do the same for the Asgard. Their situation was even more precarious and in need of immediate attention.

Even before going to stasis, Liam had known what the fate of the Asgard would be if they didn't find a cure for their degenerative disease and he had worked hard for several years to find anything relevant that could help them. He saw the appropriate files and sent them as well, hoping it would be enough. He also knew his ascended brothers and sisters wouldn't be too happy with his actions, but he'd decided a long time ago that things needed to change, no matter what the cost.

'Ah… I don't care what they think. I'll help the Asgard no matter what,' Liam thought.

As if on cue…"You are interfering Liam. Again!" a female voice was heard coming from behind.

'That was fast,' he thought.

"Hello Aenea, nice to see you too," Liam said while turning to face the woman.

"Hello, husband."

The way she'd said the second word, made chills go down his spine. 'Oh she's pissed, and worst of all, she had ten thousand years to prepare for this reunion. I'm clearly in the disadvantage here.' He needed to postpone this meeting and have some time to prepare. 'Quick! Think of something!'

Of course, nothing came to mind. Instead, 'You look well' was the idiotic response Liam gave her. Saying something like that to an ascended being that looked the same for the last several million years, wasn't the smartest thing to say. It was probably something someone who had suffered extensive brain damage would say.

As he'd predicted, the 'monolog' had begun, and it lasted for almost an hour. At that point, Liam did the only thing he could do, the wisdom that he had learned a long time ago on what he must do on similar occasions.

To shut up and listen.

There had been a few moments when she'd looked so pissed that he'd been sure she would conveniently forget about their rules of noninterference and fry him like a well-done steak. So, occasionally he would nod or, if he felt bold enough, he would say 'yes dear' or 'you are right dear', the whole time, waiting and hoping she would calm down. Of course, it was his fault; there was no doubt about it in his mind. He was the one who'd unilaterally decided to leave the higher plane of existence and her in the process. To make things worse, he had done it for reasons she didn't quite understand.

Suddenly, his wife's expression changed from anger to concern. "You know, the others are not happy with you and with what you're planning to do."

"I know, but… I decided a long time ago that something must be done, and I stand by my decision."

"And you don't care about the consequences of your actions?"

"The lack of consequences is the reason I left in the first place. I couldn't just stand by and do nothing, not anymore. "

"I have to go," she said with apparent concern, but she also wanted to end the conversation quickly. "Be careful. They are watching."

"I will, and keep me apprised if anything changes upstairs."

"You still think that it will, don't you?"

"I do. Without change, life has no meaning," Liam replied, with conviction in his voice.

She disappeared only a moment later, once more, leaving Liam completely alone.

Earth - SGC

Sam was working on her laptop in her small lab, trying to understand the weapon Jack had created to help the Asgard destroy the Replicators. She'd tried to ask Jack how he'd done it, but from his expression, she'd quickly realized it was a waste of her time and therefore decided she would be better off on her own.

While she was working, her screen suddenly started flickering. She was sure her laptop was ready to die on her. She cursed - also promising to herself never to buy a Dell ever again - when suddenly the display came back to normal, but it also showed something else. It showed several new schematics scrolling on the screen that she'd never seen before. She looked at them for the next few minutes, and the only thing she could say was, "What the fuck?"

She'd spent the next fifteen minutes on the phone talking to people from the R&D department before deciding she had enough. She stormed out of her office with her laptop in hand to speak to the one person in charge and see what he thinks about this.

Jack was walking down the hallway, not exactly knowing where he was going. The only thing he knew for sure was that he had already eaten, so the mess hall was out of the question, and that he didn't want to go back to his office. The last two nights he had spent having nightmares related to the tons of paperwork he'd been doing these days.

"Sir!" Carter was calling him from behind.

'Good, something must be important for her to run like that. Maybe I'll have an excuse for NOT being in my office for the next few hours,' Jack thought, with amusement.

"Carter! What's up?" Jack quipped, cheerfully.

"Sir, I have something to show you, and it's important," she said, while practically bouncing with excitement.

"Then… show away."

"Not here, sir. I think it's best if we go to your office", Carter opined, immediately noticing the annoyed expression on the General's face. Not really knowing what she'd done wrong, she decided to wait.

Jack reluctantly nodded and led the way to his office. Once inside, he immediately noticed the ever-growing stack of paper on the left side of his desk. He cursed, softly asking God what he'd done wrong for being punished in such a horrible and completely unfair way.

"Well, what is it?" Jack asked while sitting in his chair behind the desk.

"Sir, something strange happened to my laptop less than half an hour ago."

'Is she joking? If she starts talking about her computer, AGAIN, I'm going to shoot myself', Jack thought, but waited; maybe there was more.

"I've just got a ton of schematics on my laptop depicting several key systems for the Daedalus, ranging from weapons, thrusters, propulsion, energy distribution and a lot more."

"So what? Somebody from R&D sent them to you. What's so strange about that?"

"That's the thing, sir, no one from Area 51 sent me anything. And the strangest thing is that these schematics are significant upgrades to our current systems."

"What do you mean exactly when you say considerable upgrades?" Jack was now more than merely curious.

Sam leaned forward, showing one of the schematics on her computer screen, "This one looks like the prototype weapon the guys at Area 51 are working on, but they are months, or maybe even a full year from finishing something that can work. Instead, this one is finished and with several improvements to the original concept."

"Carter, are you saying that someone has given us a working design of a big honking space gun?"

"Even better. These designs can be easily scaled up or down. We can make weapons that can fit on any vessel, even on our fighters. And as I said before, there are more designs in here for a better propulsion system, power distribution and a lot more."

Jack observed Carter as she looked like a fat kid in a candy store without adequate supervision, "But how? Did the Asgard have anything to do with this?"

"I don't know, sir, but I don't think so. There is something else", Carter said, with a sheepish expression plastered all over her face.

Of course, it was too good to be true. There had to be something that would make good news end up being a bad one. Jack felt the sword falling even before Sam began explaining.

"It looks like, before we got these designs, someone managed to access our databases. I checked at Area 51, and the same thing happened there too."

"Carter, what did they take?" Jack asked, dreading the answer.

"Everything, sir."

"Crap! Do you know how much paperwork that's going to cost me?" Jack was furious.

'Really? THAT'S the biggest problem he's having in all of this,' Sam thought. "I can only imagine, sir."

"All right, do we know anything? Who, how or why at least?" He had to call the President for this and he needed something to calm the man down, or it would be hell to pay.

"Nothing, sir, we don't even know where to start looking," Carter said, with an apologizing look.

"Alright, try to find what you can, and next time we see the Asgard, we ask if they know something. As far as I know, they are the only ones who can pull off something like this."

Sam nodded and stormed out of the office, leaving Jack to the horrible sight of his desk, with the stack of paperwork on one side and the red phone on the other.

Somehow, the paperwork didn't look so terrible anymore.

Ida Galaxy

Finally, it was payback time. For so long the replicators had made a mockery of the Asgard Fleet and, with that, a mockery of him. Now, things were different. With this new weapon at his disposal, the replicators were on the run, and he enjoyed every moment of it. The best part was that their ships would usually remain intact after the fight, hence still salvageable.

Only moments after the fight had ended, Thor noticed his comm system started receiving a lot of data. He cautiously looked at the data he was collecting, confident it was some nasty virus the dying replicators had sent, and he certainly didn't want to spend the next several hours cleaning up his systems. However, after a while, Thor became more and more interested, now being confident that in fact, it wasn't a virus. As he read more, his eyes grew larger and larger, as if that was even possible for an Asgard. Suddenly, he became very excited, again, as enthusiastic as an Asgard could become. He didn't know if he should go left or right. Suddenly, he stopped in his track, forcing himself to calm down with sheer mind power. Such behavior was unbecoming for the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet, no matter the reason. When he was satisfied he was calm enough, he opened a channel to the Asgard High Council.

To Thor, the seconds it took to establish the connection felt like hours. Finally, the link was established, and the large display showed Odin on the other end. Thor didn't wait for any pleasantries and started speaking in his native language, at least a thousand words per minute. Odin was excited as well, and soon the display showed several other Council members, as well as their lead geneticist, Heimdall.

"What do you make of this, Heimdall," Thor asked, with impatience.

"It will be of great help. This data will be instrumental in stopping the disease and, one day, we may be even able to procreate again."

The entire Council was in awe as well as Thor. They never thought it could be achieved. Beating the degenerative disease the cloning process had created was hard to accomplish, but they always knew it was at least possible. But being able to procreate again, was another matter entirely.

"Thor, do you know who sent this data?" Odin asked.

"No, the carrier wave seemed to originate from everywhere. There is no way to locate the source. Maybe if the communication happens again, I could be better prepared to scan for the source", Thor said.

"You know what this can mean. Only one other race has the capability necessary to find a cure for us, at least, that we know of," Odin said.

Thor blinked twice. "It is possible, but why would the Alterrans refrain from contacting us more directly?"

"I cannot be certain Thor, but we know the Alterrans behaved, on several occasions, in a strange manner that we did not understand until we saw the results," Odin opined.

"If that is the case, they will show themselves eventually. In the meantime, I will keep a watchful eye for any evidence. Somehow, I believe the people of Midgard will soon get involved as well. They always do," Thor opined while emphasizing the last part.

The connection ended, and Thor continued with his task of preparing his ship to tow the captured one back to their home planet where it was going to be repaired or, if not possible, at least used as raw material.

Andromeda Galaxy

Liam had been very busy in the last few months. One of the problems was that his timetable had been shortened considerably. Not only were things in the Pegasus galaxy not going as he had predicted, but the state of the Andromeda galaxy was also troubling. The Alterran had never populated the Andromeda galaxy and had never performed any terraforming on any planet. Still, since Andromeda was the biggest galaxy in the local cluster, it had a lot of naturally occurring habitable planets, but for some reason, there hadn't been any race advanced enough to travel the stars ten thousand years ago. Things were different now. Several races had reached the necessary level, and some were showing clear signs of hostility and xenophobia towards others, with one of them being pretty close to the region of space he'd inhabited.

Moving wasn't an option; he knew that. Too many projects were placed here to leave. While he was in stasis, not everything awaited idly for his return. The only ZPM factory still available in the whole Alterran domain was here, and the factory had spent the last ten thousand years producing ZPMs. ZPMs were incredibly difficult to produce since they were nothing more than very sophisticated batteries that, once constructed, needed to be charged. To charge a ZPM the factory needed to be positioned near a massive star or pulsar, and with equally massive solar panels, the energy from the sun would be stored inside the ZPM. In the beginning, it had taken five years to charge a ZPM but, as time passed by, the station had deteriorated more and more, and the last ZPM was charged in almost fifty years. And now that he was awake again, the factory needed to be repaired.

Other facilities had also been built in the same system, which was another reason for not being able to leave. Shipyards and factories awaited his return to start production of everything he would need on his quest. Of course, Liam thought about activating those facilities before going to stasis, but there were too many unknown variables to do something like that. He thought about what could happen if someone accidentally found hundreds of Alterran warships ready to be taken. He could have made quite the impact on the universe, and not in a good way. Being guilty of the death of many races, wasn't something he had been prepared to take a chance of ever happening, no matter how small the chance. Instead, he'd taken out all the control crystals from the shipyards and factories, and left them without power. Since they had been placed on various moons, without oxygen to support life, he'd believed they would remain intact for the next ten thousand years he would have spent in stasis. As it was, all his assets were in good condition, and once the power was restored, the facilities would take care of themselves. All facilities were automated, and if there was some minor damage, in time, it would repair itself. All this was going to be of great use to Liam in the upcoming years, but this wasn't the most important asset he had.

More than ten thousand years ago, he'd started a project similar to the one his brothers and sisters had done a very long time ago. When the plague came to the Milky Way galaxy, the Alterrans were decimated, and they eventually had to flee to the Pegasus galaxy. That was almost five million years ago, and it took them several more million years to terraform thousands of planets and spread life on them in a new galaxy. More than five hundred thousand years ago, the Pegasus galaxy was flourishing with human life and everything looked great, except for one thing. The number of Alterrans was diminishing rapidly. This time, the plague wasn't the cause. Instead, it was ascension. More people ascended every day than they were born. Still, the Alterrans believed that the humans in Pegasus needed guidance and decided to take some humans from one planet and advance them as much as they could, both biologically and technologically, in the short time they had left. That was how the Lantean race had been born, and Atlantis was given to them for safekeeping as well as a beacon of light for the other humans in the Pegasus galaxy.

Much in the same way, Liam had started a project in the Andromeda galaxy that eventually created the Edenian race. The Edenians grew both in numbers and as an advanced society. They lived their lives to the fullest without worrying about wars, hunger or enemies coming from the sky, since the Andromeda galaxy, strangely enough, didn't have space-faring races.

Liam moved to another console and started pushing a few buttons. It was time to lift the time dilation field he had placed in their system and to visit them. The time to fulfill their destiny as guardians had finally come. He beamed to his ship, sat in its control chair, and started activating the ship's systems. Moments later, the ship entered hyperspace, on its way to Eden Prime.

The voyage didn't take long since the planet was only a few thousand light years away. Immediately upon arrival, he entered orbit above their capital city and beamed down in front of the tallest building on the planet. A woman walking by stared at him for a long time before turning to the statue in front of the building. Suddenly, she looked all excited when she understood the statue and the man in front of her looked the same.

"Ancestor Liam?" the woman asked, unsure.

"Yes," Liam replied, with a smile on his face.

The woman's eyes grew so large that Liam thought they would pop out of their sockets. She turned abruptly and started running toward the main building, leaving Liam to stand there like an idiot.

She must have understood that she forgot something because she turned and ran back towards him.

"If you would like to follow me, we can inform the Council of your arrival," she said with an apologizing look.

Liam smiled, "Lead the way."

While walking down the hall toward the Council Chambers, people started turning towards them with puzzled looks, unsure if this man was him. In front of the Council Chambers, the woman spoke quietly to another man who, after sparing a glance toward Liam, hastily entered the chamber. Moments later, two people were ushered outside, and he was admitted.

Inside, nine people stood behind a semicircular table. The man in the middle rose, "Ancestor Liam, you have returned. It is an honor to meet you in person. I am Loran, the presiding member of this council."

"Hello Loran… Council," Liam said while nodding to every member in the room. "It is an honor to meet you as well."

"Is it time?" Loren asked with excitement in his voice.

"It is Loran. The time to fulfill our destiny is upon us. Is everything in order?"

"It is Ancestor, we have worked very hard in your absence, and our race has flourished. The Order of The Guardians has grown considerably in that time, and they have worked very hard to prepare for this moment," Loran said, with pride.

"I'm glad to hear that, we'll need it," Liam said, ending the sentence with a somewhat more serious tone.

Loran picked up immediately, "Has something changed?"

"It has. I didn't predict some unfortunate developments, both in this galaxy and others. It appears several races are now capable of space travel in this galaxy as well. Although this is not the concerning part per se, I believe that some of these races are very hostile and even xenophobic. One, in particular, is expanding its domain considerably, and it's very close to this region of space," Liam explained, with some concern in his voice.

Loran was perplexed. He didn't know much about other races, or how to wage war against them for that matter. "Is there a chance we will have to relocate?"

"No, too much has been invested here. Here is your home and it will stay that way. Besides, any race foolish enough to attack this planet will pay the ultimate price. My only concern is that this will set us back in the other two galaxies," Liam said, pausing for a moment, "Also, Atlantis has been taken by the people from Terra."

"That is most unfortunate. I know the original plan was to inhabit Atlantis and make it our base of operation in the Pegasus galaxy. What are you planning to do?"

"Not much, except maybe help them if we can. It is something I didn't predict, but it doesn't mean it is a bad thing. I believe we could even find an ally in the people of Terra, something that can work in our favor."

"What is our next move," one of the members asked.

"As we speak, three cruisers are under construction. They will be ready in less than a week. They will be dispatched to the appropriate galaxies, and their first task will be to gather intelligence." Liam didn't like the fact that his first ships would be mere cruisers, but he knew that waiting for larger vessels to be built wasn't an option. He needed to grow in numbers, and fast.

Although these cruisers were marvels of technology and they had quite the punch, he knew that facing the Wraith and their hive ships with them would be suicidal. At least, it was better than the love boats the Lanteans had used in their war. How did they plan to win with those ships was beyond his understanding. Having a warship with only drones as a weapon was shortsighted. Sure, the drones were powerful, but you had only a limited number of them on any ship and, after you used them all, your warships were useless. Worse even, drones were a bitch to produce. The production process was very energy consuming and required some of the rarest materials in the universe to work. As it turns out, a drone was more expensive than a Wraith dart was. It looked as if the people of Terra were more prepared for war than the Lanteans ever were. The Tau'ri, as most people in the Milky Way were calling them these days, had designed an excellent ship. They had different weapons on-board and even had real fighters, as opposed to the Lanteans having used gateships that were great for everything except for fighting, and again with drones as their only weapon.

"We will also build two outposts, one in the Milky Way and one in the Pegasus galaxy. They will be placed on planets that don't have gates so that nobody knows their location. I will provide two new gates that will be placed there, and only these gates will be able to connect to our base of operation here in the Andromeda galaxy. The outposts will have some defenses, but our most effective defense will still be anonymity. Furthermore, every outpost will have a few recon teams stationed there. For now, it will have to suffice."

Loran simply nodded, "Very well, I'll contact the Fleet Commander and the Commander of the ground forces. They are competent people and will provide the appropriate personnel and troops."

As the conversation continued and things got set in motion, Liam switched the topic, asking about their society instead. He saw how proud Loran was while he talked about their accomplishments during his absence. In that time, the Edenian population had grown more than five times, even with the time dilation field slowing down time considerably, and now the Edenian society numbered in almost fifty million. They made quite some advancement of their own as well. Since the Edenians weren't here only to provide the needed people for the war to come, Liam had decided not to give them too much knowledge, so that they could discover things by themselves. The only people that would participate in the incoming conflicts were the members of the Guardian Order. These people had trained for the past hundred years to prepare, and they now numbered five hundred thousand, although most of them were only reserves that lived regular lives and would just be called if needed. As of this moment, only ten percent were active, and most of them were Fleet and Fleet Intelligence officers. Liam thought that ground forces would be needed, but not in significant numbers and especially not in the beginning.

Eventually, the meeting ended and Liam beamed back to his ship. He had a lot to do and time knew of only one direction.

Only days after their meeting, two old builder ships already in Liam's possession departed for their respective galaxies to build the outposts. Liam soon found out about another Edenian trait. They were incredibly stubborn. He tried to tell them that only the Guardian Order was to be involved, but the Edenians didn't want to hear any of it. They decided that they would provide the people needed to build the outposts and some would even stay and make sure the outpost would run smoothly. Liam was glad. He preferred having people who wanted to help, even if that meant defying his wishes, rather than puppets who would do everything he said unconditionally.

Earth - SGC

General O'Neill was working at his desk in his much-hated office when Walter stormed in.

"General, we've just received a message from deep space. It's addressed to you," Walter said giving a piece of paper to Jack.

Jack looked at the paper and read, "SHE IS DECEIVING YOU. SHE IS TRYING TO FIND OUT HOW THE WEAPON WORKS. KILL HER!"

Jack jumped out of his chair and ran to the gate room. "Dial the Alpha site!"

Alpha Site

At the Alpha site, the wormhole connected and Teal'c, who was in the lab with Carter and Replicarter, started receiving a message through his earpiece. He immediately raised his weapon.

Replicarter understood what was about to happen, but the only thing she managed to say before Teal'c fired was, "Fuck!"

On the other hand, Sam didn't know why Teal'c had just killed her. "Teal'c, WHAT THE FUCK!?"

"ColonelCarter, I received a direct order from General O'Neill to shoot her immediately," Teal'c replied in his calm and composed way.

Sam gave him a death glare before storming out of the lab.

Earth-SGC

Jack was sitting behind his desk, waiting. He knew she was coming, and he knew it wouldn't be pleasant. Jack thought about putting the base on lock-down for the next few hours so that nobody could gate in or out, but he knew he couldn't do that. He also knew it would take more than just a few hours for her to calm down, if at all possible. As if on cue, she stormed into his office, closing the door behind her.

'Oh boy, if she's pissed,' Jack stated to himself.

She was furious, "Sir, why did you give the order to shoot her?"

"Carter, calm down," Jack said, also knowing she wouldn't calm down. He took the piece of paper with the note and gave it to her. He waited for a moment, letting her read it. "We received this message just moments before I contacted the Alpha site and gave the order to shoot her."

"Who sent this message, sir?"

"Don't know, but it came at the right moment. If she was able to adapt to the weapon, we'd be in deep shit, and I can tell you right now, Thor wouldn't be very pleased with us."

"But, sir, if we don't know who sent this message, it could very well have come from Fifth."

It was possible, but Jack was sure this wasn't the case, "I thought about that, and I'm not that convinced. I don't think Fifth would send us a message that says 'kill her'."

Sam still wasn't convinced. She believed her double was telling the truth. However, seconds later, Walter entered Jack's office with new information. "Sir, we just received word from the Alpha site. Fifth attacked the planet and was destroyed by the satellite in orbit."

Thank you, Walter. That's good news. You may go," Jack replied with a smile on his face.

Sam, on the other hand, was shocked, because that meant- "THAT BITCH!"

On the other side of the table, Jack was so happy that he could bounce up and down for the next ten minutes. Not only were the last two humanoid replicators dead, but he'd also been right, and she'd been wrong; at least this time.

"I'm sorry, sir, I thought she was telling the truth," Sam said with an apologizing look.

"Not your fault, Carter. It's difficult to believe that the other you is lying to you. It's almost like lying to yourself."

'Did that make any sense?' Jack thought, not being sure. "Anyways, I think that in the end, all went well for a change. I think some celebration is in order, don't you think." 'Anything to get me out of this office.'

"Yes, sir," Sam replied with a little more spirit.

"Great! Let's find the others," Jack said while getting on his feet.

"Sir, there is still one problem," Sam said with a puzzled look.

"And what's that?"

"Who sent us the message?"

Jack thought about it for a moment, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that too much. Somehow, I think we will find out soon enough."

They both got out of his office in search of Daniel and Teal'c.

Pegasus Outpost

Liam stepped into the Stargate and found himself in a control room, similar to the one on Atlantis. This one didn't have the upper floor with all the consoles positioned there. Instead, everything was placed on the same level, and the room felt somewhat smaller. Behind the various consoles, the Fleet Commander of Pegasus Operations (FCPO) was waiting for Liam's arrival.

"Commander Soren, what was so urgent?" Liam asked without any small talk since Soren had urgently requested him to come.

Soren bowed slightly before answering, "Ancestor Liam, there's a development on Atlantis that is of some concern.

"What kind of concern?"

"A massive storm is approaching Atlantis. Atlantis won't be able to withstand such a powerful storm without the shield, and at the moment they don't have the necessary power requirements to raise it. They think they can harvest the energy of the storm and raise the shield that way, but..."

Liam thought about it for a moment. It was a problem and a big one. Their plan could succeed, but it was a long shot at best. It was also too soon to make their appearance, but they had to do something had since leaving Atlantis to be destroyed by a storm wasn't an option.

"Alright, here is what we'll do. Redirect our ship to the nearest planet with a stargate. I'll make a small energy device and charge it with enough energy to raise the shield for a short period, just enough to last through the storm. Once the device is on board the ship, they are to proceed to Atlantis and, while cloaked, insert a team that will go to the power room where they will activate the device in case the Tau'ri plan fails. With some luck, they won't know what happened and if they manage to do it on their own, even better." Liam knew there was a chance the people there would discover his team, but he didn't have any alternative and, as he said, leaving Atlantis to fall wasn't an option.

"I'll get right on it," Soren replied and turned towards the comm. operator. "Contact our ship with orders to head for the nearest planet with a Stargate."

Liam rushed out of the gate room directed toward the small lab the outpost had. He had a lot of work to do and little time to do it.

As planned, an hour later the device was picked up by the cruiser, and the ship immediately entered hyperspace, en route for Atlantis.

Atlantis

After almost an hour of travel, the ship exited hyperspace inside Lantea's system and cloaked immediately. A puddle jumper with the four members of Pegasus Recon One (PR-1) was ready to take off in the main hangar. After cloaking it departed the hangar bay, descending into the atmosphere and heading straight for Atlantis. After fifteen minutes, it reached Atlantis and landed near the central tower.

Inside the jumper, the four members were making a few last minute preparations. They were all wearing a light black armor that wasn't blocking their motion but still capable of providing more than adequate protection for their torso and shoulders. They also had a wristband on their left hand and dark sunglasses on their eyes. The wristband contained technology that allowed them to cloak or raise a personal shield for a limited amount of time. It also had sensors that would scan the surrounding area and relay the information to their glasses. The glasses also could switch from normal vision to night vision or infrared, and through them, the user could still see his team members, even while cloaked. They all carried an energy rifle of some kind, a holstered pistol, and a knife on their right thigh.

Aaron, the captain of the team, just finished checking his gear. "Alright, is everybody ready?"

Garen looked at the captain with a smirk on his face. "Always boss."

Receiving confirmation from the other as well, he continued, "All of you should already know what our mission is, but for those who didn't pay enough attention I'll say it one more time. Our mission is to reach the power room in the central tower without being detected. As far as we know, there are only a few people in the entire city, so this shouldn't be a problem, but because the city has sensors, we will have to go cloaked and remain that way until we reach the room. Once we reach the power room, Marin will disable the internal sensors there, so we can de-cloak again without being noticed. We will have to be quick. Our cloaking system will last for only half an hour. Once we are in the power room, we will wait there until it's time to activate the device and only if needed. I want this mission to go smoothly, just as the last time we were here. Let's go."

Indeed, this wasn't the first mission the team had done in Atlantis. Less than a month ago, they had to plant several listening devices around the city. This is how they knew the storm was coming and what the Tau'ri had planned to save the city.

While the team was making its way to the power room, things in the control room just went totally FUBAR. The Genii managed to gain access to Atlantis through the gate while disguised as Athosian refugees. They were able to kill the only two guards that had stayed in the city before they could react.

Meanwhile, Rodney and Weir were returning from their task of disabling the grounding stations, when they heard over their radios what was happening in the control room. Instead of running the other way, or at least take some guns, they decided to storm the gate-room unarmed. Once they reached the control room, Weir just asked the Genii angrily what was going on. Not the smartest thing to do when you were facing armed soldiers. Of course, their actions didn't go unpunished, and they were immediately taken as hostages. What they thought they would accomplish was beyond anyone's understanding.

At least one man knew what needed to be done, so the first thing Sheppard did was to run to the nearest weapon's locker. The Genii wanted the C4, so that was what they wouldn't get. Sheppard took some guns and hid all the C4 so that they couldn't find it.

The Genii weren't happy in the least. Things were not going according to plan, especially when an ambush that was supposed to capture Sheppard ended up with two of their men killed, which made Kolya angry. He didn't know how much more pissed he would get until the day was over.

The four men waited patiently in the power room, oblivious of what was happening in the city up until the captain's earpiece chirped. "Captain Aaron, there's something you should be made aware. The city has been attacked by some humans that call themselves the Genii. Atlantis is currently under their control."

'Shit! Why can't things ever go according to plan?' Aaron thought. "What are our orders?"

"Your primary objective stays the same. The shield is the most important thing right now. Your secondary objective is to lend a hand to getting rid of the 'infestation' if you can, but in no circumstances are you to be discovered or leave evidence of your involvement. One of their people disabled the power, so you don't have to worry about the sensors anymore."

"Acknowledged, Aaron out." Turning to his team, he continued, "All right, you heard what the man said. You two will stay here and watch the room, while Garen and I will see if we can take out a few of these Genii."

Garen was a little concerned, "Boss, how are we going to do that without leaving evidence? Our energy rifles are a dead giveaway."

Aaron already had an idea, "We'll leave our weapons here. I saw an armory with Tau'ri weapons while we were coming. We will take a few of theirs. I don't think they will mind."

Garen nodded, and they took off. They found the armory only ten minutes later and took two P90s. They spent a few minutes figuring out how they worked before heading out in search for the Genii. It didn't take long for their sensors to pick up two life signs, only a hundred meters down their path. They both cloaked and proceeded further until they reached the two unfortunate Genii who didn't know what was coming. Aaron motioned to Garen to take the left one while he would target the right one.

"Now," Aaron whispered.

At the same time, both of them shot a single bullet. The Genii only twenty feet away, just dropped, dead on the spot.

Aaron looked at his weapon, "Impressively accurate weapon." The bullets hit dead center where he was aiming.

Garen grinned, "Yeah, boss, these things are not bad at all. Let's find some more Genii."

Aaron nodded, and they continued their search. In the next half an hour, they managed to take down three more enemy soldiers.

Aaron looked at his wristband, "The storm will be here soon, and we don't want to be in the hallways when they start pouring all that power through them." They turned and headed back to the power room.

In the meantime, Rodney and Weir were working on the central console trying to activate the shield. It wasn't working and, as a result, Kolya was furious. He had lost contact with all his men except for the two remaining soldiers in the control room. He didn't even have enough people to take all the stuff they'd stolen back home through the gate.

'How the hell did Sheppard managed to kill so many soldiers.' He thought, not having the right answer to that. And now, their scientist was telling him their plan wasn't working, and Atlantis was going to fall in a matter of minutes. He had to get out of here.

He turned to his men, "We are leaving. Take whatever you can." Turning toward Weir, he continued, "You two are coming with us. You will pay for what you did."

Weir was furious, "What we did!"

The genii scientist and Kolya pointed their guns at them and forced them to follow. Before they reached the gate, John and Ford made their appearance, guns blazing. Rodney immediately understood the situation and, with the speed only a frightened scientist could achieve, he ran out of the way. The Genii scientist did the same and seconds later he was through the gate. Weir wasn't as fortunate. Kolya had a tight grip on her, using her as a shield. However, he did not know that John was good enough - or crazy enough - to shoot anyway. The bullet hit Kolya in his left shoulder, making him lose the hold he had on Weir and fall through the event horizon.

Weir had fear plastered all over her face. She didn't know if John was that good, or if it was sheer luck she didn't end up with a hole in her head.

With haste, they all reached the control station, and Rodney began working on powering the shield. Once Teyla and Carson reached the control room, they activated the shield just before a massive wave of water hit the city.

Aaron was cursing silently. "Why the hell did they wait until the last minute to activate the shield?"

Marin looked at his wristband taking some reading, "I don't know sir, but they waited for too long."

"How do you mean too long?"

"The shield generators didn't receive nearly enough energy, and now that the shield is raised, the lightning can't hit the rods anymore."

"All right, activate the device so that it looks like the energy in the shield generators is lasting longer. With some luck, they won't even know somebody helped them".

They activated the device, and the energy reserves started falling much more slowly. The storm lasted for ten more minutes, and after that, the shield dropped. Aaron and the rest of his team picked up their things and left. No one saw them, and no one knew they were there.

Things began returning to normal in Atlantis. Weir and John were looking from the balcony the last group of people gate-ing back.

Weir was pensive, "John, we came too close to losing Atlantis."

John shrugged, "I know. Hopefully, it won't happen again."

Weir wasn't satisfied. "I'm not confident of that. We were too reckless. We gave the IDC codes to so many people without thinking that somebody could steal them."

"Maybe you are right."

Weir changed her gaze to a naughty one, "Thank God we had a terminator on Atlantis when it all went down."

John wasn't too pleased to be called a terminator, "Hey! It's not my fault! The Genii just kept coming at me!"

"I can't wait to read your report and see how you managed to kill ten people."

John looked at her with a puzzled expression, "You mean five people?"

"No John, I mean ten people."

John didn't know if she was trying to have some fun at his expense or what, "I don't remember any other five."

Weir was now frustrated, "What do you mean you don't remember? How can you not remember killing five people?"

'What was going on here?' John thought. "I'm telling you, I took out five soldiers, and that's it! Maybe Teyla and Ford had something to do with it."

Weir didn't know what was going on. She knew Teyla and Ford didn't do it. "I've read their reports, and they only mentioned having stunned the two Genii that were threatening you."

Weir and John were now looking at each other, both of them not knowing what to say, when they heard an irritated Rodney. "Huh, it shouldn't have worked."

Weir turned to Rodney who was working on the control station nearby. "What shouldn't have worked?"

Rodney was still looking at the display, "The shield. It should have dropped much sooner than it did."

John stated the obvious, "But it did work!"

Rodney was already entering his babbling speech mode, "I know it worked, but it shouldn't have! Look," Rodney motioned the two of them to look at the display. "This power spike is when we charged the shield. You see how it starts falling right after we raised the shield?"

Both Weir and John replied at the same time, "Yes Rodney, what's your point?"

"You see here how it slows down. It shouldn't have happened."

John thought about it for a moment, "Maybe a lightning stroke the rods again and charged the shield generators."

Rodney was looking at John as if he was some kid speaking nonsense. "Once the shield is raised, it's impossible for the lightning to go through it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! Of course, I'm sure!"

In the meantime, Weir was silently thinking about the entire situation. If what they were saying was true then- "So, you Rodney are saying that there is no way we could have had enough energy for the shield to stay powered for so long, and you, John, are saying that you didn't kill ten people, but only five."

Suddenly the implication of what Weir just said dawned on Rodney and John. Somebody else must have done it.

John was the first to ask, "Who?"

Rodney followed, "How?"

Weir was troubled. They needed some answers. "I don't know, but let's try to find out. Rodney, work on this and try to find what exactly happened. John, we are going to see Carson and the dead Genii soldiers. Let's check how they died. We will reconvene in an hour in the conference room."

They both nodded. Rodney began checking and rechecking all the data he had, and John and Weir went to see Carson. An hour later, they were all in the conference room.

Weir began, "Okay Carson, what have you found from the autopsy of the ten soldiers?"

"Well, all ten soldiers were killed by 5.7 bullets from our P90s, but there is a difference between the five soldiers John killed and the other five we found near the armory. While those killed by John have multiple wounds consistent with rapid weapon's fire, the other five were killed with a single headshot. What is even stranger is that the shooter, or shooters, must have been very close, only 20 feet from their victims."

John was puzzled; for several reasons, "How do you know they were so close?"

Carson smiled, "It's because Atlantis has some remarkable scanners that can measure the amount of gunpowder on the victim with incredible accuracy."

"So, somebody stood 20 feet in front of them and shot them in the head, and they didn't even flinch? To do that, somebody must be incredibly fast or incredibly invisible," John opined, as much to himself as to the others. Then he continued, "Oh, by the way, two P90 are missing from the armory."

"That doesn't mean anything. Maybe the Genii took them," Weir replied.

John didn't believe it to be true. "I don't think so. For one, the Genii weren't interested in our rifles, they wanted the C4, and second, if they wanted our rifles, they'd have taken more than just two."

Weir frowned. He was right. "Rodney, did you find anything on your end?"

Rodney nodded, "Actually I have. From the power logs, I managed to pinpoint the location where a power source must have been connected. It was in the ZPM room. I checked the ZPMs. They are depleted, the same as they were before. So, whoever helped us must have used an alternative power source. I also found out that the internal sensors in the ZPM room had been disabled. They must have tried to reconnect them back, but they were damaged in the process."

Weir was pissed, "Great! Somebody, who knows a lot about ancient technology has managed to get access to the city without us even realizing it. Do we at least know if they are still here?"

Rodney was the one to answer. "No, they aren't. We checked with the sensors and only our people are in the city."

John wasn't so sure, "How do you know? If they managed to disable the sensors once, they could do it again."

"No, that's not possible. Look, the city sensors can scan the entire city without the need for internal sensors. Only a few rooms that are shielded need internal sensors. Only the control room, ZPM room and a few more are shielded because you don't want those rooms to be susceptible to different forms of radiation," Rodney replied.

John was worried. They'd all forgotten one crucial thing, "You are all forgetting something. Like the method they used to get on-board Atlantis." Seeing that nobody understood, "They didn't use the stargate; that, we know for certain."

Rodney understood and finished John's thought, "They were here by ship!"

"Bingo!" John exclaimed.

Teyla didn't know what 'bingo' meant, but the thought that somebody that wasn't the Wraith can travel through space was unheard of, "I do not know of any space-faring race in the Pegasus galaxy that has spaceships, especially with the Wraith present. They would have never allowed it."

"Still, the evidence suggests otherwise. Let's hope that, whoever they are, they are friendly," Weir replied.

"It seems that way. If they wanted to harm us, or even take the city, they had ample opportunity to do it," John said.

"Alright, enough about this, we won't find out anything else anyway. What are we going to do with the Genii? If they are bold enough to attack us here, our teams are even more exposed out there, and I for one don't think the Genii will forgive and forget the seventy men John had single-handedly killed." Weir knew John only did what it had to be done, but she also liked to tease him a little.

John didn't like Elizabeth reminding him how many people he had killed, but her concern was valid. "We will have to be very careful from now on when we go out there. I also think that we should send a message to the Manarians. After all, they were the ones who ratted us out to the Genii."

Weir was concerned, "John, we are not going to attack the Manarians."

John was deeply hurt, "Give me some credit, would ya? Contrary to recent evidence, I'm not the Terminator you think I am."

They all chuckled, except for Teyla who didn't know what a Terminator was.

John was now even angrier. "Anyway, I only meant that we should pay them a visit with a few teams and tell them how displeased we are with them and that next time we won't be so forgiving. We can also politely ask them to give us any information they have on the Genii and that that would go a long way for us to forgive them for what they've done."

Weir thought about it, and though she preferred solving problems through diplomacy, she too was angry and didn't want something like this to happen ever again, "I'm inclined to agree. A little intimidation can go a long way in preventing something like this from happening again, but we will discuss the details later. I think we all have a lot of work to do so, if no one has anything to add, we can end this meeting."

Since no one had, the meeting ended, and everyone went their separate ways.

Teyla rushed to catch up with John, "John, can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"What is a Terminator… or bingo for that matter?" Teyla asked with a puzzled look on her face.

John smiled, "Let's go grab something to eat, and I'll explain."

Teyla nodded, both going for the mess hall.

Pegasus Outpost

Liam and Soren waited the return of Aaron's team to congratulate them on a job well done. The Tau'ri had found out that somebody had helped them, but fortunately, they still didn't know who they were.

Aaron's team walked through the gate, and they immediately greeted both of them.

Soren was first to congratulate. "Captain Aaron, welcome back and congratulations on your success."

"Thank you, sir, I apologize we weren't able to cover our tracks better," Aaron replied, apologetically.

Liam didn't want to hear that nonsense, "No need to apologize, Captain. The important thing is that Atlantis is safe, and I don't think there was something more you could have done anyway."

Aaron replied with a smile. "Thank you, sir, we appreciate that."

Soren continued the discussion, "So, Captain, what do you think of these Genii?"

"Not much, Commander. Our encounters with them were quite brief, but they are the military type, there's no doubt about it, and from what I've seen, they're not very friendly."

Liam was pensive. He didn't need another enemy, no matter who they were. He turned to Soren. "Do you think they will make things more difficult for us, or Atlantis for that matter?"

Soren believed it to be true, "Our intelligence on them is sketchy at best, but from what we have collected thus far, I'm sure they will further their agenda with disregard for others. They were already on the warpath with the Tau'ri, and after what happened in Atlantis, I don't think that will change."

Liam had to agree with the Commander's assessment, "Well, there isn't much we can do for now except to gather as much information on them as possible. Tell Fleet Intelligence to find as much as they can about them, what assets they have, how many there are and on which planets they are located, but also tell them to be discreet. Things are moving too fast, and we are still not ready.

"Gentlemen, I need to go back to the Andromeda galaxy. There is some development regarding the alien race near our borders that needs to be addressed."

Soren didn't know much about what was happening in the Andromeda galaxy these days, it wasn't his job, but he was still concerned. After all, their home was there. "Is there something to be concerned about?"

"No, no, there's nothing to worry. I'll try to make contact with these aliens and see what happens."

"Well, good luck. Let's hope they are open to discussion."

"Thank you, my hope as well."

Andromeda Galaxy

Liam ended the conversation and gated to his station floating in space somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, still hidden by the nebula surrounding her. The station wasn't empty anymore. People were buzzing around while operating the various consoles. He spoke briefly with one of the technicians before beaming to his ship.

His ship, on the other hand, was empty. It had been built a very long time ago, even before he made the Edenian race. Because of it, he had to build the ship to be self-sufficient, so the only thing that operated it was a VI (Virtual Intelligence). The VI was a marvel of technology. It was a merging of an AI core and a copy of Liam's consciousness, not very different from what the Asgard used to do on a few occasions. It was strange for Liam to talk to a copy of himself, but the benefits outweighed the awkwardness he sometimes felt. He didn't know how to call it either, so he decided to call it VI, "VI, is everything ready?"

A holographic representation of Liam appeared on the bridge. The only difference was that it wore black robes instead of the white ones Liam preferred. "It is. If we want to reach the opposite side of their territory first, the journey will last twenty minutes."

Liam didn't want the Senari, as the aliens called themselves, to know from where his ship was coming, so he decided he would travel far from Eden Prime and meet them there. Liam simply nodded, and the VI knew what to do. A hyperspace window opened, and the ship sped inside.

As predicted, the journey lasted twenty minutes. Upon exiting, Liam instructed the VI to raise the shield, but not to power the weapons. It wasn't that kind of mission, no matter what the outcome would be.

Not far away, a ship stood motionless. From the ship's size, Liam thought it was a heavy cruiser of some kind, approximately five hundred meters in length. The scans showed that it had several weapon arrays, a clear indication of his primary role. It didn't take long for the ship to notice them. It immediately turned to face them and powered the engines, pushing on a direct intercept course.

"Send our standard first contact message on all channels. Let see how they respond."

They didn't. Instead, they powered weapons, and after entering weapons range, they fired some green energy bolts at Liam's ship.

Liam stood up from the control chair, "Status of our shields?"

The VI mentally checked the pertinent data, "The shields remain at one hundred percent efficiency. They do not possess the required energy output or sophistication to bypass our shields."

'No wonders here,' Liam thought to himself. Its shields were a slight variation of the one Atlantis had, the most durable shields the Alterran had ever built. It was slightly different because the one developed for Atlantis had a small problem which made it useless aboard ships. It was so strong that it didn't only stop all types of weapons directed at it, but it also blocked all kinds of weapons fired from inside as well. The exception was the drones, as the only type of armament that could be used in conjunction with that type of shield. Liam didn't want to build a ship that only used drones, so he had to compromise by not using the same protection as Atlantis.

That, coupled with three ZPMs on board his ship, and the enemy had no chance in hell of overpowering the shield.

'They have guts. I give them that. Or is it insanity?' Liam didn't know, but for them to fire on a ship more than six times their length alone and with more advanced technology, wasn't such a great move. "Alright, let's wait and see what happens. Make our message repeat in a loop. Maybe we can bore them to death."

It was sad to watch for how long the enemy ship fired at them with no result. They finally stopped shooting, but to Liam's disappointment, they still didn't initiate contact.

'What the fuck. Is it so difficult to say hello?' Liam thought, angrily. One thing was to shoot first and ask questions later, he saw that kind of attitude many times before, but to not even answer, THAT WAS JUST RUDE!

'One shot, I need one shot from the main cannon to send them all to the afterlife. No, no, I need to calm down. They are not a threat to me and shooting them wouldn't solve anything. Except maybe for my mood. Don't think like that; you are above this.'

The VI snapped Liam from his impure thoughts, "You too, huh?"

Liam nodded, "Yeah! I don't know if a can take it anymore."

"Hey, what do you think how I feel? They are shooting at me! The greatest warship to ever be built," the VI answered, proudly.

Liam sighed, "Alright, let's leave before we both lose our patience. It's apparent we won't achieve anything here anyway."

The ship turned on his axis by almost a hundred and eighty degrees with tremendous speed as to show how angry it was. It opened a hyperspace window and sped through it with the same haste.

Liam needed some distraction, so he turned to the one thing that relaxed him the most; designing ships. He liked to think of various ships he would build with the help of the VI, something he was excellent at. Sometimes, they would argue for hours on the type of ships they'd create and how to best utilize the resources at their disposal. One of these discussions had led to the conclusion that they needed to build at least two more shipyards, one in the Pegasus and one in the MW galaxy. The reason was simple. He wanted to make smaller ships, some even less than a hundred meters in length. Some would be recon ships while others would serve as fast response units. The problem was that the almost four hundred meter long cruisers he already had were the smallest ships that could house an intergalactic hyperdrive. If he'd build ships without the IG drive in the Andromeda galaxy, there was no way to send them to other galaxies, unless he made large carrier ships and that was something he wasn't prepared to do. Hence, he decided the best option at his disposal was to build two additional shipyards in the other two galaxies. He'd already sent the two builders there, two massive ships capable of making almost anything. They would soon reach their destination, two uninhabited systems where they can start building the much smaller shipyards and other facilities that will serve to refine the needed materials.

The first ship that the new shipyards would build was a corvette type, only sixty meters in length, designed for recon and Intelligence gathering missions. These corvettes would still have a fast hyperdrive, but it would lack the endurance needed to cross the void between galaxies. There were two other advantages to building smaller ships. They were cheaper, faster to produce, and they required fewer people to operate. It was shortsighted at best to tie down larger ships just for intelligence-gathering mission, making two hundred or more people wait and do nothing for several days at a time while they monitored some godforsaken planet. Instead, the corvettes would need only a dozen or so people to operate correctly.

The second type of ship would be a destroyer, approximately two hundred and fifty meters in length. Without the IG drive and the hangar bays for fighters and puddle jumpers, the ship would have extra room to house a larger than usual reactor and more weapons. It was going to make the destroyer almost as strong as a cruiser, even though it would be much smaller. The only negative side was that these two new shipyards wouldn't be able to build larger ships. Cruisers, battleships, and maybe someday dreadnoughts, could be constructed only at the two main shipyards he had in the Andromeda galaxy. He wanted to build at least one more capital shipyard, but he just had two builders at his disposal, and the two new shipyards took precedence, so it would have to wait.

He sighed, knowing that time wasn't on his side. The Wraith were already culling worlds, and he knew that, at the moment, he didn't have the strength to oppose them. Similarly, in the Milky Way galaxy, the Goa'uld had hundreds of ships at their disposal, and he had, well, one ship there. And to make things even worse, it was a small cruiser. He thought about an alternative way to fight the Goa'uld, a move that didn't involve the standard brute force approach and believed that the Jaffa's rebellion was the most promising candidate. Their resistance was growing in strength, but it was painfully slow progress. He had to think of a way to help them. The Jaffa were the Goa'uld greatest weakness, as a direct result of their arrogance. In the end, their dependence on the Jaffa to fight for them, or rather instead of them, will prove to be their undoing.

Liam closed the holographic design of the Corvette and walked to his room to take some much-deserved rest. He hadn't slept in almost two days.

Milky Way Outpost

The outpost was on a very inhospitable planet. The level of humidity was so high that you thought it was always raining, something only insects liked and, as a result, the planet was full of them. The outpost was placed somewhere near the South Pole where the climate was somewhat better. Not that it mattered, the outpost was underground for obvious reasons and had a closed environmental system, but people still liked to go outside from time to time. It wasn't healthy to be underground for too long. It was too depressing.

In the last two months, the outpost had grown considerably, now capable of housing thousands of people with a small manufacturing facility and medical bay. One day, the fleet and the number of recon teams were going to grow in number, and when that happened, the outpost needed to be able to support them.

The last few months were mostly uneventful, but now Liam was waiting impatiently for Recon-One (R-1) to return from their mission. He didn't have to wait for long though before the gate started to spin and only seconds later R-1 stepped through. Liam walked to greet them, "R-1, welcome home. How was your mission?"

Maras, the Captain, replied. "The mission was a success, sir… for the most part at least."

Liam raised an eyebrow, almost like Teal'c would, "How do you mean, for the most part?"

Maras looked at his team and sighed before beginning to tell the story.

Unknown planet - Two hours earlier

On the planet's surface, the Stargate was being guarded by half a dozen Jaffa with the symbol on their forehead indicating they belonged to Ba'al. The six guards suddenly turned and raised their weapons, the moment the Stargate started to spin. They watched as the seven chevrons locked one after the other. The wormhole formed, but to their confusion, nothing came through.

Or at least, that's what they thought.

Only one of the Jaffa noticed a slight disturbance in the event horizon, but it was already too late. R-1 had been already through the gate, and in mere seconds the six Jaffa were shot without even realizing what was happening. After checking their sensors and making sure they were alone, they de-cloaked. Having a cloaking device was helpful at times.

Maras, the team leader, was the first to speak, "Ok, let's proceed with our mission as fast as we can. The longer we stay here, the greater the chances of being discovered."

R-1 started the long trek towards their target. They couldn't use their cloak because they needed it later, and the built-in energy capacitor could last for only half an hour. Still, they had sensors that would tell them if there were patrols in a thousand feet radius, which made evading them that much easier.

Ba'al had become too strong for the System Lords to provide adequate resistance, so Liam and the Commander of Milky Way operations had decided that something had to be done. This planet had a manufacturing facility that was providing several critical components in the construction of Ba'al's Ha'tak class vessels, and yet the defenses on the world were minimal. Ba'al believed that no one knew the location of this facility and, as a result, only a small garrison of Jaffa was stationed here. The destruction of this facility would delay the production of his ships for at least a month. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but it was better than doing nothing.

The team had managed to evade two patrols before reaching the complex where two guards were guarding the main entrance. They had to take them down to gain access, and they had to do it quietly. R-1 cloaked once more and slowly approached the two guards unaware of what was coming. Maras and Mekai walked behind the two guards while Anya and Erin kept their rifles pointed at the guards in case something went wrong. Maras and Mekai grabbed both guards at the same time, snapping their necks from behind. Without a word, they hid the two bodies behind some nearby bushes. It was better if someone noticed two guards were missing than to find two bodies lying on the ground.

A couple of days before the mission, the cruiser had passed through the system and had scanned the entire facility. So the team knew the exact spots where to plant the explosives that would do the most damage. They had to plant their bombs in three places. The first two went without a hitch, the last one, not so much. Their cloak didn't work anymore, and one Jaffa ended up walking straight where they were trying to place the final explosive. The Jaffa wasn't very alert, and it took him almost an eternity to point his gun, partially because of how cumbersome a staff weapon was. Anya and Erin, who were guarding the corridor, shot the Jaffa with short bursts from their rifles. The Jaffa dropped dead on the floor. They feared someone could have heard the shots, and decide to come and check, so they decided to leave as fast as they could. Fortunately, they were not far from the entrance point because, the moment they stepped outside, an alarm began blaring throughout the entire complex. They ran toward the woods with two dozen Jaffa exiting the complex in hard pursuit.

The fifteen minute run toward the gate was exhausting, but they wanted to make some space between them and the chasing party. When they reached the gate, they saw the wormhole was already open, and to their left, there was a strange vehicle on six wheels. The moment they arrived in front of the stargate, three people came out of it. The two teams looked at each other for a long time, both parties measuring the others, not exactly knowing what to say or do.

'Oh goody, just what we need,' Maras thought to himself.

Daniel thought they looked just like any SG team if it wasn't for the slightly different vests and another type of weapons. He had to break the silence before somebody decided to raise his gun, "Hello, who are you?"

Maras looked at Erin and gave him a small nod that made Erin move in front of the DHD and start dialing. Maras looked back at Daniel who was waiting for an answer, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to postpone our introductions for another time. You see, a few dozen angry Jaffa are coming this way, and they are only a few minutes behind us. I suggest you gate back home as well or at least hide before they get here."

Two things happened next — a big explosion in the distance and the gate opening a wormhole. While the SG-1 was looking at the distant smoke, three of the four members of R-1 had already gone through the gate. Maras turned to the puzzled members of SG-1, and with a smile, he continued, "Colonel Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c, I hope we'll see each other one day and have a little more time. But until then, I can only say that it's been a pleasure having made your acquaintance."

Maras stepped through the gate, and the connection closed. Carter just watched the stargate, trying to understand what had just happened, while Teal'c had his eyebrow raised without saying anything.

"They know who we are, but we have no clue who they are, and I don't like it one bit," Carter said.

"Indeed."

Daniel thought he needed to mention something, "So, two dozen angry Jaffa are coming here, huh."

It took a few seconds, but eventually, Carter understood what Daniel had meant with that, "Daniel, dial the gate. Teal'c, help me with the MALP." She didn't want to explain to Jack why they'd lost yet another MALP. The IOA performed extensive research of all SGC expenses. One report showed that SG-1 had the highest rate of MALPs lost. And the IOA didn't care that this was because SG-1 was getting the most dangerous missions either.

They'd managed to gate through, just before the Jaffa were able to reach the opening where the gate was.

Earth - SGC

Inside the gate room, Jack was already waiting, wanting to know why they were back so soon, "Hello kids, home so soon?"

Carter reached the bottom of the ramp before replying, "Yes sir, something… strange happened, sir."

"Strange? What do you mean by strange?" Jack was puzzled.

Carter didn't know how to begin, "To tell you the trough, sir, I'm not sure exactly what happened. When we gated to the other side, we bumped into a four-person team that was about to leave the planet. I have no idea who they were, but they knew who we are."

O'Neil didn't follow, "Wait, wait, what team?"

Daniel was the one to reply, "They didn't say, they were in a hurry. From what we saw, they just blew up Ba'al's facility there on the planet. Some Jaffa were chasing them, so they gated away. We did the same immediately after. The strange thing is that if they weren't wearing dark clothing and different weapons, I would have thought they were one of our teams."

"Indeed O'Neill, there was a great resemblance," Teal'c stated with a raised eyebrow.

O'Neil was thoughtful for a moment, "And they knew who you are?"

Carter nodded, "Yes, and by that, I mean us personally. They knew our names."

"Alright, go and get changed. We'll talk about this later." O'Neil didn't know what was going on, but it seemed there was another player on the galactic scene now. He wasn't sure, but he believed this team was somehow connected to the messages they had recently received. It seemed to O'Neill that they were on the same side. The recon mission on Ba'al's planet they had a few days ago, was to be followed by the same type of task these people had just completed. No matter how it looked, these people are an unknown factor, and he didn't like it.

He decided he must eat something.

Milky Way Outpost

Liam listened to Maras' recollection of events that happened on their mission. He knew the Tau'ri would eventually connect the dots. The next time they talked to the Asgard, they'd find out that somebody helped them as well, and once they established contact with Atlantis, they'd know even more, but now wasn't the time to think about it. He had a task only he can complete, and if things went as he'd planned, Atlantis would be able to connect to Earth once again.

Pegasus Galaxy

It was a beautiful day on the surface. The sun was high in the sky, and the temperature was perfect. Not too cold not too hot, just like a typical spring day that made him want to find a tree and just lay there and relax, but he didn't have the time to do something like that. Instead, he entered the monastery that stood in front of him. After a few minutes of walking through the various halls, old and with clear signs of long-term neglect on them, he entered the central room where he found a woman working on some scrolls.

Liam approached the woman, "Hello, Allina."

The woman was so deep in her work that she hadn't even noticed someone entering the room. She looked at the man who seemed somewhat strange to her. He wore white robes she had never seen on anyone else. "Hello. Who are you?"

Seeing that she was somewhat cautious, Liam smiled. "My name is Liam, and I'm Alterra."

Allina didn't know what 'Alterra' meant, "Alterra, what's that?"

"Alterra is the name of my race, the race that came here in the Pegasus galaxy more than five million years ago. I'm a member of the race that spread life in this galaxy on thousands of planets. I'm a member of the race you refer to as your Ancestors."

The woman was startled, and she was clearly showing it. Eyes as large as planets, a heart rate that threatened to turn into a heart attack, and the loss of color on her face were dead giveaways. But there was something else as well. She was suspicious too. "You are? And how do I know you are telling me the truth?"

Liam sighed. No test or proof would prove that he was who he said he was. "Please let's go for a walk; it is such a beautiful day outside."

Allina hesitated for a moment, but there was something trustworthy in this man. She decided to follow him outside. They walked in silence through the monastery, and they were already a hundred feet in the open when Liam spoke again. "You asked me a question, and I don't know how to answer it. I don't have anything that would prove to you that I am who I say I am."

She as well didn't know how somebody could prove something like that, "Then tell me, why are you here?"

Liam smiled, "You know why."

Realization crossed her face, "You want the Potentia."

"No, not exactly. I want you to give it to somebody else."

"Who?" She asked, but realized the answer right away, even before Liam could reply. "The people that now inhabit the city of the ancestors. Why?"

"That's simple. It's because they need it. The city needs it," Liam answered.

"But they are not our ancestors."

"That's true, but neither were the people that gave the brotherhood the Potentia for safekeeping."

Allina was puzzled, "What do you mean?"

"Allina, the Alterran were your Ancestors. The people that gave this device to the brotherhood more than ten thousand years ago were called the Lanteans. They were more your siblings than your ancestors." Liam paused for a moment before continuing, "More than five hundred thousand years ago my race understood that our time here was coming to an end. More and more of my people were ascending to a higher plane of existence. Because of it, we decided that someone else had to continue our work. So, we took humans from one planet and advanced them as much as we could in the time that remained. The Alterrans gave Atlantis to them in the hope they could use it to help others in this galaxy. That is how the Lantean race was born, the one you mistakenly call your Ancestors."

Allina stood there not knowing what to do or say.

Liam smiled, "You're still unsure that I'm telling the truth."

"I don't know. I don't see why you would make up a story like the one you just told me, but on the other hand, I still don't have any proof that you are telling the truth."

"I understand." Liam thought about it for a moment, thinking of a way to gain her trust, "Would it help if I showed you Atlantis?"

"I suppose, but how?"

Liam smiled at her before both of them were beamed to his ship. The moment they appeared, Liam noticed the frightened expression on her face. "Don't be alarmed; we are on my ship above your planet. We'll need it to reach Atlantis."

Seeing that her natural color had started to return, Liam gave a mental command to the ship. The ship lurched forward, and a moment later a hyperspace window opened, and they went through it. Allina was fascinated with what she saw outside the window. She had never witnessed anything so beautiful.

Lantea's System

The ship exited hyperspace, and in front of them, a blue marble appeared. The planet grew larger and larger as they came closer, finally settling once they reached its orbit.

"Where are we?" Allina asked while looking at the planet below.

"This is Lantea, the planet where Atlantis resides."

Liam instructed the ship to magnify the image and Atlantis appeared as detailed as possible.

"This is Atlantis?" Allina asked while still looking at the display that she previously believed was a window.

"Yes, this is Atlantis; the city built more than five million years ago. Unfortunately, her very existence is now threatened." Liam finished with a glint of sadness.

"What do you mean?"

"The Wraiths are coming, and without the Potentia the city can't defend itself." He didn't want to tell her that even with the ZPM their chances of survival were small.

Allina watched the city float for a long time, "Alright, I'll give them the Potentia."

Liam smiled, "Thank you, Allina. There is something else I need to ask of you. I don't want you to mention me when you give them the Potentia."

Allina had a questioning look, "Why?"

"I'm not ready yet to introduce myself to them, but I hope that the day will come when we will forge an alliance that will fight the Wraith together until they are no more."

"You intend to fight the Wraith… and win? Is that even possible?"

"Everything is possible. I know the people of this galaxy have lost hope that they could one day live free without fear of the Wraith, but I can promise you that, in one way or the other, that day will come."

For the first time, Allina sensed hope. Hope that was lost to the people of this galaxy a very long time ago. The thing she didn't realize was what 'one way or the other' meant. Liam firmly believed that the Wraith had to be stopped at all cost and that, if no other methods were successful, he would use his last resort, a device that his people developed a long time ago. The weapon would kill the Wraith, but would also kill all humans in the Pegasus galaxy. He didn't like that option. Even though he would first relocate as many people as possible to another galaxy, he knew that some would stay, for one reason or another, unwilling to leave their homes. There were also too many planets to go through, and he didn't know, if it came to that, if he'd have enough time to save them all.

Liam sighed, thinking of the Lanteans and the great mistake they'd made. Of course, the Wraith didn't evolve naturally. They couldn't have. It's impossible for a race to naturally develop if it can only feed on one other sentient race, and the Lanteans were to blame.

In all the good the Lantean had done, there was one thing that pushed them in the wrong direction. The Lantean wanted to imitate their parents. Nothing wrong with that, but they weren't patient enough. They tried to find a way to accelerate their evolution, and when they encountered the Iratus bug, they began to experiment with it. Their curiosity came from the fact that the bug possessed telepathic abilities, something the Lanteans knew their predecessor possessed as well. The result was the creation of a retrovirus that would have given them those abilities, but what they hadn't understood was how aggressive the bug's DNA was, and once they finally did, it was already too late. The entire lab, with all the Lanteans, was infected and they mutated practically overnight, and the Wraith race was born. It wasn't surprising that all Wraith based technology was biological. The first Wraith were mostly doctors, biologists, and geneticists that worked in the lab.

Liam and Allina talked some more about everything and nothing in particular. Of course, he didn't tell her how the Wraith came to be; there was no point in burdening her. Soon they departed for Degan where they said their farewells and Allina was beamed back to the planet while Liam went back to the outpost to continue his never-ending work.

Atlantis - one day later.

Hearing the familiar sound of the gate opening, snapped Weir from her administrative work. She stormed outside her office, reaching the stairs that led to the gate when John, Rodney, Teyla, and Ford stepped through the event horizon, "So John, what did they want?"

John was smiling from ear to ear, but that wasn't what made Elizabeth curious. Instead, it was Rodney's behavior. He looked like he was about to start drooling any moment now, and for some reason, he seemed very protective of his backpack.

John was the first to speak, "Rodney, show her."

To John's dismay, nothing happened. He looked at the scientist and noticed his reluctance even to show it to anybody. John thought the only thing missing was for Rodney to start whispering 'my precious' right there in front of them. John looked at Weir with an apologizing expression, "He's been like that ever since we got it. Rodney! Don't make me use it!"

Rodney looked at John with fearful eyes.

John slowly opened one of his pockets and slowly started to take out the yellow fruit.

"Alright, alright, no need for threats," Rodney exclaimed while taking off his backpack and showing the content to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth looked at the content in disbelief, "They gave it to us?"

John nodded, "Yup. They changed their minds."

Elizabeth was puzzled, "But why? I mean, the first time you met them they were adamant the ZPM would be returned only to their ancestors. What changed?"

John shrugged before replying, "I don't know. They just told us that it belongs to Atlantis. Although, I had the impression they were hiding something."

"Like?" Elizabeth asked.

"I don't know; I didn't ask. I didn't want to ruin the moment with too many questions."

Weir nodded approvingly, "Good thinking. They could've decided to change their minds again." She turned to Rodney before she continued, "Rodney, I want that ZPM installed, and everything tested as soon as possible. We have a phone call to make."

Earth – SGC

At the SGC, business was as usual. Jack was holding a meeting with the SG-1 team, discussing recent developments including the appearance of someone else's team. "…so we don't know who they are."

"No sir," Carter responded dryly.

"GeneralO'Neill, after our encounter I asked other Jaffa if they have seen teams fitting the description. They said they occasionally had seen a team that fits the description, but they believed them to be of the Tau'ri, just with different clothing," Teal's interjected.

Jack thought about who they could be, and why they were so mysterious. "I just hope they are the people same that sent us those messages."

"Hope? Why?" Daniel asked.

"Because, if they aren't, it means there are two new players on the galactic scene, and I don't think I can take it," Jack retorted, really not liking the idea. "Alright, enough about this. Carter, when is the Daedalus shakedown scheduled?"

Carter blinked, "Sir, it has already begun. The Daedalus has already reached the Alpha site where it will perform several tests to see how its new systems work."

'Dammit! I missed it. Maybe I can catch up with them through the gate.' He wanted to see how the ship performed. "I think we are done here. If there's nothing more, I'm going to the Alpha…"

A white beam of light encompassed Jack, and he was gone.

After a moment of silence, Daniel was the first to speak, "So, are we going to eat something?"

"Yes, I'm hungry," Sam replied.

Teal'c simply nodded, and all of them headed together for the mess hall.

In the meantime, Jack was beamed aboard Thor's ship. "… Site to see the Daedalus…"

Jack looked around realizing he wasn't in the SGC anymore. He turned and saw Thor standing in the center of the bridge. "Thor, buddy."

Thor blinked. He didn't mind O'Neill calling him 'buddy', except that he didn't know what buddy meant. He tried once to look on their Internet, but that thing was a nightmare. Most information was wrong or irrelevant. He didn't understand how the people of Earth could find anything useful there. One day, he would have to ask him what it meant, "O'Neill, I apologize if I have interrupted something important."

Jack waved with his hand as to say 'no problem' when he noticed something, "Thor, you look… different." Jack looked at Thor more intently, "You look… taller?"

"O'Neill, you have noticed. My new body is ten percent taller than the last one."

Jack had to ask, "Thor, doesn't a clone look the same? I mean, isn't a clone... like a copy?"

"It is, but after tens of thousands of years of making new clones, our bodies deteriorated, and we needed to find a solution to the problem. We made a recent breakthrough that will solve the degenerative disease that afflicted the Asgard race for a very long time."

"That's great news. I'm very happy for you guys."

"Thank you, O'Neill."

"We should celebrate. Listen, what do you say we go see the test of our new ship at the Alpha site."

Thor was grateful Jack didn't propose the have a party of some kind, and he liked the idea of seeing how their new ship performed. Thor nodded, "That is acceptable, O'Neill." Thor touched one of the stones, and the ship sped through hyperspace.

Jack looked at the hyperspace for a few seconds, before casually turning toward Thor with a smug expression on his face, "We should be just in time for the plasma weapons test."

Thor blinked twice, "I didn't know you developed energy based weapons?"

Jack liked the fact they now had some real weapons on their ship. "Oh yeah… well, we had help."

Thor was now very curious, "What kind of help?"

Jack took a deep breath before speaking, "Well, almost half a year ago we received a message from space. Carter did actually, on her computer. I can tell you; she was so excited that she was all over the place. The data contained a ton of improvements for the Daedalus. Amongst the data, there was also the finished and improved design for a plasma-based weapon that we were trying to develop. They also gained access to our entire database though. I can tell you, the president wasn't happy about that and neither was I. This is the reason why I wanted to talk to you."

Thor listened carefully to Jack's recollection of events while making deductions of his own. What had happened recently to both of their races wasn't a coincidence. The timing when they'd received the data, coincided perfectly with the time he'd received the data with the solution for their cloning problem. Unfortunately for Thor, Jack could sometimes be very alert.

Jack looked at Thor and knew he knew something, "Thor, you know something don't you?"

'Busted,' Thor thought to himself. He shrugged before answering, "I also received a similar data burst approximately at the same time as you did. It contained the cure for our disease."

"So, somebody gave you what your race needed the most, and did the same for us. It looks like they are helping us to become stronger so that we can fight the Goa'uld or anybody else on better terms." Jack thought out loud.

Thor blinked, "Your deduction is sound. Although, without more evidence, we cannot be certain of their real motives."

Jack agreed with Thor's assessment, "Well, we know they are humans, but we don't know where they are coming from."

"How do you know they are humans?"

"Oh, SG-1 bumped into a four men team on a recent mission. They sabotaged one of Ba'al's facilities, and they had some fancy weapons with them. I think it's safe to say that this is too much of a coincidence not to be related."

Thor believed Jack to be correct, but he also caught one mistake Jack was making. They only looked human. Thor kept listening as Jack continued with his recollection of events that led to the destruction of the two remaining human replicators. He was a little pissed that they almost gave the replicator known as Replicarter the only effective means to destroy them. Thankfully, the message they had received saved them from making a big mistake; a mistake that could have caused them a lot of grief.

"Thor, there is one thing that troubles me. How did they know? I mean, it's not like we posted a big sign for everyone to see saying 'we have a human replicator on the Alpha Site'."

"If they were able to access your entire database, it is possible they have other means to monitor your actions," Thor said. What he didn't say was that to do something like that you needed to be in the system or even in orbit of the planet in question to do it. Thor believed there must be a cloaked ship or more likely a satellite relaying the collected data. Maybe he can find the satellite and contact them through it. Thor frowned mentally. If it were Goa'uld cloaking technology, it would be easy to detect it. But if Alterran technology was involved, his task would be much more difficult.

"So, you think they are constantly spying on us?" Jack didn't like it.

"It is possible, O'Neill. Your technology is not advanced enough to detect advanced spying equipment. When we return to your planet, I will perform a detailed scan of your facilities." Thor replied.

"Thanks, Thor. I don't really like being spied all the time, no matter what their intentions are."

Thor nodded, and his console beeped, "We have reached your Alpha site. There is one ship in orbit around the planet. I presume that is the Daedalus?"

Jack looked at the large display on the bridge and saw the ship orbiting the planet, "Yes it is. Isn't it beautiful?"

Thor simply nodded, "Do you mind if I perform a scan of your new ship."

Jack waved with his hand, "Go for it."

Alpha Site

Thor scanned the ship for a few seconds before the results started scrolling on display. Their new systems were considerable improvements if compared to the Prometheus' systems, but this wasn't exactly what he was trying to find. Thor found it inspecting the power distribution conduits. They were of Ancient design, he was sure of it. His excitement ended shortly after when the Daedalus powered its shield and turned towards them. Their sensors detected his scans. "Impressive. Your ship was able to detect my scans. They have raised shields and powered weapons, and are currently approaching our position."

"We'd better open a channel and let them know who we are."

Thor started working on his console. "I have established a connection. You may speak."

Jack cleared his throat while trying to remember the name of the Daedalus' captain. "Colonel Caldwell, this is General O'Neill aboard Thor's ship. Please stand down weapons."

"General O'Neill, we picked up an active sensor scan of my ship. Weapons are powering down," Caldwell replied over the comm channel.

"No problem Colonel, I was showing Thor our new ship. How's the ship?" Jack asked cheerfully.

"It is performing better than expected. All tests so far have exceeded all expectations. We were about to head for the nearby asteroid field to test its new weapon systems. If you'd like to watch…" Caldwell replied.

"That's exactly why we are here Colonel. Please, lead the way."

"Acknowledged, Caldwell out."

The Daedalus sped toward the asteroid field no more than five minutes away, with Thor following closely behind. Once they reached the area, they powered all their weapons systems. First, they fired from their railguns, shuttering large pieces from the asteroid they were targeting. Then they tested their missiles. The missile didn't have any armament because they only wanted to check its new propulsion system. Their new ion propulsion made the missiles accelerate almost three times faster, and it had better maneuverability than its predecessor, making it more difficult to target. The grand finale was the plasma weapons. The Daedalus had two fixed plasma cannons that could only shoot forward and another two omnidirectional guns mounted on separate turrets, one above and one bellow. Although everything had performed as expected, the two frontal cannons were the most impressive. Every shot they made was enough for the large asteroids to shatter under their tremendous power.

Thor watched intently at the scans his ship performed while the Daedalus fired its plasma weapons. His eyes went wide when he saw the amount of power displayed by the two frontal cannons. He believed that even his ship's shields would eventually collapse under a sustained bombardment from these cannons. "Impressive O'Neill, this weapon is considerably stronger than what the Goa'uld are using on their ships."

Jack was happy. He finally had his big honking space guns. Now he only needed to convince the President to name the next ship the Enterprise, and his dream would be fulfilled. "Yes, they are. Although, they tell me those two guns can suck the life out of the energy reserves in no time."

Thor checked his readings and nodded, "Yes, your power reserves would be enough for approximately ten shots at full strength. After that, your rate of fire will decrease considerably. Still, I believe that you now have a ship capable of fighting the Goa'uld even when faced with more than one ship."

"That is what we were hoping to achieve. Although, it will be some time before we can test that theory. The Daedalus is scheduled to leave for the Pegasus galaxy the day after tomorrow."

Thor blinked, "You are going to search for Atlantis?"

"Yes, we are. We don't know what happened to our people. They probably can't contact us or something even worse, and I know from experience it's not a good feeling being stranded somewhere without support. So we are sending the Daedalus. His hyperdrive is faster than the one the Prometheus has."

Thor waited for a moment, leaving Jack with his thought. "O'Neill, I must return you to your planet and then head back to my galaxy. I must discuss this new information with the Council as soon as possible."

Jack snapped from his thoughts, "Oh yeah, sure. I have to go back too. It's not a good idea to leave the fort for too long. Who knows what those kids are doing when I'm out."

Thor's ship entered hyperspace for the short voyage back to Earth. Once there, Thor beamed Jack back in the conference room and began scanning for any surveillance device inside the SGC. He wasn't able to find any, but his ship detected a subspace transmission coming from the compound. Thor couldn't find out where the receiver was because the signal was omnidirectional, but that wasn't important right now. He managed to find the modulation the signal's carrier wave used and embedded a message of his own in it. Immediately afterward, he departed for the Ida galaxy and his home planet.

Andromeda galaxy – Liam's Space Station

Liam was sitting on the control chair in his lab while a device was virtually being constructed in front of him. The new invention floated like a hologram while pieces were continually added to it. When the last part was connected, the device materialized on the small pedestal below. Liam powered down the control chair and stood in front of it. He pushed a few buttons on one of the sides of the pedestal, causing the device to start humming. It didn't take long before sparks started flying and the humming stopped.

'Crap! You piece of junk! Why won't you work!' Liam was trying to calm down without too much luck.

A voice behind him made things even worse. "Hello, Liam."

Liam sighed, "Hello, Aenea."

"Liam, you must stop with what you are doing."

"Right to business I see. May I ask why?" Liam raised an eyebrow.

"The others don't want you to work on the device."

"I get that, but why?"

"They don't want you to interfere."

Liam rolled his eyes, "Unbelievable, I'm finally close to finding a way to get rid of that half ascended son-of-a-bitch, and who wants me to stop; the ones that are responsible for his state because I'm a hundred and ten percent sure he didn't ascend on his own. I hate to sound repetitive, but I must ask again. WHY?"

Aenea sighed, "It is not your place to fix this."

Liam was now pissed, "FIX! I'm not trying to fix anything Aenea. I'm trying to prevent more bloodshed at the hands of that monster. You know, for beings that under no circumstances will interfere with the lower plane, you do that a lot. And who the hell helped that thing ascend in the first place?"

Aenea shrugged, "Oma."

'Shit, crap… fuck, fuck, fuck.'

Aenea could've sworn she saw smoke coming out of Liam's ears. She knew that Liam and Oma were good friends even though they disagreed on almost everything.

Aenea was also angry at Oma because she believed she'd somehow influenced Liam into leaving the higher plane of existence. She didn't know how, because Oma usually preached the opposite, but Liam changed more and more during the time he spent discussing things with her.

She waited patiently for Liam's cognitive abilities to return to normal before continuing, "I'm sorry, he tricked her somehow. She didn't know he was Anubis."

Liam sighed, "Aenea, I understand the gravity of what she did, and I can even imagine how pissed the others are at her and even understand their wish to punish her, but please can you help me understand one thing?"

Aenea blinked, "And what would that be?"

"What did the people from the lower plane do to deserve this kind of punishment? I mean, while the others are punishing oma, a lot of people are dying down here as a direct result."

Aenea didn't have an exact answer to that. "The others have forbidden Anubis from using his powers or the knowledge he gained while he was fully ascended."

"So his sudden understanding of our technology and subsequent use of the same came from…" Liam waited for an answer.

Aenea frowned, "What do you want me to say? I don't know. Are you happy now?"

Liam shrugged, "No, not really."

Liam and Aenea stood in silence for a long time. They looked very depressed, no one knowing what to say.

Liam broke the silence first. "So, what do you think they'd do if I continue fiddling with this device?"

'Shit! I had to know he wouldn't give up so easily.' Aenea looked at Liam with a concerned expression. "I'm not sure, but it's possible they'll try to stop you. They are not very happy you are building a device that can kill an ascended being."

Liam looked puzzled, "I'm not building that. I'm building a force field strong enough to imprison him. Wait! Does that mean it is possible to kill an ascended being?"

'Shit! Now I've done it.' Aenea tried to back up quickly, "No, no, it isn't. Look, I have to go now… it's very late."

He grinned, "Sure, no problem."

'Damn, he didn't buy it. When the others hear about this, I'm so screwed.' Aenea started fiddling with her fingers. "Look, is there any chance you could not mention what I said to anyone?"

Liam thought about it for a moment before answering truthfully, "Sure Aenea, no problem."

Happy with his answer, she decided the best thing she could do was to bail out before she said something even worse. "Thanks, I owe you one… bye."

She was gone before he had the time to respond.

'So there is a way to kill the sucker. If I only knew how. They also didn't know I was planning on capturing the bastard instead of killing him. Maybe they wouldn't mind if I imprison him for a few thousand years.'

Liam was interrupted when one of his aides entered the lab, "Ancestor Liam, the satellite from Terra has received a message that was implanted by the Asgard. They want to meet with us."

Liam nodded, "Well it was only a matter of when anyway. Did they leave instructions when and where?"

"Yes Ancestor, they left coordinates in the Ida galaxy. Thor's ship will be there in three days."

"Very well. Is there anything else?"

The aid grinned, "The shipyards have completed the first batch of corvettes in both galaxies. The pilots are already fighting over who will fly them first."

Liam smiled at the last part. The corvette-class ship was so maneuverable that every pilot wanted to try what they could do with it. Capital ships were relatively slow at turning and changing direction. That was why in a fight they would mostly rely on their shields to protect them. The corvettes were different. Their primary defensive capability was the ability to evade incoming fire from other capital ships, and because of it, the pilot's role was far more critical than on larger vessels. A unique interface capable of predicting the path of incoming fire and then display it on the pilot's hood was designed, one that gave the pilots the option of mentally instructing the ship to follow the predefined evasive path or manually steer the ship. Only the best pilots would be serving aboard those ships, and everyone wanted to prove they were the best.

Liam recalled how much trouble he had designing the Corvette. The initial design had the Corvette at only 60 meters in length. Soon it became clear that there wasn't enough room to put everything he wanted in such a small vessel. He compromised, and the final design of the ship was by more than fifteen meters longer. It would have been even longer if it wasn't for a few recent discoveries. The most important finding was Naquadria. The Alterran never used Naquadria because the element was too unstable and because, frankly, they never needed the extra power. He read about Naquadria from the reports from the Tau'ri and how they had successfully created a stable reactor that they were using on their ships. The logic was simple. Instead of using rods purely made of Naquadah in the reactor, they laced them with twenty percent Naquadria. They managed to more than double the output, without making the Naquadria go critical. With the same logic, Liam redesigned the Naquadah reactors the Alterran used. He was able to mix the Naquadah with an even higher percentage of Naquadria while still retaining the essential stability of the core. The results were outstanding with almost four hundred percent increase in power output.

The corvettes had a few problems Liam didn't know how to solve. Since the new Naquadah/Naquadria reactor essentially had the same configuration as the older model just with different fuel, the reactor had some heating issues. Because of it, Liam decided that the reactor would have two operating modes. The usual working mode could give a hundred percent power output just like the old one. The burst mode could give up to four hundred percent power output, but it could last for only half an hour before the reactor would automatically shut down to prevent melting. Liam didn't think it was too big of a problem, such power output would be usually required only in battle, and when did battles last longer than half an hour. The other time such power was needed was while traveling at high speeds through hyperspace, but the newly designed compact hyperdrive wasn't built with endurance in mind in the first place. If you run the ship for more than thirty minutes at full speed, three things would happen, and not always in the same order. First, the reactor would shut down, second, the hyperdrive would burn out, and third, the crew would be cooked to death because the support system was unable to dissipate so much heat from both the reactor and the hyperdrive.

All in all, this was the most powerful ship he had ever designed when compared to its size. The destroyer came close, but it wasn't ready yet. He had first to upgrade the cruisers' reactors - something that would give the ship enough power to cross the void between galaxies in less than a week, even without the need for a ZPM. Liam had enough ZPMs for now, but the number of ZPMs he had was still finite. The next ZPM would be built in almost five years, and that meant he had to be careful how he was going to use them.

Later that day, Liam watched the hyperdrive test the Corvette made. As predicted, after twenty-eight minutes, a warning sound notified the pilot that it was time to slow down or the ship would do it for him instead. In that time, the vessel had traveled almost 30,000 light-years or one-third of the Pegasus galaxy. The other tests have performed as expected, except for one. The advanced cloaking system needed more than the hundred percent power output the reactor put out in normal mode, which meant the ship would have to decloak after some time or the reactor would overheat. It wasn't ideal, but Liam was more than satisfied with the ship's performance. The craft needed twelve people to be operated correctly. Additionally, it could hold two more teams and had a hangar bay that could barely hold two puddle jumpers or other boats of similar size.

Liam beamed aboard his ship to prepare for the long journey to the Ida galaxy. There was no reason to hide from the Asgard anymore, and he had intended to introduce himself to them first even before he received their message. The long drive was going to last almost a day and a half at cruising speed. He didn't want to push his engines too much because he made quite the mileage in the last few months and he had time to spare before the meeting anyway. His ship had a well-equipped lab so that time wouldn't be wasted. He was also troubled by the fact that his brothers and sisters upstairs didn't know what the device he was developing was supposed to do, which was strange because it wasn't easy to hide something from ascended beings. Then he remembered that he worked on the device mostly on his ship while traveling through hyperspace and he only got caught when he worked in the lab aboard the station. That gave him the idea to continue working on the device only while traveling through hyperspace. He remembered what it was like when he was ascended. Powerful and free to roam the universe, but that didn't mean he had the power to do whatever he wanted. Hyperspace, as well as many other dimensions, was off-limits unless an ascended being was already on board a ship before entering that dimension. He also wondered what would happen to an ascended being if the ship blew up while he was on-board and while traveling through hyperspace. Would he be destroyed or would his energy somehow find his way back to normal space?

He thought Anubis would be the perfect test subject.

Earth - SGC

While Liam was traveling to the Ida Galaxy, the SGC received their first intergalactic phone call from Atlantis. Everyone was ecstatic at the news, but it didn't last for long. Only they could be so cursed to stumble upon a new and powerful enemy on their first day in another galaxy. The biggest problem had been that they didn't have any way to contact Atlantis back and to send help. The Daedalus would never reach them in time before the Wraith showed up, or at least that was what they had initially thought. Luckily, Daniel was able to find the location of another ZPM. The troubling part was that they also found a video recording buried with the ZPM, clearly indicating the SG-1 and O'Neil had gone back in time to prevent Ra from taking the ZPM with him. Nobody liked the idea of traveling through time, but at least this time it looked like everything went well.

Now, with a ZPM at their disposal, they were able to send the much-needed supplies, and the Daedalus departed with the newly found ZPM on-board, allowing him to travel much faster.

Jack was in Daniel's lab with Sam and Teal'c, discussing recent events. "What do you think of these 'space vampires'?"

Daniel thought that Atlantis was screwed, but he didn't want to say it like that, "I think it will be tough."

"So you think they are screwed?"

Daniel blinked, 'What? Is he reading my mind?' He nodded with an expression saying pretty much.

Sam interjected by being more optimistic, "I think they have a shot if the Daedalus arrives in time. The city is shielded so…"

Jack thought about that, "Yeah, I'm not so sure it will be enough. I mean, yes the Daedalus with the ZPM is powerful, but did you see how big those hive ships are? And if the Daedalus can't destroy them, the city will be besieged just like it happened to the Ancients. How long would the shield last then?"

An awkward silence had followed Jack's rhetoric question before Teal'c replied, "O'Neill, we have done everything that we could to ensure their survival. Now we can only hope they will find a way. On many occasions odds were not on our side, yet, we always prevailed."

"You are right Teal'c, we must stay positive," Jack chirped.

'They are so screwed,' Teal'c thought. However, he only nodded in confirmation to Jack's remark.

Their small reunion was interrupted when the alarm of an unscheduled incoming wormhole went off. They quickly took off to see who was coming. As the group reached the gateroom, they saw Master Bra'tac descending the ramp in front of the gate. Teal'c was first to greet the newcomer in the usual Jaffa stile, "Master Bra'tac, it is good to see you."

"It is good to see you too, Teal'c. There is much we need to discuss."

"Alright kids, let's go to the conference room," Jack replied in his usual playful way.

Bra'tac for the first time raised an eyebrow, stunning even Teal'c, 'Kids?'

Daniel rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. Usually, it made things even worse. He just took off following Jack, with the others following closely behind. Once they were all seated, the conversation began.

"So, Bra'tac, what's up?" Jack asked a little more seriously.

"I came here to discuss a matter of great importance. As you know, Jaffa's rebellion is going well. We are gathering more support with each passing day, and we are steadily increasing our numbers. However, we do fear it will not be fast enough. Ba'al is winning in his war against the System Lords, and once that happens, he will turn his attention to the both of us." Bra'tac ended, with great concern in his voice.

Sam didn't think this was any news. "Bra'tac, we are aware of this, but that doesn't change the fact that we don't have the resources to fight Ba'al's fleet."

Bra'tac nodded, "I am well aware of it, and that is why we need to act now, or we will lose this war."

Jack was the one to ask, "How?"

"The rebellion needs to grow faster, and I know only of one way to accomplish that," Bra'tac began to answer Jack's question.

Teal'c didn't let him finish, "You want to take Dakara."

Jack watched Bra'tac nod while smiling, "What? That's nuts!"

Bra'tac turned to face Jack, "O'Neill, Dakara is the planet where the Jaffa race was born. If we take Dakara from Ba'al, many will see the Goa'uld as false gods and join our cause."

"I get that, but we don't have the ships to attack Ba'al's forces."

Bra'tac smiled, "We do."

Jack was stunned, "How do you mean, we do?"

"We have several Ha'tak vessels at our disposal, but we must act quickly. Ba'al has initiated a major campaign against the System Lords and, as a result, only a few ships remain in orbit around Dakara. We also heard you have a mighty new ship at your disposal."

Jack sighed, "Yes we do, but we don't." Seeing Bra'tac confused expression, he continued, "The Daedalus is on its way to the Pegasus galaxy to try and help our people there. We only have the Prometheus here."

"That is most unfortunate, but I still think we can win the battle with what we have."

Jack wasn't that confident they could, but this wasn't his biggest concern at the moment either, "Alright, let's say we can take Dakara. How do you intend to hold it once Ba'al turns his entire fleet around? He will destroy the few ships we have easily, and then he'll blast our troops on the planet from orbit."

Bra'tac wanted to reply to Jack how it didn't matter because the Jaffa would fight to their deaths and how their cause was just, but Sam answered before he could say anything.

"Sir, I think I have a solution."

Jack, as well as everybody else in the room, turned to face Sam. "You do?"

Sam nodded, "Do you remember when I told you the plasma weapon developed for the Daedalus could be scaled for other ships like our fighters?"

"Vaguely, I do, yes."

"Well, it can be scaled up as well, so we immediately started designing a ground to orbit variant that we could place on Earth. We have built three so far, which is not enough to cover the entire planet, but Dakara doesn't need full coverage."

Jack was puzzled, "Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"You were, sir. You must have received the report about it."

'Dammit, I must start reading those damn reports,' Jack thought while nodding. "And they will be enough to keep Ba'al's fleet at bay?"

Sam nodded, "They should. Each is five times the size of what we put on the Daedalus."

Jack whistled while thinking what those guns could do, "Wait! If they are so big, how are we going to transport them to Dakara? They won't fit inside the Prometheus."

Sam nodded, "No, the Prometheus can't take even one of them in its limited cargo hold, but Bra'tac just said they have several Ha'tak at their disposal. The cannon should fit in their cargo bay without trouble. Bra'tac, how many ships do you have?"

"We have five ships. At least three of them are close enough to be here in two days," Bra'tac replied.

"Great, if you can redirect those ships here, I think we can pull this off."

Jack frowned, "Wait, wait, I still need the President to authorize this, and even with these cannons protecting the skies, that doesn't mean Bocce there won't land troops outside the range of the weapons, and attack on foot. Bra'tac, how many people do you have?"

"We have more than two thousand men."

"You see, that's not enough. Ba'al could bring ten times that number, easy."

Bra'tac turned to Jack and looked him directly in the eyes, "O'Neill, are you saying we cannot succeed?"

"No, I'm saying that we need a plan that works if we want to sell this to the President."

Strangely enough, Teal'c was the one to find the solution, "While I was here on Earth, sometimes I watched documentaries showing your ground forces using different vehicles of great power that the Goa'uld or Jaffa have never seen before. I believe that with such armament, even a smaller army could win against a much larger one."

Teal'c was right. With tanks, APCs, and the support of the artillery, even a large Jaffa army would perish. Now the only problem was how to convince the President.

Jack sighed, "I think I need to go to Washington for this. In the meantime, Bra'tac, I want you to redirect those five ships to Earth, and I want your people already on board and ready. If the President approves the mission, we can launch our attack from here in approximately ten days."

Jack spent that evening trying to explain their plan to the President and the Joint Chiefs. In the beginning, they looked at him like he had finally gone completely bonkers. He feared that someone would stop listening to him and call an ambulance to take him to the first psychiatric hospital and leave him there for the rest of his life. As time progressed though, more and more people in the room were starting to believe that it wasn't such an insane idea after all and that if they succeeded, it would be a significant step forward in the war against the Goa'uld. Still, many problems were there that concerned the President. For instance, he'd practically yelled at Jack on how the hell he was planning to land five Ha'taks on Earth without anyone noticing the big pyramids falling from the sky. He replied to the President that he didn't need to worry because Carter said so. When the President asked him to explain, he cursed and phoned Sam to see what she meant. As it turned out, the ships wouldn't need to land on Earth. Instead, they would use the beaming system aboard the Prometheus to transport the cannons to the Ha'taks. In the end, the notion of fighting the war on another planet, instead of on Earth, won the argument and Jack got the green light. Half-joking Jack told them that if everything went as planned, instead of a second star, he wanted to name their next ship the Enterprise. They all laughed. They would instead give him the second star. Jack mostly joked because he knew his career was on the line, and if things did go south as they usually did, he would be the first in line to feel the consequences. Fortunately, Jack didn't care too much about his career.

He wanted to retire anyway.

Ida galaxy – rendezvous point

Liam was at least an hour early, but it still didn't matter. When his ship exited hyperspace, Thor was already there waiting.

Almost immediately, Thor appeared on Liam's main display.

Thor introduced himself, "I am Supreme Commander Thor of the Asgard Fleet. Thank you for coming."

Liam bowed slightly, "Greetings, Supreme Commander. I am Liam, the founder of the Guardian's Order. I'm lowering my shield so that you can beam aboard…"

Liam didn't even finish his sentence when Thor was already on his bridge. Thor slowly strolled, as all Asgard did until he came in front of Liam. He scrutinized the man for a moment before speaking, "You are Alterra."

"I am," Liam replied.

Thor was puzzled, "How?"

Liam sighed, "That is a rather long story. In short, I ascended a long time ago; then I came back."

Thor was relentless, "Why?"

"That is an even longer story. Again, in short, after five million years in the higher plane, I decided it was time for changes."

"What kind of changes?"

"Some are personal, but also other things that need to be done, things that were left unfinished when my race ascended," Liam answered.

Thor blinked twice, "Very cryptic, yet I think I understand."

Now it was time for Liam to blink, "You do?"

"Yes. From what we learned when Daniel Jackson ascended we know that not everyone in the higher plane of existence believes what the majority does. When you mentioned things that need to be done, I suppose you refer to the Goa'uld and the newly discovered threat in the Pegasus galaxy. Although, I do not know what your personal reasons are for descending," Thor explained.

"You did understand most of what I was saying."

"Does that mean that you are alone in your quest?" Thor asked

"Yes and no. I am the only Alterran in this plane of existence, but I'm working with a race of advanced humans that I created a long time ago. With them, we created the Guardian's Order.

"I suppose this advanced race of humans is not in the Milky Way galaxy. We would have detected them."

"They are in the Andromeda galaxy. When I started all this, it looked like the safest place," Liam frowned.

"From your expression, I would say it is not the case anymore."

Liam sighed, "No, it isn't. We could have an enemy there at our doorsteps very soon."

"I see. Is there any way we can help?"

"Oh, but you already are. You helped the people from Terra, and I believe they will play a vital role in the years to come."

"They helped us more than we helped them. We also believe they will have a great role in future events." Thor waited for a moment, "Do you have any plan that involves us shortly."

Liam thought, "At the moment, I believe that you need to rebuild what you've lost in the war with the Replicators. I'm not certain what the future holds for us, but I hope that one day the Great Alliance could be restored with, again, four races, the Nox, the Asgard, the people from Terra and my people."

Thor nodded, "This is my hope as well, but I must warn you that the Nox have become isolationists."

"I know, but I think this is more because of the current situation in the Milky Way galaxy than the belief that that is the right way. If I'm wrong, we will have to do without them."

"The Asgard race is in great debt with you, Liam. Without the data you sent, we would not live much longer."

"I'm glad the data was helpful, and no debt is required. Our races were once good friends, and I don't think that will ever change."

Thor bowed slightly, "Thank you, this is my hope as well."

"Thor I need to ask you a favor. I don't want for the Tau'ri to know about me, not yet anyway."

Thor thought about it before answering, "As you wish, but can I ask what the reason is?"

"There is still too much uncertainty about them. They have progressed very fast in the last few years if we only look at the technology they possess now, but socially, they are still young. Their people still don't know anything about the universe, they are far from being united, and their politicians can change their minds in a blink of an eye; something that happened on many occasions already."

Thor sighed, "That is what the Asgard Council fears as well. They have great potential, but the path they will take is still uncertain."

"Well, we will have to help them chose the right direction, if needed, even without them knowing."

"You already have a plan?"

"I do, several in fact, and I will need your help to accomplish some of them, but not now. The people from Earth have too much on their plate right now, with the Goa'uld on one side and Atlantis on the other, to burden them even more."

"Let us know when you need us, and we will try to help," Thor paused for a moment. "The Council will want to meet with you."

"Not a problem, but let's wait until things settle down a little in both galaxies. Depending on the outcome, we will have much to discuss."

"Very well. I will inform the Council."

Liam and Thor spent the next thirty minutes talking about many topics before they had to depart. Liam decided to go to the Andromeda galaxy to check how things were progressing and to check on the possible threat there. His brief encounter with one of their ships steered the hostile race in the opposite direction, but it wouldn't last for long before they turn back to their previous course.

Pegasus galaxy - Atlantis

Elizabeth watched as people frantically moved in all directions in the gateroom below. Two days ago, they'd received several shipments through the gate before the Daedalus had to leave with the ZPM if they wanted the ship to reach them in time. She wasn't thrilled with Colonel Everett's arrival and him taking command of the military personnel present on Atlantis. He was different from John, and she had trouble even speaking to the man. Making him listen was outright impossible. Even worse, John and the Colonel didn't see eye to eye on anything, probably because the Colonel blamed John for Colonel Sumner's death. And since John blamed himself as well, he wasn't reacting to the Colonel as he should have.

Elizabeth watched as the display was showing the Wraith location. They would reach them before the Daedalus arrived. They also had a big problem with their railguns and the Colonel was angry. No one thought that the shield would stop the railguns from going through, inevitably making the railguns useless if you wanted the shield active. John thought about it, and he had come up with a solution. They'd placed all their railguns on the end of the city's piers, and if they need them, they will shrink the shield enough for the guns to be outside the shield's perimeter.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Lantea's System, Rodney was working on the Lantean defense satellite. He didn't know that Liam's people spent almost two days repairing the damage the satellite had a long time ago sustained. Liam believed that the satellite would give them the best chance of survival. The weapon was the most powerful the Lantean had ever created. The satellite was a powerful particle accelerator firing a focused beam of antiprotons. It was the only energy weapon the Alterran, and consequently the Lantean, ever built and that used antimatter. The particle accelerator needed to be almost a mile long to work, which made it practically impossible to fit on ships, at least the smaller ones. Strength wasn't the only strong point of the weapon. His range of fire would outclass any other known weapon.

The Lanteans must have found the designs for the weapon in Atlantis' database and constructed the defensive satellites. The only thing Liam didn't understand was why they didn't place a shield on the damn thing. It would have made the weapon so much more powerful, and there was not enough time to make the necessary modification now. Liam was sure the satellite wouldn't survive, but he also hoped it would destroy at least a few hives in the meantime.

Rodney brought the Naquadah Mk. II generator instead of its much weaker predecessor since the chair wouldn't need it, and the satellite's fire rate was dependent with the used energy source. Once the testing was done and the satellite was deemed ready, they all bailed out. The puddle jumper would stay close to control the weapon remotely.

They didn't have to wait too long for the Wraith to show up. The Wraith had three hive ships and a dozen cruisers at their disposal. Unaware of the satellite existence, the Wraith proceeded toward Atlantis. Their first surprise came when they were halfway there and the satellite fired for the first time, splitting a hive in half before it utterly exploded. The Wraith decided to turn around and face the satellite, but it was like watching a group of whales turn in slow motion. They didn't even finish the turnaround when the second hive exploded as well, taking out two cruisers in the massive explosion. If nothing else, it could be said that the Wraith were persistent. The faster cruisers pushed at full speed, leaving the remaining hive behind. Rodney decided to ignore the cruisers by firing at the last hive.

That was the last shot the satellite would ever make.

The cruisers entered weapons range and fired at the satellite, destroying it in mere seconds. The Wraith turned again, continuing with their slow but steady approach toward Atlantis. There were still ten cruisers remaining, but there were no hives anymore. Atlantis now needed to survive somehow until the Daedalus arrived.

The wraith detected the nuclear devices Colonel Everett had placed in orbit, thinking the Wraith would immediately enter orbit. Instead, the Wraith bombarded them with asteroids. Colonel Everett wasn't pleased that his plan had failed miserably. Still, the plan had at least made the Wraith more cautious. After losing three hives and two cruisers, the Wraith decided to approach Atlantis with the respect it deserved. They knew what the drone weapons could do to them, so they decided to send darts to deplete the drone reserves before the cruisers entered orbit. The Wraith didn't know that humans were masters in building cheap weapons. The darts descended into Lantea's atmosphere, going straight for the city. Before they reached weapons range, Atlantis' shield sprang to life. The darts started shooting at the shield, in the process, missing to notice the unprotected railguns on the end of the piers. Three railguns opened fire at the approaching darts, taking several down in short order. Once the darts passed the city, the railguns on the other side picked up the job, and more darts exploded. Still, there were hundreds of them, and they were now more prepared. The darts split up, heading for the railguns on the piers. The Marines added their fire from their handheld weapons, as much as they could. Some launched missiles, while others fired from their P90s and machine guns. The darts scored a few good hits, taking out one railgun and several marines with it. Other darts just passed above the piers, deploying Wraith drones on them. Soon, the fight was as much on the ground as in the air, and some Wraith managed to sneak under the shield, headed for the inner city.

Colonel Everett didn't like it. They have taken out almost half the darts, but they had sustained too many losses for his liking and the Wraith sneaking into the city was the final straw. He turned to Rodney who was working on the console nearby, "Enlarge the shield."

Rodney looked at John and Elizabeth to ask for confirmation. Elizabeth nodded, and Rodney turned to work on the console, "Done."

John looked at the sensor's screen showing at least fifty Wraiths roaming the city, "I think we have a pretty serious infestation on our hands."

Everett was already picking up his rifle and checking his ammo. "Major I want you to head for the chair-room, but I don't want you to use the drones to shoot at the darts. They can't do squat with the shield raised. However, if the cruisers reach orbit, you are authorized to shoot at them. And make every drone count."

"Yes, sir," John nodded and headed outside of the control room.

Everett turned to Rodney, "Doctor McKay, what are the Wraith doing?"

Rodney watched the sensor readings before replying, "They aren't doing anything. The darts are circling the city, and the cruisers are still keeping the distance. Wait! The darts are retreating! Why are they doing that?"

Everett frowned, "Because they are bringing the big guns and they don't want the darts to be in the way."

Rodney wasn't happy with the answer. "Oh, that's not good. So, what do we do?"

"There is nothing we can do except wait for the Daedalus to arrive and see what they can do about those cruisers."

In space, the Wraith cruisers started moving toward the planet. John fired the remaining few dozen drones they had and managed to inflict critical damage to another cruiser. The cruiser went off course, dropping through the atmosphere at high velocity. The ship soon became a fireball, breaking apart from the high friction with the atmosphere.

The remaining nine ships were taking positions above Atlantis, when one larger and two smaller ships de-cloaked while on a strafing run against the Wraith cruisers. Two mini-stars flew from the more massive ship with incredible speed and toward their targets. Those stars were torpedoes with five pounds of antimatter each, with the equivalent power of a hundred megaton bomb. Two bright suns illuminated the night sky, obliterating the two unfortunate cruisers. The more massive ship fired its four beam energy weapons at the next ship, while the two corvettes fired from their four frontal pulse weapons and the rotatory beam cannon on top of the ship, destroying any dart in their way. Once the road was cleared of darts, the two corvettes targeted the first available cruiser and unleashed everything they had. The cruisers tried to hit the corvettes, but it looked as if the ships knew where they were targeting in advance, changing direction and evading before being hit. The ships had the agility usually seen only in fighters. Once the three ships had passed through the group of enemy ships, the bigger ship fired two more torpedoes that flew backward toward the two cruisers standing last in line. In the first attack, they managed to destroy five cruisers and damage two to at least some degree. Now they were turning back to finish the job. The four remaining ships tried to do their best but ended up being destroyed shortly afterward. The ships made another run to take down the few remaining darts that survived the nuclear blasts and the relentless fire from the corvettes. As soon as they finished their job, they all entered hyperspace and left Lantea's system.

The first thing the people of Atlantis noticed was the bright flashes of light that had changed night into day. Rodney worked on his console, trying to find out what was happening, but before the sensors could recuperate from the massive energy release in orbit, two more explosions with the same intensity went off.

Everett looked at Rodney, "Doctor McKay, what is going on."

"I don't know… give me a minute," Rodney replied while still working on the console trying to clear the sensor readings from all the radiation in orbit. Rodney suddenly stopped, puzzled by what the readings were telling him, "Huh, they are gone."

Elizabeth looked at Rodney, "Who's gone, Rodney?"

"The Wraith, they have all been destroyed. Those flashes of light were massive nuclear explosions."

John just entered the room, "What's going on?"

Rodney was still working on the console, "Wait a minute, I think… I got it! If these readings are right, three ships came out of nowhere and attacked the Wraith cruisers with nuclear weapons as well as several different types of energy weapons I've never seen before. They destroyed all of them in less than five minutes."

Elizabeth began firing questions one after the other, "What? Who can do something like this? Are they still there? Can we contact them? Rodney, contact them now!"

Seeing that everyone was looking at her, she felt embarrassed for losing control like this. Thankfully, Rodney broke the silence.

"They left." Rodney suddenly noticed something, "Huh, are we sure the Ancients left this galaxy?"

Elizabeth blinked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, they used antimatter warheads."

Everett looked confused, "Didn't you just say they used nuclear weapons?"

"Yes, this is also a nuclear reaction, but not the same way we do it. Our nuclear weapons use fusion or fission, but these bombs used antimatter, which is way more powerful. These bombs had only a few pounds of antimatter each, and were enough to make new suns appear above us."

Elizabeth was pissed. She wanted to know why Rodney asked that question, but he was already lost in his mumbling, "Rodney forget about this and tell me why did you ask about the Ancients and what antimatter has to do with it."

"Well, the type of antimatter they've used are antiprotons, and I know only one other weapon that uses antiprotons, and that's the satellite the Ancients built. I mean, it's not that easy to use antimatter in the first place."

"Maybe there are others who use it," John interjected.

Rodney was irritated. "Everything is possible, but didn't you listen. In all three galaxies - and I'm including the Asgard in the Ida - this is the first time we see someone use antimatter, and for a good reason. Producing it is incredibly difficult and storing it is even more so. You need a containment field that can hold the antimatter in a complete vacuum, and when I say complete vacuum, I mean not even space is so completely devoid of any matter."

Elizabeth was thoughtful the whole time. "John, do you think they are the ones that helped us in the past or the race that helped Earth and the Asgard?"

John shrugged, "Don't know. It's possible."

Rodney heard a beeping sound coming from the console. "We have another ship on our sensors."

"Are they back?" Everett asked.

"Nope, the Daedalus is here."

Everybody relaxed a little now that the Daedalus was finally here. They contacted the ship and exchanged information on what happened recently. Another positive side of Daedalus' arrival was their pest problem. They dropped the city shield, and the Daedalus beamed the remaining Wraith who were roaming the city into space, something the Asgard aboard the ship wasn't particularly happy to do. The Daedalus began beaming down supplies he was carrying when Atlantis' sensors detected a new group of Wraith hives en route to Atlantis, and this group was much larger than the previous one. It looked as if the Wraith weren't ready to give up so easily. Plans were being evaluated on how to defend the city, but even with the Daedalus here, fighting such a force was suicidal. That was true until John came up with the idea to take the fight to them before they reached Atlantis and see how it goes. Rodney selected a point in space where the Wraith would need to exit hyperspace before reaching Atlantis.

After almost three days of preparations, the Daedalus departed.

The Daedalus had waited for two hours before the Wraith showed up. Taking the enemy by surprise, the Daedalus attacked the convoy from behind firing four nukes at the closest two hives. To their surprise, the hives didn't get destroyed by the blasts. I took a dozen more shots with the energy cannons for the hives to break apart and explode. In the meantime, the Wraith had time to deploy their darts and cruisers and turn to face the lone ship. The second time the Daedalus fired its warheads, only one managed to go through the darts that were now screening their hives, again doing damage to the massive ships but not enough to destroy it. The Daedalus fired his railguns at the incoming waves of darts, but there were hundreds of them, and some of the darts didn't just shoot at them. They were ramming them, uncaring for their lives. The hives and cruisers were bringing their heavy weapons to bear, and Daedalus' shield became a constant bright blue bubble from the intense fire. If it weren't for the ZPM pouring terawatts of pure power in the shield generators, the ship would have already been destroyed. Thankfully, John got an idea of how to change the odds in their favor, and his plan was soon implemented. Hives started to explode apparently for no reason. The Asgard on-board wasn't too pleased by the method employed to destroy the ships. It was one thing to use the beaming system to dispatch a few wraiths in space, but beaming a warhead to the enemy hives was another thing entirely. Reluctantly, the Asgard on-board disabled the safety protocols designed to prevent Asgard tech from being used as a weapon and warhead after warhead was beamed to the hives. The fun stopped after the fourth hive exploded when the Wraith somehow managed to jam their beaming technology.

The ZPM was powerful enough to provide power to the shields for several days for the kind of senseless beating the Daedalus was being put through, but the shield generators weren't. Pumping so much power to keep the shields up meant the generators were overloading. The shields were already at fifty percent efficiency, and some of the enemy weapon's energy was able to bleed through damaging the ship. Things weren't looking good for the Daedalus.

Suddenly, three hyperspace windows opened on the opposite side, and the same three ships that fought the Wraith above Lantea entered the fray. The large one fired four antimatter warheads at four hives directly in their backside. Two went through and hit the hives, one was stopped by a cruiser that got in the way, and the last one was destroyed by a lucky shot fired from another hive. The cruiser was destroyed, but the hives were only damaged and still able to fight. Several hives turned to face the new opponents while hundreds of darts changed positions to screen their hives from the other side. The cruiser and corvettes passed through the Wraith formation, firing as they went. Once on the other side, the cruiser launched a few more torpedoes back at the passed Wraith ships. Most were intercepted before reaching the hives, but a few were able to get through. There was also one difference between the nuclear warheads the Tau'ri used and the antimatter torpedoes the Guardians employed. Soon it became clear that antimatter torpedoes exploded even when intercepted by darts or other weapon's fire. It was dangerous to use antimatter torpedoes because they could get shot near your ship and such an explosion was hazardous to any vessel in the vicinity. It was also harmful to the darts nearby. Hundreds of darts simply vanished in the bursts and the screening fleet was slowly thinning out. Unfortunately, it wasn't soon enough. The two Corvettes had to retreat after having suffered a few lucky shots from a cruiser, and the Daedalus and the other cruiser didn't look any better. To make things worse, they had exhausted all their warheads, and the energy weapons were overheating from the extensive usage. The Wraith were severely bitten, but the remaining three hives and more than a dozen cruisers were too much for the two cruisers in their current state. Shortly after, three hyperspace windows opened, and the three ships went through, leaving the Daedalus alone. The Daedalus shields were at twenty percent. The situation was grim.

The officer at the comm station looked at some scrolling data before notifying the captain, "Colonel, the three ships have left the battle. They sent us a message apologizing for leaving, but their shields were close to being depleted, and all of their ships have sustained extensive damage."

"Very well. How is our ship doing?"

Shields at twenty percent efficiency, we have multiple breaches on the outer hull, the support system is malfunctioning, and our plasma weapons' fire-rate has dropped considerably due to overheating," another lieutenant replied.

The Colonel didn't have time to reply when another blast rocked the ship violently, which caused one of the consoles behind him to blow up. "That's it! Set course for Atlantis."

The Daedalus left the battle, reaching Atlantis only fifteen minutes later. Caldwell and John beamed down to the city. They were discussing what to do next when the Wraith showed up. They had decided to speed up things, probably not wanting to give them time to recover. The Wraith entered orbit above Atlantis and started their relentless bombardment as if it was punishment for what they'd dared to do.

"For how long will the shield hold Rodney?" Elizabeth asked with evident concern in her voice.

"The ZPM is fully charged. We should be okay for a month or so."

"It doesn't matter for how long the shield lasts! We are screwed! The Wraith won't leave, and I can assure you, they are going to send more ships, just as they did with the Ancients," John said.

Elizabeth frowned, "So what, we give up and leave the city?"

John shrugged, "I don't know Elizabeth, but I know that as long as the Wraith know we are here, they won't stop."

Rodney blinked, "So, what if they don't know we are here?"

"What do you mean?" John asked.

"I think I can cloak the city. We can use the cloaking system from one of the puddle jumpers and connect it to the shield emitters."

John wasn't sure about that, "They already know we are here, Rodney. They will know we are still here even if we vanish."

"They won't if we make them believe we destroyed the city."

"How do you intend to do that?" Elizabeth asked.

"We blow up one of the Mark VIIIs above the city, blinding their sensors. During that time, we switch from shield to cloak," Rodney answered.

"Won't the explosion burn the city?" John asked irritated by the idea.

"Not if we time it correctly," Rodney replied.

John and Elizabeth looked at each other, unsure if this was a good idea. John turned to Rodney. "Are you a hundred percent sure this will work?"

Now it was Rodney's turn to be irritated. They always wanted a hundred percent plan. "Of course I'm not sure, but do we have any other option?"

They stayed there for a few moments before agreeing it was their best option, or maybe their only one available. Everybody went to work. Another problem was that they didn't have a Mark VIII. The Daedalus had spent everything he had during the battle. The only way was to ship Daedalus' ZPM to Earth through the gate and wait for them to send back the nuke. Even worse, since the shield was up, beaming was impossible, so the Daedalus had to go to another planet, transport the ZPM through the gate to Atlantis and then to Earth, and then wait to receive the nuke the same way back. But no matter how difficult it was, they finally managed to set up their plan.

Everything was ready and Teyla telepathically connected with the Wraith, fooling them into believing they were about to destroy the city. The Wraith stopped firing since their entire plan was to capture the city because it was the only way to spread to another galaxy, a rich, new feeding ground. Seconds after they stopped firing, the Daedalus beamed the mark eight above the city. The nuclear mushroom above the city obscured Atlantis from the Wraith, just long enough for them to cloak the city. The Wraith stood there for at least fifteen minutes before deciding to leave since seemingly nothing had survived the blast.

Aboard Atlantis the cheering and celebrating were more than welcomed. It had been a very long and stressful week after all. The Edenians at the Pegasus outpost were also celebrating the survival of Atlantis and the safe return of their three ships. Liam thought that it couldn't have gone better. He already planned to send them another ZPM and drones so they could destroy the hives in orbit, but he knew it wouldn't be enough. It would have never been enough. The Wraith would have sent more and more ships, and no matter how much he helped, it would have been all for nothing. The humans didn't know the real number of Wraith hives in the galaxy. They believed the data they had, showing sixty hives, represented them all, but that was only the hives that belonged to the same clan, and there were dozens of clans, some even bigger than this one. Hopefully, they'd now have enough time to build up their strength before the Wraith comes back.

The Daedalus had to spend the next few days repairing the damage before it could leave Atlantis for the journey back home that, without the ZPM, would take almost three weeks.

Dakara

The Prometheus exited hyperspace already in weapons range and launched the only two upgraded Mark IXs as part of its arsenal. Unfortunately, the enemy ship had raised their shields in time, but this didn't matter because it wasn't their job to destroy the Ha'tak. Another use of nuclear weapons was that, for several minutes after the explosion, most communication and sensors would be jammed because of the high radiation produced. After the blasts that had managed to destroy the three Al'kesh and blind the other two enemy ships, five Ha'taks led by Bra'tac entered the scene, firing at the enemy before they even knew what was happening. Severely outnumbered, the fight had lasted less than two minutes before the enemy ships were destroyed. The five Ha'taks and the Prometheus regrouped in orbit before beginning with phase two of the plan to invade Dakara.

They had chosen their timing just right. It was noon on Dakara, and nobody noticed the two explosions in the sky, something that was going to give them more time to act and still have the element of surprise on their side. SG-1, Bra'tac, and Colonel Pendergast were discussing their primary targets. They had to take control of the gate as quickly as possible, but also take down any stronghold that had gliders or Al'kesh present before they could take off from the surface.

"First, we launch our F-302s and gliders to take out any enemy glider or Al'kesh that takes off the ground, and then we bomb the three strongholds outside the city. We beam down one platoon of marines in front of the gate and another inside the main building moments before our fighters reach the ground, " Sam explained.

Bra'tac nodded, "What about my warriors?"

"Unfortunately, we have only one beaming array so we can't beam everyone down. You will use the two Al'kesh at your disposal and land your troops at the entrance of the city. You'll have to stop any reinforcements from entering the courtyard and the main building. This is the most important part of the plan. If reinforcements can reach the inner city, we will be overwhelmed before securing the area. Once we beamed all of our marines, we start beaming the rest of your people down to provide additional support wherever is needed," Sam explained.

Everyone nodded, satisfied with the plan. "We'll begin in ten minutes. Tell everyone to be ready," Sam said, concluding the meeting.

Ten minutes later, more than a hundred fighters from all six ships poured out, directed at the capital. As they reached the outskirts of the city, several groups detached from the main formation and went to take out the three strongholds holding most of the death gliders. Meanwhile, the remaining forces proceeded on their previous course of engaging the enemy on the ground, as well as the few gliders that were already in the air. At the same time, team after team of marines were beamed in the courtyard and the main building. Sargent Jenkins and his squad were beamed as close as possible to the main hall. Their mission was to take out the low-level Goa'uld in charge of the planet and take any communication devices he may have there before he could contact Ba'al.

The first team turned the corner and fired at the two guards stationed in front of the entrance door. They fell even before raising their weapons. Team One and Two proceeded toward the door while Team Three watched their rear from any unwanted visitors. Team One opened the door. They were greeted with several plasma bolts flying in their direction. The guards inside had heard the weapons fire and were ready. Ready or not, they didn't stand a chance. Three grenades flew in the room. The resulting blasts killed all the guards inside, except for one that was dispatched shortly after by one of the marines. Only the Goa'uld in charge remained unharmed, protected by his personal shield. The Marines poured in with weapons trained at the Goa'uld.

The Goa'uld didn't look very happy. "Who dares to defy their god?"

Sargent Jenkins walked into the room looking at the poor bastard. He didn't have time to listen to speeches. He took his knife and threw it at him without hesitation. The blade went through the shield, hitting the man straight in the chest. The shield didn't work very well with relatively slow moving objects. Stunned, and very much hurt, The Goa'uld dropped his shield, allowing a few short bursts from the marines to end his miserable life.

Jenkins looked around the room trying to make sure all guards were dead, "Team One and Two, secure the room and find any communication device in here. Team Three watch the hall."

Jenkins activated his radio and reported his success. Shortly afterward, he received new orders, and his squad quickly moved out of the room.

Outside the main building, a much bigger firefight was taking place. In the courtyard, almost fifty Jaffa were pinned down from two sides, yet they weren't even close to giving up. They were pinned between the platoons that beamed in the courtyard, near the gate and the one that had been beamed inside the building. Thankfully, the marines in the yard didn't have to worry about Jaffa reinforcements coming into the city. Bra'tac and his two hundred fellow Jaffa were doing a great job at stopping anyone stupid enough to try to enter it.

The Marines threw a dozen grenades, followed by as much flash-bangs, at the group of pinned Jaffa. A coordinated attack from both sides quickly ended their struggle. The capital of Dakara was theirs.

Now that the gate was secured, they connected to the SGC to receive more troops. General O'Neill and Colonel Anderson, US Army, stepped through the gate. Anderson was awestruck. Only days ago he didn't know anything about aliens and other inhabited worlds, and now, he was here to defend this planet against some parasites with a god complex. Behind him, an entire battalion started pouring out of the gate. Combat engineers were the first to come through. They were going to assess the situation and decide how best to fortify the city. The positive side was that they'd have at least three days to prepare their defenses, the time the closest Ba'al's ships could reach Dakara and, with a little luck, Ba'al still didn't even know they had taken Dakara.

The Prometheus went to work, beaming down APCs, tanks, artillery and construction machinery from the Ha'taks in orbit. In the meantime, the combat engineers started digging up holes outside the capital where they'd place the three massive cannons. Defending Dakara wasn't going to be easy, but it wasn't impossible. Dakara was a desert planet. Not the typical world you'd visit for a vacation, something Jack understood the moment he'd stepped through the gate. But he also knew that, except for maybe a few places, the planet's barren landscape would work in their favor. Such a world would make an assault made by infantry much more difficult, especially after placing trenches and other defenses. The Jaffa forces solely comprised of infantry would have a difficult time approaching the Capital of Dakara. Of course, all this would be meaningless if the cannons couldn't do what they were supposed to and that was to stop any ship approaching the sky above them.

It had been an exhausting three days, which Jack had mostly spent on the planet making sure everything went as it should. He admired Colonel Anderson, a no-nonsense kind of guy. Anderson knew what was at stake, no matter that not even a week ago he didn't know anything about the state of the galaxy. He put his stupor aside and pushed the combat engineers and the rest of his battalion to their limits until he was satisfied that everything was ready. And it wasn't a moment too soon either. Ba'al found out what had happened and his closest ships were now only minutes away. Bra'tac had received word from rebel Jaffa on other worlds that at least a dozen ships were coming.

Ba'al's fleet was approaching the six ships in orbit above the capital city. To the approaching enemy ships, it didn't appear strange that, instead of attacking them, the ships were slowly retreating. They thought they were afraid, scared as they should be when facing their god's mighty fleet. What they didn't know was that they were entering the weapons range of the cannons on the ground. The commander of the leading Ha'tak knew something was wrong when he saw three massive balls of plasma coming from the planet. It was the last thing he would ever see.

Two plasma bolts slammed into the leading Ha'tak vessel, shields overloading in microseconds and with the ship's hull following with the same fate and breaking apart, unable to withstand the massive amount of energy thrown at it. The third plasma bolt hit the second Ha'tak, receiving a crippling amount of damage that ended completely disabling their shields. Finally realizing where the real threat was coming from, Ba'al's fleet changed course toward the planet.

The five Ha'taks and the Prometheus changed course as well, now moving toward the enemy. Their tactic had worked. They'd correctly predicted the enemy ships would have gone after them, not caring about the planet and anything that could be on it, and now the enemy ships were being hammered between two fires. They opened fire at the same time as another round of bolts came rushing from the surface, destroying the one already damaged ship as well as another one. In response, Ba'al's fleet fired at the three cannons on the ground, with everything they had.

Jack watched as the rain of plasma bolts descended from the sky toward the three cannons outside the city. Instead of hitting the guns, the plasma bolts slammed into massive orange shields that were protecting them. He hoped the shields would hold; they weren't of Asgard design, after all. Therefore, he couldn't be sure. They'd tried to place Asgard shield generators, but they would collapse when they couldn't form a complete sphere as they usually did around a ship. It was a problem the people at area 51 didn't know how to solve, probably because this wasn't their technology and nobody understood it. Thankfully, the first version of shields developed for the Prometheus worked like a charm, except for the fact that it was much weaker. Three new bolts of plasma flew upwards into the sky, which made Jack smile at the sight.

The enemy finally realized things weren't going as they'd thought they would. The remaining five ships began a hasty retreat outside the weapons range of the cannons, but stubborn as Jaffa were, they'd decided to launch their gliders as a last attempt to inflict damage. They poured out of the larger ships and turned toward the planet, while the Alliance's ships still focused their attack on the capital ships. It was strange they were letting them pass, and they should have noticed it. No fighters were launched as a response to try stopping the Gliders from reaching the planet's surface. They should have wondered why.

A hundred gliders entered the planet's atmosphere and were welcomed by a barrage of SAMs that took almost half of them down. The remaining half proceeded further even more enraged by the enemy's audacity. They soon found out what a couple of dozen railguns, placed at various points on the ground, could do to gliders. They tried to evade the incoming fire, but it was coming from all sides. Gliders started exploding one after the other.

After only two minutes, there were no more gliders in the sky.

The reason why nobody chased them was apparent. The missiles and the people manning the railguns would have had a difficult time differentiating friends from foes, especially if they'd sent their gliders that looked the same. Also, the gliders weren't very good at ground targets. Having only the two fixed plasma cannons at their disposal, made the whole thing an almost one-sided battle with only one SAM installation destroyed and two unlucky soldiers ending injured by a few flying pieces of shrapnel.

The six alliance ships continued chasing the fleeing enemy until they entered hyperspace. All two thousand Jaffa cheered and celebrated their success at protecting their new capital from Ba'al's fleet. Bra'tac sent a dozen Jaffa to spread the word of their success to other planets. There was a big problem when you ruled your people by pretending to be a god. Your people would follow you for as long as they believed you were what you were claiming to be. But when ordinary people won against you, someone who should have godlike powers, questions would inevitably be raised; questions like, how could mere mortals win against a god? How could they take the most sacred planet away from him, and then even succeeding in preventing the same god from retaking the world? The rational mind could only conclude that the Goa'uld were, in fact, not gods. Bra'tac firmly believed that this victory would turn many Jaffa against them. Now, they just needed to spread the word and wait to see the results of today's win.

The next five days were utterly uneventful. There was little or nothing to do except to sit and wait to see what Ba'al's response would be. The answer came the sixth day in the form of a dozen Ha'tak and thirty Al'kesh. As they'd predicted, Ba'al didn't intend to use them to attack Dakara. Instead, they were mere transports for the troops. While the twelve capital ships were taking orbit above the planet, somewhere outside the cannons' weapons range, the Al'kesh began ferrying troops to the ground below, and once they were done, more than twenty thousand Jaffa warriors were preparing to assault the capital.

Colonel Anderson watched as five thousand Jaffa were amassing only a kilometer west from their defenses. He wasn't sure if he should be happy or if he should pity the enemy. Saying that they were using a Napoleonic style of fighting would be insulting for the guy that had used it more than two hundred years ago. The Jaffa were forming an old style phalanx that would march toward their defenses. Anderson sighed at the thought of so many lives that would soon be extinguished.

Maroc inspected his troops before the attack. His forces were finally ready to march toward the enemy shol'va that had dared attack their capital. He would rightfully kill every last one of them for what they had done. No one defied his god and lived to tell the story. He took his horn to sound the beginning of the attack, and for his trouble, he got a .50 caliber in his chest. Blood gushed from his body, spraying the Jaffa in the first row. The troops didn't know what had happened to their leader, as they watched him hit the ground, lifeless and with a large hole in his chest. Their confusion grew even more when they began hearing a whistling sound coming from the sky.

Anti-personnel shells exploded everywhere around them, sending hundreds of shrapnel in all directions. Jaffa were dying everywhere as shell after shell exploded. It was 'hell-on-Dakara' for the five thousand Jaffa, all amassed in such a small space. Wherever any of them looked, the only thing they could see was torn bodies and death, death by the thousands. Those that were still alive soon realized that the only thing they could do was to flee from the rain of death that was butchering so many of them. They scattered in all directions, knowing that everywhere else was better than here. That wasn't true, though. Not for the five hundred Jaffa that decided to go east toward the enemy front line.

Colonel Anderson took to heart when O'Neill had told him that the enemy would only have infantry. As a result, he'd placed at least one heavy machine gun with each squad. Thirty machine guns and even more rifles from Bravo Company opened fire at once, cutting down the unfortunate five hundred Jaffa who were running towards them. The entire fight lasted less than fifteen minutes, and to Anderson it all felt very anticlimactic, to put it mildly. The first engagement ended with almost three thousand Jaffa dead and zero casualties on their side.

'If the Jaffa keep up like this, I can defend this place for as long as soldiers have bullets to fire, and those we have in abundance,' Anderson thought to himself.

The Jaffa understood that as well, immediately stopping the attack that they were preparing on the north side of the city before another massacre happened there. It took them two days to realize that the south side was the only approach vector with some cover they could exploit. The next night, a few hundred Jaffa tried to sneak in, while taking advantage of the terrain to provided cover. Though, they didn't know the Tau'ri had infrared and night vision at their disposal. Flares in the sky turned night into day, and the two hundred Jaffa were suddenly dying from machine gun fire or fleeing back from where they had come from.

The fighting continued for the next few weeks. In that time, the Jaffa had lost more than fifteen thousand people. But the fight wasn't one-sided anymore. Newly arriving Jaffa were being transported to the planet every day, and now there were Kull warriors amongst them. The artillery was useless against them. Only the disruptor weapon or concentrated fire from the 50 caliber machine guns were able to stop those monstrosities. The Jaffa were also getting smarter. They knew that attacking en masse was suicide because of the artillery, so they used smaller units attacking from several directions, making the artillery work much less efficiency. The alliance didn't have the losses the enemy had, but one entire company of soldiers had been killed or injured as well as more than five hundred of the allied Jaffa in all the various skirmishes they had in the last two weeks and, with the never-ending stream of enemy soldiers coming every day, the situation was turning grim.

Then, things suddenly changed. The enemy began attacking more intensely with larger and larger units, uncaring for the higher losses the artillery was inflicting to them. It was as if they'd forgotten everything they'd learned in the past few weeks. The answer why this was happening came from Bra'tac. He had received word that Ba'al and the System Lords were losing support from Jaffa everywhere in the galaxy. Ba'al needed to win this, fast, and prove to the Jaffa that the Goa'uld were, in fact, their gods.

The enemy was preparing a massive assault with more than fifteen thousand soldiers. To make things worse, Ba'al had decided that he would send the thirty Al'kesh and more than five hundred gliders to support their troops. Every platoon leader was asking for greater artillery support, but there wasn't enough to go around.

Jack and Anderson watched as five hundred gliders and thirty Al'kesh began their approach toward the front line.

"We are sending every glider and F-302 we have, but we are outnumbered three to one here," Jack said to Anderson.

Anderson was concerned, "Our air defenses will have a difficult time picking up enemy fighters from ours once the two fronts merge."

"I know, but our defenses won't be enough to stop so many fighters on their own. We have no choice."

Walter came from behind the General. "Sir, Pendergast says Ba'al's fleet is moving toward them. He's asking what his orders are."

Jack turned to Walter, "Tell him to use the same tactic as last time. Let's hope it works."

Walter nodded before leaving.

Anderson was looking through his binoculars the approaching enemy fleet, "Here they come. Wait! What is that?"

Jack watched through his binocular as two ships, much larger than an Al'kesh, decloaked on the left side of the approaching enemy fleet, going straight for the enemy, "The Defiant? Two of them?"

Anderson didn't know anything about the Star Trek series, so he was utterly confused by Jack's questions but decided it was better not to ask. He knew O'Neill was strange at times.

The two corvettes fired from their forward pulse cannons cutting down everything in their path. Al'kesh and gliders exploded one after the other. The corvettes went straight through the enemy formation where a few gliders, unable to change course in time, slammed into their shields and exploded on impact. The corvettes were turning back, but before making a full turnaround, they unleashed half a dozen missiles above the enemy troops that were reaching the front line. Massive plasma explosions burned everything on the ground in a half kilometer radius where the bombs touched the ground.

Anderson watched as the two Corvettes rolled by ninety degrees and performed a tight turn back towards the enemy fleet. "I'm not a pilot, Jack, but those two ships turn more like fighters than similarly sized ships."

"Yeah, I'd really like to get my hands on one of those," Jack replied while still watching the ships in the distance.

The second pass through the enemy formation threw the enemy in complete disarray, with a large portion deciding to chase the two ships while the rest continued on their previous course.

SAMs flew in the air followed by railgun fire while the F-302s and gliders attacked the enemy formation from above. The enemy gliders turned upward toward the incoming fighters while the Al'kesh continued to fire on the defenders on the ground. Complete chaos was assured when the cannons began shooting at the approaching enemy ships in orbit and those, in turn, started raining plasma back on the ground. For the first time, Jack thought it would have been better if he stayed in his office back at the SGC. He was becoming too old for this.

The situation wasn't good at all, but it would have been much worse if they didn't have a backup plan. Bra'tac's plan came to fruition a week ago when Gerak, a First Prime, heard the Jaffa Rebellion had taken Dakara and rebelled against his god. He and a group of loyal Jaffa took half a dozen Ha'taks with them. Jack and Bra'tac knew that even with Gerak's forces, they couldn't attack the twenty capital ships Ba'al had amassed above Dakara. So they came up with the plan to hide the ships nearby and use them in a surprise attack only if Ba'al decided to attack.

While Ba'al's fleet was targeting the ground cannons and the six alliance ships in orbit, behind them, seven hyperspace windows opened, and six Ha'taks and one Daedalus that had returned from the Pegasus galaxy came through. Ba'al still had more ships than what the Jaffa rebellion and the Tau'ri had, but they were being attacked from three sides at the same time with the massive cannons on the ground inflicting incredible damage every time they fired. The fight was brutal with everyone putting everything they had into it. The same was happening on the ground. At one point, the frontline had been breached, with soldiers retreating at the second line of defense while gliders were flying overhead. They didn't even know if the gliders would attack them or protect them. They all looked the same. Fortunately, the Tau'ri knew this could happen, so they'd installed tracking devices on all friendly gliders. The F-302a used this to target the enemy fighters rather than their allies, but the railguns weren't getting the information soon enough to know who was who. In the meantime, the two Defiants, as Jack called them, were having a field day. They were the only ships with shields in the firefight, and they were using that advantage to wreak havoc among the enemy fighters and bombers.

The turning point came when the enemy lost the battle in orbit. The enemy ships were now in the minority, which prompted the Prometheus to descend into the atmosphere to lay a hand. The large craft hovered above the Capital, providing cover by attacking any glider foolish enough to enter inside its weapons range. The enemy fighters didn't have the firepower to weaken its strong Asgard shields. Soon, the Ha'taks in orbit were destroyed, followed shortly by the destruction of the enemy fighters and bombers. With no support from the sky, the Jaffa on the ground began to retreat without knowing that no Ha'tak could pick them up. The alliance won the war, and this time Ba'al would not be coming back.

Dakara was now free from the Goa'uld oppression, but it didn't happen without a cost. Half of Anderson's battalion and more than a thousand Jaffa had perished in the battle on the ground, and four Ha'taks had been destroyed in orbit. Still, a victory was a victory, and everybody knew sacrifices were inevitable. They were already celebrating when the Stargate opened. Ba'al's hologram formed in front of it.

Even though Ba'al had a smile on his face, as if the battle he'd lost was of no consequence, Jack knew the man was angry as hell. He decided to pour more salt into the wound. "Hello Bocce, how are things going?" Jack asked with a grin on his face.

Ba'al stopped smiling, "O'Neill, you think you have accomplished a great victory today, but you must know that in the end, you cannot win against a god."

"I don't know Bocce. I think we did a pretty good job today."

Ba'al grinned, "Perhaps O'Neill, but you made a grave mistake."

Jack didn't know what Ba'al meant with that remark, but his grin told him he wasn't bluffing, "Sorry, nothing comes to mind."

Ba'al chuckled, "You have forgotten about Earth, O'Neill. You left it unguarded."

'What is he talking about?' Jack was concerned, "You know very well that the Ancient weapon is protecting Earth. I don't think you have anything that can beat that."

"You are right O'Neill, you have a potent weapon, but the thing is, the weapon is useless without a ZPM, and a bird told me that you are using it to connect to Atlantis. And without the two ships that you have here, you don't have the means to beam the power source in time." Ba'al laughed hard, "Tell me O'Neill, how much time it will take to transfer the ZPM to Antarctica, an hour, two hours…"

Jack looked as Ba'al vanished and the gate closed, "Dial the SGC, NOW!"

Earth's orbit

Two Ha'taks exited hyperspace close to Earth. It didn't take them long to enter geosynchronous orbit above the American and Eurasian continent. Without waiting a minute longer, the two ships began their bombardment of the planet, randomly choosing cities to be targeted first.

Ba'al thought it would be at least an hour before they powered the Ancient weapon, and that would have been the case if Liam didn't have satellites monitoring the galaxy. When Liam realized that two Ha'taks were on their way to Earth, he sent a message informing Earth of their predicament. He'd sent the cruiser he had in the Milky Way galaxy as well, but he knew it wouldn't reach Earth in time.

Only minutes later, the Ancient weapon fired a stream of drones toward the two Ha'taks in orbit, the drones swirling around and through the two ships until they both exploded. The drones had obliterated the two Ha'taks, but the damage to Earth had already been done. Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Sacramento, Paris, Munich, Rome, Bombay, Shanghai, and Tokyo were struck the hardest. The destruction was massive, with millions of dead and even more injured or lost.

A new era was about to begin on Earth, and if Ba'al knew what the consequences of his attack were going to be, he would have thought a little harder, and he would probably have decided against doing it.