The Age of the 5th Race

by Hamburger73 and SilverInk

Summary: After a long and devastating war with the Ori, General O'Neill is ordered by the IOA to evacuate all surviving SG personnel, along with the surviving alien allies, to a new colony with Atlantis.

This is my first fanfiction story. Without the help of my beta, SilverInk, I wouldn't be able to publish this story without her. So I thank her for her support.

Disclaimer

All rights of the mentioned TV series belong to the TV studios that produce them. I own unfortunately only the idea for the scenario.

1. Journey into disaster

25.06.2010 Pacific, Earth

It was a nice summer morning here in the middle of the Pacific on Atlantis. O'Neill was lost in thoughts as he was sitting in the meeting room waiting for the others to arrive. It would be the last meeting before Atlantis would have to start to this new journey.

So much had happened since they went through the Stargate for the first time so many years ago. Not everything was bad but not everything was good either. He had lost count of all the people they had lost all those years. There were the obvious like General Hammond, Bra'tac, Dr Frasier, Vala who sacrificed herself when she killed her daughter Adria. And then there were so much more, not all of them were soldiers. There were quite lot civilians as well, like scientist and so on. Jack really hoped that someday all the people who had died would receive the honors they had earned themselves.

O'Neill wasn't really happy with the fact that the IOA had ordered him to evacuate all of the SGC members with Atlantis to a new colony world. Somehow it didn't feel right to him. Ok, it was a legitimate order but still, it felt to him as he had lost a serious battle. He couldn't tell anybody why he felt this way since he had received this order almost 3 months ago.

Flashback

30.03.2010 Washington DC

Homeworld Command

O'Neill wasn't happy at the moment, as always when he had a meeting with politicians. And the next meeting, which should take place here in a few minutes, was 1 of the meetings he would have loved to miss. Unfortunately that wasn't very wise, especially when you have to deal with the IOA.

O'Neill knew, that the three delegates of the IOA where already in the building. He wondered what they wanted this time. Not that it was important, which it wasn't normally. It seems that the job of the IOA was, to make the job for O'Neill and the SGC as hard as possible. Especially since Woolsey had died in the Pegassus Galaxy. He missed him. It had been such an unnecessary death in the end and it was in the end easy to work with him.

There are not many people who once worked for the NID, then the IOA and in the end commanded Atlantis. He was a respected commander who was able to achieve a lot in the Pegassus Galaxy.

Minutes later James Coolidge, Jean Lapierre and Shen Xiaoyi entered the meeting room and took a seat.

As soon as O'Neill came into the room and also took a seat, he asked:"What can Homeworld Command do for you today Gentlemen? We are currently in the last stages of our preparations for the expedition to the Pegassus Galaxy, to finally defeat the Wraith."

"That is good to know, but I'm afraid, there will be no expedition to the Pegassus Galaxy." answered Mr Coolidge.

"What is going on here? Could you please explain that to me?" demanded O'Neill to know.

"It's quite simple, after a very long discussion, the IOA has decided, that currently we don't want to have more military engagements with the Wraiths. The IOA and all of its member states have at the time a lot more problems that must be solved first. And one of the biggest problems, that we still have, is that the Stargate and everything else is still not disclosed. We simply don't have an idea, how to disclose all of that, without having several uprising and wars on our hands." explained Jean Lapierre.

"And what does this all mean for Homeworld Command and the SGC, if I may ask?"

"You may ask, that is the reason, why we are here in the end. General O'Neill after a very long discussion the IOA came to the conclusion, that the wisest decision would be, if you and your men would be evacuated to a new colony world." said Shen Xiaoyi.

"What, you can't be serious!"

"No, that is no joke. General O'Neill you are hereby ordered to evacuate all personnel of Homeworld Command and the SGC with the help of Atlantis and our 5 remaining space ships to a new world, where you will found a new colony." ordered Mr Coolidge.

"But that makes no sense at all. That is a huge mistake that you are making here."

"We don't think so. General do you remember what happened when the Ori attacked the first time with the plague? About 3.000 people died worldwide, that time. That were already quite a lot, and it wasn't easy to keep the Stargate secret. Do you how many soldiers we have lost only against the Ori? That dam war lasted only from 2005 – 2009. We had more than 50.000 casualties. But that was topped by the second bio attack of the Ori in 2008. That time we had to suffer almost 100.000.000 people. How do you expect, to explain all these deaths to the world General O'Neill? How many more deadly training accidents will there be?" wanted Mr Lapierre to know.

"If any of you think I don't care about all the dead people, you're wrong. And you, too, should be aware that even if we hadn't gone to Abydos then, the Goa'uld probably would have attacked us by now. I admit that this is only a well-founded assumption, but it is currently supported by many clues. So you want SGC to practically close, but why should we start a new colony on another planet, that seems a little odd to me."

"Well you could say that your men pose another problem for us. Please don't misunderstand us here now. Everyone in the SGC and Homeworld Command served honorably and did extraordinary work, most of which went far beyond the demands of service. We all know this and it is recognized by everyone."

"So what is then the problem with us Mr Coolidge."

"Have you taken a look in the mirror recently? You were born in 1952, yet you look like you were only around 30. And you are not the only one. All your subordinates are affected. They will all have a life expectancy of at least 200 - 300 years, as it currently looks. General, do you think this won't be noticed at some point as long as we can't go public with the Stargate project? And should any of your subordinates ever die or end up in a hospital and by any chance be examined by a physician. Some inconsistencies certainly would be noticed. Your age is one thing, but your perfect health is another. Likewise that nanites in your body support your immune system, or that your brain is used to about 80%.And I don't think I need to mention that they're all telepaths either. All these things, if discovered, would cause considerable problems for all of us." explained Ms Xiaoyi.

"Although I can understand these explanations, I can't accept them, because it's simply wrong to abandon my men. They fought for you all, they suffered and many of them were wounded or were killed. Because they are inconvenient for you, you send them away. And what happens, if you need us, do you expect, that they all will come willingly to die for you again?"

General O'Neill never would have guessed that this meeting with the IOA would become that emotional. He also would have never expected to be betrayed by the IOA and the other world leaders.

"And what will happen to the IOA?"

"A new foundation is already founded in San Diego that will be the cover for the IOA. With the foundation we will work secretly, to make a disclosure possible. Then we will contact you and inform you that you can come back. We expect that it will take at least 10 probably 20 years, before that can happen. So the majority of your subordinates will be able to see the Earth again, before they will die."

Jack couldn't believe what he had heard so far. It was like was having a very bad dream. The problem was, he wasn't sleeping. He vowed to himself to try everything to make sure, that these orders were taken back.

End of Flashback

15 minutes later he was sitting in this meeting room with the others and his mood was still not a little bit better. The others knew about his feelings, but that wasn't difficult either because all of them felt the same way. They all felt neglected and thrown aside and that after what they had to suffer and sacrifice. It wasn't fair. But that was their order.

Among the persons with him in the meeting room, were Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, Dr. McKay, Helia and Anise /Freya. Anise was now a queen for the remaining Tok'ra. And they were desperately needed, especially since the Ori had manipulated the Tretonin. That had been a devastating blow for the Jaffa. Many went on suicide missions by themselves. Only a small group had in the end accepted that they would need Goa'uld larvae again to survive. The fact that it would be the larvae of the Tok'ta made it a little bit easier to for the Jaffa to accept it at the time. By now only around 5.000 Jaffa and only 237 Tok'ra were left. The Tok'ra didn't serve as undercover agents anymore. Because of the simple fact, that they were more or less useless against the ORI as undercover agents. So nowadays they served as healers, psychiatrist and scientist for the so called Ta'uri alliance. And they were all on Atlantis.

"Jack."

"Yes, Daniel?"

"I'm afraid, it's time for us to leave. Look, we are all not happy with the order, but maybe it's for the best off all. We have to remember that the Stargate still isn't disclosed to the public, there is the fact, that we have all received genetic treatments, and we are all Telepaths now."

"Hmm, is everything on board now, as we speak?"

"Yes, all of the 679.573 people who should be on Atlantis are here." replied Anise.

Helia then confirmed, the Tria, Daedalus, Odyssey, Gen. Hammond and Prince of Wales had landed on the pier. Although it was quite crowded now at that the pier, but it was alright. All 128 F-302 Fighters were on board of the battle cruisers. And all the jumpers were either on board the Tria or on Atlantis.

"All the warehouses on Atlantis were completely full with all kinds of spare parts, weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, medicine and food. We also have enough seeds for all crops to feed at least 10 times as many people as we really need. Really General O'Neill, I wish we had that many supplies when we went to Atlantis the first time." reported Dr. McKay.

"Well Jack, as far as I know, all the books, movies, TV series, songs and so on, that we know of, have been uploaded into the databanks of Atlantis." told Daniel. It was an important project in the eyes of Daniel, to make sure, that they were able to preserve parts of their culture, they were born into. Daniel and several others expect that there will be mixture of the different cultures in the new colony. It would be almost impossible to prevent something like this to happen, if you have to deal with the survivors of several dozen different cultures.

From Daniels point of view it was necessary to save all this knowledge, because it was unknown when they would be able to return to Earth if ever.

O'Neill then looked everyone in the room in the eye and all of them gave him an approving look.

"OK, it really seems as we have everything that we need is here and everybody is on board. Carter please go to the control room and contact the IOA. Tell them that we will be leaving Earth in 5 minutes. And Sheppard you go to the control chair and take us out of here."

After everybody left the room for their posts, O'Neill waited a short moment before going to the control room. He knew, like all the others on board the ships and Atlantis, that it would be a farewell for a very long time, probably for ever.

The IOA was quite pleased to hear that Atlantis finally left Earth, the members of the council thought that way they had to deal with several problems less.

O'Neill's had always liked to visit the control room on Atlantis, especially since the Asgard core was also located here on Atlantis. Sometimes he spoke with his old friend Thor here in this room. Ok it was only Thor's consciousness, but in the end it was better than nothing Jack thought.

Meanwhile, Sheppard had taken a seat in the control chair. Every time he sat there, it was always special to feel all the power of the city. Even more now that Atlantis had 3 fully charged ZPM's. He briefly went through the pre-flight check - all systems of the city-ship were green. After John confirmed to Control that everything was fine, he received the command to lunch the ship.

Sheppard started the engines and slowly at first, Atlantis began to ascend. He didn't fly the city ship very fast, because there was no need for it. The cloak was activated since the ship was in the traffic in the air and on the ocean.

With a steady speed of 0.9 Mach and 2 g acceleration, Atlantis reached an altitude of 100,000 feet in 5 minutes. John deliberately didn't fly any faster to avoid a sonic boom. This changed when Atlantis finally reached orbit.

First he accelerated to Mach 5, afterwards further accelerated to over Mach 35. With this speed Atlantis flew towards the moon, to finally activate the hyperdrive. Although Atlantis could have flown 3.000.000 light-years within an hour, they were only flying with a speed of almost 20.000 light-years per hour.

They were about 50,000 light years away from Earth when suddenly Colonel Sheppard started losing control of the city-ship. In the end it got so bad, that the Colonel had to take Atlantis out of hyperspace.

Obviously, O'Neill wasn't very pleased with this incident. But when he asked Carter and McKay, they were only able to tell him they didn't know what had happened. Nobody knew that, while they were searching for the reason for the current problem, the real disaster was happening behind their backs

Nobody had an idea that when they had saved all the various books, movies and so on, that they would also upload a very dangerous virus. It waited passively in the database. When a certain distance to Earth was reached, the program was activated. This initially led to Atlantis no longer being able to continue flying in hyperspace. But then about 10 minutes later, another subroutine was activated. And so the stasis capsules on board of Atlantis were activated, only with the small difference that the stasis field completely enveloped Atlantis.

And so Atlantis now drifted towards an unknown planet. Many centuries were to pass before the city ship could finally be rediscovered by chance.