Chapter 1a
Daniel was sitting in the Core room on board the Odyssey with a steaming mug of coffee and a note pad. He took a sip of the coffee and swore slightly as it burned his throat. One of the other people in here looked over to him with a stern look on her face, like a scummy old librarian who had been alive longer than most archaeological finds Daniel had made in the last three hours; they dated back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and when the Asgard Feared other races. The Kerror, Bonranshion and Ditrodian races. There were supposed to be four though; probably the replicators, he hadn't gotten that far along with this part of their history.
He spent the next seven hours reading a very interesting passage about the Bonranshion. They had entered the Dying galaxy and then been shot down by the Ancients, or so he thought it said; they had used a different name. His coffee, not so much coffee anymore, but cold milk with a tinge to it, needed refilling. He wandered out of the core room and headed for the coffee machine in the mess hall.
He passed Teal'c in the corridor with six other Jaffa following behind. Teal'c was getting rather annoyed with the political guard, seeing as he could probably take them all down while making soup. He nodded to Daniel and Daniel nodded in return, this is how it was. If he said something that made Daniel seem like the higher one in the situation his honour would been scorned slightly and his guards would not be so willing to take a shot or three for him; that was if he needed them in the first place.
He kept on going down the hall until he entered the lift and stood in silence next to Sam. After so long, it was still easier to save the world than get into small talk with her. She was busy pretending to do some work on her tablet computer. The problem was: Daniel could see that she was trying to complete a game of solitaire before the lift reached his deck.
"So, anything going on?" Daniel asked, not even trying to get the words a few centimetres out of his throat.
"Nope." She replied, by a few less millimetres. "Knight slipped, that's about it."
"He good?" Daniel asked, not really caring that much.
"Yeah." She replied, also not really caring.
A few more millennia of uncomfortable silence past before the lift finally stopped at Daniel's floor. Teal'c walked passed, smiling to both of them. He had lost his guards, it was something of a game to him. They would find him though, they always did.
"New record?" Daniel asked while walking with him toward the mess hall.
"Indeed. Two minutes." He replied, the smile broadening by about an inch.
"How'd you do it?" Daniel asked, trying to seem interested.
"I told them to stay where they were while I climbed up through Mitchell's quarters." He chuckled. "It was easier than last time." Teal'c stopped while looking around a corner and sighing with his smile fading quickly. He walked around the corner with all composure suddenly steaming up through the floor and his warrior presence while headed toward his guard.
"Well, see you later." Daniel said to himself while entering the mess hall.
Cam and Vala were exchanging more than a word in the corner of the room as crew wandered around finding seats with associates and food. The coffee machine was next to Cam and Vala, he decided he should get some sleep and dropped the crinkled cup into a bin by the doorway.
He walked passed Teal'c, again, this time guarded on all sides by Jaffa who looked more angry at the person they were protecting than the people who might attack the protected. After a long walk toward the lift again, he found Sam still standing outside it concentrating on the solitaire game.
"Really got nothing better to do?" Daniel asked with a slight mumble.
"I could be in the engine room getting yapped at by Mike, or I could be on the bridge getting yapped at by Dave," Colonel Edward Davidson was something of the worst commander the Odyssey had seen in its short lifetime, and so the crew called him Dave, "for not being in the engine room being yapped at by Mike." Mike was the new engineer they picked up a week ago, he was a good mechanic, just very loud and temperamental. "So, no." She said rather harshly.
"What's your problem?" Daniel asked, going into concerned friend mode instantly.
"Nothing, just a thing." She replied, trying to keep the pain from not showing.
"What kind of thing?" Dan asked, being the friend he always was.
"Just Jack." She replied while frantically tapping on the lift for the first deck with her knee.
Dan stepped in and put a hand on her shoulder. "What's going on?"
"One of the scientists at the SGC made a bomb, by accident." She quickly added on the end. "And he got caught in the explosion. I just got the news an hour ago."
There was a bang on the roof of the lift. One of the panels was pulled out of place and Teal'c dropped into the lift. "Why weren't we told?"
"He didn't want you worrying." She said, mainly at Teal'c for a joke. He smiled slightly. "But he's hurt his back."
"He'll pull through." Dan said as the lift stopped at his floor. "We'll be back in Ten days anyway."
"Indeed, O'Neil is somewhat of a badass." Teal'c said surprisingly. "I have been watching some movies Jack lent me." He admitted after they stared at him surprisingly
Dan had headed out of the lift and Teal'c was following. Sam sat on the lift floor and pulled out her Tablet to continue with her game of solitaire. The ship rocked slightly as they suddenly left hyperspace. Sam stood up again and turned her tablet off while running to the bridge.
"What's happening?" She asked as Cam and Vala ran in as well.
"We don't know. Maybe your friend Mr. Thomson could tell us, except he has been answering his station for a few minutes now." Dave said. "Either way, I've sent a few soldiers down to check up on him."
"He's dead." Someone said through the radio on Dave's chair. "Bullet to the head, it's an insider."
"Looks like we have a murderer aboard the ship."
"No sir, I shot him. Didn't you get my last transmission?"
"No, apparently not." Colonel Davidson replied.
"He sabotaged the hyperdrive, turned them off and damaged a power cable. He had an LA communicator out."
"Oh, so he was the insider."
"Yes sir."
"Ok then, Cater go down there and get the hyperdrive running, Mitchell and Jackson go with her in case there are other insiders." Dave said with ignorant confidence.
"Yes sir."
"Incoming ships sir, three Ha'tals and six Me'tas."
- Writer's note to the reader:
Dear reader,
This fan-fiction is written five years after Icarus base was destroyed and so the LA have developed their ships somewhat.
- A Ha'tal is a ship about half the size of a Ha'tak built with war in mind. They hunt in packs and have missile capabilities as well as the usual weapons a criminal underground organization would have (Plasma weapons, fighters, railguns, not the 'insta-kill' beams though)
- A Me'tas is a ship that is half the size of a Ha'tal. Used in the capturing of ships they have the roll of firing a constant steady stream of plasma at ships degrading their shields. When shields are down radiation missiles are launched that will most likely kill the crew inside a ship. If used with Ha'tals, the ship in question is most likely not wanted and so is destroyed by the Ha'tals.
I thought you deserved to know this seeing as you have survived the 'back' button on your web-browser.
Thank you again for reading the fan-fiction,
Experiment 442 ;)
(you haven't even reached the good part yet my friend :D) -
"Battle stations!" Dave shouted as Carter made a run for the hyperdrive. Teal'c was standing with his back turned to Dave, he didn't deserve the honour of a title like colonel. He would probably give Marks the job of actually coordinating the battle. "Marks, get targets!"
"Yes sir." He replied, probably on the same train of thought as Teal'c right about now. "Watts, evasive manoeuvres! Jones fire missiles when the Ha'tals get close to us. Kelis Railguns on intercept, fire beam weapons at the Me'tas Hulme."
They all acknowledged their appreciation of Marks' battle readiness. He should have reached captain by now, maybe Teal'c should pull a few strings, break a few necks. Not literally break their necks, but try and force them to make him captain by talking with Jack. He felt like a cat trying to climb a very large tree right now. The ship may be very capable of battle, but nine ships was far too many for even the Odyssey.
Flashes of light now struck the shield every now and again as missiles impacted. Not the powerful kind like the Tau'ri missiles, but still able to, as they say, pack a punch. The Me'tas were starting to fire their plasma weapons, most missing due to Watt's piloting skills. The yellow plasma screamed across the dark sky as lines in space from the Ha'tals smacked against the shields. The railguns were now starting to fire toward the fighters that had flown out of both sides of the closest Ha'tal.
The first casualty of this battle was Dave. He had become so engrossed in watching the battle that he had seemed to drop out of reality as if he were watching it from a faraway place on a magical screen. The second was a Me'tas that exploded as a beam weapon sliced through its shields and hull in one swift shot. As usual, a certain kind of fate or god decided to intervene with their success.
"Beam weapons are malfunctioning again!" Hulme shouted from the side of the bridge. "Someone needs to sort this out!"
"What must I do?" Teal'c asked as he walked over.
"It's a power conduit that keeps sliding out of place, you'll needs to replace it with this." Hulme replied while handing Teal'c a small glass tube with two metal ends, it was about half a foot long and looked very fragile. "The conduit breaks here." He pointed to a screen near the front of the ship, they were in the bridge, near the centre of the ship. Teal'c quickly ran toward the lift and stood inside it while the ship violently rocked around him.
The calming music was not so calming at this moment. He mildly looked around and tried to whistle the strange position he was in right now away. Another 'thing' rocked the ship manically, he decided the elevator needed to go faster, or he should have used a maintenance hatch. The lift slid to a stop and a door half opened. He sighed.
Trying to push himself between the doors took him nearly a minute, the next five were spent burning off lunch as he ran to the beam weapon station where two people were looking very panicky.
"Have you got it?" One of them asked as he stepped into their view.
"Indeed." He handed it over to her and she pulled open a box to show six of them, one had exploded and was littered across the ground as the door opened. She pulled out the ends and replaced the glass tube while the other one started tapping frantically on his screen. After a minute of trying to carefully push the glass tube in place Teal'c decided to push it in with a bit more force and the entire board lit up.
"Um, thank you." She said with an empty bow, but he had learnt to respect those who tried to honour his ways.
He bowed his head in return and ran back to the control room.
"He seems nice." Geoff sad from his desk while another beam lit their entire work station up like the fourth of July. "He's not your type though."
"Neither are you Geoff." Jane replied as Teal'c turned a corner and disappeared from her view. She landed on her seat like a tank. "I must have insulted him."
"Why'd you say that? You only needed his help with a an oversized fuse and destroyed his culture with a bow that could have made one of his guards kill you." He joked. "Anyway, Hulme says its only a few LA ships."
"How did they drag us out of hyperspace?" Jane asked herself more than the central hub of ship gossip Geoff.
"Mike was a spy apparently. They found him tampering with an engine and thought the worst so they shot him." He replied confidently.
"What if he was trying to fix what the spy had done?" Jane closed her eyes and whished the banging would stop.
"He also shot at the team sent to figure things out." Geoff added.
"Oh." She opened her eyes again as Hulme sounded over the radio.
"Everything good down there?" He asked over the radio.
"Yes." Geoff replied. "How are things up there?"
"Not good, Dave got Marks to do everything again." Teal'c ran back onto the bridge and stood at his usual place. The only major losses were on the LA's side, they'd lost three Me'tas and one Ha'tal. Teal'c peeked at shield strength and changed to a more stern face. Judging from it, Hulme gathered they'd be destroyed in a few seconds. "Also we're about to lose shields."
"Shields at ten percent!" Marks informed the bridge. As if someone had punched him in the head repeatedly, it suddenly dawned on Dave that he might die. He jerked his head forward for a second, tried to regain any honour he could gather from the SG-1 effect; if you had a member of SG-1 on the ship, you would survive longer than normal; either fate or the atheist god watched over them.
"Carter, get the hyperdrive working!" Dave shouted into his radio like a child demanding candy.
"I need two minutes." She replied while Dan held a power cable and Cam held a tool kit.
"So this won't hurt me at all?" Dan asked looking at the power cable that connected to the control panel.
"No, well, yes. But only for a second."
"Ok, plug it in Mitchell."
"Sure thing Jackson." The room suddenly filled with a tar like substance, not a literal one or they'd all be dead, but a metaphorical one that seemed to radiate from both Cam and Dan at an alarming rate. Vala was probably the source. It clogged up sensible thinking and made both of them do stupid things to prove themselves, though Sam couldn't complain.
There was a loud bang and everything went-