Stargate Atlantis

04x15

Reliquary

Daniel was translating another section of Ancient text, the structure they'd found had been constructed after the war with the wraith in Pegasus.

"Hey, Jackson, how's it going?" Cam walked up beside him.

Daniel turned to his commanding officer.

"Well I've translated the first section of text, it seems to be detailing the progress of something called the Asura project which seems to have a variety of meanings. I believe that this base was built for someone to continue research into the replicator technology behind the Asurans."

"The Ancients built the replicators?" Vala clearly hadn't read any of the reports from Atlantis that Daniel had converted in lieu of actually going there.

"Well, according to what we've found from the Asurans themselves the Ancients in the war with the wraith created nanites designed to infiltrate and kill from within. However the Ancients programmed them to adapt and self-replicate, ultimately they lost control and they built human form bodies and began to copy the Ancients technology even Stargates and ZeePMS. When they decided the project had gone too far they tried to destroy them, they were able to destroy all but a few nanites which have been able to replicate an entire civilisation,"

Cam lent on one of the wall panels, all of the Ancient runes flashed on as the wall dissolved into a mesh of nanites, Daniel and Teal'c raised their P-90s to face the nanites as they went into the walls. The chamber beyond powered up revealing a room identical to those on Atlantis with crystal computer consoles and tan orange walls, at the centre of the room a light flashed on to show a cabinet with what looked like a sheet of glass over it. Inside the stasis pod was a middle aged man with his arms crossed over his chest as if he was being put in a coffin. He had long brown hair split with greys and a long aristocratic face, Daniel moved to the nearby console, he waved his hand over the crystals making it light up, he smiled, he'd got Dr Beckett's gene therapy when he was in Atlantis.

"Who is that in there?" Cam and Teal'c still had their P-90s raised at the pod.

Daniel read the displays; although he wasn't a Doctor he knew enough about the basics and was smart enough to work out what the displays meant.

"According to this the person in there has been in place for eight thousand years." Daniel looked back up to the person in the long white robe. "He may be an Ancient."

Kefflin sat in the Paltak chair on his Ha'tak, the Lucian Alliance wasn't what it was, their alliance with the Aschen would lead them to ruin, the others seconds just couldn't see it. Kefflin needed something to give the others in order to dump the Aschen.

"Kefflin sir," Kefflin looked up at one of his scouts, an Oranian called Lor'at. "We have detected a Tau'ri presence on a planet that appears to have an outpost built by the Ancients."

Kefflin smiled, the secrets of the Ancients had elevated the Tau'ri to a galactic superpower with only a few ships.

"Ready my fleet of Ha'taks, we will capture them and find out their secrets."

His scout hurried of as the five Ha'taks in his fleet jumped into hyperspace.

In orbit of Asuras a teardrop shaped golden sliver dropped out of hyperspace and entered the atmosphere, Oberoth was worried, most of the defence satellite array had been destroyed and most of the fleet was gone, only fifteen Aurora class ships remained along with twenty of the smaller escorts, just as Oberoth put down he felt something. Oberoth opened a communications channel to the high council.

"This is Oberoth, ready a ship for an extragalactic jump now,"

The Avenger was once more parked on the sandy slopes of the mountain range, Ikaros was inside the rebuilt bridge on the Tria, most of the structural damage had been repaired and preparations had been made to install hyperdrives and shields. The hull damage would be the last to be replaced. Once Ikaros was certain that the repairs were on schedule he beamed back to the Avenger, sitting in the control chair he pulled the Avenger back into space laying in the co-ordinates for his own facility on Mykena Lattor, the twin planet in the binary system where he'd built the Charybdis device.

The Avenger once more roared into hyperspace heading at max speed towards the Pegasus galaxy.

Colonel Reynolds looked up when he saw the formation of Alkesh and gliders approaching.

"This is Reynolds to SG-1, we are under attack,"

The Alkesh passed over the 'gate dropping its explosive payload, the SG team took shelter from the blast as the rings deposited a group of Lucian alliance shoulders, the fired zats at the team, the first few shots hit one of the marines, he dissolved into the air as his atoms were excited. Reynold instantly opened fire; the first few were taken down instantly.

Cam's radio fizzed and crackled; the others looked to him and tried their own radios.

"This is Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell to Reynolds, can you hear me?" The only response was static.

"This room must be shielded," Daniel pointed out.

Cam nodded and headed into the foyer outside.

"This is Cam Mitchell, Reynolds can you hear me?" Cam was about to send another transmission.

"This is colonel Reynolds we are under attack from Lucian alliance troops, be advised there is an Alkesh heading your way."

Cam walked back into the room.

"Alright Kids, let's get going," Teal'c and Vala moved to obey the order but Daniel hadn't moved, he was staring at the person in the stasis pod. "Yo Jackson, lets get goin'"

"We can't just leave him here, we know how the Alliance treat prisoners, if he's an Ancient we can't just let him be captured."

Cam sighed, he'd been their prisoner, so he knew exactly what Daniel meant.

"Alright, thaw him out, but if anything happens it's on you."

Daniel nodded and imputed the appropriate commands causing the energy field in the cabinet to shrink back as the person stumbled forward, Daniel caught him and wrapped his arm around his own shoulders and dragged him out of the room.

Ikaros was woken by an alarm sent through the ships neural interface; the Avenger had detected a wraith hive ship with two escort cruisers culling a heavily populated planet. Ikaros adjusted the ships course to intercept, Ikaros ran through a pre-battle checklist, even though the Avenger was far more advanced than the wraith vessels the Avenger was rated as only a Group Defence Frigate, it wasn't designed to take on a fleet by itself.

Ikaros took a deep breath as he went over simulations for the ships fate in the upcoming battle, all simulations concurred that the best strategy would be to take out the hive first with a full salvo of drones, engaging at a distance of ten light seconds, that would mean the drones would take fourteen seconds for the drones to reach the target at maximum speed while it would take twenty for the wraith plasma blasts to reach his position which offered enough time for effective manoeuvre at sixty percent of the speed of light.

When the Avenger dropped out of hyperspace he couldn't visually see the enemy ships with his eyes, but the subspace sensors and VR matrix gave him real-time telemetry as the wraith began to fire on his position. Ikaros opened the drone launcher silos and commanded all of the missiles to head first towards the hives weapons then the same on the cruisers. He began a complex set of manoeuvres to avoid the encroaching plasma bolts.

The Avenger spun and rolled like a fighter avoiding most of the incoming bolts while the others were either countered by point defence or impacted the shield. The impacts could be heard but the Ancient shields were able to counter the momentum effectively unlike the Asgard designed counter parts.

Meanwhile in orbit of the planet the darts were swarming up to intercept the drones, however the Ancient energy missiles at seventy five percent of the speed of light were far too fast, they slammed into the hive ship, weaving throughout the hull destroying all of the weapons and hyperdrives. The hive listed towards the planet as explosions ravaged the behemoth. The two cruisers came about to intercept the Avenger, moving at a quarter of the speed of light they'd reach the Avenger in forty seconds.

Ikaros saw them coming, if they got in close they could box him in so he couldn't take evasive action and slowly drain the shield, taking a gamble Ikaros swung the Avenger around to face them and accelerated to half the speed of light.

Just after thirteen seconds the Avenger blasted past the two cruisers, Ikaros charged up the plasma point defence turrets and fired off a salvo of supercharged pulses at the cruisers, while not enough to destroy them the plasma ripped through the outer layers of armour and caused internal damage to either the structural supports, they slowed immediately. Going at a quarter of the speed of light wouldn't be possible now.

A further six seconds later the Avenger slammed into a high orbit, the darts began to swarm. Ikaros used the sensors to tag the ships with humans inside the matter buffers, reaching out he brought the drones back online to destroy registered 'safe' targets, while he used the point defence batteries to disable the registered 'unsafe' targets.

Some of the darts changed course to Kamikaze the Avenger, the darts accelerated up to ninety percent of the speed of light; Ikaros switched point defence to automated control allowing the ship to take down nine out of ten of the incoming ships.

Shields were holding at 85% and all ships in range were either destroyed or disabled, the two cruisers had entered hyperspace.

Ikaros pulled the Avenger alongside the hive ship and locked onto all of the human life signs, activating the transporters he stored them in the buffer before returning them to the planet, when the ship was free of wraith Ikaros opened fire.

The remaining drones ripped the hive apart in a massive plume of fire and gas.