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The Others Chapter 1b
Asuras: On the Roof of a Skyscraper.
"Rodney? John?"
Weir gazed at Sheppard and McKay both still staring at the screen on Rodney's tablet.
Sheppard snapped out of it first
Casting her a look of distinct concern, he leant over and spoke a few words that Weir didn't catch in McKay's ear.
McKay gave a slight nod, and returned to his tablet.
Sheppard walked forward to join Weir, giving her a grin of reassurance that was so obviously contrived she didn't buy it for a moment. He seemed to realize she could see right through him, as she always could, and so sat quickly down in the pilots chair across from her.
She watched him, as he sat there, resting his head in his hands. For a few short moments, all the stress and worry of the last few hours could be seen on his face and in his slumped posture.
Then just as suddenly, the look was gone. Sheppard sat up, alert and poised. On his face Weir could now see the mask of the soldier, the part of his character Sheppard seemed compelled to hide most of the time behind a façade of humor and dry wit.
His eyes scanned the horizon carefully, before he relaxed and sat back slightly in his chair. As the minutes ticked by he sat, fiddling absently with his watch strap, from time to time bringing up the HUD to check if anything had changed.
At last, after at least 10 minutes had gone by McKay gave a cry of triumph. Followed by "Sheppard, I'm hacked in, I've got full schematics of the facility and the status of the ships in the docking bays."
"Took you long enough?"
"Well they had some major security around the shipyard's mainframe, took me a while to get in without letting them know I was there. Plus I had to hide my data-link, you know to stop them finding and tracking the source of the hack. Luckily the facility seems to be fully automated, so no-one was reviewing the feeds."
"Nice one, good job McKay"
"Thanks, well maybe I could have been a little faster but I really …
"Never mind that now, can you put a map of the facility up on the screen."
"Oh right, yes sure of course."
Sheppard nodded as the image steadily formed on the HUD, growing in detail until it depicted a vast facility the size of Atlantis, in the shape of a wide circle.
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"You found us a ship yet McKay?"
Ronon strode into the front of the Jumper, followed by Teyla. The Satedan now wore his long coat, though Sheppard personally had no clue as to how and when he'd had the time to grab it before they left the fake Atlantis. He carried a P90 on a strap, his gun in its usual holster, a number of grenades and surprisingly, a Missile launcher over his shoulder.
Sheppard's eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the weapon. "Is that real?"
Ronon shrugged, "seems to be, I checked it" He gestured towards the back of the jumper; there's a whole lot of guns back there, the odd missile and explosive too." He grinned slightly "they really put in a lot of effort didn't they" he patted the tube "I've wonder what one of these would do to a replicator".
Sheppard grinned back, "it might slow some of them down enough to let us steal one of their ships. McKay's found something I like the look of."
He gestured to the screen.
Ronon stared at it, stared back at Sheppard, stared at the screen again, then turned and raised an eyebrow at McKay.
"You've found us a ship McKay?"
Rodney, who had been staring at the arsenal draped over Ronon with a slightly open mouth, shut it hurriedly.
"You could say that, I found several actually."
His fingers began to dance over the tablet in his hands, making parts of the plan on the HUD flash.
"I was using the jumper's sensors to scan for ships with active reactors, when I noticed a strong energy reading coming from beneath the ground, or so I thought."
On the screen 12 rectangular shapes began to glow with a deep blue light. Of the two shipyard complexes built by the replicators, the HUD was displaying a plan of the larger. It was a massive site, similar in scale and shape to a city ship such as Atlantis.
The major difference was that where Atlantis was divided into 6 piers around a central hub, the shipyard spanned a complete circle around a central tower. Most of the complex was covered by three concentric rings of slipways, radiating outwards from the center. All in all there were perhaps 30 ships under construction in this one facility alone.
Smaller towers and buildings dotted the complex between the 3 rings of slipways. Clearly also visible were 5 large rectangular structures located equidistant around the perimeter, beyond the outer ring of slipways. They were squat bunker like structures, each with the easily recognizable circle of a drone launcher on their upper surface. Clearly this time the Asurans weren't leaving anything to chance and had built their shipyards to withstand and defend against any orbital bombardment.
Surprisingly though, the dark blue rectangles that had lit up on the plan did not correspond with any of the slipways on the 3 main rings. They were instead grouped in a tighter circle around the shipyard's central spire, within the innermost ring of shipyards. They were also significantly larger than any of the slipways containing an Aurora.
Sheppard gazed at them for a moment, noting the distinct line down the center of each rectangle. Then it clicked. "Hangers, like the one on Volcano world where we found the Orion?
"Bingo! We didn't notice them at first, because it looks like they were deliberately designed to not be visible from orbit."
"So they're hiding something" commented Ronon.
Only McKay's preoccupation with his tablet prevented him from retorting with an especially sarcastic reply this time. While he may have remained silent, Sheppard distinctly saw his mouth twitch.
As the scientist typed, he carried on his explanation. "As I said, I a detected power signature from the area beneath the hanger doors, but the Jumper's scanners couldn't penetrate the surface. They must have some sort of scrambling field in place."
"Anyway, it took me a little while but I managed to hack into the shipyard mainframe. After breaking few a number of quite nasty firewalls undetected, I finally found this in the mainframe." McKay tapped a key on his tablet.
The plan of the shipyard on the HUD vanished. It was replaced by another, a slowly rotating schematic of a very large and very intimidating looking ship. It appeared to be at least half as large again as an Aurora class and was distinctly bulkier around the center. The center hull was also distinctly wider and thicker from above, suggesting the vessel mounted a far more powerful set of hyperdrive engines.
As the image of the ship slowly rotated Sheppard saw that while the ship possessed a set of "fins" housing the sublight drives similar to those of an Aurora, the "fins" themselves were both larger and more streamlined. As the image rotated to show the ship from end on, he saw that instead of the Aurora's four the ship now had 8 sublight engine ports, 4 in each fin.
While the ship was considerably larger and bulkier than an Aurora, it also seemed more streamlined and aerodynamic. From the unusually smooth appearance of the hull plating, Sheppard guessed that much of the ship's hull was enclosed inside an armored casing, thus hiding much of the clutter visible on the Aurora's exterior. The plating of the upper hull ran almost level from fore to aft, with only a slight rise in the middle of the ship to visibly accommodate the bridge and obvious drone launching systems.
In fact the only thing that spoilt the ships smooth lines was the rear tower housing the main drive systems, the slight bulge of the ships snub protruding bow and the mountings for numerous weapons emplacements that dotted the ships flanks.
That and the twin mountings of what could only be some form of large, directed energy weapon, two on either side of the ship's hull.
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McKay gave a slight cough, drawing everyone attention instantly back to him, though eyes still wandered to the image of the ship of the screen.
"This ship is one of twelve currently under-construction in the hangers we detected. While it's obviously bigger, larger and meaner than anything we've seen before, there's far more to it that just that. Shortly after we first encountered the Aurora, Zelenka and I were digging around in the Atlantis database, looking for information on Ancient ship design. We were looking mainly for more data on the Aurora class, as well as any useful technology or techniques that could be applied to the next batch of 304's.
While we didn't find much that could be applied at our current level of shipbuilding, we did find the design specs for this. Simply put, it's an Alterran dreadnaught. This thing makes the Aurora look weak in comparison. Unlike the Aurora, it's purely a dedicated warship. It has faster sublight, much stronger shields, more powerful energy-weapons, much more automation and auto-repair facilities. Oh and a hyperdrive equal to if not faster than the one the Asgard provided for the Daedalus.
Sheppard gave a low whistle of appreciation. "Sweet" he muttered.
McKay gave him a nod of agreement. "The Ancients built this thing specifically to take out Wraith Hive ships. One of these took out of fleet of 7 hives by itself while protecting the evacuation of a civilian outpost towards the end of the war. Sadly they were all destroyed in the final battles to defend Atlantis, and the Lantians only had the time and resources to build a few dozen before they were defeated.
"And now the replicators are building a dozen of them." Weir sounded slightly shocked, almost scared at the concept.
McKay winced "I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news but it's only a dozen for now, I'm detected more hangers such as these under construction in the other shipyard, dozens of them. They're building a fleet of these things."
"Silence"
Then Weir rounded on Sheppard. "John" she said firmly "We have to do something, we've got to try stop them building these ships, even if we only delay them for now. You heard what that replicator said, Oberoth and the others are targeting the human planets, wiping out entire worlds to starve the wraith."
"With this many ships they'll be able to do that in a matter of months. By the time they're done they'll have an armada, Atlantis will most likely be destroyed, and then, then they'll come after earth. Stargate Command will be overwhelmed."
"Elizabeth's right, there's no way earth could handle even a few of these ships. Even with the new Asgard upgrades they're bringing online, we'd still be outnumbered and outgunned." McKay spoke quietly, his tone somber.
Sheppard guessed he was thinking of his sister Jeanie and her family.
"Asgard upgrades?"
"Yeh, you missed that memo when you were .. missing." McKay's voice tailed off again.
"Well" Sheppard hesitated, clearly deep in thought. "If we want to do anything about this we're going to need a plan. We'll also need a way out of here."
Ronon grinned suddenly. "How about we just blow them up, worked last time?"
"Well unless you packed a couple of nukes in your pockets this morning, oh no wait, we don't have any"
"Weren't you supposed to be looking for a ship McKay."
"Well it helps if I'm not continually distracted by people proposing stupid plans that have no chance of possibly succeeding, and as a matter of fact I do have plan!"
"Excellent" exclaimed Sheppard, stepping in swiftly to cut Ronon off and prevent another pointless argument. "Let's hear it McKay."
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McKay nodded, swallowed once and then shifted the image on the HUD from the Dreadnaught back to the plan of the facility.
For my plan to work we need access to a ship, we need to be in orbit and we need access to working weapons.
"Now the ship in this hanger is the only one that's completely finished." He highlighted on the dreadnaught hangers on the Southside of the complex, nearest to the city. "It's the second one they started building; the first is currently being repaired after battle damage."
"The problem is its reactors are stone cold, it's receiving power through umbilicals from the shipyard, but that's about it. Even if I override as many non-essential safety protocols as possible it would take at still take me at least 30 minutes to warm up its reactors enough to take off. The replicators would be on us and aboard the ship likely inside of the 20."
"How about one of the Auroras then" asked Sheppard.
McKay shook his head "the only ones that are finished and powered up likely have full crews onboard, there's no way we can fight nearly 900 replicators."
"So what do we do Rodney?" asked Weir.
McKay tapped on his tablet again, highlighting a hanger on the far side of the complex from the one he had just shown. "This is the only ship in the complex that is running under its own power; I can have it flying inside of 20 minutes. It may not be completely finished but it's definitely space worthy."
"Alright so we steal that one then." Sheppard sounded relieved. "Then what?"
Rodney gave him a wide slow grin. It was a distinctly unsettling expression to see on McKay's face, to Sheppard there seemed something almost feral about it. But at the same time, he could also tell that McKay was about to come out with one of his usual harebrained yet genius solutions.
"No, we take the finished one; we just make it look like we're taking that one."
End of Chapter 2: Sorry for the Cliffhanger.