"Colonel Carter what's our status?" Mokar asked when he walked up to her on the bridge of the Nest. Through the forward viewscreen they could see the lights of the fleet Sam had gathered, twenty Auroras, thirty five Retributors and almost a hundred upgraded upgraded Generation ships, almost their entire Pegasus fleet.
"We have received confirmation from all ships, we are good to go," Sam answered from the control chair in the center of the bridge.
"Good. We need to know what the wraith have been up to," he said as he came up next to her. To her it was strange seeing him dressed for battle with weapons hanging in holsters.
For the past year or two the Traveler generation ships had been searching through the galaxy but they were starting to enter wraith space and the wraith were responding in force each time they could, now it was time for the Alterra to strike back, hard. A few light years in front of them the generation ships had located a very large wraith outpost that was protected by a sizeable wraith fleet, but the planet itself also had several large deposits of metals that made it an even more tempting target.
"This is likely to cause a full scale war with the Wraith, are we ready for this?" Sam asked.
"I know that, I know that it would be better if we had more ships to deploy but we need more resources. We will be taking that planet today."
Sam nodded and activated a fleet wide transmission. "Prepare for a short hyperspace jump into wraith territory. Ground troops stand ready to deploy to the surface."
She waited a second before she sent the order to every ship in the fleet and they all jumped away simultaneously. They stayed in hyperspace for a few seconds before dropping out quite some distance from the planet. Four hives were sitting in orbit along with their escorting ships and they immediately began to break away from the planet. Long before the wraith ships were in weapons range the Arcturus generator was online and the Nest was fully operational.
"I will be joining our ground forces. Good luck Colonel," Mokar said.
"Likewise," Sam answered moments before Mokar beamed over to one of the generation ships.
Slowly the wraith ships approached them and Sam held back her fleet, finally the wraith began to fire their weapons but still Sam held back her fleet, only when the wraith fleet was fully committed did she turn the weapons of her fleet on the wraith. In an instant the Nest's three beam weapons began to slice through the wraith fleet, a moment later the Auroras' and Retributors' pulse cannons began to fire and pummel the wraith ships.
With a single thought Sam connected her combadge to the generation ships that had been keeping their distance far from the fighting. "Colonel Carter to ground team, you are clear to deploy."
-Copy that Colonel,- a man replied. A few hundredths of a second passed as the generation ships entered hyperspace only to appear in the lower atmosphere of the planet roughly a kilometer from the wraith outpost.
Through the viewport Sam watched her fleet tear through the wraith fleet. After one of the hives was cleaved front to back by one of the beam weapons the wraith began to launch darts but the gunners sitting in the secondary control chairs behind Sam on the bridge were waiting for them and did their best to eliminate them the moment they left the hangar, still a few slipped through and began attack runs against the Retributors in the fleet.
"Ma'am, four hundred wraith darts have successfully launched. Enemy ships are turning to protect hangar entrances," a crew member reported.
"Launch half of our complement of Wasps," Sam ordered.
"Launching wasps."
Deep inside the Nest was a series of tunnels leading from the exterior of the hull to large internal storage bays capable of housing hundreds of thousands of the small Wasps and a few thousand larger Hornets. But now they barely held a few thousand Wasps, less than a thousand Hornets and all the storage bays were eerily empty.
A few floors below the bridge of the ship a large hall was completely filled with pilot stations, but with only a handful of pilots on the ship most of the Wasps and Hornets were being flown using a very advanced Alterran auto pilot. As soon as Sam had given the order half of the Wasps rose up and rushed forward into the closest tunnel while the pilots began to pick ships for their squads. In a matter of seconds the Wasps had entered the fray to chase down the wraith darts, against the Wasps the darts stood no chance. For each Wasp that the darts managed to take down they lost ten, but some of the pilots took a more creative approach and landed their ships on the wraith hives and cruisers, then they began to fire the railguns into sensitive parts of the wraith ships.
-Colonel Carter we have deployed to the surface,- a man reported.
"Good work. I want rapports as you progress," Sam replied.
-Yes Ma'am.-
"Colonel Carter, one of the Retributors is reporting hull breaches," one man on the bridge rapported.
"Have them set a course that takes them above the hangar, once in range use tractor beams to dock them inside. Start to beam their crew onto our ship," Sam ordered.
"Yes Ma'am."
Through the viewport Sam saw one of the hives turn around back towards the planet, with a single thought she redirected one of the Nests beam weapons and cut straight through it. She focused the other two weapons on the remaining two hives and watched them exploded a few seconds later. Before her she could see the cruisers splitting up, trying to run away, but she kept firing and both the Auroras and the Retributors ganged up on them. A few minutes later debris was all that remained of the wraith fleet.
"Operations, group the ships that are in good condition and deploy them to secondary targets. Send the damaged ships back to Athyl," Sam ordered. The secondary targets were a list of wraith outposts and fleets that were badly defended and the groups would go through the list and eliminate as many as they could before they needed to go to Athyl for repairs.
Ronon was leaning against one of the large hydraulic pistons that moved the boarding ramp on the Traveler generation ships up and down. In front of him a few dozen men and women were standing, most were Travelers or Pegasus natives that wanted revenge on the wraith but a few were former SGC soldiers, most importantly for Ronon he had trained everyone of them to fight the wraith. "Check your shields and weapons," he ordered. He could see the nervousness on some of the mens' faces.
-Ready to land,- a voice announced through the ship's' internal speakers, a moment later the ship groaned and shook slightly. Then the ramp began to lower and Ronon walked down it, before he reached the edge of the ramp he was running. He jumped down on the ground before the ramp had reached the grass below and his men followed him. He looked left and right and saw the other sixteen Traveler ships that had touched down to deploy troops. A few ships to his right have saw Teyla lead her troops forward and to his left he saw Mokar doing the same. The other Traveler ships were circling above, waiting for the wraith outpost to deploy their darts.
The moment their feet hit the grass the wraith began to fire at them from the wraith outpost that was sitting at the base of a mountain and a hoard of wraith began to flood out on the plains towards them. As the blue stun bolts from the wraith began to reach them Ronon watched two blurs dashing forward and a few moments later he saw that both Teyla and Mokar were in the middle of the wraith horde fighting them hand to hand. Seeing the wraith horde closing around Teyla and Mokar Ronon pushed forward as fast as he could to catch up to and help them but it would take vital minutes. Still he held out his gun in front of him and fired as fast as he could while running forward. Behind him most of his men did the same but some of the more trained men spread out in a firing line and knelt down to provide covering fire.
In the midst of the wraith horde Teyla and Mokar were fighting fiercely in close combat, but not with their hands or with knifes or swords, on their wrists they carried rapidly firing plasma weapons that they used to cut down the wraiths at an incredible rate, enough to keep most wraith from firing at them and the few stun bolts that reached them were absorbed by their personal shields. The size and speed of the weapon meant that it was highly inaccurate and almost useless beyond a few meters. Together they held the wraith at bay while Ronon and his men were coming up to them. Using their Alterran physiology they both jumped around in the wraith horde to make sure they had something to fire on.
Above them they heard a high pitched whine. They looked up towards their right flank to see a wing of Traveler ships approaching quickly on a strafing run. In a quick dash the two broke out of the wraith horde just before the ships began to bombard the wraith horde. As soon as the Traveler ships were done Teyla and Mokar jumped back into the fray, this time joined by Ronon and the others. Unlike Teyla and Mokar Ronon's men were relying on their rifles and pistols simply because they were not equipped for close combat, while Ronon himself had pulled out his sword and was holding it in one hand with his pistol in the other. He took down hundreds of wraith in a matter of minutes but he had no chance to of taking out as many wraith as the two Alterra did. The Traveler ships came around for another strafing run, this time hitting closer to the wraith facility. Hundreds of wraiths were being thrown up into the air and their numbers were starting to get thin but still they were rushing forward towards them.
As the wraith thinned and the sounds of gunfire began to quiet down Mokar heard a loud screaming sound coming from the facility. He jumped over a few wraith to Teyla. "Do you hear that? The wraith have activated the self-destruct of the facility. Come."
Teyla spun around and gunned down a few more dozen wraith. "I will follow you."
Mokar took out a few more wraith before he turned towards the outpost and jumped up onto the outside of the wall. He grabbed a ledge and pulled himself up onto it, then he jumped again, this time up and through a thin membrane into the facility from where the wraith had been firing down. He cracked the neck of the closest wraith and began to fire down the corridor into both directions. A few moments later Teyla followed and fired her weapons as well.
Together they ran through the corridors of the facility, gunning down every wraith they found until they finally reached the reactor room where the wraith Queen was standing bent over a now dead human.
"Do you seek death?"
"Yes, yours," Teyla said calmly. She walked forward towards the queen and Mokar let her, he knew well about the rage for the wraith burning inside her. The queen reached out to feed on Teyla but her personal shield burned the queen's hand. A single thought from Teyla was all it took to force her way into the mind of the queen. The queen was young and weak and Teyla channeled all her rage into her focused thoughts. In a matter of moments she was inside the telepathic network of the wraith on the planet and she was causing havoc. With a single thought she broke the queen's mind and sent her to deactivate the self-destruct, then she began to work on the wraith drones that were still running around outside. With a few thoughts she sent them against each other, completely ignoring the Alterran forces. Another thought from Teyla ripped the free will from the queen and shattered her mind. Mokar did not have the wraith DNA that Teyla had, but he could still feel the wraith telepathy and he could feel the chaos that Teyla was causing.
"The wraith should take care of themselves, the queen is yours to study. As you wished," Teyla said when she released her mental grip of the wraith network.
A few rapports coming through Mokar's com badge confirmed that the wraith were fighting and killing each other. "Good work Teyla, I will make sure she is put to good use."
"I wish her to suffer."
"I will make sure that you can make her suffer before she dies. We will not feed her, she will suffer."
Without another word Teyla left the chamber to kill more Wraith. Meanwhile Mokar removed two halves of a metal ring from a pocket, he placed them around the wraith queen's neck and the halves locked together to form a mental suppressor. There was no way for the queen to communicate mentally or even form complex thoughts while the collar was around her neck. He tapped his combadge once and sent a mental command to the Nest that was sitting in low orbit slightly above them, the ship would need to move every few hours to stay in beaming range but it was not going to stay there for long. A few moments later he and the queen found themselves standing in the gate room of the Nest and the gate was already dialling.
After walking through the gate and beaming straight from Atlantis to the station nearby they were in the stasis labs with eight confused Asgards looking at the Alterra and the Wraith who had just arrived, but it did not take long for Thor to regain his composure.
"Why have you brought a wraith queen here?" Thor asked.
"This is our most advanced research facility, I was hoping to learn something about the wraith that we can use. But that will have to wait until you have finished your new bodies. Until then this facility will remain at your full disposal, but after that I hope that some of you will remain to help us with future research," Mokar replied. He sent mental instructions to the station and two Asurans walked in and escorted the queen away.
"Learning how to fight the wraith is something we have always sought to do, I believe that there are many who would be happy to help you with that," Nytar said. She was one of the Vanir scientists that had been working on the project.
"I will of course stay as well," Thor informed.
"That is good, but the time to make such promises is not now Thor. How is work coming along on the bodies?"
"We have abandoned the body we first used to convince the Vanir to join our cause, the one you created. It seems that the cloning process is highly unlikely to succeed and as such that is not a valid solution. Heimdall, Loki, Hermoid and myself are using those bodies now that we have no other bodies, but the wasted clones for a larger scale would not be acceptable, we lost close to a thousand bodies to have these four bodies made," Thor answered.
"Then it seems that other solutions need to be researched." In truth it was Mokar who had ordered the facility to sabotage the bodies to make sure that a proper solution was found, still knowing the predicament of Thor and his kin were in Mokar had allowed four bodies to be created.
"There are may other things we still have not tried, the issue is that the genome is growing more and more complex with each iteration," Ydar, another of the Vanir, said.
"Still there is one thing we have yet to try, something I know that you will not like," Thor said.
"As long as you do not seek to kill something I do not see a reason why I will not like it," Mokar said with a smile.
Thor nodded thoughtfully a few times before looking at Mokar, he was uncertain how but Thor looked nervous. "Are you certain?"
"Of course, the Alterra have always tried to help the Asgard. I will give what assistance I can," Mokar assured but he was getting nervous now.
Loki stepped in front of Thor and looked up at Mokar. "We wish that you seek to contact the Nox, we know that the Alterra and the Nox have not agreed on things very often but they have always had the best knowledge of nature and biology. They may be able to help us solve this were the Alterra have not."
"I see." Mokar was unsure how to feel. The Nox had been their allies once, but only because of the friendship between their two vassal races, the Asgard and the Furlings. Now the Asgard wanted to give the credit for the solution to their issues to the Nox.
He exhaled before slowly nodding, the need for a united Asgard race was more important than his ego. "I will sent a ship to meet the Nox, if they wish to help then I will bring them here. I hope that time has changed them, but you know what they felt about your cloning effort." The fact that he was feeling so angry at a race that he had actually never meet was scaring him slightly.
"If they wish not to help then it will simply take time, I am confident that the knowledge of the Alterra will be enough to help us," Thor said. He could see that they had struck a sensitive nerve.
"I am sure that we will solve it, but you are correct that the Nox will be helpful. If they wish to help," Mokar admitted. "I will see to it that they are informed." With that he beamed back to Atlantis.