Pegasus—Alpha-site.
One day later.
Sheppard and his team were in the command and control room of the ever expanding Alpha-site, watching the holographic display of the Pegasus galaxy appear in front of them. They had been busy over the last two months placing cloaked spy satellites throughout the dwarf galaxy so they could keep track of the Wraith.
"Well, the image is incomplete, but you can see the territories taking shape," Rodney said. "And it looks like Todd understated the amount of Wraith that didn't want the treatment. They have divided the galaxy into three regions: the largest section is Wraith, the next largest is the Goa'uld, and the smallest is the Neo-Wraith. The Goa'uld were spreading across the galaxy, meeting with little resistance, but a week ago it changed. The Wraith were able to stop them in their tracks. They did push them back slightly, but the boarders seemed to have stabilized now."
"How?" Sheppard asked.
"I'm not, exactly, sure" Rodney answered, adjusting the hologram to highlight the Wraith territory. When it finished zooming in, tiny red images of Wraith ships began to appear. A few at first, then more, and more, and more, until there were about forty hives, and one hundred fifty cruisers. "And that's just what's in range of our satellites."
"Where did they get all those ships?" Teyla asked.
"I don't know," Rodney answered. "But in the last two weeks they've more than doubled the size of their fleet, and it's not just the number of ships that they've increased," He said, zooming in further to a single hive. Rodney scanned the hive to show the life signs, after a second the image of the hive populated with Wraith life signs throughout the ship, final count was around five thousand. "It's not fully loaded, but every hive in their space, that we can see, has as many or more, and the cruisers are fully loaded. The strange thing, is they aren't just drone soldiers, almost half are the regular males that would hatch from eggs, and would have to grow up."
"Could they have cloned them?" Brig. Gen. Shilin asked joining them at the holographic display. He had been busy with the expansion and fortification of the Alpha-site.
"Maybe, but it doesn't make sense to increase their numbers when there weren't enough humans to sustain their population as it was," Rodney answered. "That brings me to another mystery, with the increase in numbers you would think they would be culling planets to extinction, but it's been quite the opposite, they're taking very few."
"Are we sure they didn't get ahold of the treatment?" Sheppard asked.
"Yes, our sensors can detect the difference between the regular Wraith, and the Neo Wraith. They're definitely regular Wraith," Rodney answered.
"So to get some answers we're going to have to explore the areas that our satellites don't cover?" Sheppard asked.
"I'm afraid so," Rodney answered.
The next week seemed to pass very slowly, conducting the tedious work of searching for the Wraith shipyards and cloning facilities. The urgency to find them had been increasing everyday though, the Daedalus, Apollo, and the Sun Tzu were continuing the process of completing the network of spy satellites as they searched. Allowing them to get a better count of the enemy ships, which was now fifty hives, and two hundred cruisers. They put every ship they could muster into the search: Puddle Jumpers, Hyper Jumpers, and a few of the new 305 Raptor class ships. It was one of these that caught the first lead, spotting a hive enter a Nebula then vanished from all sensors once it was fully engulfed by the gas. Which is what brought Sheppard and his team there to investigate.
"The Wraith have set up a system satellites to send out false sensor readings, so that when anyone looks at the Nebula that is all they see," Rodney said, as they passed into the gas cloud.
"Can you compensate so we can see where we're going," Sheppard asked.
"It looks like the interference is directed outward, so it should clear up as we get further in," Rodney answered. They continued on in silence for a few minutes before a beeping revealed a change in sensor readings. "Whoa," Rodney exclaimed.
"What is it?" Sheppard asked.
"We're cloaked, right?" Rodney asked.
"Yes, Rodney," Sheppard answered impatiently. "What do you see."
"There are eleven hives and twenty-seven cruisers in this Nebula with us," Rodney answered.
"So this is it then?" Ronon asked. "The shipyard we've been looking for."
"I'm not sure," Rodney answered, as he continued to run sensor sweeps. "There is a void near the center of the Nebula, the sensors can't see inside."
"Is it more of the sensor camouflage?" Sheppard asked.
"No, it's not false readings, there are no readings," He answered.
"How far away is it?" Sheppard asked.
"A little over a light year," Rodney answered. "But that is also where all the Wraith are."
After a short Hyper-space jump to just outside the Wraith sensor range. They reemerged into normal space, and found themselves approaching a normal white star, but around the entire system there was what appeared to be a glass sphere.
"What is that!" Sheppard asked.
"Uh, hold on," Rodney said, running sensor scans of the void. "Sensors still can't penetrate, maybe we can get visual, passive scans," He said switching to the optical sensors.
"This is odd, even visual observations don't make sense. It's like the whole system is inside-Oh crap!" Rodney said, when he got the results from his last scan. "I thought there was something familiar about these readings, It's a time dilation field, similar to the one we discovered some years ago, made by the Ancients."
"You mean the one you got me trapped in with that invisible monster?" Sheppard asked.
"That wasn't my fault," Rodney argued. "But, yes it's very similar, which means we can't just fly though the event horizon."
"How do the Wraith get in and out?" Ronon asked.
"They could shut it off every so often," Sheppard said.
"I don't think so," Rodney said. "I don't know what the time ratio is, but most likely they're running time faster inside the field, so the star should appear to be brighter outside the field, and there should be a lot more radiation emanating from the field. So I scanned the barrier, somehow they have modified it to capture that energy. I also found a structure built into the barrier, probably a portal allowing safe passage in and out of the field, since that's where most of the Wraith ships are clustered."
"Which way?" Sheppard asked, and turned the Hyper-Jumper that direction when Rodney pointed.
"So instead of a cloning facility they are able to grow ships, and troops inside the field at a normal pace. But to us on the outside it seems to be very fast. Is that right?" Teyla asked.
"Yeah, and they probably have human colonies also," Sheppard said.
"How did they come by such a device?" Teyla asked.
Sheppard and Rodney realized together. "Todd!" they said in unison.
"That could explain why he was acting so odd." Rodney said. "He probably stole the info on that too. They could have the very same device that you were trapped in."
"We need to have a long talk with him, next chance we get," Sheppard said in such a cold voice that even Ronon was a tiny bit afraid for Todd.
By now they were within visual range of the Wraith ships, and the portal Rodney mentioned, which was wide enough for two hives to pass through side by side, and protruded out from the field approximately two kilometers, and though they couldn't see it clearly through the barrier, it extended at least that far inward. And since it was Wraith tech it very much resembled the rib cage of a monstrous sea creature.
As they maneuvered around the Wraith ships to get a better look, a large Wraith cargo ship emerged from the passage way, and headed to the closest hive.
Rodney had been scanning the mouth of the tunnel when the ship appeared, giving him a very detailed report of it. "I'm getting massive human life sign readings from that ship."
"So that's why they aren't culling other worlds as badly, they have a fast food window right here," Sheppard joked to combat the feeling of helplessness at not being able to do anything to save them.
Teyla had been watching the cargo ship, when she noticed something about the hive it was headed for. "Does that hive look different, somehow?" she asked.
Rodney directed the sensors to the hive in question. It didn't take long to see that indeed the hive was different. "Oh crap, it's a new model with minor improvements. We can't let this continue, we have to destroy their field generator before they can make more advancements."
"Oh, no kidding," Sheppard said.
They saw another ship heading for the passage, having apparently finished transferring its cargo.
Deciding to follow it back they moved in behind the Wraith vessel, Rodney keeping the sensors locked to it, in the hope he could get some readings of how the tunnel worked as it passed though. As soon as the bow of the Wraith ship breached the tunnel the sensors began receiving data, and it continued for a few seconds after the stern had passed the threshold.
"Well did you get anything?" Sheppard asked.
"Yes tons, it's going to take me days to go through it all. But it looks like the passage works by gradually changing the speed of time, making a ramp instead of a cliff, so it should be safe," Rodney answered quickly, then continued to study the new information. So engrossed was he that they had nearly reached the entrance of the tunnel-like passage when he noticed something else from the scans. "Whoa, Stop, Stop!" He yelled.
Sheppard, hearing the concern in Rodney's voice, acted quickly cutting the sub-light engines, and using maneuvering thrusters flipped the vehicle over, one hundred eighty degrees so they were pointed back the way they came, then punched the sub-lights back on, rapidly slowing the ship to a stop inches from the threshold, then blasting them clear. Even with the inertial dampeners they were smashed into their chairs for a second.
"Are we good, Rodney?" Sheppard asked, having an idea of what scared him.
"Yeah," Rodney answered, when the blood returned to his head, and he could see again. "The passage has sensors that could detect us even cloaked."
"That's what I thought," Sheppard replied.
"Wow, that was very impressive flying," Teyla said, her stomach feeling very uneasy. "Please don't do it again."
"Can they detect us on the other side?" Ronon asked.
"It's doubtful," Rodney said.
"Why don't we make a run for it then?" Ronon asked.
"We might be able to make it through before they close the portal, destroying us." Rodney said. "But they would know we were here."
"He's right, to have any chance at destroying the time device, we have to get in there undetected. We need a plan," Sheppard said as he took them back the way they came.