***Sorry for taking so long to update. This is my first attempt at writing, so my updates might take awhile sometimes, but I promise to keep at it.***
Apollo, 1 Hour before SGA-1 entered the passage.
The Apollo had been sent to the Wraiths secret base ahead of the rest of the fleet, to get started on the first phase of the plan. Which was to attach a reaper mines, a mark IX with a cloak, to as many Wraith ships as possible.
Ever since the Goa'uld had demonstrated the ability to detect the reaper missiles, the Tau'ri scientists and engineers had been working diligently to figure out how the cloak was vulnerable. The consensus was that they were detecting the power emissions from the sub-light engine. Since then they had been trying to either improve the cloak or develop a new delivery system.
They decided to use a MRCV mining/repair/construction vehicle or scorpion as they had been nicknamed. The vehicle did indeed look like a robotic scorpion, having eight legs, the two large arms with pincer-like hands, and the long-segmented tail. The cockpit was at the front, between the two large arms. Both the arms and tail had the same equipment, which included a tractor beam, laser drill, and matter relocation/reorganization system or MaRS beam. The pincers also had the ability to transform into robotic hands. In the main body, there was a small cargo bay for raw materials, to be used for construction. At the end of the main body under the tail, there was a small sub-light engine.
The scorpions had to be upgraded to accomplish the task required of them. So, they were provided with a cloak, stealth armor plating that dampened all energy emissions, and a MaSS device, which held thirty reaper mines.
Although they weren't certain that these new Wraith ships could detect the energy emissions through the cloak, and even though the engine on the scorpions were much smaller than the one on the reaper missile, they weren't willing to take the chance. So, it was decided that the engine couldn't be used within one hundred kilometers of any Wraith vessel.
Cpt. Duncan Campbell was one of Apollo's newest fighter pilots, and a member of the air force academies first graduating class to be trained with the use of the memory transfer device. With the knowledge and experience of the best pilots in the world being transferred to them in a series of treatments over a period of months, they had destroyed every record set in the academy.
He and two other pilots were nearly finished with the easy part of the mission, which was the fifteen-hives positioned around the entrance to the passage. Duncan was maneuvering around his fifth hive to reach the best location to plant a reaper mine. Once there he opened the bomb bay doors on the underside of the scorpion, and a small robotic arm lowered the two-meter nuke into position. The reaper mine secured itself to the hive with a combination of electromagnetics, small self-tapping bolts, and cold welding. When that was complete, the bomb's own cloak activated.
The eight legs gently pushed off the hull of the hive, Duncan waited until he was a few meters away before activating maneuvering thrusters. He was excited for the challenge the cruisers presented. For, while the hives were far more powerful, they weren't moving, making it very easy to plant mines on them. The cruisers, however were patrolling the inside of the nebula, moving at speeds far greater than the scorpions could achieve. As soon as he reached one hundred kilometers he punched his sub-light engine to full power, shooting the vehicle forward with an immense burst of speed. Fortunately for the pilot the scorpion had been equipped with the most advanced inertial dampeners the Tau'ri had created, making the g-force he felt negligible.
Even at twenty percent the speed of light, it took him half an hour to reach one of the cruiser patrol routes. For most of their path through the nebula they would be travelling at nearly their maximum sub-light, making it impossible for the scorpions to land on them. Luckily though, at certain points on their route they would slow down, sometimes it was the density of the nebula gases interfering with their sensors, sometimes it was to make course corrections. But the one that best suited their needs though was when they would report in as they passed by the hives, in order for them to use their telepathy, they would have to slow down to under twenty five percent of light to keep the time dilation effects to a minimum.
As he got closer his sensors detected a cruiser nearing the slowdown point, and he was close enough to catch this one. He adjusted his flight path so that he was directly ahead of the cruiser moving in the same direction. Once he reached his maximum speed of sixty-one thousand kilometers per second he shut down his sub-light engine to avoid detection, and though the cruiser was slowing down it didn't take long for it to catch up to him. He watched the speed of the cruiser intently, for him to pull this off it had to slow to sixty-five thousand km/s, any faster and he would most likely be smashed into their hull. When the cruiser was only twenty thousand kilometers away, it's speed stabilized at sixty-four thousand km/s.
He had positioned himself so the cruiser would pass only seven meters below him. With only seconds before the vessel overtook him, the computer was in control of firing the three grapplers, which was a spear attached to a cable made from a material developed by the Asgard, similar to spider silk, capable of stretching to seven times its original length before breaking.
This was the most dangerous part of the mission, if the cruiser altered its course in the slightest it would obliterate the scorpion, and the wraith might not realize that they hit anything.
The computer fired the grapplers when the cruiser was still far behind, but as the clamps reached their target locations the ship had coved the distance allowing the clamps to secure themselves to the hull. To cushion the acceleration the cables continued to be spit out at a tremendous speed, that combined with their ability to stretch allowed the scorpion to smoothly match the cruisers speed. Once the speed equalized, Duncan began reeling the cables up, pulling the scorpion to the hull of the cruiser. The had stretched to a few times their original length, but by running an electrical current though it, as it was recoiled, it would contract to its original shape.
It took a few minutes for the scorpion to reach the cruiser and disconnect the clamps, but only seconds to plant the mine then push off again and head back to the starting point to wait for the next cruiser.
When he reached the standby position, his sensors detected four more hives emerge from the passage way. Evan though they expected this to happen, their orders were to stick with the cruisers, for it would take too long to get back to the hives.
Another five minutes and the Daedalus with the rest of the fleet had arrived.
SGA-1, WRAITH TIME-DILAION BASE
They continued to stare after the inexplicably fast ship for a few seconds.
"How can that primitive ship be that fast, Rodney?" Sheppard asked.
"Hold on," Rodney said, as he studied the extremely detailed scans they got of the ship. After only a few minutes he had it, and mumbled to himself, "Why didn't I think of that?"
"Think of what?" Sheppard asked.
"Their type of FTL drive," Rodney answered. "It just goes to show that necessity is the mother of all invention."
"The drive shifts the vessel out of phase with space-time," Rodney continued. "The SGC has encountered similar technologies, one time it was a crystal skull that shifted Daniel Jackson out of phase with matter in our space-time. Another time it was Merlin's mobile computer which shifted colonel's Carter, and Mitchell out of phase. From their experiences, we realized that the laws of physics are a little different in those dimensions. Being out of phase they could pass through solid matter, but they didn't fall through the floor, leading us to realize that matter in those dimensions isn't affected by gravity. In essence, it has zero mass, which allows it to achieve such high speed, and not have the time-dilation effects."
"Isn't that what the inertial dampeners do, reduce our mass?" Sheppard asked.
"Yes, but they don't get it all the way to zero," Rodney answered, as he continued studying the scans of the FTL drive. "I was able to get a perfect scan of their drive, and as impressive as it is, it's still very primitive. I mean, we have more advanced versions of most of the individual components, and the ones that we don't have counterparts for, I can still make better versions," He said as he moved back to one of the computer stations at rear of the compartment, and began working on that very project.
"Are you saying that you can copy their FTL drive," Sheppard asked.
"No, I'm not going to copy it, I'm going to make a better one," Rodney answered.
"So, will it only work inside this time-dilation bubble?" Teyla asked.
"No, it will work outside in normal time as well," He said as he continued his work.
They continued the long, slow journey to the inner planets. While Rodney worked with the mostly Asgard computer, which allowed him to come up with a prototype design in only two hours. Using the MaRS beam, and the raw materials stored on the ship, he produced a new FTL drive for the Jumper, and in one more hour had it all tied in to the Jumpers systems and ready for a test run.
"How will this affect our cloak?" Sheppard asked.
"I have set it up so that the cloak will deactivate at the same time the FTL drive activates, and vice versa," Rodney answered.
"Okay, let's give it try," Sheppard said.
"Starting at ten percent power to the engines," Rodney said as he activated the drive.
They didn't feel anything. "Is it working?" Teyla asked.
"Yes, we are at twenty-five percent the speed of light," Rodney said excitedly. "With only a tenth of the power we are at our maximum speed."
"The sub-light engines are using a tenth of the power, but what is the FTL drive using?" Sheppard asked.
"Uh, it's using about a quarter of what the Hyper-drive would use, but that is its maximum usage, it won't get any higher, and that's a fraction of what the other ships was using," Rodney answered.
"All right, Rodney you've done good," Sheppard admitted, smiling excitement himself.
"Increasing to thirty percent," Rodney called out.
The ride continued to smooth.
"Seventy-five percent of C," Rodney called.
Rodney continued to increase the power until he got to eighty percent, which got them to twice the speed of light, and decided to hold it there. "With a little fine tuning, I think I could get the speed even higher."
"Well, this is good enough for now," Sheppard said. "At this rate, we will make it to the inner planets in a little over five hours."
