DECLARATION OF WAR
The Commanders plan to inflict the Fade on other worlds has been temporarily stopped thanks to Alisana's quick thinking to dial the gate he intends to use before he could dial out.
"Alright, so what's the Vincular?" asks O'Neill.
"Chaya?" says Alisana wishing for Chaya to explain.
Chaya comes over with Lya, "The Vincular is a smaller version of the device on Dakara. The one on Dakara was designed to seed worlds with new life, unfortunately as with all life viruses and diseases would form and potentially wipe them out. The Vincular was designed to eliminate all forms of diseases on worlds, not just to prevent them from spreading to others, but to allow life to flourish without sickness and in some cases even prevent death." explains Chaya.
"Sounds good to me." says O'Neill, "What's bad about that?" he asks.
"All life forms suffer sickness and disease, and a lot of them build a natural immunity to them. Although they become immune to them, these viruses remain in their bodies, no longer harmful but it becomes a part of their biology. If we had used the Vincular device, those who's biology contained the viruses would have been wiped out along with it, that is why we abandoned the project and never used it." explains Chaya.
"Are you saying he's going to kill us all by wiping out viruses?" asks a confused Woolsey.
"No. When we abandoned the project we erased that particular function from it." says Chaya, "However, the core system still works." she adds.
"What's the core system?" asks Carter.
"As I said, the Vincular is similar to the device on Dakara. The Vincular is capable of transferring whatever it is programmed to do directly through the Stargate, in this case I believe he plans to use it to speed up the Fade process." says Chaya.
"But they already have a way to start the Fade, what do they need that for?." asks Raina.
Carter thinks for a second and then steps in to the conversation, "The clamps." she says.
"Clamps?" asks Alisana.
"We found black devices attached to Stargates on several worlds, they seemed able to control the gate remotely some how. Like the one on Gaia that stopped O'Neill from getting through the gate." says Carter, "Sir, I think I know what they are now." she adds.
"And that would be?." asks O'Neill.
"They're not planning to fade one world at a time, they're going to fade every world at once." says Carter.
"Sorry, how are they going to do that?" asks Woolsey.
"Remember our fight with the replicators, we used the device on Dakara to activate every gate at once, so we could hit every replicator at the same time with the disruption field." says Carter.
"That device has since been destroyed so the Verdain need another way, that's what the clamps are for. Sir, I believe they intend to use them to activate every gate at once and using the Vincular device to transfer the Fade through the gate and hit every world simultaneously." adds Carter.
"Oh we have to stop this." says Mitchell.
"No kidding." says O'Neill.
"Well if Alisana's right, then our connection to the gate is stopping it for now, but we only have 38 minutes before it shuts down. Well about 30 minutes now." says Carter.
Alisana steps forward, "Jack, I think I have an idea, but I'll need Carter's help." she says.
"Go." says O'Neill.
Alisana and Carter head out of the control room, "What idea?" shouts Carter as she lags behind.
On P3X-504, the Verdain have reached the planets surface and are unloading the Vincular device from the back of their ship close to the Stargate. The Verdain look towards the gate and see it's already active, although they seem a little puzzled by this they don't seem too worried and continue unloading the Vincular.
As the Vincular comes to a stop, situated about 30 feet from the gate, a ship descends through the atmosphere and lands on the surface, the rear ramp lowers and out walks the Commander accompanied by several of his guards heading towards the gate.
"Why have you not triggered the device?." says the Commander as he reaches the Vincular and two guards either side of it.
"Commander, the gate was already active when we arrived." says the guard on the left.
"Did anyone come through it?" asks the Commander.
"No, Commander. We can not trigger the device until the gate shuts off." replies the guard.
The Commander looks at the gate, after a few moments of silence he speaks, "Patience." he says, He then steps over to the Vincular and rubs the dome with his hands, "It will shut down soon enough, then this universe will be ours." he says.
On Atlantis, Alisana and Carter enter a lab where the Oeveo device is located, the Oeveo is in the middle of the room and Alisana stands by it.
"So what's your idea?" asks Carter.
Alisana points to the Oeveo, "We use it to on to stop them." she says.
Carter thinks for a moment, "You want to use it on P3X-504?, it's too far away, we don't have near enough time to get it there." she says.
"We sent it through the Stargate." says Alisana.
"No, the energy comes from the side here, you need a clear line of sight to what you want to use it on." replies Carter.
"I know, that's why we need to modify it." says Alisana.
Carter looks at Alisana with a confused expression on her face.
"Look, we modify the Oeveo to emit an kind of energy bubble. It will encompass the planet and everything on it." explains Alisana.
"OK, how do we do that." asks Carter.
"We remove the focus crystal." replies Alisana, "That's the hard part." she adds.
Alisana and Carter kneel by the Oeveo and get to work, they remove a metal panel from the front of the device, inside the device they see more panels and eight vertical glowing power rods in a circular pattern with very small gaps between each one, in the center of the rods is the focus crystal.
"How do we get it out of there?" asks Carter.
Alisana points to one of the internal panels, "These are magnetic panels, it's going to be hard but you're going to have to hold it while I extract the crystal." she says.
"Alisana, do you have any idea how much power is flowing through this thing, if you touch one of those rods you'll be fried." says Carter is a worried tone.
"I know." says Alisana.
"Hope you know what you're doing." replies a reluctant Carter, "OK." she says as she lets out a breath and reaches in and grabs the panel.
Carter tries to pull the panel and moves it a little, but she underestimates the strength of the magnetic force and it shunts back out of her grip, "Wohw. Stronger than I thought." she says.
Carter reaches in and grabs the panel again, placing her feet at the base of the Oeveo for leverage, "Ready?" she says.
"Yes." replies Alisana.
"OK...go." says Carter as she pulls on the panel with all her strenght, "Haargh" she groans as she slowly pulls the panel away, fighting the force of the magnetism.
Alisana uses a large pair of tweezer like grippers to reach slowly in between the power rods toward the focus crystal, her hands shake a little as she tries to keep them steady so not to touch the side of the rods.
"Hurry up." groans Carter with her eyes squeezed shut, pulling intensely on the panel.
"Nearly there." says Alisana as the grippers reach the crystal and she attempts to get a hold of it.
"I...can't...hold it." shouts Carter.
"Almost got it." replies Alisana.
As Alisana carefully guides the crystal out from between the rods, Carter's fingers begin to slide away from the sides of the panel losing her grip, she loses her grip and the panel shoots back in to place, at that very moment Alisana finished extracting the crystal and her and Carter fall to the floor on their backs away from the device.
They look at the Oeveo with their hearts racing, the Alisana looks at the grippers in her hand, she has the focus crystal, they look at each other and laugh.
"Phew. That was too close." says Carter with a giggle.
They get to their feet and quickly replace the outer panels on the device, they then pick it up and walk as fast as they can towards the control room.
"Is the gate still active?" shouts Carter as they enter the control room carrying the Oeveo.
"Yes, but not for long." shouts McKay.
Mitchell and Ronon go over and take the Oeveo from Carter and Alisana.
"Get it to the gate." shouts Carter, "How long do we have to it shuts down?" she asks as she stands by McKay out of breath.
"15 seconds." replies McKay.
Mitchell, Ronon and Alisana run down the stairs to the gate, "Put it down." says Alisana and she starts pushing the buttons on the side of the Oeveo to activate it.
"5 seconds." shouts Carter.
"OK, that's it..push it through." shouts Alisana, successfully activating the device.
Mitchell and Ronon rush the Oeveo across the floor and push it through the gate a fraction of a second before it deactivates.
"Do you think it made it through?" shouts Alisana up to Carter.
"We'll find out soon enough." replies Carter.
The gate shuts down on P3X-504, two Verdain approach the gate and attach a black clamp device to the side of it, as they walk away a red ring glows on the front of the clamp and the gate activates.
Clamp devices attached to gates all over the Milky Way start powering up and activating the gates they're attached too.
"We're ready, Commander." says a Verdain guard.
The Commander reaches over to the Vincular and pushes down on the large blue crystal situated on the front, a ball of blue light appears above the device and slowly intensifies.
"Now they will see the true power of the Verdain." says the Commander.
As the Vincular fully charges, a large energy beam shoots out of it and through the gate in front.
"Yeeeees." says the Commander in a victorious tone.
Suddenly he notices the air around the Vincular device becoming wavy and blurry, as it gets worse the Commander starts to see the surface of the planet through the Vincular. He slowly reaches out to touch it and as his hand reaches the large crystal at the front, his hand goes right through it.
"What is this!" shouts the Commander.
He pulls back his hand and walks around to the back of the Vincular, after he concentrates from a few seconds staring at the surface he sees the faint presence of the Oeveo device laying on the ground touching the Vincular.
It would seem that when Alisana activated the Oeveo, it had already began emitting the energy bubble, when it exited the gate on P3X-504 is was already removing itself from our reality which caused it to go unnoticed by the Verdain as it appeared.
The Oeveo builds a charge and then in one large burst of energy it engulfs the entire planet and it disappears in the blink of an eye.
"Noooo!" screams the Commander, who's armour crumbles and falls to the ground as the Oeveo engulfs the planet.
Stargates across the Milky Way deactivate and the clamp devices attached to them short out, release and fall to the ground.
On Atlantis everyone is waiting to see what happens next and are unsure if their plan had even worked.
"It's offline." shouts McKay typing on his laptop.
"What is?" asks Carter.
"P3X-504." says McKay, he brings up a display of the active Stargates in the Milky Way and points to P3X-504, "Look." he says with a smile.
On the display of the Milky Way Stargate network, P3X-504 is highlighted in red, indicating the gate is offline, moments later it flashes and is removed from the display.
"It worked." says Carter, she turns to face Alisana with a smile.
Alisana and Carter hug and everyone shakes hands, taps each other on the shoulder and claps with relief, congratulating each other.
"Good job." says O'Neill.
"It's over." says a happy Raina.
Chaya steps forward and she doesn't seem to share their joy, "Not yet." she says, she then shuts her eyes and vanishes from the control room in a bright light.
On Sehabo inside the great battle ship is a room containing the energy machine used to convert the Novum children to Verdain, the machine comes to life and fills with smoke and the floor within the machine opens, through the smoke we see a suit of armour rise from the floor.
A blinding bright light fills the room, emanating from the machine, moments later the doors of the circular chamber slide open and figure steps out, it's the Commander.
He groans as he moves his limbs, testing the armours strength, then he runs out of the room heading for the bridge. When he enters the bridge he's about to give an order when he sees Chaya standing outside at the front of the ship, he uses his power to bring her on to the bridge and they stand facing each other.
"I'm here to give you one last chance, it's not too late, you can stop this madness and rejoin your people." says Chaya.
"These are my people." replies the Commander, "We will destroy you all." he adds.
"Not without the Vincular." says Chaya.
The Commander steps closer to her, "Did you really think that would stop us, you may have slowed us down but you can not escape the inevitable." he says menacingly.
"You're not going to stop?" asks Chaya.
"Never." shouts the Commander.
"Our people will fight." says Chaya.
"Wahahaha" laughs the Commander, "Do they really believe they have a chance against us." he says, "We know your weakness, our power is much greater than yours." he adds.
"Then I suggest we end this." says Chaya, "Astrobaga." she adds.
The Commander raises his head and firms up his chest, "Very well." he says.
Then Chaya vanishes in a bright light from the bridge.
"Raise the ship." orders the Commander as he turns around and sits in his chair.
"Where are we going Commander?" asks a Verdain sitting at the ships controls.
"To War." replies the Commander.