Chapter 51

Poor Radek was so upset about having to lie to his friends he went and drank himself into a stupor. This is so unusual for a man who would not normally drink at all. The next day he was so hung over getting out of bed was impossible. "Oh my head, what was I thinking getting so drunk. I wish I had never done that, never again!"

Deciding to stay in bed for the day Radek took three aspirin and called in asking for the day off. This was unusual for him to do, it took quite a bit of painful convincing with his head pounding like someone was using it as a snare drum not to have Dr. Keller come to his quarters and check on him.

His ancestor Lovaphi had put him in a real bind leaving the data crystals to him, The next day when he was feeling better Radek in a fit of desperation almost destroyed the precious crystals, at the last second he changed his mind knowing some piece of technology or information contained on them might save his friends and family in the future, instead Radek decided to hide them away and not pull them out unless there was another emergency.

One week later onboard the Enterprise:

"Navigation how soon till we drop out of hyperspace?"

"Captain Marks, we will be dropping out in thirty seconds one light year from system four."

Since system three was almost a disaster, it had been decided to play it safer and drop out of hyperspace at this distance and look at the light coming from any new system peering into its past. If it was deemed safe to approach the ship would travel to one half light year drop out and check again. At that time if it was still safe The Enterprise then would continue to the edge of this system. (This would become standard procedure for all ships entering an unknown system.)

System four is a disaster area it seems the sun had become a red giant and would swallow up the planet they had come for in the next fifty years. It was necessary to come behind this world in its shadow to protect the ship from be damaged due to the sun's size and radiation it was expelling. Once Enterprise is close they could see a damaged shipyard on the darkside of this world, it looked big enough to have been used to build City ships. The Planetary A.I. had been trying to contact its creators for over ten thousand years wondering why no response had been forthcoming. The A.I. recognized a ship containing ancient technology and contacted Enterprise once it was in orbit screaming for help to save it and the data contained in its databanks. It said that the sun will destroy its internal systems in less than one week if it was not saved.

"Communications contact Governor O'Neill; tell him we will need all five of the planet movers here ASAP to save what it left of this system's worlds and the resources they contain. All of the remaining worlds are a gold mine of precious materials needed for Elliot's world ship building program."

While this was happening Praesidos was having a different type of problem: "Taggert, I am detecting a rouge world heading into our vicinity it will be here in less than six days. It came in from behind the sun and was undetectable until now, at the rate of speed and direction it is coming it will hit and destroy us."

"Praesidos, check that again!"

"Mark, I have checked this three times there is no margin for error."

"Rodney, dial the gate and contact Atlantis tell them to send all the planet movers our way to help deflect this world away from us!"

An emergence session of the entire scientific division is called on Atlantis. They have to solve three problems.

One:

The planet movers needed to be overhauled and would take longer than the time left.

Two:

Which problem did they deal with first save a world with a shipyard and evacuate Praesidos

Three:

Save Praesidos and lose a world containing information that would help leap their shipbuilding program ahead by years and possibly cutting down the time it will take to win the war with the Wraith.

The argument between the Scientists is getting louder by the minute with tempers flaring up. Jack tried to stay out of it, finally after eight hours he had enough of the bullshit and intervened.

"Listen up, cut the crap and make a decision now! I am tired of hearing the bickering going on. Do we evacuate Praesidos or not? McKay, you and Radek sound like an old married couple."

It was a good thing Sam was still laid up or she would have knocked heads together at this point, Sam would have not waited so long before saying something.

"Jack, I think we should build more movers are we forgetting that it is possible to put Folly into a time dilation field? We could recover the used Carbon, Trinium and Naqahdah when we are finished with the movers."

"Thank you Dr. Macintyre, I was hoping someone had a solution for this dilemma, Ok People that is what we are going to do, you have five hours to evacuate all of our human personnel from Folly. At the same time I want Rodney to transfer twenty tons of each ore from the ship building program to Folly from Gem's world. Yes Rodney I realize it will require Gem to be removed from its time dilation field in order to do this. Now move everyone time's a wasting! Dr. Macintyre, I would like you to supervise the repair of our existing movers here on our world. The program to create the new movers will be loaded into Folly's V.I. before the five hours is up."

Jack contacted Enterprise telling them it would be at least two days before they would get the movers, explaining the problem with Praesidos is a higher priority with ten thousand staff onboard it would not be possible to evacuate the base in time before it was taken out by the rouge planet.

Folly is able to TD and creates the new movers in less than one hour; it is decided to send the newly created ones to Praesidos instead of the older ones since their situation is considered urgent. They were made with Wormhole drives and hyperdrives.

It takes Dr. Macintyre three days to add an upgrade of WD drives on the five older planetary movers then another day to finish repairing this older tech.

It is a real surprise for the staff onboard Praesidos to find out it isn't a rouge world! Instead what is thought as a world in reality is a city/ship of unimaginable size, this one is a monster measuring twenty thousand miles across. All of its systems are shutdown except the V.I. and even that is in power saving mode unable to communicate with the outside world. After two days of trying to stop or deflecting this vessel away from the base, the scientist on Praesidos and crews onboard the movers realized this is going to be impossible with the time remaining. Radek with Mark Taggert's approval is going to move Praesidos and the attached shipyard out of the way instead of stopping the monstrous city/ship.

Once this was done a team went onboard the city/ship to attempt to gain control of it. This monster of a city has still resisted every attempt to bring its movement to a halt. The scientist in their spacesuits had taken twenty Zpm's with them to install in the power room. All the systems onboard are a mess, broken conduits are everywhere. There are scorch marks on the walls, floors and ceilings it looked like a warzone. One area even looked like a bomb had gone off. It is necessary to detour around several hallways were you could see space outside to where the movers are struggling to stop the city. Two movers attempted to us their tractor beams and came away with only half mile sections of the ship.

Once Rodney and Radek made it to the power room they started swapping out dead Zpm's for new ones. Sparks are flying out of the bottom of the sockets where the new modules have been installed. One came close to blowing up, it was only with quick reflexes did Radek stop the overload by ejecting all of the Zpm's.

"Whew Rodney that was close, remember the lecture Sam gave us about what would happen if one of the Zpm's blew up? She said it would take out the whole solar system!"

"Yes Radek, you do not need to remind me… sigh or are you just trying to remind me about my past problem blowing up Dorandan?"

Ever since Rodney's mental breakdown he has become increasingly defensive and paranoid. McKay has been placed in a lab to experiment to his hearts delight without any other responsibility. No longer in charge of the scientific division on Praesidos, but to help boost his self-esteem Rodney is allowed to think that he is.

Radek has taken over as chief scientist in his place.

"Radek to Praesidos, we are going to need about five tons of refined Naqahdah, Trinium and an Asgard energy/matter converter over here before we even try to power up the systems there is just too much damage, we will need to rebuild the power stacks in order to install any Zpm here. The one that is functioning has less than one month left before it runs out of power. I am unable to communicate with the V.I. onboard this ship until we rebuild many broken conduits as well.

It is decided to bring ten thousand Asurans from Folly and a Time dilation field device to speed up repairs on this monster of a city. In order to fix several problems one of the Naqahdah asteroids's from where the Enterprise is currently salvaging the world in system four, it is placed on the east pier. A temporary shield is then erected around the still moving city and a TD field is activated.

Five days later the TD field comes down, there was nothing left of the Naqahdah asteroid, Data reported to Mark Taggert on Praesidos telling him it would take over two hundred tons of materials to rebuild this monster of a city. He has found humanoid bodies and body parts all over the place. It is a gruesome site to see, several looked like they had been experimented on. This head Asuran recommends a replacement for the V.I. just in case it had gone insane. The crew of replicators had managed to fix the conduits and install one Zpm to keep enough power flowing to the ship's systems. Mark questioned Data further about what it had accomplished in all that time the TD field was up. After all one week in real time outside the field is equal Ten thousand eighty years inside of it! Taggert is getting madder by the minute, he wanted this problem to go away and the replicators are not getting the job done.

What Mark forgot it that there was no V.I. inside the field to control all of the replicators so many were just standing around not doing anything! Some were working at cross purposes while several had tried to fix broken conduits, others are rebuilding the walls over where conduit rebuilding Asurans are trying to work. Mark Taggert has Chuck dial up Atlantis and request that a V.I. along with its necessary hardware to hold it be created and send to him. While talking to Atlantis Mark remarked on how many tons of refined Naqahdah and Trinium it is going to take to rebuild this ship.

The council is listening in the background it looks like council members are going to faint at the material costs reported to them.

An argument ensued as to if it is even worth continuing to repair this city. Henry Hayes, Jack O'Neill, Elizabeth Weir. Teleconferencing all the way from the Pegasus Galaxy General Bethany Anne Brewster is not happy at the thought of what it would do to their shipbuilding program having to divert the precious resources to build what looked like to be a monster.

"Dammit Jack, we cannot fix that city now! Think of what it would do to the ships we need to build."

"Henry, Liz and Beth we need to keep that city out of the Wraith's hands, if they get a hold of it we could see them on our doorstep in a matter of months! If the Wraith manages to reverse engineer the Stardrive we are all screwed. At least let's fix it enough so we can get it here under its own power. You all know me I am not a politician, I am or was a military man speaking from the stand point of strategy it would be a disaster of epic proportions to allow that to happen!"

The council decided to divert just enough materials to create a new V.I. setup and to get the ship's structural integrity fixed up enough to allow the planetary movers to tractor this monster of a city/ship back to the mothballed ships holding area just outside the orbit of Elliot's World. It will stay there until the resources became available to fix it.

Mark Taggert was not happy, he wanted to see this city rebuilt back to its former glory. It would have made one hell of a moving base to attack the Wraith from or to become a great big traveling shipyard. It could move from one solar system to another and extract the ore itself then using an Asgard matter/energy converter create the refined material into whatever is needed right onsite, instead of having to use cargo ships to transfer the raw ore to Elliot's solar system for processing.

While this is ongoing Major (Captain) Marks is dealing with his own headaches onboard the Enterprise. He is dealing with a cranky A.I. called Owibos who just wants to get his world out of the way of the ever expanding red giant sun. Marks sent a team down to the darkside of this world to repair the planetary shield generator that had burned out from the stress of stopping any further damage from the sun that has turned into a red giant. Major (Captain) Marks tried to explain how much time had passed and that all Ancients have pass beyond the veil or ascended to another plane of existence. Owibos will not listen to him. Finally five planet movers grabbed a hold of his planet without telling this A.I., Owibos really howled when his world started to move and complain that the moon that is orbiting the planet needed to be moved also. Marks started chuckling under his breath knowing the Jack O'Neill would not put up with Owibos's constant bitching it might even get unplugged if it got on his nerves.

Once the companion military ships for movers show up it is time to move on to the last system on the list. Enterprise's weary crew cannot wait for this mission to be finished it has been a long boring drag, lurching from shear panic one moment to nothing to do for days and days on end in the next moment. It is now time to move onto system five, the last on the list given to them by Todd.

Once again Enterprise drops out one light-year away to make sure they would not land in hot water again…

After several days of observation it is determined the system is overrun with Wraith. Somehow they had managed to defeat this system's defenses, it is now time to call in the big guns to deal with this mess and retake this ancient outpost world.

"Comms, get me General Brewster."

"Yes Captain Marks."

"Brewster here, Captain what is the problem?"

"General, we need to clean a nest of Wraith out this system is crawling with them. Enty cannot sense this system's A.I. he thinks it might be hiding hoping someone will come to its rescue."

"Very well I will send a fleet to your position, Brewster out."

One week later, four Pacifica class and ten Atlantis class city/ships come out of their wormholes near Enterprise loaded down with over one thousand Twee's and Scutin class warships, another five thousand ships are accompanying them. Thor has decided to get involved, he shows up with his giant Dyson sphere loaded down with O'Neill class warships. Between the two Allies there is the equivalent of ten thousand ships by counting the city/ships and the Asgard Sphere as a fleet all by themselves.

"This is Captain Marks, is John Shepherd there?"

"Hi Kevin, good to see your ok. Why don't you wait here while we clean out that rats nest for you?"

"Huh not on your life John, we have been bored out of our minds just sitting here watching what has been going on through the probe we sent to the edge of system five while waiting for you to finally show up."
"Yeah I know Kevin, sorry about that there was quite a bit of excitement back at home we had to clean out another system of Wraith before we could bring our ships here. Todd did it again trying to send one of our ships into what looks like a trap. It's a good thing you decided to drop out of hyperspace one light year away from the last system on our list. Oh by the way the good news is that while you have been out here Ol Doc Beckett and Keller finished the retrovirus. Todd is now as human as the rest of us. You should have seen the look on his face when we stunned him and administered the treatment. I damn near wet my pants laughing so hard after he woke up and saw what was done to him! I will send you the video of it later. Like I told Todd if you are going to screw with us we will get even. He tried to lie and tell me that it is not possible for his kind or should I say former kind to be in this fifth system."

"Shepherd to all ships, use the probe's data to target the Wraith ships in System Five and then launch our new surprise missiles into hyperspace. Captain Marks, General Brewster has placed me in charge of this mission. Enterprise and your crew is to stay behind Pacifica until we finish bombarding this system with our newer weapons then you are to team up with one of the Scutin's. You will be their wingman for the duration of this fight. We have been upgrading our ships with several weapon systems Doctor Zelenka found in an ancient database."

"Marks to Shepherd, your orders are acknowledged."

What happened next is still up for debate amongst the Wraith; twenty thousand missiles came out of hyperspace and destroyed ninety percent of all the Wraith ships in system five. There were two missiles for every vessel in this system most of them came from the city/ships and Supreme Commander Thor's Sphere. Onboard each of these vessels is a matter/energy converter with several tons of raw materials for creating more missiles if they are needed. By the time all it was over there is less than one thousand Wraith ships left not one of them is a Hiveship they had been all destroyed or so it seemed to be. Only cruisers and supply ships are left.

"Shepherd to all ships break and attack, Commander Thor would use your special plasma beam to clear the way please?"

"Thor to John Shepherd, we will comply."

The half mile wide beam damages two hundred cruisers making them easy targets for the Human/Asgard fleet. This will not be an easy battle, soon after entering into this system hundreds of Wraith ships come out of hiding from behind a gas giant there are one hundred hives to deal with, Fifty have been adapting their systems to Zpm's found in the ancient outpost. If these hives had been allowed to complete their adaptation it would have meant the end of all human ships sent against them. A Pacifica class city/ship could not stand up to the awesome power of a fully adapted Zpm hive. Thor would have had to retreat out of this system with no one left to cover his retreat.

This will be a hard fought war in this system many human ships will not make it back.

"Shepherd to all Twee's and Scutin's, form up into squadrons of twelve ships. I want four squads attached to each large city and the same goes for the Asgard ship guard it with your lives. It will be the only way you get home if we are not victorious here. All of our F302's are to form up into squadrons of twenty four ships you are to harass the cruisers if you can destroy them do it. Cripple the supply ships so they cannot jump away, our sensors are detecting that they are filled to maximum capacity with humans to be used as food. I will be dammed if they are going to be turned into Wraith chow!"

"McKay to Shepherd, John, my sensors are reading we have less than one hour before five of the Zpm powered hives have full adapted. I am also seeing the power output equivalent of four Zpm's those five hives!"

"Rodney what the hell are you doing here? Jennifer is going to kill you when she finds out."
"There was no choice John, you need the ships I have brought with me."

Shepherd could see two thousand ships on his sensors all of them are cloaked. He sets his communication system to a new encoded channel.

"To all cloaked ships, use the special missiles to attack the Zpm powered hives, then break and attack.

It looked like the Wraith would win this battle with the fifty Zpm partially adapted hives leading the way. Five squadrons of Twee's and Scutin's are attacking this class of Wraith ship chipping and destroying them one at a time. It is not a one sided battle twenty human vessels are either destroyed or forced to drop out of the battle due to damage. Soon it became one hundred then two hundred human ships. So far over one thousand lives human have been lost with the ships that have come to this battle with only skeleton crews to run them. The cost of lives and ships today is going to be horrendous if the battle is not turned around soon.

"Thor, to all ships, jump away I say again jump away now."

The Asgard ship powers up its half mile wide beam weapon on five of the special hive ships knocking them out of the fight, but not destroying them they are just too tough a nut to crack. Thor has modified this sphere with five hundred Zpm's and one hundred Arcturus reactors just for this fight. Another beam weapon deploys from the bottom of his ship while the one on the top recharges. This one fires an even bigger beam having been adapted from the information recently found in one of the ancient repositories of knowledge. The bottom beam manages to finally destroy the five damaged hives as well as knocking ten more out of the fight. These ten Wraith vessels are now just drifting hulks. It looked like Thor's strategy might work. But like all best made plans they do not hold true once the enemy is encountered. His sphere is being surrounded by the Wraith and is taking heavy damage. Thor has no choice but to have the human ships jump back into this system behind the Wraith vessels surrounding his sphere. This had the effect of causing the Wraith to scatter losing their overlapping fields of fire on any of the Allied ships. One hundred Wraith cruisers did not make it out of this attack. Another one hundred human ships are lost there is nothing but dust left of them. Three of the Atlantis class cities are in trouble, with shields that are about to fail they have no choice but to retreat and jump away from this battle.

"Shepherd to all ships, lock tractor beams on our damaged ships and retreat. I say again retreat. We will return to avenge our dead."

Among the missing is the Enterprise, it is considered killed in action, lost with all hands onboard. Of all the ships sent into battle only three thousand fourteen survive. Half are damaged in some way or another. Seven city/ships will need to be towed back to the Milky Way galaxy to be repaired. Two of them are the Pacifica class cities. Thor's sphere limps away from the battle; it is the last to return to the rendezvous point. This has been a disastrous fight for humanity. They have managed to cripple and/or destroy only twenty of the fifty Zpm powered hives. Once word reaches the council back on Elliot's world it is decided in order to defeat this treacherous species it will be necessary to overcome the jamming the Wraith have managed to surround their ships with. The plan is to use Dr. Beckett's retrovirus on the entire Wraith species thus eliminating the threat to all human in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Once Owibos and his planets are back in the Milky Way galaxy a team of scientist is sent to his world. The scientific team is lead by Dr. Shawn Macintyre. Both Rodney McKay and Radek Zelenka are severely injured close to death if medical treatment onboard Pacifica had not been done on the journey back to Praesidos Dr Beckett thought both of them would not have survived.

Shawn discovers that is it necessary to reset Owibos using the same method used on Beltran the central A.I. of the Pantera solar system. He must trick Owibos into thinking the team is going to replace its antenna array to give it updated version of this piece of technology. Owibos's system's hardware is so damaged it would need to be completely replaced. This will require delving deep into the depths of his planet. While in to process of removing the A.I.'s older systems and replacing it with a newer V.I. hundreds of data crystals are found containing exactly what Owibos had stated. The Crystals are examined in a read only mode by the V.I.'s to determine if it is safe to install them into their systems. It is determined safe to use even with the damage suffered by the crystals, they contained the full knowledge of the Ancients. Their history and technology well beyond what the humans are currently using. One file even had the exact location of every world the Ancient's had outposts on.

It looks like System Five the solar system where the A.I. Evin is the world where they grew a large portion of their Zpm's. This system even contains Zpm recharging technology.