7: Alpha Centauri

Author: Chaoseternus

Chapter 12: Bad News, and Arrivals

General O'Neill was not having a good day. He had been woken early to the sound of his second in command knocking on his door, and announcing that surface travel on Alpha Prime had been suspended due to a Grade 'A' Biohazard Alert issued by RSG-1, it seems they had found Ra's dirty laundry, a nice little Biological Warfare Laboratory which just happened to have been compromised to the point where a leak wasn't just possible, it was likely.

Not only that, but the daily fleet report had just landed on his desk, and it listed RSS Devonshire, the batch 2 Dauntless prototype as MIA. They had lost another very valuable warship, and more of their dwindling supply of qualified and cleared personnel. They now had just seven fully operational warships, and five of those were known to have as yet unresolved issues with their hyper drives.

Worse still, the latest report from the Tok'ra had come in. It seemed Maktenos and Anubis had swallowed the last of the system lords up, and were now looking for other places to gain forces and ships. And while there many places humans could be grabbed for use as ground forces, to add to the numbers of the Jaffa, places with ships and construction facilities could be counted on one hand, and the Tau'ri controlled two of them, as well as having some Asgard technologies, plus the surviving Tollan, both of which Maktenos and Anubis would love to get their hands on. The fact that it would involve wiping out their hated enemies the Tau'ri at the same time was just an added bonus.

The few Tok'ra who survived amongst Maktenos's and Anubis's forces could only provide one explanation why Earth had not been wiped out by either force yet. Earth had a strong enough Navy that diverting enough forces to wipe it out would leave the one vulnerable to attack by the other, so Maktenos and Anubis were racing frantically to build up forces and gain the advantage.

So far neither side had the advantage, luckily. Anubis had better ships and technology that was certain, but there wasn't as large a gulf technology wise between Maktenos and Anubis as there was between Anubis and the now defunct System Lords, but Maktenos had more ships, enough to compensate for Anubis's better technology. How long the status quo would last was uncertain, the Tok'ra had heard rumours that Maktenos had 'acquired' one of Anubis's ships, and was backward engineering it. Already they were seeing circumstantial evidence of this as upgrades were ordered for all Maktenos's ships, upgrades that looked very similar to Anubis's Ancient inspired technologies.

Anubis on the other hand was retiring the Udajeets as useless, instead he was introducing a new fighter which the Tok'ra had as yet seen only once, and it was nasty. Slightly larger than an Udajeet, it was improved weapons, and a hyperdrive for definite, and was rumoured to not only carry missile armament, a rarity for the Goa'ulds, but be shielded as well.

The war was polarizing, the system lords were gone and now the Tau'ri were fighting for freedom and survival, whilst Maktenos and Anubis fought for domination. As yet, nobody had enough of an advantage to begin an assault of any kind against the other, so they just nibbled, and frantically built up their forces.

He sighed, his face lined and weary as he reached for the intercom,

"Yes?"

"General, the team from the SGC are here"

"Send them in"

O'Neill looked to the door as it opened, them smiled as Colonel Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c and Doctor Frasier filed into his room.

"Guys! Good to see you!" O'Neill rose from his creaky leather seat with a grin.

"So, what brings you to this neck of the woods anyways?" O'Neill asked, as they relaxed with a hot coffee each.

Fraiser commented wryly, "I got a message about a Goa'uld bio-warfare lab, and being the foremost expert on alien disease's…"

"Fun" O'Neill commented, "but nice to know someone as good as you will be handling it"

"Thanks General" Fraiser replied, mildly surprised by the complement.

"So let me guess" O'Neill turned to Carter then Daniel as he commented, "you get to look at the tech to see if you can find anything Fraiser can use, and you get to look at the writing"

"Pretty much, yes" Carter replied.

"I told Hammond I wished to review Training procedures on Alpha Prime" Teal'c added.

"Yeah, you kinda got an odd look for that as well, I don't think he was fooled" Daniel commented, resettling his glasses on his nose.

"Indeed he was not, however I am here"

"So, what's the latest?" Frasier asked.