There were far more than even she'd expected. The view screen was literally dark with the oppressing number of ships that were waiting for them. Huge mother ships were in a small cluster in the middle of what could only be called an armada of other ships. An armada of thousands of space craft, of all shapes and sizes.

"Holy shit..."

Daniel had seen them as well. There was a sensor mounted on the back wall of Fugly and he'd called up the exact same picture that Mitchell was seeing. There was no way they were going to be able to destroy all of them. No way they were going to be able to survive an attack if they all started firing.

"This is bad," he said, softly, in German.

"Not so bad, Daniel..." Mitchell was over her shock almost instantly, and the surge of satisfaction at the amount of ships facing her came purely from Talon, but she felt it as well, and agreed with it. "The more we kill, the better. Now hush."

They were being hailed.

"This is Arabis. You are Talon?"

Mitchell thumbed the communications device even as she felt Talon take over.

"I am Talon."

"You are vastly outnumbered by your betters," Arabis told them. "Surrender your ship, and its technology, and I will allow you to live to serve me."

"This is your offer for peace between myself and the system lords?" Talon asked, not at all rising to the bait of the arrogant demands.

He was far better at this than the rest of the system lords, mainly because Melony was so cool-headed all the time that it tended to rub off on him. Already the scanners on the ship were checking to make sure that there were system lords on the mother ships. Enough system lords that they'd do true damage to the Goa'uld when they killed them.

"There will be no peace. You will be killed and your Jaffa armies will be divided among us, as will your territories."

"That is unacceptable."

She knew the first shot was coming, and knew that if Daniel were watching what was going on from the back, he'd see it as well, so she didn't tell him to brace himself. The shot hit directly, but it didn't even jolt the little ship. The system lords wanted Talon dead, but they really wanted Fugly. It had proven to be the deadliest ship any of them had ever heard of, and they all wanted a crack at that technology, knowing it would only increase their stature if they could work it out.

She reacted instantly, and less than a moment later all the ships in the entire area were reporting that their shields were down. Just like that. No warning, and no rejoinder from Talon. He'd received the information he needed. The Goa'uld had shown themselves to be the cowards he knew they were, and even better, they'd shown themselves to be foolish enough that over 80 percent of the major system lords were in this one gathering. It was more than enough for Talon. And for Mitchell.

"Now, Daniel!"

Daniel hit the button that would fire up the escape device, and stepped prudently away from it, unsure what it'd do. A moment later, he felt the whine of the main weapon in Fugly's arsenal being brought to full power. That power was fed directly into the crystals that were positioned perfectly into the cannon, and the energy was magnified as it bounced around the crystals in the blink of an eye. A moment later, Mitchell fired the primary weapon at the ship she knew to be Arabis'. It exploded instantly, taking out a large mass of other ships with it.

The rest of the ships in the armada started firing, no doubt acting on the orders of the system lords. They knew they had the numeric superiority at the moment, and they were determined to take Fugly down before they lost too many ships. The shots started beating into Fugly's shielding like angry hammer blows.

"Hang on, Daniel!" Mitchell yelled, still in German. "It's going to get rough!"

Daniel was thrown back against the wall, and fell, stunned, but he jerked himself upright almost immediately. He needed to be ready to hit the final button that would activate the device. The one that would draw the power from the explosion that he knew Mitchell was already setting up.

The trick, Mitchell and Talon knew, was to make the system lords think they were winning. That was all that would keep them in the vicinity while the self-destruct on the ship gained full power. In order to do that, they had to take the beating they were being given, and make it look like they were losing. It wasn't hard. The ship had never been subjected to a round of fire like it was taking just then. Not from every angle, even from below and above. It made the last ambush look like a one on one fight.

Even in her command chair, Mitchell was being tossed around as the little ship bucked under the more powerful explosions that were trying to damage the shields. They were holding, though, just like Mitchell and Talon had known they would. Even without the crystals to fall back on. Melony hit the self-destruct button, and then the modification button that she'd installed. Now, when the ship blew up, the explosion wasn't going to be caught by the shields and the crystals. It'd just be caught by the crystals and magnified by a billion. The explosion was going to be huge. More than enough to take out the ships that were so bent on killing them, and probably enough to take out the ones one the edges that weren't shooting at them because they couldn't get a lock on them through so many other ships. Even if the primary explosion missed those ships, though, the destruction of the ships around them would catch them, and nothing should survive.

"Now, Daniel!"

He hit the final button, and the ship's alarms started going off. The device activated instantly, already finding enough energy from the explosions that were rocking the ship to feed on.

"Melony!"

"Go!"

The self-destruct went off just as Daniel dove through the watery looking substance in the doorway, and Daniel felt a searing pain along his back and the back of his legs at the same moment he felt himself start to disintegrate, and he knew even as he dissolved that there was no way Mitchell was going to be able to get from the front of the ship to the back of the ship before it blew apart completely.

Then he felt himself coming back into one piece. Felt pain like he'd never felt before, and was suddenly slammed hard into something solid. Hard enough that it knocked him out completely. As the blackness overtook him, he thought he heard someone yell his name, but he wasn't sure...

............

"How much-?"

Jack as just about to complain about waiting, when he felt all the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand up. An electric wave of something seemed to come over the embarkation room, and there was a sudden flash of light that was so bright Jack had to cover his eyes.

From the yelp beside him, he knew Sam was doing the same thing. A moment later he forced his eyes open, just in time to see what looked like a wormhole open in the middle of thin air – in the exact center of the space that Melony had tape off – and suddenly something came through, slamming into the floor with an impact that made Jack wince. He recognized the form instantly. It was one of two that he'd been waiting to see, after all.

"Daniel!"