Mutiny

Dylan turned his gaze towards the sisters. The returned his gaze, a mixture of fear and resignation in their eyes.

"You know what the Triumvirate has ordered don't you?" Stupid question of course they did.

"You have been ordered to kill us." That was Logic. As usual she came right to the point.

Core picked up where Logic had left off. If you choose to obey your orders we will not resist you." Then in a voice so low that Dylan could hardly hear her she added. "We would not want to live if you choose to follow them"

They actually think that he would carry out the order marveled Dylan. How could they imagine that he would consider such a thing? Rommie's words came back to him 'You are not exactly free of prejudice yourself Captain ….. Do you remember Maggie, Jill, of the Pax Magellenica?' Now he understood why there was fear in their eyes. He had given them reason to fear him.

Core and Logic had been his advisors, no friends, for years and Rommie, what he felt for Rommie was more than friendship. Love, lust, in love, all, none, he had never analyzed his feelings towards her, but he did know that he would never willingly harm any of them.

"Andromeda, please connect me with Fleet Admiral Tanaka. I am about to resign my commission."

Even a hologram can shed tears.

Tanaka's face appeared almost instantly on one of the auxiliary viewscreens. He must he been expecting his call.

"It took you long enough to contact me. Are you reporting that you carried out your orders?"

"Sir I must regretfully tender my resignation from the High Guard. I refuse to carry out the orders of the Triumvirate and should you attempt to enforce those orders I will resist you."

A look of relief passed over Tanaka's face. "I don't think that will be necessary Captain."

"Sir?"

"You were the last C.O. to report in. Every single one of my C.O.s refused to obey the order. Admiral Hasturi even threatened to eject me from the ship if I insisted that the orders be carried out, without a vacuum suit I might add."

"The courier that delivered the order was followed by another courier, this one from Mobius. The High Guard units on Mobius received the order before it arrived here. Over 98 percent of the High Guard commanding officers in the Mobius district refused to obey orders. Those that did obey the order found themselves wondering how long they could hold their breaths in a vacuum."

"Dylan in the 10,000 years of High Guard history we have never had a fleet wide mutiny. Now thanks to a bunch of panicky politicians we have one. And if I don't get a handle on things quickly we could have a civil war on our hands. Some of my hotheaded captains are going to want to go after the Triumvirs. Other members of the fleet, even those who refused to obey the order, will try to stop them. Between the Replicators and this I don't think I am going to be getting sleep any time soon." He started to turn away from the viewscreen.

"Admiral wait."

The Fleet Admiral turned back to the viewscreen awaiting what Dylan had to say.

"It can't go on any longer Admiral."

"What can't Dylan."

"The way we treat our AIs"

"I can assure you Dylan that when this is finished no High Guard artificial intelligence will never again have to worry about a summary wipe."

"I don't mean just the High Guard AIs; I mean all of them."

"I see." The Admiral paused for a moment then began to speak. "Dylan, we need to talk, in private. I know Andromeda is listening. Please send her away."

"Privacy mode Andromeda." Core and Logic vanished from sight. Rommie, after receiving a stern look from Dylan left the bridge.

"It's her nature to be attracted to men such as you Dylan"

The sudden change of subject caught him by surprise. He wasn't quite sure what his superior was referring to.

Tanaka continued. "She's drawn to you like a moth to a flame and like the flame you will destroy her. I'm neither blind nor deaf, I know what's going on between you and your ships avatar. There's a time and a place for relationships such as yours but not here not now, not while you're both in harness. If you continue, you will only break her heart. When things have settled down and your services are no longer needed, that will be the time. I can't order you not to pursue her, but if you truly care for her you will wait."

Rommie, the Admiral was talking about his relationship with Rommie.

"It's not just her I'm concerned about Dylan" A distant look came across Tanaka's face, as if he was seeing a different time and place. "It's hard enough to loose a friend and shipmate. It's a thousand times worse when she is you lover as well." The Admiral came back from wherever he had been. "Now if you will excuse me I have a mutiny to attend to before it becomes a civil war."

The image of Tanaka disappeared leaving Dylan staring at a blank viewscreen. Dylan left to find Rommie and to confer with his engineers. There was still a lot of work remaining to do on Arzawa II.

New Toys

Teal'c, Tyr, Carter, and Harper stood in the staging area aboard Siege Perilous along with ninety-six other warriors, General O'Neill, and Admiral Tanaka. They were clustered around two large viewscreens, watching as O'Neill conducted the briefing.

"The High Guard fleet is scanning every square inch of the surface," he said, "And you can see the result. Our buddy Thor is down there taking care of business."

The screen depicted the planet's surface, with a green icon depicting Thor's ship, slowly moving across a sea of silvery tendrils. The ship left behind it splotches of black, as living Replicators became small pieces of inert metal.

"As you can see," continued O'Neill, "Any Replicator on the surface will be nothing but small chunks in another hour or so. But unfortunately, they aren't all on the surface. There are at least four locations where they've gone underground. And those four locations look like Replicator factories. They're churning them out by the thousands, and Thor's weapon isn't effective that far underground. So we're going down there to smoke them out. For those not familiar with Earth slang, we're going to go kill them, each and every one of them, until there's not a single stinkin' chip that can combine with any other stinkin' chip. Then we can all...go have a beer or something."

He looked at Tanaka in mock panic. "You guys do have beer, right?"

Tanaka laughed. "If by that you mean alcoholic spirits, yes we do. We have some stuff that will make your hair stand on end and your eyes bug out. I would watch out for these Lancers. Some of them can suck a liquor bottle so dry that it gets wrinkles in the glass."

"I don't doubt it, sir," said O'Neill. "I don't doubt that at all." His voice trailed off as he looked into the distance, perhaps recalling memorable celebrations from his Air Force Academy days. Someone coughed and O'Neill was jolted back to the present.

"Right," he said. "Well, I look forward to that. Now. The order of business now is to plan the attack on the underground hatcheries. Luckily they're all within a few miles of each other, so Thor should be able to keep the surface bugs off our backs. But we need to leave the special bug zapper ray gun hooked up to Thor's ship in case another bug-filled spaceship comes out of one of those holes. Now I want to show you something else."

The second viewscreen came to life, showing an aerial view of four warriors fighting against thousands of Replicators.

"Sir, was this taken from Thor's ship?" asked Carter. "This is amazing. The clarity and detail, and from such a height."

"Yes yes," said O'Neill, "It's a pretty picture. One reason we sent a team to the surface was to test out the rifles firing this Lysol stuff."

"Shorinol, sir," said Carter.

"Whatever," said O'Neill. "Now I want the assessment of each of you as to how well the rifles worked. Carter?"

"Not very well, sir," said Carter. "It takes at least two and sometimes four shots to kill one Replicator."

"Teal'c?"

"Ineffective," responded the Jaffa. "Many shots missed on full automatic. Too many Replicators, not enough bullets."

"Tyr?"

"I could have done better," said the big Nietzschean, "With a bucket of Shorinol and a big hammer."

"Harper?"

"I thought we had a good design," said Harper. "But there were too many of them, and they were too fast, and we weren't. I'm not going down there again without something better."

"In that case, you're in luck," said O'Neill with a smug smile. "When I saw how much trouble you were having down there, I sent my own design over to the Forge Victorious. And here's what they made for us. Sergeant Haulder, would you do the honors?"

Haulder stepped forward, reached behind an electrical panel, and pulled out the most fantastic-looking weapon that anyone in the room had ever seen. Six large-diameter parallel barrels were arranged around a rotating armature. A flexible tubular feed mechanism stretched back to a large drum with backpack straps. The design was topped off by a futuristic-looking stock with swirling red and yellow patterns and swoopy looking fins on the sides.

"A shotgun," said Carter, marveling. "Gatling shotgun."

"Give that woman a kewpie doll!" said O'Neill. "I call it...the O'Neill bug squasher. Sergeant, would you demonstrate it for us please?"

"With pleasure, sir," said Haulder. She strapped the ammo drum on her back and walked to the firing range area, followed by a large group of people who liked to see things get violently blown up. She stepped up to the firing line, turned her head to look back at the people behind her, and made a point of activating the auditory baffles in her helmet. Most of those present either activated their own baffles or plugged their ears with their fingers. Haulder leaned forward, as though walking against a hurricane force wind, and pulled the trigger.

The barrels began to rotate, and a solid column of flame shot out twenty feet from the weapon's muzzle. When the projectiles struck the solid metal target, the metal was immediately shredded, with pieces flying in every direction. And as the pieces flew, so did a continuous stream of liquid, as though the target was being hit with a high pressure fire hose. Haulder was rocked backward, and controlled the weapon with much difficulty for a few seconds, finally having to shut it down before she was unable to hold on to it.

O'Neill turned to look at the assembled warriors and was amused to see the naked lust in their eyes at the prospect of firing such a weapon. He was sorry he would have to let some of them down, but he could tell that they were all eager to be in on the operation, and if they were not picked for the prime position, they would be happy to be spear carriers.

"So," said O'Neill, "The gun shoots high-velocity pellets. Half are regular lead pellets and the other half are hollow plastic spheres filled with Shorinol. You can all see the problem. It takes a large and strong person to be able to handle this weapon. For those of you who aren't large people, you can still make a difference by carrying spare ammunition drums. You can also carry gauss rifles as a backup if the bug squasher fails for some reason. Talk among yourselves and sort out who will carry the guns and who will carry the drums. You all know your own capabilities, and I don't want to designate people who can't handle the operation. The only rule I will make is that there will be one ammunition carrier for every shooter."

O'Neill looked around at the assembled troops, all eager to go into battle and all willing to give up their lives for the Commonwealth. He couldn't have been more proud if they had all been Terran warriors.

"I want to hit the planet in one hour," he said. "In an hour we should have enough weapons manufactured for the operation. Make your selections and split up into four teams by then. Dismissed."