10: Dawning Alliance
by Chaoseternus

When Enerina is sent to investigate why every gate in an area of space will not establish a wormhole, she finds something totally unexpected...

Thank you to my reviwers, you know who you are!greyangle: There are no immediate plans to add any more races
mikibee: in this universe, there is ONLY one Earth and thats the Tau'ri Earth, no EA
Someone: totally out of my control. NIS2005 managed to corrupt my windows install when i tryed to upgrade, and even on a clean install it managed to corrupt itself. Went back to Norton2002 and immediately had a Dual-hardware failure, IDE controller and DVD-RW drive.
Needless to say, all that meant writing suffered

Sixteen

RSS Command, RAF/RSS St Athan, Earth

Admiral Thompson was not in a good mood. Through no real fault of his own, he and his Command were receiving heavy flak from the Politicians. Politicians who expected the fleet to constantly grow without interruptions despite the resources that even they had to agree needed to be diverted to the Colonial Relief effort, then onto fortifying Edonia. Politicians who had been told time after time that they could have the growth they wanted if they were willing to fork out for it.

Politicians who literally laughed when told the RSS needed more funds to continue expansion; otherwise they would have to wait on Edonia. Not that Thompson could blame them, the money literally wasn't there, even spread across three 1 st world governments, the RSS was an expensive operation, the SGC was worse off, they only had America and Russia funding them and whilst America often seemed to have money to burn, that wasn't the case. Russia was, as always, cash poor and people rich which wasn't very helpful, but they were able to provide a number of SG teams, each of which it was openly acknowledged, copied every report they made to send back to Moscow .

He had managed to get seized NID funds added to the RSS and… well, mainly to the SGC coffers, which allowed them to reduce their debt somewhat and arrange for each MTB squadron to be brought up to full strength, but it was a drop in the ocean of what they needed to do to build up the allied forces ready for the War.

Still...

The Sentinel refits had begun, indeed Sentinel herself would be ready within the month and Commander Harris was already pencilled in as her CO at the insistence of the Colonials, who had also dropped the Gold Cluster upon the somewhat unconventional officer for his efforts in bringing the Second Colonial Fleet from Red Line Anchorage to Tau'ri controlled space.

Two Sentinels under refit at Ravenbright, three at Thundersdawn...

Five more ships, only two of which would be added to the Tau'ri fleet.

Well, every little helped but he would have to watch how they were used, they seemed, to his eye at least, to be more suited to Fleet actions rather then lone-wolfing it.

He chuckled, he had little doubt Harris would do his best to disprove that theory on his maiden voyage. It was something to encourage, to a point. After all, there was only one way to truly show what a ship could and could not do and despite what many of the Politicians and the techies might think, that was still by doing, by actual trying it and seeing what worked and what didn't.

Still, he hoped Harris didn't bend her too much… After all, he didn't want to lose the office betting pool did he?

And now, he had to think on this proposal that had arrived from the Allied Races, that they build a station for the Tau'ri in exchange for technology and a limited number of ships permenantly stationed.

It had its attractions, it truly did, and unlike Star Trek… Thompson paused, make that, unlike the Star Trek universe, they didn't have a Prime Directive to deal with… Well, actually they did and that was the problem. Theirs wasn't about preserving cultures, theirs was a lot simpler.

Don't screw up.

Simple to say, not always simple to do, and putting technologies, however circumspectly into another races hands always had the potential to go balls up. Not that he had much choice really, it would really add to the strain on Personnel and Training Divisions but there were far too many advantages to let this one go by.

Far too many...

Thompson didn't like to look a gift horse in the mouth too closely, but frankly, sometimes you had too, and this smelt like one of those times.

But dammit, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to get a personal look, to meet the races who were giving this proposal and judge for himself, he had to trust his people on the scene.

And that was the crux of the problem, the one person he trusted most on the scene, strange as it might seem to an outsider that he trusted a Goa'uld, was out of the action having once more landed herself in hospital after going to far trying to save somebody else's life.

There was another problem too, part of their agreement stated that if her ship was lost on a mission for the Tau'ri then the Tau'ri were obliged to replace it. Whilst he was tempted to just give her one of their Ha'tak's, or even ask the SGC to cut-out a Goa'uld ship for her, their were advantages in giving her one of the Tau'ri designed ships too, not just the level of trust and faith it implied they had in Enerina.

Truth be told, the choice wasn't really that hard. The ‘Goa'uld' ships the Tau'ri used were either noticeably altered during the refits that made them operational once more, or were unmodified System Lord ships, very much outclassed by the ships of Maktenos and Anubis.

Giving her a System Lord ship would be a step down from her old vessel, which would be noticed, and would reduce her effectiveness, giving her any of the other Ha'taks would negate the advantages of having an allied Goa'uld on a Goa'uld hull due to the noticeable modifications, modifications which were recognisable Tau'ri in style. A cutting-out expedition to acquire another ship from Maktenos or Anubis was out too, both had lost too many ships, both guarded theirs far too carefully and put too many safeguards in place against theft or desertion nowadays.

No, they could only give her a Tau'ri warship.

Which meant a Dauntless, a Prometheus, one of the Sentinels that would be joining the Tau'ri fleet, or a Britannica.

A Britannica was out, the first three ships were already allocated, or at least pencilled in and given their flagship status, placing Enerina in command of one of them was frankly, politically unsound. However much he might trust her, the Politicians were far less willing to forgive her past and her race, they would certainly question any move to place her in command. Besides which, she would have to wait far too long for a Britannica to become available.

A Sentinel was out too, whilst the Colonials would have little trouble with her in Command of one of their hulls, Enerina did after all lead the Relief Fleet sent to meet the refugees and had almost died proving that a human could be released from a Cylon, she would have to wait months before… scratch that, a year at least. This batch of Sentinels was already allocated; she would have to wait for the next at least.

That left…

Defiant.

Perfect.

Despite her near ready status, that new Dauntless II didn't have a command crew, a drunk driver having killed her Captain and XO as they left Colorado Springs for their leave, her tactical officer being medically discharged and the helm officer sectioned. That left the Engineering Officer amongst others, but he had seen their files, he doubted they would have any problems working with Enerina and frankly, she would need a core of experienced Tau'ri officers and NCO's, especially whilst she got used to the ship.

Thompson grinned, his mind dredging up an image of several politicians he could think of and their likely reaction to this decision. Kealty being the worst, lecherous bastard, but Defiant was an RSS hull, Kealty would not be able to influence his decision and he would most likely have the support of the PM. He had appeared to like and respect Enerina the one time he had met her.

Saved him the problem of having to dredge up a new Command crew anyway, even if it would delay Defiant making the operational list whilst her Jaffa crew got used to the Tau'ri systems.

Hmmm… let's see.

Arrange transport for Enerina, her crew and any medivacs from Minbari space, said transport would have to be escorted. Make Weir, the mission second official Commander of the Tau'ri mission in that area, hope Sheppard can balance her, stop her falling into the usual traps for Civilians in charge in military operations.

Oh yes, and get the SAS or MI-6 to sneak some cameras in Vice-President Kealty's office. His face should a picture when he gets the news and maybe they will get lucky and catch him pulling one of his tricks. It would remove one thorn from their side at least.

Murrielle would appreciate the job anyway; she hadn't had much to do since most of the NID cells fell.