The
city of Atlantis,
the
Pegasus Galaxy.
Dr Elizabeth Weir strode into the command centre above the Gate Room, and looked over at the technician who was sitting at the laptop computer that acted as an interface to the Stargate's iris-control.
There was an established, incoming wormhole connection to their Gate from off-world, but the technician at the main controls to the iris had not lowered the energy-barrier that protected their Stargate from unauthorized personnel yet – he hadn't yet received an I.D.C., an electronic identification code that would verify that the incoming traveller or travellers were indeed people they wished to allow come into the city.
"Nothing yet?" Weir asked. If there was no I.D.C. data-stream sent, then the iris would stay up, and any person or object would be destroyed instantly upon attempting to cross through the event-horizon and reintegrate on the other side of the Gate. The object or person would be reincorporated on the other side of the Stargate, only to slam straight into the energy-barrier that protected the city's Gate and be instantly destroyed.
"No ma'am, I haven't received an I.D.C., and the three teams currently off-world are not scheduled to make any contact with us or return through the gate for at least 24 hours," the Gate operator replied. He looked over at Weir, waiting for any lead she would give, any instructions for him to follow…
"Let's give it a little more time…"
Suddenly, just as Weir trailed off, the I.D.C. signal came in – it was Lt Colonel Sheppard.
"Lower the iris!" Elizabeth ordered immediately. The Gate technician typed in a quick command, and the energy-shield dropped down.
A few seconds later, John, Teyla Emmagan, the Athosian merchantman, Malden, and the Genii spy Oskar all came staggering through the Gate's watery, slightly displaced event-horizon. Sheppard had his P-90 rifle trained back towards the Stargate's rippling wormhole, his finger resting lightly back on the trigger-guard.
Dr Weir shouted to the technician to put the iris back up into place as she raced down the stairs and ran across the floor of the Gate Room to meet with the incoming travellers; and he did just that, shielding them all from anyone or anything else that would come through the Gate after Sheppard and his people. Just a few moments later, though, the connection with the other planet shut down and there was no more need for concern.
"John, Teyla… Malden," Weir said by way of greeting, noting the three people she knew. "And you, sir, I take it, am the Genii intelligence operative who wishes to defect to us… am I correct?"
"Yes you are, Dr Weir. My name is Oskar." He offered her his right hand to shake, the picture of sincerity and warmth. Weir took it, shook the Genii's hand firmly, smiled into his eyes… "I'm sure we can come to quite an amicable arrangement, that will suit all of our interests perfectly."
"I very much hope so, Oskar…" Elizabeth replied. She turned slightly to John after finishing up the handshake, tilted her head to the side inquiringly. "We weren't expecting to hear from you for another 24 hours, John… let alone have you all come back here so soon…?"
What was left unsaid was the obvious – entire point of the mission was to verify the validity of this Genii and his story off-world, not have a potentially very dangerous adversary in Atlantis…
"Well, we ran into a little bit of a snag…"
Weir looked over to one of the Special Forces soldiers on sentry-duty in the Gate Room. She waved the big, burly Spaniard over. "Corporal, see to it that this gentleman is shown to one of the VIP guest quarters… and see to it that a guard is posted outside his door at all times." Elizabeth looked to Oskar, and asked, "I hope you don't object?"
"No Doctor, not at all, in understand the precaution, and would do the very same thing in your position," the Genii replied.
"That's good then." Oskar followed the armed soldier off through one of the adjourning hallways to find some temporary quarters that would be suitable for him. Weir turned to face Teyla, John and Malden. "Okay then, let's go to my office for a full debriefing… I want to know exactly what happened out there."
# A #
Onboard
the lead Puddle Jumper, the outer edge of Sector 1146,
the
Pegasus Galaxy.
Commander Acastus Kolya was not a pilot, but by what he was told by the man currently at the controls of the Ancestors' flying spacecraft, and others besides, it was far more instinctual to control this vessel than it was about any great skill… still, he had decided from a very early point in the operation to leave this stage of things to somebody else, more capable with these things than he was. And now, he was quite glad indeed about his decision.
Kolya had saved this final masterstroke to the last moment, so that when the blow came to his enemies it would be delivered swiftly, and from an overwhelming point of advantage.
No mercy, no remorse, no regrets… the Commander was determined to bring his foes to bear this time, without fail, and with the technology of the Ancients his to control – at least to a certain degree – it was well within his grasp to sweep all his opponents aside with impunity.
The rear compartment of the small, box-like spacecraft were jammed full of Genii soldiers, armed to the teeth with the best weaponry their people could manufacture.
Kolya had planned this entire phase of the mission down to the smallest detail – it a point of extreme risk, so he knew he could leave nothing at all to chance. It was simple in its scope, yet brutally effective because of it…
Out of his formation of five Ancestor spacecraft, – found on a world halfway across the galaxy over four years ago, but made to operate thanks to the sheer will and tenacity of Kayne – they would each target a specific enemy vessel to destroy.
The other four craft had the Wraith star-ships to annihilate – Kolya and his team were going to go for the human battle-cruiser, and he had every intention of boarding the vessel with his troops, not obliterating it like they were going to destroy all of the Wraith ships.
It should be a totally one-sided affair, with the enemy vessels all so hopelessly stricken thanks to the initial EMP strike.
"Ten minutes out from our target, Commander," the pilot stated. The vessel they were in screamed through the thick black void of space at an incredible speed, while the rest of their formation split away, each craft heading off in its own direction towards its own target…
It was time for war. It was time, Kolya thought with a childishly gleeful grin, to finally make his enemies pay… he would not be made a fool of again!
Not this time!
# A #
The
outer edge of Sector 1146,
the
Pegasus Galaxy.
Like Kolya's Puddle Jumper (a reference that Colonel Sheppard and the Atlantis expedition would have understood, but not the Genii), the other four ships were all loaded with Genii troopers – they all had orders to converge on the Atlantean battle-cruiser and join in the boarding operation, as soon as their primary targets had been destroyed.
The men, and one woman, who flew the four Jumpers piloted their vessels with practiced self-assurance. They had only been training in the spacecraft over just a few months, but the direct interface between their own minds and the controls, allowing their will to be transferred to immediate action, made it all quite simple.
Each vessel came swooping in towards their independent target.
Wraith cruisers, when compared with the Puddle Jumpers the Genii were using, loomed over the smaller vessels with an ominous presence that was hard to shake. The pilots were all flying their ships without the cloak-feature activated, so the Wraith could see and detect them all, supposedly… if their sensors had still been active.
No weapons-fire whatsoever swept over their vessels, and no Wraith darts were launched from the ships' fighter-bays to intercept them. All four Wraith cruisers seemed completely oblivious to their presence…
The Genii pilots, as one, did not hesitate when they had the opportunity to fire, once the Wraith ships were within their weapons-range. With their minds, they commanded their vessels to launch two drone-weapons apiece at their selected targets.
The fiery, ultra-sonic heavy ordinance rounds shot out of the weapons-pods that retracted down from the undersides of the Ancient space-fighters, and streaked away from their mother-ships at astronomical speeds, hurdling straight towards their hapless targets like burning little comets…
The Wraith probably never knew the danger they were, as they didn't put up any kind of fight to speak of. They had been completely blinded, so it seemed, by the initial energy strike the Genii had unleashed from the planet so far away, and now the Puddle Jumpers were going to finish the job and destroy them all…
Hundreds of Wraith killed on each cruiser – the biggest strike against the enemy of all humans in the Pegasus Galaxy the Genii had ever accomplished. It was a momentous moment in their peoples' illustrious history.
The drones streaked in on their targets, punched right on through each Wraith cruiser in their turn, and detonated deep inside the vessels once they'd carved their destructive path through enough of the star-ships, causing devastating explosions to rip through the huge battle-cruisers as they were effectively cut in half by the assault.
The Ancient weapons had blown massive sections of all four Wraith vessels away from the main sections of the cruisers, and entire floors of the ships were being torn apart as the irreparable devastation compounded upon itself, spreading out at an incredible rate. Huge portions of the stricken vessels were being ripped away, as the damaged cruisers quickly succumbed to their mortal injuries while they floated through space, dying slow, prolonged deaths.
The Genii watched on through the front windshields of the Jumpers, flying alongside the Wraith ships, getting in real close to see the enemy vessels up close – the men and women savoured the kills, cherishing every moment of their victory. It was the first, they all hoped, of many more to come…
Then, they all turned back towards the lead spacecraft, still heading towards the only enemy vessel still remaining in the entire solar system – it was time to get down to the bloody end of this.
The four Puddle Jumpers converged at a certain position in space, then carried on in formation after Kolya's spacecraft, towards their glorious prize, the stricken Atlantean battle-cruiser.
A hard fight lay in the immediate future, but then, each and every Genii soldier knew there was no force in Pegasus tougher, or more experience in the many arts of combat, then they were…
# A #
On
the outer edge of Sector 1146, onboard the USS Daedalus,
the
Pegasus Galaxy.
"Well, that was… umph, very effective," Colonel Calwell muttered, seemingly to no one in particular. Rodney McKay glanced over at the man with a look of pure loathing twisting across his face. Interesting? Interesting…?
My Lord, the Doctor thought to himself with bile churning up in the back of his throat, I'm going to die right here and now, because these imbeciles wouldn't listen to me when it mattered most…
And Calwell continued to make an ass of himself!
What the Colonel was referring to was the ease in which the four Puddle Jumpers, having broken their formation to go after the four helpless, stricken Wraith cruisers, had managed to destroy the usually quite formidable vessels.
They had all been obliterated, and now the sensors onboard the Daedalus were picking up the clouds of debris that had just moments before been Wraith warships. It had at least taken the possible threat the Wraith had posed out of the equation – but the direct danger from the Jumpers, now that was something else entirely.
Because no one really believed these ships were from Atlantis, coming to get them home. They didn't really know who they were dealing with, including Dr McKay, but the crew of the Daedalus were now well past the point of believing in the bright, positive scenario – they'd been screwed around with too much.
"Well, they do have drones in the weapons-pods of those Jumpers, at least we know that much now – and we already know just how effective drone weapons are!" McKay snapped back dismissively. He was running out of patience with ignorance a lot quicker than normal, under this pressure-cooker situation. "Now, we have to get some X-302s out there, at least give them some kind of fight if it comes to that… it should be possible to reroute much of the minimal amount of power I've been able to get back to the shields in the fighter-bay. Major Norris, do you think you can get some pilots into those space-fighters, in about five minutes?"
"I'll damn well try," the Major replied, standing up and moving at a rush towards the nearest door.
"Good," McKay shouted after him, "because that's about as long as we've got until that lead Puddle Jumper is within drone weapon range of us."
With that, Norris raced through the doorway and down one of the hallways, towards the nearest gate-hatch that would get him into the network of crawlspaces that ran throughout the entire vessel.
Rodney then looked to Caldwell. "Colonel, I really hope to God those Puddle Jumpers are ours, by some miracle or chance of fate. Because even with our entire squadron of X-302s, it will probably be a pretty one-sided dogfight if they have to go up against five Puddle Jumpers."
"Well, what else can we do then?" the Colonel asked, looking at the scientist with a look of fear on his face akin to that of a child, scared, frightened, and way out of his league…
"Nothing, Colonel, nothing at all… except fight, if it comes to that. Fight as hard as we damn well can!"
Out of the corner of his eye, McKay caught Ronon Dex looking at him strangely. He turned to look at the big, massive fighter, and saw Dex smile at him slightly, his eyes sparkling with warmth.
Ronon had a look of… what was that look? Respect? Yes it was. He had a look of respect plastered all over his face, for the way he was being strong, commanding, and was not allowing himself to give into his despair. At least, that was what Rodney thought Dex was proud of.
He didn't really deserve that, not honestly. Because deep down inside, Dr Rodney McKay had little doubt at all that he was the most terrified man onboard the Daedalus.