"You can't see me… you can't see me…"

The words were whispered. Barely audible, but fervent.

"Go on… nothing to see here… no brilliant scientist on an alien ship. No one trying to hide here… Go on back to Anubis and tell him it was just some kind of anomaly and not really someone scanning you… "

McKay was watching the search of the hangar from the safety (as it was) of the cloaked Gateship. The Jaffa were in the hangar, obviously looking for him – well, actually, looking for the source of the scan that they had to have noticed – with weapons out and ready. Weapons that made McKay's insides quail.

He wanted to call Ian. Wanted to warn the kid that the Jaffa were all over the place – and were just bound to eventually get him if he didn't get his butt back to the ship where he was safe. One kid against a whole army? The boy was nuts. But it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that a single call on the radio was all it would take to get Ian caught. And if Ian were caught, McKay wouldn't be far behind.

"Get back here… come on… you're nuts. Just crazy…"

He couldn't call him, but it didn't stop McKay from thinking it – or murmuring it as he watched the Jaffa look around the huge hangar.

Luckily, they weren't looking for an invisible ship sitting in the open. They were looking for a group of people – like SG-1 or something, McKay was certain. And they didn't need to walk around all that much to see that the place was deserted, and the few areas that might be hiding those nebulous people were quickly checked and deemed secure.

As McKay breathed a sigh of relief – a silent one – the Jaffa left the hangar and headed through the open door to check the rest of the ship.

OOOOOOOO

"Oh my God…"

Daniel's breathless exclamation was right on course for how Jack was feeling just then. Despite the urgency of their situation, all three humans couldn't help but stop dead in their tracks when they materialized in the middle of the cavern that the Ancients had left. It was huge, with walls made of ice – or maybe some kind of clear substance that allowed it to make the walls look like ice but wouldn't rely on the cold to keep them stable – and was definitely as alien as any of them might have expected.

"Think this is the right place?" Jack asked, reverting to humor as all other words failed him.

Sam smiled.

"Unless you see another huge alien room…"

"This place is incredible," Daniel said, looking around and – not surprisingly – taking the first step into the room.

All around him were Ancient writing and technology. Technology he wouldn't understand immediately, of course, but then that wasn't his strong point anyways. He did understand the writing, and that was all that mattered.

The room was dominated by a chair, all alone in the middle of the place, it wasn't even the most alien-looking chair Daniel had ever seen, but it was definitely what they'd come for.

"Jack…"

"I see it, Daniel…"

Jack had moved as well. He took a step toward the chair, feeling nervous and afraid – but not of what was to come. More like he was afraid what would happen if they weren't able to activate the thing, or if they failed. The entire world hung on this working, and that it might not was enough to scare O'Neill.

The movement of the two men broke Sam out of her own paralysis, and she moved as well, carrying the ZPM in her hand as she followed Jack to the chair. Jack turned to her.

"Can you get it running?"

In turn, she looked at Daniel.

"If Daniel can figure out where this goes," she said, holding up the ZPM, "I'll get it working."

Daniel nodded, and moved closer, studying the writings around them and wishing – not for the first time – that he shared Ian's memories of all things Ancient.

OOOOOOOOO

Forced to stay where they were to provide any support or what little protection they could to SG-1, Teal'c moved the Tok'ra ship as close to the ground as he could without landing it. For one thing, they would be unable to take off quickly if they landed – although they'd be able to turn off their engines. For another, if they landed, it might (and probably would) leave an outline of the ship in the surface of the ice for anyone above to see. That included the Jaffa in the death gliders.

Instead, they stayed low, and watched with view screen and sensors of the ship as the two forces of flying craft met up with each other only a few miles from their position. With the communications panel lit up, they were able to listen in on the conversations – and it didn't take long for them to realize that it wasn't just one country's people out there. Hammond – or Hayes – had brought the forces of every major power – and some not so major – out to take on Anubis' Jaffa, and Jacob Carter found himself in the ironic position of rooting on pilots he would have once more than willingly battled against.

OOOOOOOOO

Call signs had been figured out quickly. Not the names they normally used – especially the American pilots – but names and numbers that would tell the others on the airwaves what air group they were from and which position they were supposed to be holding in the flight. The American pilots who were from carriers used their ship's name with their own tail numbers. The same for the European and Russian pilots who had arrived from carriers. The other forces, those from other countries, and those who were from air groups that weren't stationed on carriers, were given letters of the Greek alphabet as their designations – with each individual plane using its tail number as well, and all the pilots had memorized (mostly) who was who. It was thought it might help keep them in formation once the battle was taken to the enemy, and in truth, it was somewhat helpful – at least for those in the same commands.

But once they ran into the Jaffa in their wickedly fast death gliders with their deadly weapons, all the initial planning on battle strategy and formations had gone completely out the proverbial window. It was pilot on pilot – with a wingman for many – and the individual pilots went after whichever Jaffa ship was closest to them, instead of waiting for an order from someone manning radar on a ship fifty miles away. And the result was chaos. At least at first.

The death gliders were faster, more maneuverable and possessed far greater weaponry. This gave them an incredible edge over anything in the world's aerial arsenal. The Jaffa, however, were good pilots, and many of them were excellent pilots, but they were ground troops for the most part. They didn't spend all their time training in the death gliders. The pilots of the Earth ships were all superbly trained, quick and agile, and intelligent enough to realize immediately that they were incredibly outclasses technology to technology.

Undaunted, they used the scenery around them. Dodging the laser blasts from a death glider, a pilot would head for one of the nearby cavernous ridges, mountains, or faults that seemed to be everywhere. There, they would try to lose the pursuer, or try to outfly them, or use their wingman to harass them with weapons fire and force them into a mistake. One that would end with a death glider crashing into a mountainside – or into the side of a deep crevasse in the glacier, or one of any other surfaces they could trick them into crashing into.

Sometimes it worked. Not all the time, but some of the time. Many death gliders went down in awesome explosions. But the number of Earth planes was also diminishing quickly. They weren't losing, really, but they weren't winning.

OOOOOOOOO

Ian stopped, breathing heavily – although it was more from apprehension than it was from any exertion. He was out of the hangar – had left even as the Jaffa had entered it – and was moving quickly towards the engineering section of the ship. From the quick map he'd seen of the ship, it wasn't all that far away from the bridge – which was good – but it was far enough away that it was going to make things a lot closer than he really wanted them to be. Which was why he'd been so quick to take up McKay's idea about the power relay in the hangar. That would have been a lot easier. Now, however, he was forced to go back to plan A – which was a good plan, but would undoubtedly leave him and McKay both death. Along with Anubis and the mother ship, of course.

The engineering section was probably the most vulnerable – except the bridge – and Ian was positive that he wouldn't need to hook the ZPM up to anything to get it to destroy the entire ship with an overload. Even better; the engineering room wasn't as guarded as the bridge was – and Ian was able to slip unseen past the few Jaffa that were there to protect it.

"You motherfuckers are never even going to know what hit you…" he murmured softly from a hiding spot under a large workstation. One that actually looked a lot like any number of workstations at the SGC. He pulled out a roll of duct tape and quickly strapped the ZPM to the bottom of the table. It wouldn't make any noise as it overloaded, and it wasn't attached to any of the Jaffa sensors, so they wouldn't know anything was wrong until it was way to late to do anything about it.

It only took a moment to rewire the ZPM to the new configuration, and cross the two modules that would lead to the overload. Then Ian was quick to leave – although he did it as quietly as possible, once more slipping past the Jaffa and into the main corridor.

Once he was clear, he stopped long enough to turn off the personal cloaking device he was using, and look around. Not a single Jaffa…

Well, at least he'd save himself a little bit of an ass whipping, he supposed, as he changed direction and headed for the bridge, his hands in his pants pockets, and whistling a ditty that sounded far more cheerful than he actually felt.