Chapter 24
Location: City Ship Olympus, Damaged Pier
Date: February 25, 2025
Time: 01000
The transporter opened up into a hot and smoky hallway. Major Blanton and Lieutenant Newbold rushed out, kneeling down against the opposite wall, looking under the smoke clawing at the ceiling. Then two Colonials, Gunney Bradley and Sergeant Warren, came out behind them, moving down the other wall in opposite directions. Bradley had a SAW and Warren had a carbine with an underslung shotgun. They were both grizzled veterans, sent to protect Dr. Cruzii who in turn was assisting Captain Hailey.
"Clear," Blanton declared.
"Captain, Doc, let's move," Bradley said in his hoarse voice.
The two scientists came out, with Cruzii tying a bandana around his face to keep from breathing in the harsh smoke. He then grasped his personal defense weapon, checking that his safety was off. Walking out he held his weapon pointed down the hall the opposite direction as Hailey, who came out right behind him, holding a heavily padded tablet and was reading off of it.
"Underwood, systems up?"
"Yeah, we're up and running for the most part, but that power conduit's still not operating. We're getting the secondary conduits operating, but you need to tweak the generator," her radio responded.
"That'll take too long," Hailey said, shaking her head, "We'd be better served to go find the primary conduit break and repair it."
"And how do you intend to do that?" Ruby replied from her own radio.
Hailey sat in thought a moment, but then thought of it.
"Shokaku is in orbit right Major?" Hailey inquired.
"That's right," Blanton responded with a nod.
"If I can get an accurate scan of the damaged section and an undamaged section they can then use their matter synthesizer to recreate it and beam it into place," she then explained.
"Is it possible?" Newbold asked.
"It'll be tough, but with exact coordinates it can be done," Dr. Underwood responded before Hailey could say the same thing.
"Alright, let's get going."
As that was stated there was a creaking noise that reverberated through the hallway. The city was agreeing with them, it was indeed time to move. They all paused to listen and digest the implications of that noise and once it was over Major Blanton stepped forward.
"No time like the present," he yelled, "Captain, show the way forward, we need a way down."
"There's a stairwell…down the hall to the right," Hailey pointed out, moving in the direction in question, "From there we'll need to access a ladder that'll take us into the lower levels of the pier itself where we can start tracing the main power conduit to find the break."
"Very well, hopefully we can stay out of the way of any hostiles that are swarming these areas," the lead Colonial NCO agreed.
"That would be nice," Lieutenant Newbold smirked, looking down the sights of his SAW in the hallway.
As they moved and got to the stairwell they all heard the clinking and shuffling of hostiles moving towards them. The group halted as one of the Colonials moved an arm up, they all moved to the walls, ready to fire on anything that came into their field of view. The sounds kept getting louder and louder as they now heard voices, some gruff, some normal, all in a language they couldn't quite make out.
"Make for the stairs and hold fire, in this smoke they might not see us," Blanton whispered, waving them forward, leading the way.
"Go," Newbold stated quietly to Cruzii, slightly pushing him forward.
The others moved, with Newbold and his SAW taking the rearguard, as the two Colonials secured the hallway in front of them as Blanton moved to the small stairwell. Hailey and Cruzii were right behind him, weapons not as ready, but Cruzii was busier memorizing the pad that she was using to guide them. They knew there were hostiles around, and had to be careful.
Blanton carefully looked over the edge of the stairs' railings. He could see the rippling of fire and the shadows of hostiles moving about under him, just out of sight. Bracing himself on the railing he strained to look down to see how close or far these enemy soldiers were indeed located. But as he did that he saw a trio of soldiers walking up the bottom flight below the floor below him. Each was clothed in yellow tunics and metal helmets and chain mail. All were completely unaware of their presence above them, but were not someone to mess with, being armed with Ori staff weapons. They stopped on the landing of the next floor and spoke to someone and after a second they were ordered up again, this time accompanied by another section of a soldiers that just kept coming.
Blanton took a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and dropped it.
"Frag out!" he yelled.
A few of the soldiers stopped when they saw the grenade hit the ground and hesitated, unsure what it was. But when it exploded they were enveloped in a cloud of smoke and dust after a hail of shrapnel shredded those near it. A set of screams came immediately afterwards and Blanton rushed down the stairs with one of the Colonials next to him, ready to finish the engagement. The Earth officer saw the first live enemy trying to get up from where he'd collapsed on the steps and looked up to see the group coming at him.
But a single shot blasted him in the chest and he rolled down and onto a group of bodies as another pair of enemy troops broke and ran, each badly injured, stumbling and holding onto their wounds.
"Too easy," Bradley smirked, noting the relative ease with which they were ripping them apart.
"Almost feel sorry for 'em," Cruzii agreed.
"Not too much," Hailey interrupted as she followed Blanton down the stairs, pushing past Cruzii.
"Frakking hardcore isn't she?" the gunney laughed, punching Cruzii in the shoulder as they continued down the stairs.
"I like it," Cruzii smiled, "Not like some girls I've known."
"Oh I wouldn't do that," Newbold advised them, "The Captain's not someone to mess with."
"I'm not intimidated by intelligence," Cruzii nonchalantly replied.
"How about a girl that can outsmart you and kick your ass?" Hailey interrupted, not appreciating being talked about behind her back.
"That remains to be seen," Cruzii shrugged, halting at a landing where Blanton had them stop as he swept the hallway to make sure they weren't leaving someone hostile at their back.
"Oh we'll see," she said with a roll of her eyes.
"Yeah, I'm sure we will."
"Would you knock it off?!" Blanton snapped, turning to look at them, "Despite the obvious I have trouble believing you two are even doing this whole passive aggressive flirting here! We have a job to do."
Cruzii was rather surprised at an Earther dressing him down in such a way, and looked to his own Colonials. But both held their hands up.
"Hey don't look at me, you're the one trying to flirt," Bradley laughed.
"Key word trying," the other one chuckled from below, "Clear to move."
"Let's go, and only speak when we need to know something!" Blanton hissed to both techies, moving forward, there would be no more idle chatter.
ZPM Room
The wait for Hailey to let them know she was in position to start fixing the power conduit was wearing the nerves of the team rather thin. Especially Dr. Underwood, he had finished his work, the city's systems were up and operational, and now he was waiting. Each time the radio crackled he jumped, hands gravitating to his keyboard. But each time it was nothing. As a quick few words of Spanish from SG-36 were spoken he jumped again.
This time Ruby placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to relax.
"You alright?"
"Yeah…no, not really," Underwood groaned.
"Nervous?" Dr. Wimmera chuckled.
"What and you aren't?" Underwood responded back.
"Well of course I am, I just saw a guy dragged into the medical room there with a big hole burnt into his chest. I heard the gunshots same as you."
"Hmph, yet I'm the one among us that is freaking out," Underwood grumbled under his breath.
"Hey, it's alright, being in battle is not natural at all for people like us, but we're still here, we're doing our jobs. That means something," Ruby stated, flinching noticeably as there was an explosion further out into the city.
Lower Levels
The rest of the descent into the depths of the pier happened quickly and without incident. Once they got to the bottom of the main stairs they all saw that the normal smooth aesthetic of the city's towers had disappeared, and now a functional bare look had taken over. Fire and smoke were gone, the damage having been restricted to a single area, and now they could hear nothing aside from their own movement.
"Alright, where's this ladder?" Blanton now asked quietly to Hailey.
"Down the hall fifty meters right, and then when we get to an open cavity where the main internal structural supports it'll be just to the left along a catwalk," Hailey explained, painting their route entirely to the point where they got to the conduit itself.
"Alright, we're still in hostile territory, keep your heads on a swivel," Blanton instructed as he made his way into the hall.
Everyone followed him, careful to limit the sounds they made. The order of the column was simple, Blanton and Newbold in the lead, Hailey in the middle with Cruzii next to her, against both walls and the two Colonial NCO's in the rear, keeping a careful eye out for anything moving up to ambush them from behind. Down here though, it was dark, only emergency lights in the water-filled columns providing light every so often. But it was good enough to do the job of providing shadows and a visible way forward.
"Blanton," the radio called out, "O'Neill, sitrep?"
"We're in the pier sir," Blanton called out, "Working our way to the bilge area to access the conduit."
"Be advised we've got that Ha'tak above the city, might want to hustle up so we can have it blown skyhigh."
"Roger that sir," Blanton acknowledged, "We'll have the shield up soon."
"We've also got the issue of…" Hailey reminded him as they got to the opening in the structure where a long catwalk branched off into the darkness, straight to the center. But below them they could see the water starting to fill in the floor, a few feet below them, "The flooding."
"That water looks awfully cold," Newbold mumbled, looking at the water below his feet.
"And this catwalk looks pretty sketchy," Blanton added, tapping the shaky metal platform which visibly shook at its connections with the wall.
"One at a time?" Newbold asked.
"Here," Cruzii volunteered, "I'll go first."
"Whoa, hold now," Blanton interrupted, holding an arm out, "Sergeant?"
"If the coast is clear, we need to get the…thing fixed. He and your own expert know better how to do that than any of us. Best let him go first, he's not as smart as her. Just in case it doesn't hold."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Cruzii scoffed.
"We go together, I'll go down first, you actually test the catwalk's stability," Hailey suggested with a shrug, "I'm the one with military training."
"And the bigger gun," the other Colonial NCO poked at Cruzii.
"Okay frak you two," Cruzii snapped, turning to directly address the much larger man.
But as he turned to say that he saw a black figure emerge from the curvature of the hall and lift their arm towards them. His reaction was rapid, he lifted up his compact personal defense weapon and lined up the holographic sight on the target and fired at him. The rudimentary training he'd received, coupled with his photographic memory made the movement jerky, but efficient.
The pop of the single round struck home, striking the man in the shoulder and catapulting him back onto the floor. The others whirled around as they saw him fire his weapon and engaged once they saw what exactly he was shooting at. Once that happened other enemy cloaked assassins with plasma repeaters started emerging from the shadows, firing their weapons at the six of them.
Newbold rushed forward, kneeling against a buttress on the wall and laid into the trigger, sending a long automatic burst into the hall, sending several hostile crumpling onto the ground at the rounds hit their unarmored bodies. The others did like actions, aiming down their sights at the opposing force advancing against them, firing at any time they weren't being forced to duck and cover. And this happened more often for the enemy than it did for them, as their numbers and the ease with which they poked their arms around the corners of cover and just squeezed off a stream of plasma bolts was astonishing.
It was something Major Blanton knew he didn't want his two tech experts in the middle of, and decided to hold the line and go for broke by sending them forward the rest of the way.
"Captain!" he roared over the sound of the gunfire, "Get your ass moving, and get that conduit fixed!"
"Sir?!" Hailey stammered, not really wanting to leave them to this fight.
"Now!"
"Cruzii, go with her!" Gunney Bradley yelled to Hailey's Colonial counterpart.
Hailey fired one last burst and turned to sprint into the doorway behind her, as she did so a sting of plasma bolts chased after her, and struck the ground and wall around her. One particularly close hit sent tiny bits of white hot metal into her uniform, singing the camouflage material and catching her in the cheek in a couple places. But she made it through, stumbling onto the rickety catwalk and pinned herself against the near wall as Cruzii rushed through as well and got out of the line of fire.
"Okay, follow me," Hailey declared, carefully sidestepping to the ladder over to the side where she saw it with her flashlight now on.
"Watch these catwalk sections, could cave in on us," Cruzii reminded her.
"I know."
Hailey went over to the ladder, tapping it with foot, seeing that it was somewhat secure against the wall and grabbed the edges and slid down. However she hit the water sooner than she would have liked, sending the cold chill straight to her hips as she let go and hit the deck. Looking down she knew that this was really bad, and that there was something else going on than just a damaged power conduit.
"Underwood! Why is this water getting in?" she snapped into her radio.
"We've got it down to one of the tanks used to submerge in that pier being damaged, some cracks that have grown and split open are the obvious cause. But we can't get the tank to empty itself because its pumps have no power," Underwood replied.
Cruzii slid down to join her as well, hitting the water with a splash and piped up to join the conversation.
"As it empties into the interior of the city the tank fills from the outside, might as well have a big hole in the pier," he surmised.
"Not unless we get power restored," Hailey declared, "Come on!"
She trudged forward, moving through hip deep water into a branching hallway that she saw was clearly the way to the power conduits. Once into the hall she was greeted with the sight of the long pipe-like devices on the ground, glowing blue as energy coursed through them. She could see that they were just fine here, as damage would have showed up as an abnormality in the visual flow.
"Alright, we follow this, and should find what we're looking for."
"Lead the way," Cruzii replied, his teeth chattering slightly.
Hailey opened her mouth to say something about the fact he had no waterproof clothing on in water that hit him with hypothermia in moments. But he made no mention, and didn't want to bring it up when there were other things to do. So they continued forward.
Back in the hallway the four guardians still slugged it out above their scientists, intent on keeping attention firmly on them. Major Blanton could tell that their foes were very much biting the hook they'd offered and was perfectly alright with letting them waste themselves fighting him and the team with him.
"How many do you think?" Sergeant Warren asked as he reloaded his weapon.
"At least a dozen, maybe more coming," Gunney Bradley responded.
"Who knows if we can hold them if they get more numbers," Newbold growled as he fired again, pinning them down.
"Well those two had better hurry then!"
The sounds of the fighting continued to echo above them, and was a constant remind they were on the clock. But the examination Hailey had to do with each section, checking the watery refraction for an abnormal glow was not something that could be rushed. She had to be certain the conduit was in proper condition at each branch-off to a major system core as she moved through the water with Cruzii behind her, if only to act as a pair of eyes and extra set of hands.
"There!" Hailey stated with finality, sighing in relief as she saw the break in the conduit.
But it wasn't was an ordinary break, it was a complete one where the vertical subconduit jutted out of the main line and into the ceiling, where it moved to the shield generator. It was precisely what they'd been looking for. The blue glow was not nearly as strong as it should have been, with only bits and pieces pulsating through the opaque glass tube. It was the exact kind of thing that was being described by Dr. Underwood, a damaged conduit line, preventing a complete flow of power to the shield generator. It was above the water line, a godsend for them, and she now began a careful examination. Finally after moving through the hallway in chilly water they arrived.
It was a straight vertical sub-conduit that was situated in an open area in the normally confined service hall. A pair of control boards were on the floor, just barely above water level with dark screens hanging from the ceiling and their crystal keys dark as well. It was a threeway intersection, with a small connecting hallway to their right that Hailey cleared before paying attention to the conduit.
"Underwood, Ellis, I'm at the break in the conduit, looks a branching line has failed at the intersection of the main line," she stated, checking both sides of the main line itself, seeing the exact same glow on both sides, "Doesn't look like we've got anything wrong with the main line."
"The branch-off must've been damaged in the city submerging, blunt force shockwaves?" Ruby asked, hypothesizing a potential cause.
"More than likely," Hailey said, shining her flashlight up into the vertical corridor, "The tower itself listed and must've popped the conduit out of alignment."
"It's upright now," Underwood stated, "Perhaps the power system needs it to be reset manually as a safeguard."
"Problem though," Hailey stated as she examined the metal joint, "Don't think it's just the alignment. I'm seeing some tiny fractures in the casing itself. I'm not sure we can fix it."
As she examined and talked her way with forward with the civilian techies also having their say Dr. Cruzii had been paying attention, listening carefully while keeping an eye on the other approaches. Down here the only light was the conduit's blue glow, which wasn't as good a source as they would have liked. So he was restricted to listening and watching for ripples in the water to keep an eye out for potential hostiles. As he kept an eye out he had seen a light set of ripples disturb the water from a hallway that was directly connected, which made the open area that much more dangerous to be in.
He moved to the dark hallway, and poked his head around the corner, and saw a line of black clothed enemy elites with another line of the staff-armed soldiers behind them. This he knew was bad, and jammed his weapon around the corner and fired. He saw his targets drop into the water immediately as he shot them at near point-blank range. How they'd gotten this close so silently was not in his thought process, just getting rid of them was.
Hailey immediately stopped what she was doing, and rushed over to him, as he emptied his magazine and dropped the fifth hostile in the line of enemy soldiers. She replaced him at the corner and fired her own weapon into the line of enemy troops right as Cruzii reloaded his bullpup weapon.
"This can't possibly get much worse!" Cruzii growled as he pulled his charging handle back and moved to return to firing into the enemy.
But as he said that the enemy brought forward what appeared to be a large shield, this one metal, and when both of them fired at it the bullets pinged right off. The plate was made of trinium, and was untouchable for their current weapons. Behind it their enemy advanced, some of them poking their staff weapons up or around and fired at them pushing the bodies down or aside as they moved towards them and closed the distance to a mere twenty feet.
"Major!" Hailey cried out into her radio, "We've got some company down here!"
"A little busy ourselves!" Blanton replied immediately, weapons fire in the background, "They've all converged right on top of us from both sides."
"Can't let them get much closer!" Cruzii reminded her.
"I know!" Hailey replied, fishing out a grenade from her vest and pulled the pin, "Stay back!"
She held it open, counting down the fuse until her nerves gave out and let it fly. Her aim was to have it blow in the air amongst the enemy after bouncing it up off of their crowded formation behind that shield. It sort of worked, blasting a cloud of shrapnel into the formation directly behind the shield, killing or wounding most of them, but those that lived began retreating. However something that they hadn't noticed was coming at them from underwater. Initially leading the column of enemy warriors was a handful of the elite of their army who had taken several casualties from Cruzii himself, but what Cruzii had thought was a complete wipeout was in fact a ruse, two of them had submerged entirely and swam at them once the grenade had gone off.
Their emergence as a surprise that caught both of them off-guard. The first to make their move jumped up and grabbed Cruzii's weapon and held a knife in his other hand and shoved him backwards. The second one rose up right in behind Hailey, and jammed his plasma repeater into her back and fired a trio of shots into it. Hailey felt the shots strike her right in one of the armor plates of her back and fell forward in pain, as the material protected her entirely for the first shot and the second shot, but some of the force and heat got through the third one. The shot cut into her upper right torso and her legs buckled beneath her as she fell into the water and then the man continued his attack by shoving her helmet down into the water in an attempt to drown her.
ZPM Room
Kathy had been busy trying to patch up one of the Colonial guards alongside Dr. Tew and the Colonial team's doctors. They had, for now, stabilized the worse off of the two, but not a moment went by when at least one of them were actively working on him. She'd quickly taken lead on this one, the energy blast directly into the chest cavity had caused first degree burns down to the outer casing of the right lung and he was having trouble breathing. An emergency tracheotomy had to be performed to pump air into his good lung while a blood transfusion was being performed by another one of the four doctors.
It was touch and go, but the doctors knew what needed to be done and being at the top of their field the man's life was no longer in grave danger. But Kathy and Tew, being the team's medical specialists, always had a medical alert system linked to the armor of their teammates. So whenever there was a loud ping in their ears they took notice.
"Oh my God!" Kathy yelled, looking at her wrist pad, which was the size of a smartphone, "Hailey! Colonel!" she cried out into the radio.
"Not so loud," O'Neill responded rapidly.
"Hailey's suit was just breached, she's been shot!"
"Hailey, O'Neill respond over," O'Neill quickly called out.
But there was no response.
Damaged Power Conduit, Lower Levels
Dr. Cruzii was not much better off, having been the first attacked. He'd been grabbed around his weapon and fought to retake control of it as a knife was stabbed right at his face and he grabbed the man's wrist to prevent this from happening. But they ended up tumbling over the hip-high power conduit, falling into the water as the assassin continued to try and shove his knife into Cruzii's chest underwater. Shoving off of the smooth floor Cruzii landed himself on top of his opponent and with one hand on his PDW and the other firmly holding his opponent's arm he pulled the trigger, sending several loud concussions through the water as he himself gasped for breath. The water-bound concussions did their intended job, blasting his opponent's eardrums, and allowing Cruzii to gain the upper-hand. He twisted his weapon back against his opponent and fired the rest of his magazine into the man's chest. The slower bullets did less damage, but did enough, blood poured into the water, and the knife dropped from his grasp as bubbles escaped his mouth below the surface.
Meanwhile Hailey was battling for consciousness. When her head had been shoved below the water she'd been gasping for breath, and had taken in a mouthful of water. Her lungs burned and were vision faded she tried struggling to push off the floor and reach the surface just a few feet from her. But her attacker had the advantage of position, and her movements were getting weaker. She tried grasping for her pistol, and managed to pull it from its holster and jabbed it into the man's hand holding her head down and fired. The bullet passed through his wrist, and he let go, stumbling backwards and roared in pain as he held the wounded appendage. Hailey broke the surface now, dropping her pistol and coughed violently, ears ringing while in a great deal of pain in her lungs and back. Breath came, but only just so, as she tried recovering she saw Cruzii stand on the conduit and fired his pistol, the strange firing noise echoing in the confined space. The man collapsed silently into the water, drifting out into the hall.
"You alright?!" Cruzii gasped, seeing that she was struggling, hopping down next to her and helped her over to brace on the power conduit.
"I-I'm fine," she coughed out, trying to regain her breath, but the now burning plasma burn on her back was not helping the mask of being alright.
She tried straightening upright, but a shot of pain coursed out through her back from where she could just feel the mangled armor plate melted into her skin. Cruzii held her carefully, knowing something else was wrong and looked at her body, checking for what could have been the cause. The black hole and shine of exposed metal was the first clue. A hole the size of his wrist was burnt into her armor and some skin was clearly visible.
"You're hurt," Cruzii informed her, "Doc," he called out to his medical expert on the radio.
"Wounded," she corrected him.
"Seriously? Even wounded you're correcting me."
"And I still need to do this," she added, holding herself up and shuffled over to the conduit.
"Jennifer," it was Kathy, SG-1's medical expert, "What happened? Your suit just said you got hurt!"
"Wounded!" she corrected once again, "Not crippled."
"We're on our way Captain," Hailey heard Major Blanton call out.
"I can do this," she shook her head, fighting down the feeling of lightheadedness that now hit her full on.
"Captain your suit is saying it has been fully penetrated, Blanton is on his way," Colonel O'Neill interrupted.
"It's not bad Colonel," Hailey calmly responded.
"Captain, you're not alright," Cruzii grabbed her, and pointed down at the water at her hips. The water was starting to color red at her right hip, and was spreading, "You're losing blood."
"Dylan," this time it was Dr. Deckero, Recon One's medical doctor, "Listen carefully, you have to stop the bleeding. Get a bandage on, and apply pressure, lots of it."
"I can't, her armor's preventing hands-on contact."
"And she's not going to let him," Hailey shoved him off, "Underwood! I'm going to try and manually test the connection."
"Hailey you sure?"
"I'm doing it," the stubborn officer replied, and tried to pull on a lever, but couldn't at first try.
"Here," Curzii silently suggested moving forward to pull on it, "Get a bandage on that."
Grabbing onto the large handle he yanked on it as hard as he could, but it only groaned in response, and barely budged an inch. He looked at it closely, flashing his light at the joint and couldn't see what the problem could be. As he did that Hailey dug into one of her pockets, ripping out a bandage that stuffed into the hole in her armor and then wrapped a strip of gauze tightly around it. But she didn't inject the morphine she had, she needed her mind sharp.
"It's not budging."
"Not good," she shook her head with a sigh.
"No, not good at all," he agreed, "But there's another way to fix this."
"Give me a long enough lever and I'll move the Earth," Ruby orated into the radio.
"What're you talking about?" Hailey snapped irritably.
"Archimedes! If you can find something long enough and attach it to that lever you can overcome the jam."
"Question is the jam meant to be stuck?" Underwood asked.
"While I find something to leverage that thing you find out and try and fix it from your end," Hailey ordered.
"You're not moving," Cruzii responded to her, holding her down, "I'll go. You move anymore then you could end up making that worse."
Without giving Hailey a chance to do anything he rushed out, knowing where to find a long sturdy pole-like device. Rushing out to the field of bodies in the dark hallway he began fishing around, trying to find a staff weapon and something to bind it with.
In the time it took to find one Hailey had managed to half-swim to one of the power control stations and had plugged in her pad. She began rapidly tapping buttons on the now complete systems, trying to narrow down the issue. With these stations having the direct control over this section she was able to find the issue herself rather quickly. The power coupling that fed the conduit to the shield generator had been horribly damaged. Hardly anything of the upper receiver crystals had survived.
"Underwood, you see what I see?"
"Way ahead of you. That thing isn't going anywhere. Not until it has somewhere to put all that power. We're going to have to beam in new ones and replace them," the man stated on the other line.
"I've already got the specs to the Shokaku, they're synthesizing them now," Ruby relayed as well.
"We'll need to shut down the conduit itself before we can access it," Hailey advised.
"Once that's done we'll have them beamed right to you and the shell will be beamed away so we can replace the crystals," Underwood further explained.
"Better hurry up," Hailey then whispered, another spell of nausea and light-headedness hitting her full-on and she had to brace herself, dropping her tablet on the control panel, "Now would be nice."
The shuffling and splashing of water behind let her know that Cruzii was back, and he placed an Ori staff on the control panel. He could see with the light of his helmet flashlight that she beginning to get pale.
"You need medical attention, badly," he advised her.
"Not as bad as we need to finish," she stated again.
As she said that a long hardened box beamed into the room on the floor, and floated up to the surface. Inside were their crystals that were meant to be the linking portion of the power conduit intersection. Next the conduit itself went dark, cutting off all power and thus all light. After that a bright white light lit them up for a second and then Dr. Cruzii looked and saw the casing was gone. Shokaku's beams had taken the casing away and gave them all they needed to finish this last-minute piece of technical magic.
"We need to," Hailey stated breathlessly, trying to steady herself as she grimaced. But by now Cruzii had had enough.
"No, enough is enough," Cruzii shook his head and declared, "She can't continue like this, if she does she'll die."
"The hell do you know?" Hailey growled.
"I know enough to tell that you can't do this, you can barely stand and your blood is leaving a trail," he pointed irritated at her continued refusal to stop for medical attention, "I can finish this. I see what needs to go where, I can place it all where it needs to go."
"This is extremely delicate work," Hailey said, eyeing the damaged crystals currently connected to the conduit, "It takes someone with an extremely high skillset and-," she started to explain.
"And I'm overqualified," Cruzii interrupted, "We don't have time for this. I'm finishing this."
"The hell you are," Hailey scoffed.
However to prove his point Cruzii pressed a thumb into the wound in her lower back, causing her to spasm in pain almost immediately. He hadn't even pressed very hard, but he felt his point was made, her wound was in an area of constant movement, the slightest spasm like that and she'd damage or break the crystals.
"The hell you are," Cruzii calmly shot at her, knowing that she was in no condition and pride and a lack of trust was driving her, "Get that wound taken care of and I'll take care of this. We don't have time for this."
He stood up next to the open crystal connection and started removing the damaged crystals, one by one. There were sixteen total crystals, each unique in shape and size. All were either cracked or entirely burnt out and shattered. As he worked on this very easy part Hailey was starting to get her bearing back after the sharp pain Cruzii had put her through. Reminding herself to slap him across the face later she bit back a choice few words she had at the forefront of her mind she pulled up the connection schematics so that she could monitor the work.
The crystal bed was arranged in an octagon with pointed crystals all around. Each one was different, with white markings on them all. The bottom connections were all unique, with different shapes and inlayed white markings. Most were roughly uniform in their thickness, but none of them were entirely different to the point where you could easily see which was which. This was where the expertise and precision of the two experts.
"Alright, last one," Cruzii stated, dropping the damaged crystal into the water and turned and placed the case onto one of the control panels, out of the water where he could have easy access, "Okay…let's get these in, and get this frakking shield up."
"This one," Hailey said, passing over the first crystal, delicately placing it in Cruzii's hand, "Place it, here," she said, pointing at the entry point on her tablet.
Cruzii quickly found the place, and put it into place, feeling it gently slide into place. The cystal went in without issue, and so the process continued, one by one, they got to the final pair of crystals. By now both were in a bad way, Hailey because of the plasma weapon wound and Cruzii due to creeping hypothermia. His hands had begun shaking, making the crystal placing go slower as he fought to keep the feeling in his extremities. As he went to grab the second to last one, he noticed Hailey had begun to slur her words whenever she spoke, and she was leaning heavily on the conduit, which itself was going deeper and deeper underwater.
"The level's rising," Hailey mumbled, noting the rising water.
"I know," Cruzii responded, "Where's this one go?"
He reached for the crystal, but Hailey's hand fell once he grabbed it. She completely passed out, and fell into the water, sliding off of the conduit and limply floating in the cold water. Cruzii saw she was unconscious immediately. He put the crystal back onto the bed in the conduit and jumped to pull her back above the water.
"Doc! She's passed out!"
"Oh not good, she's been working with that wound?"
"Yeah," he said as he heard a splashing noise coming from the hall. He pointed his pistol at the noise and saw the shapes of Major Blanton and the others.
"Cruzii," Gunney Bradley said in a rush, "Get that thing fixed, now. We've got air support incoming."
"If that shield isn't up, wreckage will fall right on top of us," Blanton explained.
"If that wreckage hits the city will fracture and sink like a rock," Cruzii reminded them, "Everything we've already fought for will be gone. Not happening though. I've got two crystals left and we'll be done."
He handed off Hailey to the other Earth officer and grabbed the other crystal still in the case and looked at the two in question, and saw that they were the same shape on the bottom but different above. The group watched as he looked at the tablet next to him, comparing the two in his hands. He finally chose the one in his right hand and decided to place it above. With shaking hands he slid it into place, breathing a sigh of relief as it clicked. The second went in quickly, and he breathed a much more massive sigh of relief.
"We're done, close it up," he said on the radio.
"Good job Victor," Dr. Wimmera said with extreme relief on her end.
A moment later, the group's eyes were greeted with the casing being beamed back into place thanks to the Shokaku, sitting in orbit. Then, with a quick advising call out the blue power conduit began glowing, and the mission was a success.
ZPM Room
"Would you like the honors Brenda?" Underwood stated calmly.
He held out a hand to the enter button to order the shields to activate. Brenda, who'd just walked in herself, saw the group's objective was now complete, and she walked up the controls, looking around and hit the enter button and the screen changed and she ran out to a window to see what she'd been hoping would happen.
A massive blue bubble began to rise, forming around the city, cutting off the rising smoke from the outer pier. The Ha'tak hovering well over the city seemed to stop what it was doing and realized what had just happened. As she saw the shield complete its rise the mothership opened fire. Yellow blasts smashed into the powerful ancient shield, but accomplished nothing. The troop transports tried lifting off but left hundreds of warriors behind. They had no way out, and the first one to try and escape crushed itself against the shield, erupting into smoke and flames, the wreckage fell as the others tried as well, but two collided and dropped like rocks into the water.
"We did it," she sighed, leaning against the window frame, "We did it."
She heard a set of footsteps coming up from her right and she turned and saw O'Neill leading a line of Colonial and Earth SG-1 team members. Behind him she saw SG-36 walking in as well, with three of their number having burns in their armor plates and one with a bandage on their right shoulder.
"Don't worry about them, got ambushed but they'll be fine," O'Neill nonchalantly explained, "We've got things under control now."
"I hope so," Brenda breathed in complete relief.
"Sierra Gulf One, Kongo, support incoming," the radio called out, and they all saw the form of the Japanese battleship starting to drift into view through the fog, and the enemy saw it as well.
"Let's see if the enemy knows better than to engage us," O'Neill asked, watching the battleship accelerating towards them.
As that happened a series of small explosions riddled the shield of the Ha'tak, flashes from the distance lit up the near dusk sky as Colonial artillery finally got in range and opened fire. This was the last straw, the enemy ship knew that its time had come to leave. It lifted away from Olympus, and began accelerating away. The Japanese battleship flew overhead, resting over the city as the Ha'tak opened a hyperspace window and jumped into it. With that gone, the entire city fell into silence, the warriors deposited on the city began to see what had happened and now realized that their fight was over, they'd lost all support, and all hope. Olympus had been saved.
Okay I'll call it for this chapter, I've been working on this one for a while. The reason for the really long wait was that I'd had another version of it all the way to five thousand words and then lost it. It's happened once before, but hey, not a big deal, I got this one done, and I'll try and get back to a much less intense, more character-centric set of plots involving the Colonials and Earth.
So as usual, hope you guys enjoyed, I look forward to seeing what you guys think.
Also, if you guys are interested I was involved in a battle in Eve Online that made it onto Youtube. The video is "Phantom Recon – J104723 – 12/09/2016" in case you guys want to see what it is I am up to when I'm not writing.
Next Chapter Preview: The mission and fight is over, where does this leave the Colonies and Earth.