I still do not own these characters or elements of Stargate, Star Wars, or Buffy, nor shall I in the foreseeable future...
Aboard Klorel's Ha'Tak
For the past half hour nobody moved. Even Apophis and his Serpent Guard dared not raise a hand against O'Neill and his team. Everyone's eyes were glued to the spectacle taking place near the Moon.
The Death Gliders launched from both ships were arrayed equidistant from each other around the construct, gathering all the information they could about the spherical planetoid and transmitting it back to Apophis's Ha'Tak. The odd thing was that nothing was being done to stop them. Were there even Tau'ri aboard that thing? It certainly would not have taken Tau'ri so long to figure it out before they started shooting, as the data received showed that the construct was some sort of battle station; there were literally thousands upon thousands of weapons covering the surface of this "Death Star", as the Shol'vah had termed it. Any Ha'Tak would appear insignificant next to the size and firepower of this massive vessel, and a single Ha'Tak could wipe out the population of a single world within a day's time.
The thirty minutes by Tau'ri reckoning that passed by seemed an eternity, but in the end Apophis decided to allow caution to rule here, as he strode up to the control console of his son's pel'tak and thrust his hand into the sensor array, manipulating his fingers to command the shields to raise and envelop his ship. He was not disappointed, as less than a minute after he had raised his shields, great bolts of blue light reached out from everywhere on the Death Star's surface and impacted against his shields. Alarms went off in the pel'tak, signifying that the ship was in distress. Apophis called for a report of all damage, and he was surprised when the Jaffa giving the report stated that there had been no physical damage to the ship itself, but the shields were being drained at a rate with which the naqadah reactor could not keep up. The shields were already drained by twenty-five percent and dropping steadily with each impact of those bursts of blue light, followed by a subsequent power drainage that occurred proportionally with each impact of the blue beams upon the shields. In less than five minutes, the Jaffa had said, the shields would be gone, and the power loss would be so great that they would not be able to pick up enough to restore the shields, let alone fire weapons or move the ship. And for the first time in their lives, the Jaffa looked at their god and were dismayed, for if a god could doubt, then what use was it to follow or worship that god?
Teal'c, however, had neither ever seen doubt or fear in the eyes of any of the false gods, nor did he need to. He had already chosen not to follow the Goa'uld, and he had never looked back since joining his strength with that of SG-1. As for the source of Apophis's doubt, Teal'c knew what those bolts of blue light were.
He conveyed to O'Neill, "The ship is being targeted by an ion cannon bombardment from the Death Star, Colonel O'Neill. When the shields are depleted, the continuing bombardment will result in a shipwide power loss affecting nearly every system, including life support."
"We're obviously too small a target to waste the superlaser on," the Colonel replied. "I don't get why, unless they've somehow been in communication with Earth."
"That would imply that they know we're aboard," added Carter, "hence the decision to refrain from simply destroying this ship and its sister vessel. Otherwise, why waste the time or the effort?"
Daniel was nonplussed by his teammates' brief discussion. "This is all well and good, but don't you think we ought to try getting out of here and make for the Stargate while they're distracted?"
"Assuming there is one aboard this ship…" groused O'Neill as they began to ponder the best way to leave the pel'tak without being noticed.
"There is one aboard, human," said Bra'Tac, "several decks down. But the doors to the pel'tak are locked closed to prevent any Jaffa from entering the bridge in panic or desperation. We are stuck here."
"And we can't blast the door open; we used up all the C4 planting it around the ship to cripple it," added Carter.
"This day just keeps getting better and better," said O'Neill. "Teal'c? Can you find the controls to unlock the doors?"
The inscrutable former First Prime of Apophis negated, "I could locate them, but they are coded to only open at the command of the First Prime or the ranking officer aboard the ship. Someone will have to come to us…"
"Oh…well, at least it's not a total loss…" snarked O'Neill.
When it came to Jack O'Neill, however, Fate had a funny habit of playing malicious pranks, reminding him that Murphy was always on the clock, and especially alert for him. Murphy had to have chosen this moment to earn his money, as the moment those words left his lips, the bridge lights in the pel'tak flickered and dimmed.
"You just had to say it, didn't you, Jack…?" groused Daniel.
Vigilant Watcher Overbridge
The sudden firestorm had sent the alien recon craft and their pilots into a panic. Nearly half of the fighters had been caught in the opening salvos and were subsequently incinerated in supersized ion bolts that were wide enough to engulf them. The rest were buzzing around like angry hornets, looking for a weak spot to concentrate on, or at least to do enough damage by shooting at everything in general. Needless to say, it wasn't working, and the crew of the Watcherwere content to watch them try.
But at some point at least a few of them began to regroup and decided to target the ion cannons themselves. Small ports opened up on their wings and began to vomit plasma at every weapon emplacement they could target. They could not stand idly by and watch their gods become incapacitated by some upstart newcomer to the system, regardless of the size of the weapon he or she brought with them.
From the Overbridge, Xander and his company watched as the surviving figthers began to coordinate their response.
"Buffy?"
"Yeah, Xander?"
Xander tilted his chin in the direction of the main tactical screen, where they could see the Death Gliders begin to form groups and start coordinating their fire against multiple targets, looking to score a hit against a vital sector of the station. If they could ever find one, that was to say…
"Looks like those guys out there are starting to get wise. I want you to program and launch some TIE drones to attack them and break up their formations. They might not so much as scratch the paint on this bad boy we're on, but we don't want them to know that, do we? Plus it might keep them off the shuttle's scent when Warren and his team launch for the motherships."
"I'll have them occupying the enemy presently, Xander. Programming now…"
"What's the status on the enemy motherships' shields?" Xander then queried. He hoped they hadn't depleted the alien ships' deflectors too soon or too quickly, as he could not afford a lull in the ion cannonade for concern that the fighter craft might either concentrate their attack or decide that their motherships were threatened and fly home to their defense.
"Shields are at twenty-nine percent and falling on the nearby vessel, fifty-seven percent on the other one." She was performing very well in her task so far, and Xander had thought to make mention of that when General Hammond and his party arrived on the station to welcome SG-1 home. But that was then, and this was now, and now he needed to make a tactical decision. An idea suddenly blossomed in his mind courtesy of Tarkin…
"Concentrate your fire on the far vessel, Buffy. I want the near one to move into a position where they think they'll be protecting it just as the far one's shields collapse. When they do, we let them have it till they're dead in space."
"Confirmed, computing new firing solution…weapons are retargeting…near vessel's shields now at twenty-five percent and dropping, far vessel's at forty-nine. Launching fighters," Buffy responded.
"Very good, Buffy; let's see how they handle these vermin…"
Vigilant Watcher, local space…
The Death Gliders swerved and dove as they evaded the gargantuan construct's ion blasts, making their way as best they could toward the heavy cannons that were effectively giving the Ha'Taks' shields the worst pounding they had ever taken in their glorious existence. As soon as each craft entered maximum effective range of their naqadah cannons, they took their shots, but for each one they destroyed, there were a hundred more, and the Jaffa pilots collectively began to wonder if they would ever succeed in protecting their home ships from destruction. Still, they tried, even though over a hundred had died instantly in the opening salvos of the enemy barrage.
For a while, they continued unopposed, even as the anti-fighter cannons continued to track and target them, their firing solutions being passed along to the next cannon emplacement whenever they missed a target. The Jaffa were accomplished combat aviators, but they were not perfect, or else they would have survived en masse regardless of the outcome. That all changed when the lead elements of each flight picked up a new group of signals.
Swarms of unmanned flyers, the total numbering at well over a thousand, emerged from the belly of the battle station and waylaid the Death Gliders as they zipped between turbolasers and ion batteries, causing as much destruction among the enemy as they could. They grouped themselves into three craft apiece and sped toward the hostiles at a rate that defied the Jaffa pilots' powers of reason. Having no living pilots enabled the killing machines to pull off maneuvers that would have pasted each Jaffa to the ejection seat of his or her respective craft were they to attempt the same, and so it was that the Jaffa began to struggle against the hideous and frightening onslaught of computer-controlled death machines. But the terrible speed and efficiency with which the TIEs dispatched each Death Glider one by one soon began to panic the otherwise unflappable Jaffa, and the engagement turned swiftly into a rout as each Jaffa began to reevaluate their interest in self-preservation against the swarm of destruction.
At least from the Jaffa's perspective it was destruction. The absence of a friendly signal on a Death Glider's scopes indicated the loss of a craft, and thus a brother or sister in the vast melee appeared to have been killed by the terrible drone fighters. But the TIEs were not programmed to use blaster cannons in this engagement, but ion cannons, and each burst of blue plasma that hit a Jaffa craft instead of destroying it and killing its pilot shorted out its avionics and other critical systems, leaving it dead in space to await a tractor beam lock, to be pulled into the Vigilant Watcher's hangar bays for impoundment. The only true fatalities of the conflict were a few unlucky Jaffa pilots whose disabled craft, as they drifted in space, were each rammed by a panicking Jaffa flyer that was overeager in his or her attempt to evade a squad of unrelenting TIE pursuers. In each case, both the colliding craft and its unfortunate obstacle were annihilated in a brilliant explosion.
Pel'tak, Klorel's ship
"They do not destroy our Death Gliders," stated Apophis with dawning comprehension and alarm as he watched the battle progress from the pel'tak. "If they capture the pilots they may learn our secrets." To Klorel, he then added, "Open fire on the battle station, son."
"Father?" Klorel replied with confusion. "The battle station is too massive; our ships could not hope to destroy it before they annihilate us."
Apophis turned to his son and looked into the eyes of the host that once called itself Skaara. "You are my son; were you any other, I would have punished you for showing cowardice, but I will simply enlighten you. I mean to destroy our own fighter craft to keep our loyal Jaffa soldiers out of the hands of the enemy. Now open fire."
"As you command, Father." Klorel reached into the control cube and manipulated his fingers to send the relevant commands to the weapons systems on board the Ha'tak. In less time than it took to blink, plasma bursts erupted from the muzzles of the naqadah cannons and streaked toward the spherical construct that had responded with so much force.
On the hull, the effects were negligible, but any errant TIE or Death Glider caught in the path of the Goa'uld plasma bombardment was instantly pulverized. The Jaffa pilots flying the unlucky machines knew only a brief flash of light before they passed beyond the veil between life and death.
Vigilant Watcher Overbridge
"They're destroying their own fighters…" Xander mused as he viewed the progress of the fight in local space on the holoviewer. These Goa'uld, as Hammond had called them, were nothing if not determined, having now chosen this moment to engage the Watcher directly. "Buffy, intensify the ion batteries immediately facing the near vessel, and launch another two wings of TIEs and program them to attack the enemy vessels' shields and power plants. I want those ships disabled for capture. And signal Warren and his team they have a go to launch…"
"Affirmative, Xander. Relaying your orders…" The Slayer's fingers flew across her console, inputting the commands to carry out Xander's intent.
"Dawn patrol?" He looked now to the younger Summers sister standing at the helm and navigator's station. In response to his voice, the redhead with the rank insignia of an Imperial Admiral looked up.
"Way ahead of you, Xan. I'm already moving the station closer to the lead vessel so Warren and his boys won't have to be out there in that mess for very long."
"Officer thinking, Dawnie, officer thinking. Halt your approach to the lead vessel as soon as you get within five kilometers of it, and we'll just see if we can aim some tractor beams at them and hold them for Warren once we get confirmation that their shields are down."
"You got it."
Klorel's Ha'tak
The massive construct loomed large upon the viewscreen, and bits of what appeared to be static indicated the presence and movement of fighter craft on both sides, fully immersed in their dance of death. Blue lightning emanating seemingly from the very skin of the battle station slammed into the mothership with a fury unknowable. The latest update from the tactical station on the pel'tak indicated an almost complete shield collapse. And then, all of a sudden, the battle station shifted its fire to the other Ha'tak, the one with Klorel's holy father aboard.
Klorel was livid. How dare these upstart Tau'ri even imagine that they could endanger their gods? Still, he knew through his genetic memory that Goa'uld were as vulnerable as any other corporeal being to weapons fire, perhaps more so due to their dependence upon a host for their very existence, so he turned to the Jaffa standing the helm and shouted…
"For Apophis! Turn this ship into their fire! Put us between them and my father's ship! If we fail and survive you will all face my fury!"
In contrast to Klorel's ire, the countenances of the members of SG-1 showed their curiosity as well as perhaps a small measure of confusion. The confusion lasted only a moment, however, as they witnessed the effect of the Death Star suddenly abandoning its hammering of Klorel's shields in favor of Apophis's ship. The realization dawned upon the faces of O'Neill and Teal'c as well as the latter's mentor, who allowed himself a small smile.
"They wanted this to happen…" mouthed Bra'Tac to his pupil in naught more than a whisper.
"What are you two talking about?" put in the Colonel in the same sotto voce tone to his Jaffa allies. Teal'c, for his part, merely raised one eyebrow a microscopic fraction of a centimeter, for him an expression of admiration.
"They left us alone and concentrated their fire on Apophis's ship because they figured Klorel would rush to his father's defense. Uncharacteristic of a Goa'uld, as the son tends to plot against the father," replied Bra'Tac, "but if we move between your Death Star and Apophis's ship, then they will show this ship no mercy."
"A simple maneuver," added Teal'c, "and a cunning ploy at once. And once the shields collapse, then this ship will swiftly lose all power, allowing us to open the main doors to the pel'tak and withdraw to the glider bays."
"You know, Teal'c," quipped O'Neill, as he regarded the Jaffa's insight into their sudden opportunity, "I like the way you think…"
Vigilant Watcher, Hangar Bay 327
The Lambda-class (variant) assault shuttle was positioned in the bay like a missile ready to fire. The idea was to drop the atmosphere containment field on launch, timed from the Vigilant Watcher's Overbridge with the shuttle's primary sublight ignition. The combined forces of thrust and sudden decompression would shoot the craft out of the hangar bay like a bullet, or in the minds of the three geeks turned Stormtroopers, like a Colonial Viper in one of the Battlestar Galactica's launch tubes. To say that Warren and his two cohorts were stoked would have been a massive understatement.
They were launching in an Imperial Shuttle from the Death Star, they were Stormtroopers about to attack, board and infiltrate an enemy ship, and then they would locate an US Air Force Special Operations team and extract them from the enemy vessel, and then return to the Death Star with their precious cargo. The thought was both exciting beyond measure and sobering in the extreme; this was no longer a costume party, but the real thing. It was combat, in space, against a ruthless enemy that would certainly try to kill them on sight. Their actions this night would get people killed regardless, so it was the Trio's job to make sure the right people, namely themselves and the Air Force guys, stayed alive long enough to get back to the Death Star.
Fortunately for Warren and the others, there was enough left of the Stormtrooper in each of them after the spell broke that their excitement and trepidation were tempered by the steel of military discipline. As long as they did the job right, everyone would come home alive and in one piece each. And unlike the Stormtroopers of the films, Warren Mears was not so stupid as to go boldly into fire and take the first hit. He had read up on Microsoft's latest achievement in the Xbox video game console, which was soon to roll out to stores in the US sometime within the next couple of years. Their first game for the console was something called Halo, in which a similar character to the Stormtrooper went around slaughtering bad guys. The difference was that this Master Chief, as the character was called, did it the smart way. Some missions called for a more stealthy approach, and that was what his adaptive camouflage was for. Essentially, it was a sort of cloaking field that surrounded the Master Chief, and Warren Mears decided for Halloween night that he and Jonathan and Andrew would be smart Stormtroopers that night. Warren had even developed a back story of sorts, one that allowed him to blend stealth technology into the standard Stormtrooper's plastoid battlefield armor, in this case, adaptive camouflage. The rest of their kit included lots of sundry nastiness such as concussion grenades, thermal detonators, and other means of detection and deterrence. These were checked out thoroughly by each member of the team before Warren could certify them as combat-ready.
By this time the shuttle's preflight checks were concluded, including the cofferdam, which was lined with Corusca gems, tens of times harder than natural diamonds on Earth and capable of cutting through a ship's hull inside of a minute, allowing ease of entry and boarding by an assault force, and the tractor beams that drew the shuttle into position for a secure seal. Satisfied with that, Warren gave the thumbs-up to his team-mates, the signal to prepare for launch.
The others were moving in an instant, stowing their gear in pre-designated spaces for ease of access when boarding a hostile vessel. Weapon and equipment checks were completed, and Jonathan and Andrew took their launch positions and secured their crash webbing, signaling their readiness with a thumbs-up to Warren. The Stormtrooper commander then turned his head to their co-pilot, who was noticeably nervous about his situation. Ethan Rayne, in true form, regarded Warren with his characteristic smirk.
His singular gesture of feigned arrogance failed spectacularly to impress Warren Mears, who instantly replied with a final admonishment. "I advise you not to try anything stupid, Rayne; you're our way home while we're busy seeing to our Air Force rescuees. If we have to, mister, I'll kill you and drive us home ourselves, but that will give us more to do than we can manage, so I'd rather not pull the trigger on you just yet. Now get us ready for launch, and signal the Overbridge that we're in position."
He didn't have to be told twice; Imperial Stormtroopers were not known for their sense of humor, present company notwithstanding. "As you wish, Mister Mears." A tone chimed from his console indicating the Overbridge was ready to launch them into the void. "Command reports ready to drop the atmosphere containment field."
"Full power to sublights," Warren ordered. "RCS thrusters at station-keeping until drop, set deflectors on double front."
Overbridge
Dawn, at her station, was monitoring the assault shuttle's final checks and checking local space for anything that might impede the shuttle's progress to its objective. She had had Buffy detail a small fight of three TIE/AD's to clear the space along the assault shuttle's flight path for the first few kilometers from their point of launch, and satisfied with their readiness to launch so far, she opened the comm to the shuttle's cockpit.
"Assault shuttle 2432, Overbridge, you are cleared forward. Standing by to drop containment field on my mark. Bring your sublights to full power…"
Warren's voice over the speaker in Dawn's console came back, "Overbridge, AS 2432, sublights at full, RCS quads at station-keeping. Ready to launch…"
Hangar 327
The rumble of the sublights straining at full power, yet held back by the preignition shutoff valves of each engine that were held closed by the press of a button on the engineering console, could be felt by all as Warren reported his team's readiness to do their part. This was the ultimate thrill ride, better than being in a Viper in Galactica's launch tubes or being in an FA-18D Super Hornet locked into the magnetic catapult on a US Navy aircraft carrier. This was the ultimate high; each member of the Trio felt the rumbling of their chosen conveyance's sublight engines deep in their bones as they felt the adrenaline high of anticipation.
Klorel's Ha'tak
All watched with dread anticipation as the mighty ship of the Goa'uld moved into position to catch the withering ion cannonade and prevent the chariot of Apophis from being hit any further. Just as they began to eclipse the other Ha'tak, the ion barrage increased its intensity.
The members of SG-1 and the two Jaffa traitors began to hope for a miracle…
Overbridge
They're right where we want them now…. mused Xander as the lead vessel moved closer into the Vigilant Watcher's firing solution. Five seconds, then four, and the remaining seconds ticked away as Buffy reported the enemy vessels' shield strength at twenty-one and thirty-five percent respectively.
Two seconds, one….zero.
"All forward ion batteries concentrate on the lead vessel," Xander commanded. "Time to spring the trap. Dawn Patrol, you have the count. Launch our rescue team now…"
"You got it, Xander." Dawn then spoke into her microphone embedded into her console, "Shuttle 2432, you have a go. Dropping containment field, launch on my mark. In five, four…"
Hangar 327
"Three…two…one….mark!"
"Opening preignition shutoff valves to sublights, we are launching!"
The rush of the atmosphere evacuating from the hangar bay felt like a kick in the hindquarters as the Imperial assault shuttle was spewed forth into space. Almost immediately after clearing the hangar, the flattened oval apertures of the shuttles thrust nozzles flared in an actinic blue, accelerating the craft to hypersonic speeds in a straight path towards the lead ship. In the shuttle's troop bay adjacent to the cofferdam as well as in the cockpit, the cheers of three geeks and a chaos mage drowned out the comm chatter briefly.
"WOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"