Jump Chain Gothic 4 - Atlantis - Part 2

Aurora-Class Battleship. Space Dock.

As I jogged down one of the main corridors of this more than 3,000 meter long vessel, part of my mind kept track of were my legs were going while the rest of me did some thinking. This wasn't true multitasking, it was just that running in a straight line didn't take up very much of my attention.

The only thing I had to worry about running into was one of the robot crew, which were crude machines the Space Dock Supplement had provided. Compared to Cameron, my terminator, these robots were clunky and boring, however they did the job they were suppose to do. Which was to maintain and repair the ship.

While a combination of body mod perks and gene mods meant that my fitness level remained high, and that my life expectancy was about a 150 years, however I was still getting older. I'd been on the Jump Chain for many years, and my time on Voyager had made me lazier. At least by Alliance Marine standards.

Granted I hadn't aged that much, and I was still in good shape, but I felt the need to work on my physical fitness, hence the running. I wondered if it was possible to have a midlife crisis while still being in a young man's body.

It was hard to imagine, but once I'd been overweight and I'd loathed exercise. Jump Chain had done me a favour of sorts by turning me into an Alliance Marine, it had given me a lot more self discipline, which was just what you needed in order to enforce an exercise program on yourself.

Another thing that helped with the jogging was the sheer size of the ship, it had massive corridors that kept straight, this hadn't been the case on other vessels that I'd served on. The largest of Voyager's deck had always curved somewhat due to Starfleet's odd habit of building ships with saucer sections.

The USS Voyager had only been 345 meters long, and it had seemed like a flying palace when compared to both the first and second Normandy. Sure this ship (which I would get around to giving a proper name to at some point) lacked Voyager's comforts, but it was many times larger and a lot faster than that Starfleet ship had been.

Also this vessel was a true warship, not an explorer's vessel or a mere frigate, as such aside from being massive, it was far larger than the models in used in the show suggested, it was also heavily armed, well shielded, had decent armour, and even came with a ZPM. I felt a lot better about the idea of flying around this galaxy knowing that I had an arsenal of drone weapons capable of destroying a Wraith Hive ship in a single salvo.

Alas there were like sixty or so Hive Ships in the galaxy, not to mention cruisers, so even this ship couldn't take on the Wraith fleet directly, which meant we'd have to either take them on piecemeal or spend the next ten years avoiding them.

Peaceful co-existence with the Wraith was impossible, as they didn't tolerate the existence of advanced technology that wasn't their own, and they'd want to drain all the life energy out of my body. Since I liked having advanced tech and I also like having my life energy not being drained I would have to fight the Wraith.

Aside from the Wraith there other factions to worry about, such as the renegade Asgard, who didn't mind blowing up Stargates. Then there were the Asurans, and maybe the Genii, that could be a threat. Plus the Earth humans might be a problem as they could try to seize my ship, I needed plans for dealing with all of them.

At least the Asurans might not become an issue during my Jump as long as no one bothered them. They'd been minding their own business for the last ten thousand years and they could do so for ten thousand more years.

Allying with the Atlantis Expedition seemed like a good move, but it would have to be done early on, if I could find them before the US military came to the city's aid during the siege then I could deal with Weir from a position of strength at a time when she needed all the help she could get.

Once I had my foot in the door, so to speak, and the people of Atlantis came to depend on me for aid, then I could start to ulterlise the city's resources for my own needs, and I could get my hands on more awesome Ancient tech.

I was even considering pretending to be an Ancient, and claiming the city for myself, but I could foresee several issues with that. For starters the people already living there would fight me for it, and the city could be damage or even destroyed if I tried to seize it.

The corridor I'd been running down finally came to an end, and I was just about to go and rehydrate when I fell to my knees, covered my head, and screamed.

(Line Break)

Aurora-Class Battleship. Space Dock.

A concerned looking Cameron helped me into the chair, but she need not of bothered, nor did she need to be so concerned, as I was now feeling fine. But I could understand why she seemed worried.

She could protect me from attacks quite well, and even prevent me from injuring myself in many ways, however while she did have a great understanding of human biology she was no doctor, and as such health issues weren't something she could deal with.

Still I doubted there had been any long term damage, I'd just been overwhelmed with incoming information due to one of my perks.

Judgement Day - You automatically know the exact date and time to Judgement Day. Outside this jump, Judgement Day counts as any mass extinction or apocalyptic event for sapient species within 100 years and how, but not why, it happens. Because the future is not written, this perk will keep track of the event to the hour. So if the 2 year away apocalyptic event turned into 2 weeks and 3 hours, you will instantly know.

Until now this perk hadn't been of much use to me, Skynet having been easy to deal with, and I'd forgotten about it mostly. Then less than an hour ago information about hundreds of Judgement Days had been shoved into my head all at the same time. Cleary this perk had not been created to handle galactic wide apocalypses.

"So why did you collapse?" wondered an also worried looking Tali.

As we'd planned we were meeting in some sort of conference room. Everyone was currently preparing the ship for its mission, which would be to explore this galaxy and to fight the Wraith. This didn't just involve installing Trek tech, we also needed supplies, the right weapons, information, and to outfit some quarters so that they were more livable.

"I think the Atlantis expedition just woke up the Wraith, the timing seems about right" I told the women who were sitting around the table with me "And because of that over the next few years many words will culled, some more than once, this will destroy a lot of human civilizations, hundreds in fact, and because of the Judgement Day perk I know when the cullings will take place".

And that wasn't all.

"Sadly this information isn't a lot of help to us because while I do know which worlds are going to be culled and when, I don't know where those planets are in space, so we can't lay in ambush and attack Hives before they can start culling. The best we can do with this information is warn any human civilizations that we come across when exactly the Wraith will attack them" I said.

Oddly this perk hadn't become active while in the Trek galaxy despite the fact that some worlds must have been in extreme danger from groups like the Borg. I had no idea why this was the case.

"If you're feeling better then we should get on with the meeting" Seven of Nine suggested.

She seemed the least amount of concerned for me.

"By all means" I said.

Miranda reported first.

"I've made some of the crew quarters more livable" she informed us "I've put us in rooms close to each other, and we all get our own quarters. Cameron, I put you in the room across from Gothic's I know you don't need a bedroom, but you should have your own space".

Cameron had once done little more than follow me around, now she had her own interests, including hobbies, which she made time for while I was sleeping, as an alternative to watching me sleep.

"What about the upgrades?" I inquired.

Ancient ships were great and all, but the whole reason for going to the Trek verse, aside from wanting to recruit Seven of Nine as a companion, was because of that verse's advanced and varied technologies, it had always been my intention to make use of that technology on later Jumps.

"The tractor beams is already installed, we just need to test it" Tail let us all know "the transporter and the replicators will take a few more days, but we're in no rush".

This was true. We were due to make contact with Atlantis sometime within the year, and there was indeed no need to hurry. In fact it would be better if we made contact after Weir and her people learned that many Wraith Hives were heading their way. Then they would be more desperate for aid, and more likely to give into any demands I made.

While it might take us sometime to find Atlantis, the planets coordinates and gate address weren't in the ship's databanks for some reason, that didn't really matter as we would find it and in the meantime there was plenty of galaxy to explore, and many human cultures to interact with.

"There is little I can do with the sensors" Seven of Nine reported "As such in my role as science officer I have began compiling information on this galaxy and on the groups we may find ourselves interacting with".

Before anyone could say anything else the cyborg began the briefing.

"The Pegasus Galaxy is the name of a dwarf galaxy in the Local Group, located approximately three million light years from the Milky Way" she began by saying "There are actually two galaxies in the Local Group named Pegasus: Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy and Pegasus Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. We are currently in the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy".

I settled in for what could be a long, long meeting.

"The Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy (also known as Peg DIG or the Pegasus Dwarf), was discovered by A. G. Wilson in the 1950s" Seven was now saying "however Federation records have little else to say about this galaxy, and it is all speculative".

Hardly surprising as this galaxy was three million light years away Earth, an impossible journey to make using warp drive.

"In this universe we do know something of this galaxy" the former Borg drone went on to say "This was the galaxy the Ancients traveled to it in the City-ship Atlantis after they abandoned the Milky Way".

Leaving behind a Stargate network, and some dangerous tech they never bother to destroy, dismantle or hide away, even after becoming powerful energy beings.

"Much like in the Milky Way, they built a galaxy-spanning empire, but were forced to abandon it after most of the galaxy was conquered by the Wraith" Seven of Nine said next "Currently the majority of the human cultures in this galaxy are at low levels of development due to constant attacks by the Wraith, with early to mid twentieth century Earth technology being rare. There are also several cultures whose technology will be of interest to us, but usually such people are hiding from the Wraith as to avoid destruction".

Which would make it hard to trade tech with them, but at least trading with the more primitive human civilizations would be simple enough, with the Federation replicators we could produce vast amounts of clothes, food, simple medical supplies, basic tools, and precious metals. However few of the locals humans had much to offer aside from information. Sure I could buy the loyalty of their leaders easily enough, but again they had little to offer me.

I was pretty sure that I'd be able to unite many human worlds under any banner if I chose to raise, simply by pretending to be an Ancient, and with the technology at my command the more primitive humans of this galaxy would believe me, however I was unable to defend the people of this galaxy so any sort of empire that I tried to build would just be a target for the Wraith.

Still there might be some merit to building a coalition of planets. While I couldn't defend worlds, I could still help them to recover from cullings, and I could supply them with the stuff like medicine, perhaps even weapons. Given enough time I could give the people of this galaxy the means to protect themselves.

While I had no means of building a fleet of ships to fight the Wraith with I might not need to as the Wraith had awoken to galaxy that didn't have enough food to support them. As such it might be better to let the Wraith fight each other while arming the humans enough so that they could at least resist a culling.

It was something to think about, however in the short term, my group and I had a galaxy to explore, Ancient technology to recover, alliances to make, and of course I wanted to recruit more companions if possible.

"For millions of years, the Lantean society flourished, and they created a new Stargate network to facilitate travel" Seven was saying "However, things changed with the emergence of the Wraith. According to theory The Wraith evolved from the Iratus bug, a parasitic insect which fed on humans and incorporated aspects of their DNA into its genetic makeup".

I'd always wondered if that was true or not. Maybe the Ancients had actually created The Wraith, it wouldn't be the first time they created something which went onto endanger human lives on a galactic scale.

"While at first the Wraith were of no threat to the Lantean fleet, the Lanteans grew careless and allowed several of their ships to be captured. The Zero Point Modules which powered those ships, as one does ours, were used by the Wraith to power a cloning facility, and in short their forces vastly increased. This allowed them to overwhelm the Lanteans with sheer numbers, and soon the Lanteans were forced on the defensive".

And they were never able to seize the initiative, never able to go back on the offensive. This was a mistake I could not repeat.

"The Wraith fleet eventually conquered most of the galaxy, until Atlantis itself was all that remained. The Ancients defeated everything the Wraith threw at the city-ship, but still the Wraith would not give up, and continued sending endless waves of their forces at Atlantis. Lacking any other course of action, the remaining Ancients decided to submerge Atlantis and flee back to Earth, hoping that one day their kind would return".

Which in some sense they had since the humans of Earth were the second evolution of the Ancients, or something like that.

"Once the Ancients were gone, the Wraith took complete control of the galaxy" Seven told us "Not long after this, the Asurans, who were created by the Ancients to combat the Wraith, mounted their own assault".

The Asurans were best left alone if possible. But since it was likely that the people currently living in Atlantis would poke the bear so to speak, it was best to come up with a plan to deal with those machines. Taking out their planet with an overloaded ZPM was the only plan I had right now, however I should have time to come with something better. ZPMs were rare and for now I didn't have any spares to blow up.

"Somehow The Wraith devised a means to shut down the Asuran's attack directive, thereby causing the Asurans to retreat to their homeworld" Seven said "and they have remained there ever since".

Soon the cyborg now brought us onto the matter of the Wraith themselves.

"Any other races who were technologically advanced were either wiped out, had to abandon their advanced technology, or were forced to go into hiding. Including a group of rouge Asgard who we can discuss at a later date" Seven was now telling us "Over the next 10,000 years, the most if the Wraith would remain in stasis, only occasionally waking to cull the human populations of the galaxy for sustenance".

To me that didn't sound like much of a life for either the Wraith or the humans.

"As for The Wraith, they are a vampiric hive-based species that harvest the 'life-force' of other humanoid beings for nourishment through an organ which was on the palm of their right hands" Seven told us "As a species they have a social structure similar to that of ants or other hive/nest-based creatures, with distinct physiological differences between castes of Wraith, tailored to facilitate different functions within the society".

Like ants and bees they were ruled over a queen, and she alone did the breeding.

"They also possess powerful telepathic abilities that we don't know the extent of, as well phenomenal physical strength, along with superior agility as well as the ability to heal at a rate much faster than that of a human" Seven informed "This allows them to survive wounds that would kill most other humanoids".

This was less of an issue for us as we had weapons which could vapourise people. Even the Wraith couldn't heal that.

"Nourishment for the adult Wraith is the human "life force". Humans or very similar beings, such as Ancients and even other Wraith, are the only food source that can properly nourish a Wraith" we were informed "It is also unknown whether or not the Wraith require fluids, to facilitate other bodily functions".

At this point I let my mind wander while Seven kept talking.

(Line Break)

Holosuite. Cosmic Warehouse.

The Cosmic Warehouse contained a small holosuite which Tali had installed within the warehouse during a time when Voyager was spending weeks crossing through a rather empty patch of space. During that time there had been very little to do, and she'd been rather bored to say the least.

It wasn't really necessary as Voyager had holodecks, but it hadn't taken that much effort to build and she was going to build another within the new shop as we might end with a use for it sometime in the future outside of simple rest and relaxation. Plus we had a ZPM so we had a lot of energy to call upon.

I'd been invited to join Miranda and Tali as they tried one of the holodeck programs we'd taken out Voyager's databanks. We'd all been working hard as we refitted the ship for what would hopefully be many years of adventure and exploration, as such we all needed some R&R. Well most of us did, Seven and Cameron didn't seem to care for fun.

This was a simulation of a beach front property, which was on a nice white sandy beach, and from my perspective it was hidden behind typical tropical beach foliage. The area had a nice calming breeze as the sun shined brightly in the blue sky.

After walking up to the beach front property, I knocked on the door to the wooden two story house, only to get no response.

"Well that's just great" I said to myself.

The holodeck wasn't even set up in that large of a room, and the simulation was only that of a small island yet somehow I wasn't able to find Tali or Miranda, and because I'd changed into swimming trunks before I'd entered the holodeck I had no scanning equipment with me. Which meant I'd have to track them down the old fashioned way.

This when I could hear the sound of women laughing and after some looking around I found two women laying on fold out beach chairs next to the ocean. Their pale bodies were soaking up the sunlight, and just for a moment I wondered if was possible to get sunburn when there wasn't really any sun.

I began to walk towards the women and when I got closer I was able to see the two of them in more detail. Miranda was in a black bikini and Tali, who was in her human form, wore a dark purple bikini. Their tops barely concealed their busty chests, and as for their lower halves, well their bikini bottoms left very little to the imagination.

"This is a nice place" I said, while enjoying the wind's cooling effect.

Trek shows don't do the holodeck justice, the simulations really do feel, smell and sound like the real thing. I could smell the ocean, feel the wind in my air, and even the sand between my toes felt right.

"It is amazing" Tali agreed as she move to lay on her back, showing her barely covered breasts as they jiggled with her movement "It's like we're on a real beach".

Miranda may have the better ass and tits out of the two, but Tali's human form was still super sexy.

"Gothic, would you put some sunblock on me?" Miranda requested while turning onto her stomach, showing me her sexy ass "I'm too lazy to do it myself".

She couldn't see my smile, but of course she didn't need to.

"Sure thing!" I said before slapping one of her butt cheeks.

"Jerk" Miranda said playfully, obviously enjoying the attention.

For the next ten minutes, I spread the lotion up and down Miranda's body, letting my hands do things and go places a normal masseuse would not go. I then asked Tali if she would like the same treatment and when she consented I did the same for her. I was sure that by the end of it all three of us were very horny, however we didn't take things any further. At least not yet.

"It's not going to be a great jump" Tali was currently saying, having been discussing the jump for a while now "We'll always have to live in fear of being hunted by the Wraith"

Miranda seemed a little displeased by Tali's lack of enthusiasm for this jump. However given that Tali was right about the danger I wondered if there was another reason why Miss Lawson was being grumpy at the engineer, perhaps she hadn't liked the fact that I stopped rubbing her down with suntan lotion so I could rub Tali's body.

"I'm about done" Miranda said, before grabbing her towel, and wrapping it around her body, as she got up "Anyone else?".

"Good idea, I'm cooking out here!" Tali said, soon following her fellow companion.

I also got up and followed them into the part of the Cosmic Warehouse which contained the apartments. Once inside I quickly grabbed a bite in the kitchen and then headed upstairs to Miranda's bedroom. I opened the door after knocking, and saw a topless Miranda pulling down her bikini thong.

"Oh hi, Gothic" she said

She pulled her thong down and walked over to the end to her room so that she could lean on the balcony that overlooked the garden, which was also part of the apartment complex that itself was within the Cosmic Warehouse. She acted as if it was natural for her to undress and be naked around me, and it was.

Miranda's bedroom had another window, and this one gave the illusion of having a great view. Currently the view was of some city I didn't recognise, and it was such an impressive sight that a person could be forgiven for thinking that a real city was right outside.

However the view outside didn't interest me much, I was much more interested in looking at something inside the room, and that was Miranda's naked body. I'd seen her naked plenty of times, but I still couldn't get enough of her.

Within moments I was turning her around and moving my arms down so that I could grab her ass cheeks. She looked down and smiled as she saw that my erection was very noticeable thanks to my swimming trunks. She very much enjoyed the fact that I found her so attractive.

She stepped back slowly and knelt down, before pulling down my trunks, an act which exposed my erection to the cool air of the apartment.

Miranda looked up at me and soon began to work her oral magic. This caused me to groan in delight as I felt my knees weaken. The warmth and gentle friction felt so good. Alas before long she took mycock out of her mouth with a slight popping sound,

"Let's take this to the bed" she suggested.

I laid on the bed as Miranda climbed on top of me so that we could do it cowgirl style. She began to ride me, letting out a few explosive cries of pleasure. Even after years of sleeping together she still took pleasure from having intercourse with me, and she knew exactly how to move her on body in a way to maximise the pleasure.

"Lie back and enjoy the ride" Miranda urged.

From this point on I was too busy having fun to even think.