Jump Chain Gothic 4 - Atlantis

Part 23

Aurora-class warship. Pegasus Galaxy.

My ship spent much of its time in this part of the universe guarding Atlantis, so that the Ancients could use one of their ships to hunt down Wraith, without fear of their city-ship coming under attack by those unknown hostile aliens. A fear now even greater given how many people now called Atlantis home.

No one was in a rush to wipe out the space vampires. They simply weren't a threat any more, and actually finding all of their ships was a time consuming endeavour. Had any of us come from cultures which had spent the last ten thousand years being culled every few generations we would feel different, but none of us had, and we would never understand what it was like.

However I didn't need spend all my time playing guard dog so I got to take my ship out into the galaxy to explore. Sometimes this involved charting star systems, but now and again we found a habitable planet just like the one we were currently orbiting.

This world had two moons and a Spacegate. Also there is a long stretch of mountains on this world that made the alps look rather unimpressive, and separating the only two human settlements that we could detect was a great wilderness of over a 100 square miles.

"We don't know much about this planet but from the records there's no indication of any advanced technology, and our scans don't show any either" Miranda informed us.

Cameron and I didn't really made up an away team, but not one else on board had any interest in getting to know the people of some primitive planet. I however did fancy going down there and taking a look around. It was a whim more than anything else, as for Cameron, she just didn't want me wandering about on my own.

"So it's a standard recon' mission" I said

Should be rather dull, but if nothing else it should give me a chance to stretch my legs. Which I desired greatly after spending so much time on my ship.

(Line Break)

Town. Unnamed Planet.

"Where is everyone?" I wondered.

This was a populated village, a small town I'd say. It even had lamp posts that were lit. However there was not a single person on the street. This combined with the fog made for a spooky scene.

"Look there's smoke" said Cameron while pointing.

The smoke was coming out of the chimney of a large building, and as we got closer to the structure I could hear voices.

"Must be the local tavern" I reasoned.

We went inside to see many people sitting around, and they stopped talking as soon as they saw us. Which wasn't as rude as it might seem as Cameron I must both look very strange to the locals. My armour and weapons had to make me a fearsome sight, and Cameron's 21st century clothing would seem no less odd.

Soon a man came over and began to talk to us, as things settled somewhat down in the tavern. We took seats and the man, who must be the bartender used a rag to wipe down the table.

"Are you from Ratira" he asked.

I shook my head.

"No" I said.

Ratira had to be the other settlement we had detected, it was on the other side of a vast wilderness and while there must be a route to that town it would be a rough one given the sheer distance. There could be some villages around, but we'd not been able to detect them from orbit.

"We're from very far away" Cameron added.

Hopefully no one would ask for more details.

"I take it you don't get many strangers around here" I said.

The bartender shook his head.

"You really don't know" he said "Do you?".

I sensed that something was amiss, and this was confirmed when an older looking man, who was possibly a local leader, ordered the bartender to be silent.

"What's your business here" the older man then asked.

"We're just explorers" I said "Travellers".

Not to be confused with the human group of space nomads who were called the Travellers. Whom I was sure I would met with again soon.

"We'll you'd best keep travelling then" said the man.

I decided that it was time to leave. Most humans in this galaxy were friendly enough, but these clearly weren't and I wasn't going to stay where I wasn't welcome. We'd leave this tavern, go somewhere out of sight, and beamed back up to the ship.

"Wait, Goran. You can't turn them out there" argued the bartender "It's been 3 months. How much longer do you think it will wait?"

Something about all this was starting to seem familiar.

"Will what wait?" I asked.

I was soon told.

"The Daimos. It lives in forest. Feeds on humans" Goran said. "It's a creature, that has the appearance of a man, but it can suck the very life from your bones. It leaves only a dead, withered husk behind".

I sighed.

"We call these creatures the Wraith" I told Goran.

The man told a story of how 10 years ago when something from the sky crashed in the woods near the town, and how these people killed all of the aliens who'd survived the crash. Which had turned out to be a wise course of action since the aliens were Wraith.

"We think one of them survived our slaughter" he finished by saying "Now the creature feeds every few months and takes at least a couple of people. One of the people taken by the Daimos was my own son".

Cameron stood up, took out her disruptor pistol and turned it to the highest setting, which would totally vapourise a humanoid in a single shot.

"Go back to the ship I'll take care of the Wraith" she said.

Her concern was for my safety, and this Wraith was a threat. As for me I now knew what world this was, and what could be found here.

"We'll take care of your Damios problem" I told the leader of these people.

Cameron could hunt the male I'd take care of the female.

(Line Break)

Wilderness. Unnamed Planet.

Cameron was a Terminator, she'd never performed the role of one, and was not programmed to seek out humans in order to destroy them while in the service of skynet, but she was perfectly capable of the role, and while her primary purpose was to protect, she was able to kill.

As it turned out tracking a Wraith through a vast wooden area wasn't that different than hunting a human. Both species were after all bipedal, and they both depended upon their limited organic senses in order to navigate their environment. She was not so limited.

As such when the Wraith attempted to ambush Cameron, having mistakenly thought her to be a human, he was in for a big surprise. He failed to scare what he thought was his prey, and the blow the chest that would have sent a human to the ground barely nudged Cameron.

To his credit the Wraith didn't allow confusion to prevent them from following up on the attack, but it was rather pointless for him to try. Another powerful blow, one that would broken a human's arm, was blocked by Cameron who then grabbed the space vampire and threw it into a tree.

Before the alien creature could recover Cameron had her disruptor pistol aimed at the Wraith.

"You are terminated" she said.

Cameron fired, and a moment later the Wraith was vapourised. The hunt was already over, now it was time to return to Gothic and to make sure he hadn't gotten himself into any trouble while she hadn't been around to keep an optical processor on him.

(Line Break)

Cave. Unnamed Planet.

"Now why is distillation an important step?" the man asked.

"To... remove the toxins from the ferassin root?" The Wraith replied hesitantly .

"Precisely!" the man said as he smiled proudly at her. "We wouldn't want the serum to send you into paralytic shock, now would we?".

This was really strange. To the Wraith we humans were food, yet here a Wraith was living with a man. In the show it was one thing to see this, but to see it in person was unnatural.

"I made this drug, it means Ellia doesn't have to feed from humans" the man was now saying

This old mine that these two people were living in had shielded their life signs from my ship's scanners, but since I'd known about the mine it had been easy to find.

"Well I have something better than a drug" I told the human and the Wraith "If you're willing to take a chance I might be able to turn Ellia into a human".

Wraith were part human so the DNA resequencer should be able alter the Wraith parts and make them them human. I could even use her adoptive father's DNA and slice into Ellia's DNA making them related by blood.

"You can do that?" asked the Wraith.

It was clear that she wanted this badly.

"Yes" I said "I can take you both away from this world and once the treatment is done you can start new lives somewhere else".

It might even be possible for the female Wraith to marry and have children just like a human woman. However if it didn't work I'd have to keep her in stasis. Perhaps I should just kill her, since she had killed, but she'd done that to survive, not because she was a bad person. Still it would end Cameron would kill the other Wraith, which I hadn't told anyone in this mine about, and Ellia would never return to this world. The deaths would stop and the people of this world would be left alone. That was what mattered, and it was what I had promised.

(Line Break)

Aurora-class warship. Pegasus Galaxy.

It would be a few days before Elli's treatment would turn her into a human, and she would need observation for a good long time after that. Atlantis would be a suitable place for the converted Wraith and her human father to stay until they could be resettled. I didn't intend to become involved in that as the Ancients could handle matters in this small galaxy.

Soon I would turn my attention back to the Milky Way, but as of yet I wasn't sure what to do about the poor humans of that galaxy. It would take more time and further planning before I could make up mind, but I did already have a plan which could be put into motion. However I wanted to wait until I'd finished my last treatment before I took that kind of action.

"Will you please name this ship!" someone yelled out.

I turned my command chair to see Tali, who was in her Quarian form as she worked at the engineering section here on the bridge.

"Sorry what?" I asked.

She turned and I could tell that she wasn't happy.

"It's been over a year" she said "And you still haven't named this ship. You have clearly forgotten that Quarians take the name of the ship they serve on. So until you name this vessel I don't have a full name".

I had in fact totally forgotten about that.

"Okay we can call the ship the Thunderchild" I decided. "It's a warship from an old Earth story".

Tali let out a sigh, and then smiled.

"Thank you!" she shouted as she suddenly left the bridge.

I might be a highly advanced human, but women still made no sense to me.

(Line Break)

Vohl. Pegasus Galaxy.

While this world was mentioned in the databanks of Atlantis I knew very little about it other than it was a planet in the Pegasus galaxy which has a Stargate. Upon actually seeing the world, and being able to scan it we discovered that in Trek terms it was L-class planet much like the world I'd found that Wraith supply ship on.

There was also an M-class planet in this system that was inhabited by humans, but it was primitive and of no concern to me at this time.

Vohl did interest me because I knew that the planet had once been under the control of Ancients who'd built a experimental laboratory there, which they had abandoned when they left the galaxy. I'd known about the lab, and had expected it to be destroyed, so finding it intact was pleasant.

Once my ship had began orbiting this world, I'd also discovered that the Wraith had found both the planet and the laboratory, my ship had detected the Wraith life signs, and because of the lack of jamming I'd had the Wraith beamed up, turning them into energy, but I hadn't rematerialised them. So they were now dead since their patterns could only be stored for so long before they broke down.

While getting rid of the Wraith had been the easy part, things rapidly became more awkward for me when the Earth ship Daedalus, dropped out of hyperspace. The man in charge of that vessel, one Colonel Caldwell, claimed that he'd be sent to explore the base, but them turning up not long after my ship had arrived in system was no matter of chance.

They'd followed me here, of that I was sure, one of their people on Atlantis must have found out what records I'd been accessing and they'd decided to come and find out what had my interest. I didn't blame them, the whole point of the Atlantis expedition had been gather Ancient tech, and because of me the expedition had been a failure.

However given that they had Ancient tech back on Earth it seemed somewhat odd that any of the Tauri were even in this galaxy. Their presence here must be somehow politically motivated. Perhaps the IOA wanted to maintain a presence in this galaxy for some reason, and they were considering this lab as a base. It was rather large, and could serve that purpose.

When I'd beamed down I'd found a Tauri recon team already here, and soon introductions were made.

"I'm Major Anne Teldy" said the leader of the team. "This is Sgt. Mehra, Dr. Porter, and Captain Vega".

They all saluted me.

"I guess you're in charge down here" the Major said next "I'm not sure. Ship captains are equivalent to the rank of colonel, but you're not exactly air force".

Yes that could be a little confusing. Tauri space ships had colonel's commanding them which made them the equal of captains, but I wasn't part of any military, at least not any more, so I didn't exactly line up with their chain of command.

"Why don't we take joint command of the mission" I said to the woman.

There was a moment of silence.

"You may have notice that my team is a bunch of girls" the air force officer then said

This had gotten my attention, and just for fun I used one of my near-ascended powers, I could use a few of them thanks to my lessons and time spent in the Cloister, to stimulate the nerve endings of these women so they felt waves of pleasure running through their bodies. Which might seem like a wrong thing to do someone without their consent, but given that this team had been sent to spy on me I didn't feel bad about it.

"My bodyguard is a girl" I said while gesturing to Cameron.

There was another moment of silence.

"Shall we take a look around?" asked the Major.

(Line Break)

Vohl. Pegasus Galaxy.

"He's mine," Captain Alicia Vega whispered to other women.

The two women kept their voices down, so as not to be overheard.

"I saw him first," Sgt. Mehra argued back.

Of she hadn't since they'd all met Captain Gothic at the same time.

"You both cool it. If the rumors I've heard are true then Captain Gothic has an entire crew of women he can sleep with" Captain Vega stated "So I don't think he has any time for us".

There were lots of rumours about Captain Gothic, about how he was from another universe, as crazy as that sounded, about he command an Ancient warship that had been upgraded with Asgard tech, making it the most power vessel in the known universe, and that he powers like those some of Ancients were suppose to possess. There were also stories about his all female crew, that was made of very attractive women.

The four women kept their mouths shut for a while as the the group looked around the large Ancient lab. By the looks of things it would indeed make a suitable base for the Tauri in this galaxy, but before Caldwell could start beaming down techs and science types to study the place he wanted every room fully explored in order to make sure it was safe.

Gothic led them to a computer terminal and brought up some sort of information. It was clear that he wished to find out what the Wraith had been doing here.

"Seeing as how none of us can read Wraith I guess we'll have to upload the data and take it with us" stated Alison Porter.

Gothic smiled at her.

"Actually I understand Wraith" he said "The logs says that the Wraith here were experimenting with humans that were brought here from the inhabited planet in this system. They weren't always doing this, the lab has been shut down for centuries at a time. The Wraith must only use it when culling.

Eager to learn more Alison Porter moved closer to the Jumper.

"What else does it say?" she asked.

(Line Break)

Vohl. Pegasus Galaxy.

"Stasis pods," I muttered.

I walked up and down the corridor as I began scanning the pods with my omni-tool. I quickly discovered what had become of at least some the humans who'd been brought to this lab by the Wraith. I examined the scans of the creatures created by wraith experiments.

Had it not been for the fact that Michael, the Wraith/human hybrid, had never been created I might think that this was one of his labs. However in this time line the Atlantis expedition doctors never experimented on Michael like they did in canon.

It was pretty clear to me now that as a Wraith the one called Micheal must have worked in this lab as one of the things the Wraith here had been doing over the centuries was mixing Human and Wraith DNA. Possibly this was related to the research a lone Wraith had done which resulted in people like Teyla being about to sense the Wraith.

"No don't touch that," I told Alison Porter as I turned to see her messing with the main control console.

Unlike me she couldn't read Wraith and I was sure she'd meant to do anything bad, but it was too late to stop her now as the stasis pods shut down while their doors all opened. Blood curdling howls and screams came from the creatures that emerged. Obviously the Wraith hadn't want their experiments discovered by others so they'd booby trapped the console to release his creations on whoever tried to retrieve the data about them.

The creatures all began to rush us at once, and I could see there were dozens of them

With a wave of telekinesis, another trick I'd picked up, I pushed all of the lab creations back against the wall and raised a powerful biotic shield in front of us so the creatures couldn't reach us.

"What the hell is going on," I heard some yell.

"This shouldn't take long," I said myself.

Biotic barriers were one way so I was able to use my particle magnum to blast the creations. Not long after I was done the others joined us.

"Let's get some samples" I said to Cameron "I'm sure one of the Asgard on board the ship will want to study them".

Alison Porter was very happy that I had saved her life, and her smile let me know that I might be getting a thank you later. Assuming I hadn't moved on by then. Which I planned to do very soon as I didn't like the idea of the Tauri trying to take even further advantage of my generosity.

With that in mind I quickly collected the genetic samples I desired and got back to work. I wanted to check out this lab/base, get some scans, download its database and then leave.

(Line Break)

Aurora-class warship. Pegasus Galaxy.

"So we can detect the Genii tunnels?" I asked Seven.

She was currently at what passed for a science station on this ship, and she was using our sophisticated scanners to explore the true extent of the Genii civilisation, give sheer numbers and sizes of the tunnels it was clear that the humans of this world had been working on their bunkers for many generations.

However the tunnels and bunkers didn't concern me. If I recalled correctly the Genii had only piece of advanced technology that was worth taking, and that was sort of Wraith device which I could obtain elsewhere, they also had any empty ZPM, but I had no interest in that either.

No my reason for being here was that the Genii would keep working on their nuclear weapons even without a working Stargate, and even if the Wraith were wiped from existence the didn't mean the Genii were going to dismantle their nukes.

I suspected that had the Genii been able to nuke all the Wraith as they slept, which was unlikely, that they would have then used their WMDs to impose their will on other planets. While I couldn't prove this I simply wasn't willing to risk it.

"Lock onto their Stargate and beam it up" I ordered.

My order was carried out in mere seconds, and I was pleased by this. I'd been intending to remove this Stargate from the Genii world for some time, I just hadn't gotten around to it because I'd not been in any rush.

"Now that's done I'll take us back to Atlantis" I declared "We still have some repair work to get done".

A moment later the ship jumped into hyperspace. Leaving another job well done.

(Line Break)

Aurora-class warship. Pegasus Galaxy.

"They have a lot of nerve" commented Miranda Lawson.

She was referring to the space nomads known as the travellers. One of their ships had recently come to Atlantis had made a request of both me and the Ancients. They badly needed knew ships as despite their efforts at population control they simply didn't have enough room. Which made me wonder how crowded their ships had been since gaining a three kilometre long warship that could carry hundreds apparantly hadn't made much of a difference to the Travellers.

As to why this request was frowned upon by Miranda, that was because while I'd ventured on board one of their ships as emissary, they'd kidnapped me, out of desperation rather than any malice. And while I'd taken control of the situation, none of my girls were so forgiving about it as I was. Looking back it was surprising that no one had started shooting.

"They are offering an alliance and to share information" I pointed out "And that information could be valuable when it comes to hunting down the remaining Wraith".

I didn't have the means to build new ships, but if I could supply enough raw materials and some parts then the Ancients could as all city-ships had some industrial capacity, it was just that Atlantis was focused more on science than building stuff. Still they should be able to manage to build a few vessels that were much like Asuran cruisers.

The Ancients wouldn't give the Travellers their best tech, but all the space nomads needed were the ships and spare parts, then they could add their own tech to the vessels. Basically they'd be getting hull with life support and maybe engines.

"We shouldn't judge all the Travellers on the actions of a few officers on one ship" I said to Miranda "Besides its really up the Ancients. We'd just be supplying a few odds and ends. Which as of yet I haven't actually agreed to".

And it was unlikely I would since I had other matters to deal with. There was nothing stopping the Travellers from settling on planets now that the Wraith weren't a threat, and they could build a decent civilisation if they do wished.

Of course there were still hostile aliens out there so the Travellers had good reasons for wanting to increase the size of their ship. However that didn't mean I had to help them do that. Really if anyone was duty bound to help it was the Ancients. After all they were the reason why the Wraith existed, and it was the Wraith who made the Travellers the nomads who they are now.

"What about the Earth group" Miranda asked next as she moved from station to station on the bridge checking over readings "You've been generous with them, very much so, and it's clear that they aren't going to leave us alone".

This was true, they had been getting under foot, and given my plans for the future I was going to need to employ a firmer hand with them. I would need their cooperation, however soon they might find themselves becoming far less important to me.

I wondered if my change in attitude towards them had something to with my treatment. Perhaps I could better understand the larger scheme of things, and how that one world didn't matter much when their were entire galaxies that could use my help.

"I've given the Tauri enough" I said to Miranda "It's time we focus on other matters".

Before this could be discussed further an O'Neill class ship appeared in the system, and the next thing I knew I was being hailed by Commander Thor.