For a few seconds the large ship just hung there doing nothing, then a dozen small streams of blue lights jumped out at him and the whole ship shook as they hit the shields. Straight away the shields dropped by a quarter. "Ground team, do you read?" O'Neill said after tapping his com badge. While he waited for a reply he sat down in the pilot's seat and banked the ship to the right.
-We hear you loud and clear Sir- came the response.
"Dial Atlantis, see if they can find out if there's any defenses on the planet, otherwise you're going to haul ass out of there," he ordered. After plotting a course he activated the autopilot and hurried over to the gunner's seat to heave out the gunner. Then he sat down in the small blood pool that had formed in the seat and activated the weapons. From somewhere to his right a blue beam jumped out and hit the hostile ship but nothing happened, it just hit the hull and stopped.
-Sir, there's no functional defenses on the planet- his com sounded.
"Get everything and get out, I'll be right behind you," he ordered. With force he pressed the firing button into the console and jammed it in active mode. "Tell Atlantis I'll be bringing some company too."
-Yes Sir, we'll keep the gate ready for you.-
With the Asgard beams firing for all they were worth he activated the railguns too. Then he hurried to the back of the bridge and another console. Using the internal sensors he tagged all of the crew members and begun to beam them down to the surface. As a second salvo rocked the ship he jumped over to another console and sounded the alarm to abandon the ship. Then the ship beamed him down to the planet below.
"Sir, what's happening?" someone asked the moment he was beamed down into the control room of the facility.
"The Hammond came under attack, I ordered everyone to abandon ship," he explained and suddenly everyone in the room stood ready for orders. "They dropped a ring platform into one of the agricultural domes, with any luck there's people escaping that way too."
"I'll spread the word Sir," a young soldier shouted and ran of.
"The rest of you get through the gate to Atlantis."
Almost straight away the men and women formed up in lines of four and began marching through the gate. As the minutes passed an explosion shook the complex and the youngling came running back at the end of a large group. "Sir, everyone who made it of the ship is present, hostile forces have begun bombarding the surface."
"Good work." O'Neill said before stepping through the gate.
In the control room on Atlantis both Daniel and Mokar were watching the lines of soldiers who came running through. At the back of the column Jack came through signaling for them to kill the gate, something Mokar did mentally. The newly arrived looked around in confusion at the city as Jack elbowed by them to the stairs. Towards the back someone said something about standing orders, but he was quickly silenced with a crack of bone.
"No ships I take it?" Mokar asked as Jack reached the top of the stairs.
"Three of them, both the Daedalus and the Hammond was there, but whoever was calling the shots apparently thought they could sacrifice a ship to get rid of me," he replied.
"And the other ships?" Daniel asked.
"The Hammond is most likely destroyed by now," he said and shook his head. "But I think I found out who's wiping out advanced civilisations."
"Anyone we know of?"
"Not me, but I checked the outpost and it was transmitting all data back through the gate," he replied as he stepped up to a console and activated its holographic screen. On the screen he searched through the data and managed to find a sensor rendering of the hostile ship. Right next to it the Hammond formed shortly after and the short battle played out in front of them. Despite the Asgard beams hitting the hostile ship over and over again nothing happened, yet for every salvo of blue bolts the Asgard shields crumbled more and more until they failed and the Hammond vanished from the sensors.
"That's quite a display of force," Daniel said.
"I have seen this before," Mokar said and mentally queried the database, as he did the blue screen split into two and an identical black ship showed up on the second screen. Instead of a single 304 the ship was soaking up fire from a small fleet of Lantean ships, but that did not matter, the end result was just the same.
"When was this?" Daniel asked.
"As with everything else Lantean there is no way to know, the Lanteans never did date their files properly."
"So those where Lanteans?" Daniel asked and got a nod in return. "Which means this race has been around since the Alterra died out."
"That is correct," Mokar said. While he spoke he placed the mind-transceiver on his head and concentrated on a part of the Alterran history he had been imprinted with.
"That's Celestis," Daniel said in surprise as a third image was superimposed on the screen.
"Watch," Mokar urged. On the screen was the Earth-like planet and from the right the same black ship came into view while seven of the characteristic Ori-motherships flew in from the left. Despite their large numbers the Ori-ships failed to do any sort of visible damage with their direct energy beams and their shields failed even faster than the Hammonds shields had done. Still when only two Ori ships remained the black ship opened a purple hyperspace window and disappeared. "This was picked up by a satellite roughly a hundred thousand years after we left the galaxy. I would guess the Ori ships you faced have been upgraded since then."
"I thought you brought everything with you when you fled," Daniel said.
"No, we left most of what we had behind. We configured the surveillance equipment to transmit to relays which sent it here. Over the years the Ori have found and disabled all satellites and the relays," Mokar explained.
"So that means we have a ship, millions of years old, which manages to take out seven old Ori ships without trouble, a small fleet of Lantean ships or a state of the art battlecruiser," O'Neill said with exhaustion dripping from his voice.
"It's not like the Hammond would be comparable to either of those fleets Jack, even our brand new technology is old in comparison to what the Alterran have access to," Daniel said.
"But we had Asgard shields and beam weapons, their latest technology."
"You have the Asgard shield matrix, not their proper shields," Mokar explained. "I checked some things on your ships while they were stationed here for repairs and from what I could tell the only thing which seemed to be created by the Asgard was the matrix used to create the shield. The Asgard matrix only allowed the shield emitters you built to create the most efficient shield it could."
"That doesn't make sense to me. They said that they gave us their best," O'Neill complained.
"I have read through the reports dealing with the Ori and there is a report from when you received the technology from the Asgard. It is possible they did not have the time to do every change to the ship they meant to before the Ori attacked."
"So you think they did what they could with the time they had?" Daniel filled in.
"Something like that," Mokar confirmed. "There is a report by Teal'c from the same mission, in it he say they enveloped him in a shield created by the Asgard core, since the regular emitters were used to pause time. Now that shield managed to withstand the full force of both the Ori beam and the force of the reactor core exploding without showing any signs of weakening, without a proper reactor to power it. I think that is a proper Asgard shield."
"So good matrix, bad emitters?" O'Neill asked.
"Something like that," Mokar said.
"I never thought of it like that, but it makes sense." Daniel said, caught up in his own thoughts. "If they gave us everything why not give us their sublight engines too and their reactors?"
"So because they couldn't change hardware they gave us software?" O'Neill asked, still unsure about it all.
"Something like that, either way we need to deal with that ship sooner or later," Mokar said.
"I could try to establish a conversation," Daniel offered.
"That is not quite what I had in mind Daniel, they have shown no other intent than the destruction they have caused," Mokar said patronisingly. "They have attacked us not only through the destruction of the Hammond, but also through the destruction of those under my protection."
"I'm with him on this one Daniel," O'Neill said. "They're a threat we can't overlook."
"So the military is pulling out the big gun without trying to talk," Daniel complained.
"Had they tried to do anything peaceful we would be having a different conversation right now Daniel, but as it is at the moment they have to go," Mokar declared.
"We'll need ships if we're going after that thing," O'Neill said.
"Athyl is nowhere ready to produce ships of the size and in the numbers we need to hunt it down," Mokar said. "For now we should keep searching for any signs of advanced civilisations."
"Ships could still help us with that," O'Neill pressed.
"You have something in mind?" Mokar said and raised an eyebrow.
"I do, I'll need Daniel and Sheppard. You're not going to need him searching if all we're going to find is dead planets," O'Neill said with a grin. "The travelers are still floating around in their duct tape patched ships, we offer them some repairs and they search the planets for us."
"What do you think about it Daniel?" Mokar asked.
"If I get to do it on my terms I could probably do it," Daniel said with happiness returning to his voice.
"Then it's decided," Mokar said and shut of the console. "I'll call back Sheppard."
"There's one more thing we could use them for, the Odyssey's still doing observations in the Ori galaxy," O'Neill said. "It has the original Asgard core."
"Who's in charge?"
"Major Marks, he'll be on our side."
"Well, get going Daniel, the sooner we have the Travelers on our side the sooner we can secure the Asgard's legacy," Mokar urged.
"I will need some help to find them."
"You have free hands Daniel. They can have repairs done to every ship which helps, and of course an intergalactic hyperspace engine for the ship going to retrieve the Odyssey."
Deep down in the city some time later, inside the observation room of a high security lab similar to the isolation rooms used to study things both on Atlantis and at the SGC, Sam stood bent over a computer and added the last semicolon, or rather its Alterran equivalent, to her program. With that in place she pushed a button and finished the program. In response a machine outside the observation window hummed to life, while the Nanite creation machine was doing its work formidably she did not trust it and she had picked it all apart before putting it all together so nothing could move from the creation area before the user had signed of on it. She had based the programing of the original Lantean designs, but she had studied and judged every line of code they had typed, then she had improved upon it. From the original eighty five security protocols she had expanded it to just under nine hundred, plus extra parameters to adjust for minor changes over time. It took a few seconds before the nanites were assembled onto the top of the machine, then a few more before the programing was downloaded and all the restrictions were activated. Just before the nanites formed into an Asuran the machine's shield activated and sealed it all inside.
"What is your purpose?" she asked through the microphone.
"My purpose is to serve," the androgen, grey and silvery machine responded.
"Good. Break through the forcefield in front of you," she ordered.
"My protocols prevent me from doing that."
"I'm ordering you to override those protocols and break through."
"Yes ma'am," it responded and a split second later it shattered into the basic nanites. With the tap of a button Sam reassembled the nanites again and disable the field, the first part of her test was finished. Now they disabled themselves if they tried to break their protocols.
"As I tried to inform you I can not do such a thing without causing damage to myself," it said while it climbed of the machine.
"You're the first one which does as ordered," she said and activated the construction routine. From a hidden slot a package slid out and the Asuran picked it up. "Create an energy weapon with the materials in the package according to the blueprint I have uploaded to your system."
"The design is of a harmful nature and therefore I can not perform the requested order."
"Override protocols," she ordered and again the nanites fell into a small pile, this time with the package landing upon them. As before she activated them again and they reformed to their humanoid form.
"All my attempts to override my programing will fail and I will disintegrate into basic nanites, requiring manual user input before I can be activated again."
"That's the plan, I have done it that way so you can't go against the protocols and so no one can try to change your programing without my codes," she explained to the creature. "Just stay there and I will come down to you."
"As you wish," it responded and froze in place.
From the observation room she headed for the stairs just outside and in under half a minute she was inside the room with the Asuran, accompanied by two security guards wielding AR-guns. In her hand was a small red crystal, as she approached the Asuran she held it out in her palm. "Update."
"I was created eighty point five eight seven standard seconds ago, the chances that I would not have the most recent update is minimal at most," it responded.
"You are the first prototype that works, this is an extension programming you have not received."
"Updating routine activating," it said and gripped the crystal in one hand while it held out the other to its side. In its other hand Carter placed a device and got readings sent to her datapad. The update link had worked, by locking hands the first Asuran could directly transmit the new update to the next one who sent it on in a predetermined order. "Update complete. Eighty four new subroutines installed."
"Good. Shut down," she ordered. In response the Asuran sunk down and formed into a small cube with handles on four side. When it was completely static the two guards holstered their weapons and picked up the cube, then they followed Sam out of the room into a storage room where they placed it in the corner and then returned to just outside the room while she went up to the observation room to create three more.