On the southern pier of Atlantis the Traveler ship was finishing preparations and the engineers were tidying up after themselves before leaving the ship to the Travelers again. With the worst of the damage patched up the ship was once again fit for the dangers of space. It had only received the most dire repairs so it had only taken two days. After going through launch procedures the ship hurried away from the planet. At a safe distance above the planet it activated the old hyperspace engine and performed a short hyperspace jump. At their destination awaited the small supergate. When the ground station detected their approach it dropped the supergate's cloak and begun the process of dialling the second Alterran supergate. A few seconds later the connection was created and the gate activated. Then the ship slipped through and the gate closed after them. With everything going quiet the Asuran controlled ground station activated the cloak again and let the gate vanish.
"Here we are." Sheppard said when the ship had moved away from the supergate. With the gate now back in standby mode the only illumination came from the star which cast its warm light across the system.
"Sensors show nothing but asteroids," a crew member reported. He did not even have to look at Larrin to know the question she had been going to ask.
In response Sheppard held up a finger and pressed the com badge on his collar. "Colonel Carter, requesting permission to dock with section eight, dry dock two."
-Accepted- came her response just a second later. On an asteroid a few kilometers ahead white and blue lines appeared and grew in size as the massive blast doors slid away, instead revealing force fields which held the atmosphere inside.
"Still nothing but asteroids on the sensors."
"We're using Alterran jamming technology," Sheppard explained as they approached the growing hole in the asteroid. "So just head for the light and we'll be fine."
"Do it," Larrin ordered.
Slowly the ship moved towards the asteroid and as it came closer it begun to slow down until it just barely moved forward. At first the shield only looked as a bright spot but as it took up more and more of the viewport the view of the interior begun to filter through the blue and white shield, revealing a large space which had been carved into the asteroid itself. The space had been divided into six small docks and one much larger dock.
In two of the smaller docks ribcages had been constructed and the engineers were in the process of adding the outer hull of the small vessels, whose outline was an almost copy of the Traveler generation ship. In the larger dock something else entirely was sitting.
A large vessel flying the Alterran military colours, red, grey and black. At four hundred and thirty five meter it was two times the length of the 304 and just shy of half a wraith Cruiser, but a width of a hundred meters put it around the 304 and the Traveler Generation ship. What made it remarkable however was the narrow height of twenty meters that really gave it a sleek, blade-looking, profile.
When the front of their ship touched the shield tractor beams inside the asteroid activated and turned the ship around while still maintaining the momentum. This meant the ship was neatly reversed into the drydock right between the two ribcages.
-Welcome to the Athyl shipyard. You are currently in section eight, one of only two sections which is currently operationable,- a smooth and soft, computer generated, voice came through Sheppard's com badge.
"What is all of this?" Larrin asked.
"As our virtual assistant just said this system is called Athyl," he said. Outside they could see ledges along the walls. When the ship settled down the ledges begun to extend towards the ship and men and women hurried out onto them. "It was built by the Alterra and has stood since their fall. We thought about using it to build ships for ourselves at first, but now that you've told us about your situation it's dedicated to building a new fleet of generation ships for your people."
"So what ship was it we landed just above? There's no ship like that in our fleet."
"It's Katana's new ship, The Retributor," Sheppard explained. "It's our way of compensating her for the ship that was destroyed in our care."
"It has a most peculiar shape."
"Yes, it's a Lantean design made during their war with the Wraith. They never finished it but we fixed the last things," he said and gestured for the exit of the bridge. "But before we let you tour the station I have been asked to take you to one of the the archive rooms, we wish to show you something."
"Lead the way."
The way he lead her on was a long one, first going by one of the ships which was being constructed and then all the way back to the other ship, before finally entering a room which was about ten by ten meters. Except for the black sphere which was half hidden at the center of the floor there was nothing to separate the circular room, with its brownish rock walls and grey floor, from the rest of the tunnels which were found inside the asteroid. When they entered the room that all changed, from the floor the sphere rose and begun to project a variety of things into the room, everything from the layout of the station to the blueprints of every ship built to information on every ship to ever dock with the station.
"Welcome. New user detected," a holographic woman said from the other side of the room. She was dressed in the normal white robes of the Alterran and her black, straight, hair waved from side to side as she walked from the other side of the room to the center, just below the hovering orb. "I am a holographic representation of this station and through me all records in my system can be accessed."
"What was the original purpose of this station?" Sheppard asked the hologram.
"This station was built to construct ships for the Alterran Empire," the hologram said while hundreds of ship designs spun around it.
"What was the purpose of the two small ships being built at the moment?"
"To fight the Wraith."
"Explain," Larrin demanded in confusion.
"Forty eight years after the wraith emerged in the galaxy you have named Pegasus the Alterra felt they could win the war in time, as the wraith harvested thousands of humans each day just to keep their war machine going the Alterra felt they needed to end it much sooner. Due to their advanced psychology and low numbers only a few hundred Alterran were born every decade, still the Alterra felt they needed to create a large military force in only a few years. By this point the Alterra had already created the race you call Lanteans, but they too were advanced in their psychology and could not reproduce fast enough." As the hologram spoke holograms of wraith ships and warriors moving around the room were mixed with Alterra and Lanteans reproducing. "A few years later the design for this ship was created by the Lanteans to move the population of the galaxy into deep space. Based on simple technology the design was easily built and did not require the rarer resources used as a base in the more advanced Alterran technologies. This allowed their shipyards to produce hundreds of ships each year, all sent to Pegasus. Once in Pegasus it is unclear what happened to the ships. The Lantean plan was to train the native human population to fight and resist the wraith with the ships, mostly by protecting other human worlds but also by seeking out wraith strongholds. This however was only discovered by the Alterra shortly before they died out as a species and when they did the Lanteans no longer had access to most of their shipyards. With the plan revealed the Alterra ordered the ships to flee into deep space, staying away from the wraith as best they could. When this station lost power many millions of years ago all ships were presumed to have been destroyed."
"We found this in the datacore a few days ago, I was only informed of this a few hours before we left Atlantis," Sheppard said.
"This is amazing, so everyone of our ships were built here?" Larrin asked
"Only a few, most were built in Pegasus."
"So they meant for us to fight the wraith?"
"The Lanteans yes," he confirmed. "But the Alterra did not like the thought of sending out humans to die in ships which they knew were far inferior to those of the wraith. They wanted a fleet to combat the wraith, but they wanted quality as well as large numbers. The ship you saw while we docked was what they would have wanted you to fight with, the Alterran plan, as far as we can tell, was for these new ships to replace those you have now."
"Then why create two new Generation ships?"
"A test mostly. We wanted to see if the design was viable to be used for a new serie of ships to replace those you have."
"Why do that if you're building this new class to fight the wraith with?"
"Infrastructure really, we don't have the engineers to build more than one of these large ships at a time. But two small can be done with those we have remaining, plus you already have the hull to start with. It will be just like the upgrading done on Atlantis, only much more thorough."
"So with more people you could create more at the same time?"
"Yes, we're already training some of Katana's people to help, but more would be welcome."
"I will have someone round up those willing to help on my ship as soon as I can."
"You can talk to Colonel Carter about that. Now I'm sure you have more questions for the station, but I have to leave with the Retribution for the Milky Way in a few minutes." He searched his pocket and found a com badge which he pressed into her hand. "Ask for Carter when you're done and someone will come for you."
With rapid steps he left the room and hurried to the dock where the Retribution was waiting for him. The grey, red and black hull glimed as the star's rays reflected of it. When he stepped onto the ramp it begun to contract into the ship and the two halves of the hull which had opened to let the ramp extrude begun to close and sealed the hull a few seconds later. "I'm on board now," he said into the com badge as he walked through two airlocks which sealed behind him. Inside the ship the same red, grey and black colours could be found everywhere. The ship had three long corridors which went from front to back with crew quarters between the hull and the outer corridors. Inside, between the corridors, were the secondary and primary bridges, the drone hold, engineering, infirmary and everything else necessary to run the ship. Close to the back of the ship a small hangar was hidden beneath thick plates of armour.
The primary bridge he headed for sat on the forth fifth of the ship and when he entered it was filled with people, each one sitting at consoles which controlled the hundreds of weapons hidden beneath the hull of the ship or the drones that waited to be deployed. A few consoles remained unmanned though since the ship had not been loaded with any unmanned fighters which would be directed from the empty consoles while the pilots themselves sat deeper inside the ship.
"Colonel," Katana greeted him when he came onto the bridge.
"Captain," he replied.
"Have a seat Sir," she offered. Standing up from the Captain's chair.
"Don't call me that, this is your ship and you're in charge," he said, ignoring her offer.
"But you're in command of this mission and therefore this ship," she said.
"Fine," he said, giving up his attempt to change her mind. "You can take us out Captain."
"Destination?" she asked while their pilot took the ship out of the dock.
"The supergate. We'll take it back to Pegasus and then we'll do a jump from there to the Milky Way."
"You heard the Colonel, do a micro jump back to the gate," she ordered.
A few seconds after her order was given the ship performed a micro jump through hyperspace to the gate which had been dialled from the station. Once there it waited for the gate to finish its activation, then it slipped through the gate, back into Pegasus.
When the pilot tried to plot a course for the Milky Way and Earth a pedestal arose from the floor right in front of Sheppard who lay a hand on the top. After checking his DNA the ship matched it against a list of authorised personnel and only then did it allow the hyperdrive to plot the intergalactic jump. Still it took four seconds before the hyperspace window formed, this time was used to activate a number of extra generators and to initiate the ZPM, neither of which were used during normal operations. Now they were used to give them a great speed boost through the white and blue hyperspace window.