"Colonel the ship's cleared of hostiles," Cadman announced from the Asgard console.
"Good work. Time to pack up, we're going back to the bridge," Sheppard praised while he unlocked both doors to the room.
"Yes Sir," the two women said as they retrieved their weapons.
There was a short distance between the bridge and the Asgard core but just a few dozen meters from the bridge Sheppard heard a scream behind him. When he spun around he heard another shout and felt a sharp pain cutting into his head. Now in front of him was both Crown and Cadman twisting around on the floor in pain and what he could only assume was a prior standing over them with his staff in his hand. From the crystal at the top of the staff a white light was enveloping the entire corridor. "Do not fight it. Embrace the light and be saved. Eternal bliss awaits you."
"Then i… it c.. it can wait." Even as he felt a massive force pressing down on his shoulders and pressing him down on one knee he managed to raise his right arm. In his right hand he held his weapon and he pressed the trigger, in response the prior called fort a shield which absorbed the energy the weapon spit forward. Then a bang rang out and the prior stumbled backwards. With one hand he tried to heal the open wound on his chest but his attention had wavered for a few seconds and the shield failed. With the shield down Sheppard filled the prior with holes before collapsing on the floor.
A few seconds later he had recovered enough to get off the floor and he could see the pistol in Crown's hand which was pointed in the direction of the prior. It took him two seconds to realize that neither Crown nor Cadman planned to get up and to fall to his knees between them. With quick hands he pressed his fingers to both the women's necks but he there was no pulse beating inside either of them. "Two men down in the bridge access corridor," he shouted into his com badge, but the others had already heard the commotion and were running to his aid. "Major make sure the Retribution's med bay is ready for us."
"Yes Sir," she responded and ran back to the bridge.
Next to him two marines from Edison's team had started performing CPR on the two women while Edison and the others were ready to take over when needed. Sheppard meanwhile took a firm grip around the priors leg and pulled him away, he had something special in mind for him and his friends.
Sam had been studying the Nest, as O'Neill had chosen to translate it from Alterran, for well over twelve hours. The details of the design was amazing down to the scale that she could go into every single control crystal and change it slightly to see how the change would affect the entire ship. It was still not complete though and it lacked several key systems which the Alterra had never got the chance to fix, but she was sure that the Asgard core held plenty of solutions. One of the largest problems for the ship was its shield, it was already huge so any extra armour would be too expensive and cumbersome so it would rely solely on shields, the problem was that the Alterra did not have a good enough shield matrix and shield emitters that could produce a shield of that size. Then there was the three main beam weapons that, along with the rest of the ship, did not have an energy source capable of delivering enough power for a long enough time. It was this last problem that the Arcturus reactor had hoped to solve, but she hoped the Asgard had something to solve both of these problems and the hundreds of smaller problems. When she closed the file she opened a holographic star map and entered the coordinates from the rapport. Above her head the stars changed and twisted as it tried to locate the coordinates. When it stopped she saw a number of solar systems at the edge of the hologram and a large empty sphere at the center with the word "Classified" written across it in Alterran. When she zoomed out the hologram she quickly found a blue dot which showed her location, only a few solar systems from the coordinates.
"Katy do we have any ships scheduled for a test flight any time soon?" she said into her com badge.
-Katy's finished her shift already ma'am,- her second assistant replied. Sam's new Lantean nature meant that she needed two assistants to cover her own work time. -According to the station's log the only ship we have available is Larrin's retrofitted ship ma'am.-
"Tell her to ready the ship for a short tripp."
-Yes ma'am,- came the reply while she was throwing together some things in a backpack to bring with her.
Two point three minutes later she burst out of her office and into the foyer where still dozen of people waited to talk to her, but she ignored them and hurried on into a transporter booth that sent her down to the hangar. In the hangar she activated a pair of rings hidden in the floor and when they fell back down again she was onboard Larrin's ship.
In a galaxy, quite literally, far far away Mokar's journey came to an end when his shuttle dropped out of FTL close to the very center of the galaxy. As it did the shuttle sounded an automatic alarm to wake up any passengers who were still sleeping, such as Mokar. In the back of the ship four beds could be folded down, out of the wall, and on one of these Mokar had been sleeping until the alarm woke him up. Because it was such a long journey most Alterra had reported it to be a serene and peaceful experience, but as he had approached his destination he had gotten a bad headache which only got worse the closer he got. And he knew that was not normal for an Alterran to have, but then nothing about this was normal. Outside the shuttle he could see the solar system where he had meant to arrive and two of the planets in it while the other eight had been crushed into dust and rocks. Before his eyes a bright blue star in the distance, but still one of the closest ones, flashed and exploded while the remaining two planets were flash burnt by the wave of only seconds after. Quickly he begun to retake manual control of the shuttle and banked right to outrun it, but he knew the engines were still too hot. Five seconds later he had turned the shuttle around and activated the FTL-drive, for almost half a minute he sat there and waited, then the FTL-drive overloaded and a series of small explosions sent it spinning without control. When he managed to stabilise the shuttle he tuned the sensors to detect gamma radiation and on a screen he could see the wave of radiation rolling towards him. As the minutes passed by the wave rolled ever closer and when he tried to raise what little shield the shuttle had it glimmered to life for a second before the cabin was filled with smoke from the burning shield emitter. When the radiation wave was within a meter of the ship it split and flowed right around the ship as if a shield had formed around it. It took well over two hours before the radiation had decreased to acceptable levels and the protective bubble disappeared moments after. During the two hours he was waiting in the shuttle he could see several spontane explosions which appeared around the ship and were deflected. A few seconds after the radiation levels had decreased to acceptable levels he could feel someone or something coming towards him from the back of the shuttle. It was far from a surprise to him when he saw one of his ascended kin coming through the aft wall with its white tentacles licking the walls and the roof.
"You can show your true form to me, I know well what you are," he said.
"It has been long since we talked to one of our own who has not yet ascended" the being replied while its form shifted slightly to show a feminine and very human face along with the outlines of a human body. "I think this is as close as I can get to my true form here without returning entirely to your form."
"It is fine my friend, it is only that I am not used to conversations with energy based beings. It is slightly unnerving that you can kill me with a thought." He could feel the doubt in the ascended woman's voice and he was as unsure himself about how to handle the situation even if he was the one who had sought them out.
"I assure you that I will not harm you. But there are others who would do so if they knew about you." As if on cue she turned around and formed a shield in front of her moments before an energy blast evaporated the back of the shuttle. The moment the blast vanished she had already formed an energy bolt of her own and threw it back into the emptiness of space, which turned out to be not so empty when it exploded against a weak shield. A second follow up blast from the ascended woman exploded in the same place, but this time there was no shield to stop it, instead the blast sent millions of shards, which reminded him of colored glass, flying in all directions.
"Perhaps you can take me to a more friendly environment for a longer conversation?"
The woman looked puzzled at him then seemed to come to realization and formed a protective bubble around them. The speed at which they moved at surprised him as he saw hundreds of solar systems flash by in a matter of seconds before they came to a dead stop just a few centimeters above the ground of a lush world. "It has been so long since any of us required oxygen that I had forgotten about it."
"It is alright sister, memory fades over time. But I am still surprised that one of our kin would attack us."
The posture of the woman changed significantly when she heard it "I would have thought one of our kin would have known about the Ori."
"Of course but the humans from Avalon fought a war and won against them," he said as they walked through a field of red and yellow flowers.
"I would have asked you to tell that to the Ori who I just killed, but seeing as he is dead I have to find us another one." Her tone was sharp and cold.
"Then why did the Ori crusade end?"
"Because the seeded managed to take out the Ori leaders and cause chaos in their ranks." Her tone softened up slightly as they left the field and crossed into a forest with giant trees, hundreds of meters high and with blue leafs. "But I will admit that they helped our fight too."
"I wasn't aware that there had been any fighting with the Ori on your plane of existence." The news was shocking for him, he had thought the Tau'ri had been the only ones to battle with the Ori.
"You have seen how fast we can travel and the Ori could move just as fast before. Had we known that the Ori themselves would follow their soldiers we would have destroyed their gates before they could use them. Their crusade managed to drain our power while they boosted the Ori's. We lost the galaxies of Shaban, Aryg, Mubt, Annwn, Opar and Thuleanor, they even managed to take Avery before we managed to organise ourselves and put a stop to their advance. We managed to turn back several assaults on Darecian at a heavy cost. Then they lost the majority of their power and we gained a good boost. At the moment we are chasing them back through Libee and we hope to have them out of our territory soon."
"So will you chase after them back to Freya and end this? Your guidance would be most helpful."
"I fear that will not be happening," she said and looked upwards to the large blue leaves. "The ascended realm is in constant war and the Ori cut a long and bloody path through hundreds of other territories. We would have moved in and secured the territory but we have been under siege for as long as we can remember. When we first ascended we had to take our current territory from another group of ascended beings."
"I understand sister," he said and saw her look up again. "They're calling for you?"
"Yes, everyone is needed to drive the Ori back before their followers can be converted back to Origin."
"Before they regain their powers you mean," he said in understanding. "When they do that they will come after you again."
"Yes, as you should know we gain power from those on your plane believing in us, either voluntarily or by force like the Ori does. The seeded in one of the new galaxies have been a great help along with those in Avalon who still believe in us. Believe me brother when I say that we all want you to rebuild our empire again, it would strengthen us to the point where we could push away anyone from our borders and aid your efforts. We will help if we can brother, but I can not promise you anything." With another look upwards she begun to float away but before she disappeared away a small white orb floated down into his open hands and formed a data storage unit. A few meters above the ground she stopped and looked down on him one last time. "One of our scouts in Avalon report that they have just destroyed a small Ori fleet which came through the gate. The wraith do not yet know about you and what you are doing, it would be wise if you cleaned up Avalon before you go after the wraith. Deal with the parasitic nuisance of the Goa'uld before they become a threat, then seal the Ori gate. After that you will have a core fleet to bring down on the wraith. Be wary brother, there is another who is just as evolved as you are, we do not have the time to deal with it but you will have no choice." With those words she was gone and he was alone to find the planet's gate.