"What's happening?" Daniel had just gotten down from the jumper hangar above and the control room was in chaos.

At the centre of it all Mokar was standing calm and collected. "Three ships are approaching the planet and they are flying dangerously close to a small Wraith fleet. If they are the ships I think they are then a hive, two cruisers and a complement of darts is easy prey for them. But their hyperdrives seem to be damaged, Atlantis sensors managed to pick up their hyperdrive signatures long before they should have been found and they are traveling slower than any of the ships should. They are also not transmitting any identification signals to us. If the wraith detects them they can follow them here and I do not think I have to tell you that we are not ready for a full scale war with the wraith. Even if the wraith do not follow them here more wraith will come to see where the ships came from."

"Hyperdrive signatures detected around the wraith fleet." The report came from a technician. "Wraith ships have entered hyperspace and are leaving the immediate area." A collective sigh of joy rang out in the control room.

"Track them, predict heading and stops."

People returned to their normal positions and resumed their work now that the danger was over. "They're heading straight for wraith territory. They will likely have to stop at least twenty times before they have returned there."

"Find the closest rally point with a Retributor and order it to intercept and destroy the fleet. Only Retributors, not a single Generation ship. I do not want the wraith to connect the two."

"The fleet will pass close to two of our forward defensive bases, each has a Retributor." The rally points were eight points above the galactic plane where their ships were stationed and waiting for orders, they were simply coordinates and could be moved at will. The defensive bases were surviving Alterran installations they used, like the drone factory which was filling up Atlantis hold.

"Good, send them both to be sure that nothing goes wrong." Again the control room was in full action as the order was relayed and confirmed.

"Defensive base six wants to know approach pattern."

"Diffuse approach and cloaked attack."

"Yes Sir."

"Send some ships to escort the approaching ships too, they might need help before they can arrive here."

With a small escort of ships around them the pilot eased the Retaliation, Larrin's Retribution class ship, down through the atmosphere. It was only the Retaliation, the Odyssey and the Retribution which were going down to Atlantis, the other ships banked away, they would return to their stations and rally points.

She heard her crew getting them their permission to dock with Atlantis at one of the piers which quickly approached. A large group of technicians stood ready on the pier when the ship drifted into place and systems hidden in the side of the pier activated. Cranes came out of the side of the pier and hugged the ship when it stopped. The ship was well over four hundred meters long and a hundred meters wide at her widest , it would not have fitted on top of the pier and while the docking system was made for ships like the Aurora, one thousand five hundred meters long and two hundred wide, it gladly accepted the Retributors.

While the ship docked Larrin walked down to the lower level of the ship and waited for the hull plates to move aside so she could exit her ship.

When the BC-304 came down onto the pier the city shook slightly. It was in horrible shape, smoke was rolling out of cracks in the armour and from its belly dripped an assortment of liquids. After touching down the ship was still for several minutes before the gangplank began to lower beneath the ship. Through the gap between the hull and the gangplank Mokar could see three pair of feet which walked further and further out on the plank. Quite some distance above the pier the gangplank stopped moving and hydraulic fluid begun to run down the outside of the pistons which held it up. As he watched the ramp suddenly dropped down and one of the pistons followed it. Almost immediately personel was there to help Cooper, Kleinman and Gant away from the ship.

After checking that everyone was fine Mokar walked up the ramp and into the ship. He could feel something tugging to get his attention and he let it guide him. He had to turn around and take other routes a few times due to damaged sections but he finally walked into the Asgard core room.

Daniel came into the room a few seconds later and he could see Mokar standing in front of the dullest of the walls in the room. The Agard insisted that nothing was done to the wall because they had embedded some technology into the wall and any changes to it could damage it, hence the wall was a boring dark gray slab of metal. For a moment Daniel thought the man had gone crazy when he stood there and looked like the wall was a very interesting piece of architecture. He looked at him for more than a minute and saw him touch the wall from time to time. Daniel had been in the room several times, even if he prefered the Asgard knowledge room which he found easier to work with, but it felt different this time. The room felt almost alive when he touched the walls. Blue sparks danced around his fingers when he pulled them over the wall.

"Daniel. Do not touch anything and do not move."

"What? Why?"

"I know you can use some of the Lantean powers. Focus on your eyes and try to see what I see. There is more to this place than you can see." To the Alterra such perceptive powers came naturally and without any effort, but Lanteans had to focus to hold onto it. As a Lantean grew closer to Alterran standards such easy things could go automatically for them too, but only Sheppard and O'Neill, before his transformation into Alterra, were biologically advanced enough for those powers to come easily.

"I've always sat down when I did that, I don't think I can do that standing up." For some Lanteans it was easier to focus the powers into the right senses when they sat down and no one was helped by being told to stand still.

"There is a shaped force field covering much of your body Daniel, if you try to sit down I do not know what will happen."

He could feel Daniel collecting his inner energies as he tried to see what the Asgard had hidden from them.

Close to what could be seen as the border into wraith controlled space the two Retributors sat silently. The arrowhead shaped hulls where dark and would have blended perfectly with the surrounding void, even when their powerful cloaks were not activated. Now both ships had their cloaks running on full power to make sure the approaching wraith ships did not detect them. Along the arrowhead shaped hulls of the retributors the four pulse weapons which acted as the ship's main weapons had risen from beneath the shifting armour plates which made up its outer hull. Around fifty weaker turrets designed specifically to deal with darts lay beneath the plates and waited for when they would be called upon.

Some time after their arrival the hive and its two escorting cruisers returned from hyperspace. Both Retributors had lay side by side in the vast expanse and the wraith fleet had arrived straight in front of them. Almost as soon as the wraith fleet had arrived the Retributors broke up and begun a pincer movement. Once in position the ships dropped their cloaks. Each of the eight pulse weapons rang out in succession and the two cruisers were impacted by four blasts each. One of the cruisers begun to tilt and in seconds it had begun to spiral away from the other two wraith ships with only one engine working. The other cruiser was luckier and begun to turn to face the the Retributor which had attacked it.

Another salvo left the spiraling cruiser floating without power or control. By now the hive had assessed the situation and opened the large hangar doors. Almost a thousand darts deployed and rushed towards the two attacking vessels, who to the wraith seemed to lack anti-fighter weapons. Meanwhile both the hive and the remaining cruiser had their hyperdrives destroyed by the joined firepower of the two Retributors. Once the darts had been fully committed to the battle and where almost a minute from the hive the armour plates on the hull moved around and just over half of the ship's anti-fighter weapons rose up into firing positions. In seconds they reduced the number of darts to half and after two minutes less than a hundred darts remained.

Without hyperdrive the hive launched the remaining darts, some three thousand. At the edge of the battle the formerly spinning cruiser was limping back in between one of the Retributors and the hive with its darts on a collision course. For the first time the battle was equal and the darts which still streamed out of the hive was turning it against the Retributors. With quickly shrinking shield strength the two Retributors returned their weapons inside the armour and activated their hyperdrives. When they returned from hyperspace again they had only been gone a split second but it was enough to get the ships to the other side of the battlefield. Because the Retributors had their weapons mounted in moveable turrets they released salvo after salvo from their main weapons while they turned around to face the hive again. With the Retributors now behind it the hive tried to turn around, but the plasma bolts from the Retributors cut through the armour and secondary explosions begun to tear the hive apart piece by piece. With the hive destroyed the two cruisers split up and tried to escape while their hyperdrives slowly grew back. The darts meanwhile all headed for one of the Retributors determined to take at least one of their attackers with them into death. With only seconds to go before the darts would reach the Retributor less than fifty remained of the swarm and more darts were destroyed until only six reached the shields of the Retributor. The weakened shield of the Retributor failed half a minute later when they engaged the two cruisers, but below the shield the thick armour plates waited and held their ground against the plasma bolts from the cruisers. Salvo after salvo were exchanged between the two sides, until finally one of the cruisers exploded and damaged the second cruiser which was destroyed seconds later.

A/N: First proper battle scene in the series I think, not counting the one above Earth because it was pretty pathetic. Now please give me your thoughts about it. What's good? What's bad? Etc.