Discontinuity: Indefatigable
by chaos_eternus

Six

A month Later

Six

A month Later…

"You are truly a God!"

Ah, the words she truly wished to hear. Now, she had her tools. Primitive tools certainly and circumstances ensured she would have to given them more knowledge then was perhaps safe, but her supply of Jaffa was not unlimited.

They were irritated at her for bolstering their ranks with inferiors but with the Jaffa being kept above the slaves she doubted it would go beyond grumbles in the barracks and if it did, why then she would just have to initiate a purge.

She may need the Jaffa but not to the point where she couldn't afford to lose a few to make the point.

Still, she had the Tau'ri ship, this ' Montgomery ' and about a third of her crew. Whilst they were proving more difficult to break then the usual rabble, they were breaking and already her Jaffa were being taught how to utilise these Earthers technology whilst her scientists were gaining far more.

She would have to adapt the design of the Ha'taks again, perhaps even introduce some new ship classes to get better usage out of the weaker technologies of this universe, at least until she could figure out how to adapt the normal pulse canon technology to this place, but this was all a matter of time.

Time.

She should have that, her location had been chosen quite carefully after all and she did already have her spies worming their way into the nearest planets and bases. Soon, she should have agents in their military. They was trickier of course, but her agents were well motivated, just ask their families.

It all boiled down to time, but she was used to that. It took time to replace warriors, time to build ships, prepare alliances. It took time to wage war, and then.

Then she would have all the time in the world.

A flash in the skies above caught her eyes and her eyes widened with surprise as night turned to day for a moment. Then all the devices and screens around her went dead for a precious few seconds before slowly coming back online.

Eyes wide with fury, she glared at the spot she knew had once held the Bernard Montgomery and trembled with fury.

"We may have caught a break," Picard noted, striding swiftly across the line which marked the border between Indefatigable and Starbase Thirty-one.

"Oh?" Ewing asked, nodding a welcome as he led the Captain deeper into the ship.

"A Romulan scout picked up an anti-proton flushback surge which appeared to be from a Federation warp-core on the far end of the Federation Romulan border. The surge occurred in a system interdicted under the Prime Directive."

"Fits," he mused, "if we're talking about a particularly primitive species."

"Humans," the Enterprise Captain noted dryly as he was led into the ships briefing room, "we suspect a preserver colony given their distinctly Roman leanings but proving that can often be difficult even when the group in question has advanced far enough for the Prime Directive not to apply."

"Which doesn't apply in this instance," Ewing noted, "and if that was the Bernard Montgomery then Osiris may well have fled the scene. She's arrogant but that doesn't always override her intelligence. Given that she seems to have decided she needs time before she can 'prove' herself...

Yes, I would bet she has fled."

"I don't doubt it," Picard noted, "but it will be several hours before we receive the report from the scout. In the meantime, we need to decide how we are going to react."

"I doubt she's there... if she is, then we need to monitor and quietly move as many ships into the area as possible then move in," he shrugged, "if she has been there and moved on, then it's in the hands of the scouts again. If it was something else, well... At the moment, this seems to change nothing."

"Agreed," came the swift reply, "and you're thought mirror mine on that, but that still leaves us the main issue. How do we destroy Osiris's fleet?"

"Perhaps a better question would be, how do we stop her fleet growing?" Ewing replied dryly, "that's an even bigger issue. She should not have been able to build the number of ships we have seen in the time she has had available to her, let alone crew them."

"We can build smaller ships in a month," Picard frowned, "but that is with the full facilities of places like the Antares Yards or Utopia Planetia. I see your point."

" Ha'tak class ships are usually built on planetary surfaces and by the Jaffa that crew them," a grunt of discontent came from the Tau'ri Captain, "they get away with that simply because the ships can overpower through the atmosphere and into space, no subtlety at all. Their new ships don't have that level of power."

"Not that we have witnessed," he acknowledged, accepting with a grateful smile the cup of tea that was handed to him, "and that also brings up the issue of crew. In order to support that many ships they have to be spreading the Jaffa out and for the time being at least, the conscripted crewmembers won't be anywhere near as capable as the Jaffa ."

"The scientists she has conscripted and those Starfleet crewmembers she had broken will help there," Picard winced at this, but made a tight nod of agreement, "but there may be issues trusting them. If that was the Bernard Montgomery that blew then the question is why? That was Osiris's biggest prize, I doubt she was going to be careless with her."

"The crew?"

"Possibly," Ewing noted, "certainly I tend to think so. The right crewperson in the right place..."

"Auto-destruct takes at least three... but if one of the ships senior engineers wanted the ship gone..."

"Then the auto-destruct would not have been necessary."

"Quite," the Starfleet Captain sighed, "but that still leaves the issue of how Osiris is building and crewing ships so fast."

"I have a few ideas there,"

"Oh?"

"First, the fighters, the Udajeet. That last engagement.... well, I have seen your reports and by your standards, there do seem to have been a lot of fighters involved, but by Goa'uld Ha'tak standards, there wasn't that many at all."

"Their crews have been diverted." Picard mused.

"She has to maximise the use of the crew she has, and the Udajeet are obsolete now even by Goa'uld standards." Ewing explained, "Given the pin-point accuracy of the local targeting systems, they are just sitting ducks. The Al-kesh are a different matter, shielded or cloaked, they are very much still useful, but the Udajeet are not."

"Do you think she is likely to upgrade or replace those Udajeet? "

"It's certainly possible, she has access to the bulk of Anubis's technologies and he certainly had more modern and capable designs. We haven't seen many of those since she came through the gate and that's interesting. It could mean she doesn't have any… but it could also mean she's keeping them in reserve or has found other uses for them."

"Supporting agents and infiltrators," Picard grimaced at the nod of confirmation, "Starfleet Intelligence is working on that but frankly, it's a damn big galaxy. There is no way we are going to be able to check everywhere just within the borders of the Federation, let alone our allies and the non-aligned races."

"That has always been our blessing and our curse as well," he replied, "but that I have to leave in your hands for the most part. As far as construction capability goes, it's not uncommon for Ha'taks to have some onboard construction capability. At the very least, they usually have the capability to replace Udajeet fighters.

The ability to build Al-Kesh bombers and even Tel-tac transports isn't uncommon either, but some Ha'taks , and we're talking about 1 in every 40 or so, can support the construction of full warships from start to finish."

Leaning backwards in his seat with a dismayed frown, the Captain of the Enterprise considered this for a moment, "you think at least one of Osiris's ships might have this capability?"

"The circumstantial evidence seems to support it," Ewing noted, "but there is also a joker in the deck, the Rel'tec. "

This was considered for a moment then with a sigh, "you don't know what construction capabilities she has."

"We can presume and infer she can build at least Tel'tecs, Al-kesh and the like," he shrugged, "beyond that? We have never had a chance to properly examine an operational Rel'tec, not even a Free Jaffa one. I was hearing rumours when we left that an abandoned Cheops may have been spotted by a MALP probe but beyond that…"

"What do you think would be the biggest bar to new construction on Osiris's part?" Picard asked after a few moments.

"Trinium," Ewing replied promptly, "the Naquadah generators she can replace with anti-matter reactors, there are technologies she can use for everything from weapons to producing small parts but trinium seems to have no real analogue. The complex honeycomb of materials and structural integrity force fields in use by most in this galaxy instead she may be able to duplicate in time, but she isn't going to hit the capability and strength of a Sovereign hull in a hurry and even that isn't as weapons fire resistant as a trinium armoured hull."

"Small mercies," he noted dryly in reply, "but whilst we've proven we can destroy the Ha'taks, that Rel'tec is going to be the problem."

"If Anubis has fully modernised it," came the quiet reply, "then a single full strength salvo from the maximum number of batteries that can reasonably be brought to bear, which is usually about a third, would instantly turn Indefatigable into a mission kill. We have had to deal with such ships in the past and usually they divide their fire too much to instant kill our ships or they haven't been fully modernised, but the capability exists."

"Merde," Picard noted, as he contemplated exactly what that meant for Starfleet ships.