A/N – Second chapter, it's getting more mysterious and someone familiar has a nice entrance onto the stage.
o-0-o
General O'Neill stood on a catwalk placed in a large underground complex and looked at the hulls of new BC-304 ships that were taking shape on the slips below. He could see robots weld plates of armor onto the superstructure and in other places human workers were finishing work on more delicate systems that required human touch. Each and every one of those ships was a dangerous and graceful predator, each line screaming technological superiority. Their sharp angles and matte black paint made them look even more dangerous and scary. It was saying that they don't need fancy colors to show that they were better than everything else.
"How much better they will these be over current BC-304?" He finally asked as he turned to look at an officer standing to his side. Colonel Robert Jackson was one of rising stars of the Stargate Program.
"According to our estimations between ten and twenty percent, and those are the conservative assumptions. More optimistic ones say that it will be around forty percent."
"Do you have a list of who gets which ships?"
"Yes," Robert said and checked a couple of things on a tablet he was holding. "Russia will have the Tsar Nikolai as their ship."
"They are hoping this one won't end up destroyed after the very first engagement?" O'Neill asked, turning to look at his aide.
"Looks like it, sir," Roberto said and once again focused on his tablet. "The UK will get two of them, they chose the names HMS Hood and HMS Anson., France will have the Richelieu and we will have the USS Shangri-La, the USS Phoenix, the USS Ares and the USS Athena."
"How soon we will have them?"
"If they continue to work as fast as they are now then in six weeks all of them should be finished and ready for training in space. Tsar Nikolai and Ares will be the first two to be finished, in fact they will leave their slips in a week."
"Perfect," O'Neill said "What can you tell me about this Block 32 upgrade?"
"The interior of the ship is slightly rearranged and the hull is six meters longer than in a normal BC-304, we redesigned sensors based on an Asgard design, added two more plasma beams, eight ion cannons, and the naquadah generators got around thirty percent more power output."
"Which means that they are better than anything that the Lucian Alliance can throw at us," he smiled and tapped his earpiece. "What?" He asked, unsure if he understood it correctly. "Of course, I'll be there."
"What is it, sir?"
"Daedalus has found something and they want me there," O'Neill said and turned to look at Jackson. "It is supposed to be huge as Carter asked for assistance from the Odyssey and Apollo, the three of them are beaming aboard scientists and Marines. It should be deserted, but..." He shrugged. "Until we are sure that it is deserted we need to go in with guns ready and check if there are any enemies awaiting us."
"Even on a station that was deserted for past ten thousand years?"
"Especially there," O'Neill said and stood still waiting for a beam to latch on to him and whisk him away to the Hammond. He smiled when he saw the beam of light envelop him and when he looked around he saw that he was on the bridge of his favorite ship.
"General," Carter nodded when she saw him arrive. "Everything is ready and you were the last one that we needed to pick up."
"Take us there," he said and moved out of the way of the bridge crew. He saw them work with an efficiency not many had. Moments after the order was given engines started to push the nimble craft away from Earth and into the void of space. Saturn was far enough away to use the hyperdrive so the window in space and time opened in front of them and moments later they were in the outer part of the system.
The massive planet Saturn was to their left as the Hammond and her sisters sped through space, heading for the largest moon of this gas giant. Their engines pushed them forward with a speed previously impossible to achieve, but now completely reachable. Passing through the rings of Saturn they slowed down, preparing to take an orbit around Titan. On O'Neill's face was a weird smile as he saw the ominous moon grow in size.
"There is an incoming transmission from the station," reported the Communication officer.
"On the main display," Carter said and on a large display set in the wall appeared the face of Sheppard. "John."
"Sam," Sheppard said in greeting. "We are sending you landing coordinates, according to McKay it is large enough to house you and several dozen more ships."
She nodded and turned to look at the helmsman. "Take us there."
"At once, ma'am."
The Hammond nimbly broke orbit and descended into the atmosphere, as they crossed the threshold between the void and atmosphere the whole ship shook for a moment as it's systems adapted to a different environment than the one in which it normally worked.
"I'm no longer controlling her," the helmsman reported and all of them looked at him. "Something overrode my control over drives and steering remotely."
O'Neill glanced at Colonel Carter, she with a shrug indicated the main window. He looked and saw the Hammond fly towards a large hole in the surface of the planet, there was the faint glow of a force field protecting it. It was too narrow to allow for a manual steering. The Hammond safely entered the hole and as they looked outside they could see perfectly smooth walls. They were cut out of stone and polished to perfection, shining lightly.
After something that seemed like an eternity they entered a cavernous space empty of rock and instead filled with dozens of landing pads placed along the edges of the cave. Tractor beams latched onto the hull of the Hammond and dragged her to one of the closest ones.
"That's service I wouldn't mind to have," O'Neill said as their ride ceased and they used the transporter beam to get onto the pad. He walked to the edge of it and whistled as he looked into the hole. "Carter, how deep is it?"
"Fifteen kilometers," McKay said walking to them. "From what we have found, this is one of the main docking facilities used for bigger ships, but not for the biggest ones. There is special landing place for Atlantis and by the looks of it she was not the single city-ship they constructed. There are at least four more, or were."
O'Neill sighed and rolled his eyes. "Carter, take scientists and anybody else that you think is important and him." O'Neill pointed his finger at McKay. "While I will go and talk with Sheppard and Mitchell. They should be able to tell me something more useful than he is able to."
He didn't wait for their acknowledgement and walked towards a nearby room where he spotted Sheppard and Mitchell.
o-0-o
A burst of subspace signals sent by a probe from the Sol System raced across the void between stars and into the void between galaxies, heading towards the Andromeda Galaxy. It was a signal from a drone that was almost forgotten by the ones that left it, and many of them didn't even believe that it was there.
The signal entered a large solar system with three wide asteroid belts and two stars in the middle of it. Around the stars were fourteen planets, six of them habitable for almost all kinds of creatures and two out of them rich in neutronium. The subspace signal headed for a ship floating above one of them, it's hull painted gray and screaming technological superiority. It's shape was alien looking with a long hull, lacking any sharp lines that ended with a wide arc filled with weapon mounts. In the middle of the arc there was a raised dais where the bridge was located along with most of the communication arrays used by the ship. Those facilities were the targets for which the signal was aiming.
"Peculiar," muttered the individual standing on the bridge, his gaze focused on a holographic displayed covered in rows upon rows of runes, the meaning of which only he was able to see. He moved a couple of stones on a console in front of him and looked at the data sent by the probe.
"So the Fifth Race discovered their inheritance," he said to himself and moved a couple of runic stones on a console in front of him. "They were worthy allies when we gave their first ship some upgrades to make it able survive a confrontation with the Goa'uld, now they will be even better."
One of many runes covering the display blinked a couple of times, getting his attention as he looked at the flashing sign. He tapped it with one of his long, thin fingers and looked at the image that appeared on the display, pushing the other things currently presented to the side.
"High Commander Thor, you are ordered to travel to the home of the Nox and begin preparations for the first summit of the Four Great Races," said the person who's head appeared on the screen.
"What about the Tau'ri?" The now-named Thor asked."They are ones who are the main concern at the moment as they have discovered Arkadia."
"That is exactly why you will travel to the Nox and pass them an invitation for the summit that needs to converge. Representatives fromthe Alterans and Furlings visited me and spoke about this discovery, they want humanity to be brought into its rightful place."
"I understand, Penegal," Thor said, moving control stones and preparing his ship to leave the orbit of Othalla, one of their newer planets. "I will do so at that I will pay a visit to the Tau'ri."
"That is not the best course of action, but I can see your reasoning," Penegal said and ended the connection.
Thor moved control stones on a console and his massive ship named the Gungnir broke orbit and accelerated into space, her generators providing obscene amounts of power to its hyperdrive that tore a window open in the fabric of space and pushed the gargantuan hull into it.
The distance between Andromeda and the Milky Way was a huge one, two and half million light years away. For humans this travel would take weeks, even months, but for an Asgard ship it would take mere hours. Traveling hundreds of thousands of light years per hour and consuming amounts of energy that would, on Earth, be enough to power the whole planet for weeks.
o-0-o
"What did you find that will interest me?" Jack asked as he looked at Mitchell, Jackson and Sheppard, allowing scientists to work and blabber about whatever they wanted to.
"From what I managed to learn from the database it was the biggest shipyard ever constructed by them and almost everything that they used was made here," Jackson said. "It's production was measured in hundreds of ships per year at the height of its production and if we can use at least ten percents of it, we will have more ships than we will need."
"That gets me interested," Jack said with a smile. "Now tell me what's the catch?"
"It needs humongous amounts of resources to work at the maximum capacity."
"Humongous?"
"Millions of metric tonnes to keep it going at full capacity," John said. "But from what I found it is able to produce everything for ships."
"Even ZPMs?"
"Even them."
"How soon we can get it working?"
"That's a question for Carter and McKay," Daniel said. "From what we learned it is in working condition, but it was out of use for some ten millenia, maybe even longer,so we need to see if everything works as advertised."
"You will have everything you will ask for, but get it into working order, as soon as possible," Jack said, looked at his watch and sighed. "In thirty minutes I have a meeting with IOA, and after that with the President. For the first one I can be late, second not so much."
"Carter should have a long list of things," John said and walked to one of displays. "While we didn't venture too far into the maze I found one thing." He pressed a couple of buttons and on a display appeared a list of names and their positions displayed over a map of the galaxy."
"Are those?"
"Yes," John smirked. "You can tell the President that we have found a gold mine, one that should solve most of our issues and make them look like nothing."
"That's the kind of news I wanted to hear," Jack smiled and focused on the display, he would need to mention the discovery to a few people.
o-0-o
The Gungnir dropped out of hyperspace a safe distance from the homeworld of the Nox and immediately her sensors picked up a trio of signatures that shouldn't be here. They were Goa'uld in origin and their sources were three Ha'tak motherships that were above the planet ina stable orbit.
The moment her sensors picked up those signatures her shields and weapons went to full power, immense amounts of power being fed into those systems, giving Thor precious time to analyze the situation while the enemy was occupied with his sensor readings.
He moved a couple of stones on the console in front of him and hailed leading vessel. "Unidentified vessels, this is Supreme Commander Thor of Asgard speaking, you are violating space of the Protected Planets Treaty, leave or you will be destroyed." He sent the message and waited for their reply.
The only reply came in the form of the armaments and shields of those Ha'taks power up, which in a human would have caused a burst of laughter. Even against the oldest of Asgard designs, they wouldn't stand a chance. Against Gungnir that was a leading ship of her class and the most powerful ship ever deployed by the Asgard their chances to win were slim.
The three Ha'taks moved towards her, forming a crescent and aiming their main batteries towards their target and the moment they were in range space was filled with hundreds of golden bolts of energy. Upon impact the shield of the Gungnir blossomed in hundreds of colours, but didn't fail.
The reply was short and pointed: three beams of plasma erupted from the most forward battery of Gungnir and sliced through the shields and into the hulls of the Ha'taks. It was enough to destroy them as it caused a volatile decompression of the hull, followed by a chain of secondary explosions. They started at the impact point and with each passing second got bigger, finally reaching the core of the ship and the main power core. The explosion that followed turned them into miniature suns that almost blinded Thor.
He looked at the readings provided by sensors and, not spotting a single enemy, beamed himself to the city hidden in the clouds below. He had business to do and he wanted to get it done as soon as possible; those ships were a worrying sign.
o-0-o
A/N – Those Ha'taks didn't stand a chance, maybe if there were a few dozen of them and had a lot of luck they could take her out, but this was a skirmish that could be only won by the Asgard.
Ships – if there is a new ship introduced in a chapter, at the end of it you will find a short description of it.
BC-304 Block 32 – Upgraded version of BC-304, works on it started the moment the finishing works were done to Daedalus, it is an improvement to BC-304 that addresses issues reported through the years, as well as adding new capabilities and weapons. While the outside appearance is almost the same, as it is six meters longer, inside it is a completely different ship with most of compartments redesigned taking into account comments made by the commanders of the first four BC-304, also adding the cloaking technology applied to Odyssey as part of this package. All old BC-304 are slated to receive this upgrade once they can be safely sent to shipyard.
Gungnir – the most powerful and the newest design hailing from Asgard, it is a slight change from previous ships as its hull is much smoother and there are far less structures destroying it's lines. Her main armament are batteries of plasma beams, five batteries of four, four are facing forward and one backwards. It's secondary weapons are rapid-fire ion cannons that are mainly close combat or anti-fighter weapon. She is not the class that will be the main ship of Asgard, she is similar to Hives for Wraith, there are few of them, but they can tip the scales when they show up on the field.