Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, The Predator, Alien or Alien Vs Predator series.
Warning: There's a little foul language in this chapter.
As the Quantum Gate closed behind them the very fabric of reality shifted around the fleet, all the stellar bodies of the star system they were in had suddenly shifted position, a planet that had once been on the other side of the system's sun was now right infront of them. Asteroids, meteors and comets were no longer where they had been, to say anything it spooked everyone in the fleet.
Everywhere on the bridge of the Orion it was organized chaos. Sensors went crazy trying to make sense of the readings passing through their processors. The comms officer was being overwhelmed with reports, requests for information and concerns about what happened from every Tau'ri, Hebridian, Gadmeer, Jaffa, Tok'ra, Langaran and hundreds of other ships from dozens of worlds, the only ones not overly concerned were the Asgard. It got to the point where Major Jacob O'Neill reached the limit of his patience, which was conciderable when you concider who his father was. Barking an order towards comms to give him fleet-wide communication, he made his displeasure known.
"Everyone Shut Up!!!"
There was instant silence across the fleet.
"As of yet we don't know what happened, which is why the crews of both military and civilian science vessels need time to run scans, check databases, compare notes and come up with theories and solutions. What none of us need right now is everyone clogging up the comm channels with pointless inquieries that slow down our ability to get the results we all need! As of this moment I am issuing a fleet wide order, communications between ships will be for military, scientific and emergency use only until such time as I or the other fleet commanders say otherwise, Orion out!"
For the next two hours the entire bridge crew was quiet, no one quite willing to say anything to each other or the Major unless he should blow up again. It was well known throughout several star systems that the O'Neill temper was legendary. It wasn't until comms recieved a request from fleet commander Thor to speak with the Major that the silence was finally broken.
"Sir, commander Thor requests to speak with you."
Having had two hours to a calm himself by reading both ship and fleet reports plus doing some of the Jaffa calming techniques he'd learned from Teal'c, he answered.
"Open channel."
Thor's face appeared on the view screen and he got right down to business.
"Major O'Neill, I and my fellow Asgard believe we have an answer for the shift our sensors detected. I request fleet wide communication to explain the phenomenon." Never let it be said that the Asgard hated nothing more than having to repeat themselves. Jacob nodded and comms gave Thor fleet wide communication.
"This is Thor of the Asgard, we have discovered that the reason for the sensors shift was a temporal anomaly. The final scans the Quantum Gate sent us before it deactivated, revealed that as we passed through into this reality, a reality close to the one we have entered imploded causing a 'Quantum Shockwave' to occur. Normally this would not effect us but since we had for all practical purposes, torn a hole in the very fabric of reality, the shockwave which should have destroyed both our reality and this one, if it had not been for safety protocols inherant in the Quantum Gate itself, caused us to jump foward in time by approximetly two-hundred years. For us this means nothing, we are not native to this reality therefore we are not contaminating the timeline."
With that Thor cut the fleet wide channel but remained on screen with the Orion, possibly with something more to say.
"Thank you Thor, is there anything else?"
"Yes, it concerns the planet closest to us. Before the temporal shift my ships sensors identified it as a primodial world, however afterwards the atomsphere showed signs of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dixoide. This shows an obvious effort within the last century or so of an attempt to terraform the planet but something interrupted the process, also there is evidence of a nuclear explosion of some sort having taken place on the planet's surface sometime within the last two hundred years. I believe it is what interrupted the terraforming process."
Jacob nodded as Thor closed the channel, agreeing with the Asgard commander's theory. To the Tau'ri nuclear weapons were a thing of the past, since as of ten years ago they had abandoned them completely. When the stargate program and everything related to it had gone public over a decade ago, a complete dissarmament of all nuclear weapons was agreed upon by every country on the planet. It was a moot point really since even the weapons of the early 'Prometheus' and 'Daedelus' class Tau'ri Warships could obliterate one city after another in a matter of seconds.
Looking at the planet, he decided that they really couldn't do anything about it and the radiation made it a poor choice to terraform for themselves. They had brought with them devices capable of terraforming planets, the same technology the Alterans used to terraform every acceptable planet within the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. However it took the Alterans decades to terraform a single world, theirs however were far more advanced. Thanks to both the Asgard and the Gadmeer (Who also escaped with them in twelve ships simular to the one they used to terraform P5S-381) the devices could now terraform an entire planet in under six months. Other devices were created, such as 'Planet-Shifters'. Devices that could move entire planets that were capable of being terraformed but were too far from the system's sun to support life. They did this by negating the effects of the sun's gravity on the planet, encasing it in their own gravity field and using their engines to shift the planet closer to the sun. However the process greatly depended on both the mass of the planet and the number of devices used. They currently had a hundred 'planet-shifters' and all of them were needed to shift a planet the size of Earth.
With no other prospective planets to terraform the order was given for scoutships to recon local space, they didn't want to begin colonizing worlds within someone elses territory after all.
Twenty-eight hours later.
Tau'ri Scoutship Apollo - Eight light years from fleet.
Colonel Brian Richards, commander of the Scoutship Apollo was reviewing sensor reports of the current star system they were in. There were four worlds possible for terraformation, one planet and three moons. Another eight moons and two planets that could be shifted to closer orbits within the habitable zone. Unfortunately one of the planets had a greater mass than Earth, not by much but enough that they wouldn't be able to shift it until they could build more planet-shifters.
He was interrupted from reading the current report on the properties of the local asteroid field when the comms officer alerted him to something.
"Sir I'm picking up an automated military distress signal coming from forty-six point five light years away. It's originating from somewhere near the Sol system."
"Is it one of ours?"
"Negative sir. I've got the computer working on breaking their encryption codes so we can.....wait, codes decrypted. They're making a general alert, emergency pick-up of escape pods a priority, however they're claiming their ship is under quarantine. Hostile organisms onboard."
"Alert the Orion, re-transmit that signal to them and request premission to investigate under cloak."
It took a few minutes for the Orion to respond, apparently they weren't the only ship to detect the distress signal. Finally they recieved a responce.
"The Orion has issued orders for us aswell as the Scoutships Sceptre and Krasniy Oktyabr to investigate under cloak. We are not to engage or assist in any way. The Orion will arrive in the Sol system in eight hours, we are to report our findings at that time, the Orion will then decide what actions should be taken."
Colonel Richards nodded at the orders. It wasn't often that a Major got to order a Colonel around, but Major O'Neill had been 'elected' by the Jaffa, Asgard and the Tok'ra to be the Supreme Fleet Commander, with Thor and Teal'c as his seconds. The Major and the rest of the Tau'ri had tried to resist but the other races were adamant. Teal'c because he knew the Major since he'd been born and it helped that he was Jacob's godfather. Thor like all the Asgard concidered Jack O'Neill to be legendary and had complete trust in his son since they believed that he had inherited the best traits of both parents, and thus must be a superior tactician and scientist. The Tok'ra were the most surprising however, although there were just over a thousand of them left, they still had a lot of pull within the Alliance. They reasoned that when the then Major Carter became host to Jolinar and absorbed the symbiote after its death she became 'one of their own' along with her father being host to Selmac, so by default that made Major O'Neill one of them aswell.
Concidering the Major's record no one really had reason to disagree, the only difficulty that the higher-ups saw was his rank. If he'd been a Colonel or even a Lt. Colonel then they'd of had no problem with the idea, but a Major was a middle rank and a lot of higher ranking officers may not of been too willing to take his orders, plus when the request had been made he had only been a Major for two months, which concidering his age was impressive. Thankfully by the time the construction of the Quantum Gate was complete, the Major had proven himself to many a superior officer. He had organized and overseen the construction of the Quantum Gate, provided schematics and blueprints for several advanced civilian transport ships that had been constructed in a joint venture by the Tau'ri, Hebridians, Langarans and a few other worlds.
The Hebridians had fifteen years earlier with help from the Tau'ri brought the Langarans and a dozen other worlds with an industial system capable of mass-production up to ship building standards, not exactly to the scale of the Hebridians but close. Over the years their ship building abilities grew until they were on par with the Tau'ri. Those who didn't or couldn't build stasis ships of their own instead built ships of various sizes that would house between fifty to a thousand people for several months.
These civilian ships are what made up the majority of the fleet, several thousand from the size of an Alkesh to the size of a Ha'tak.
Reading the orders for himself to confirm them and to ensure that there wasn't anything that was for his eyes only, he nodded and turned to his helmsman.
"Helm, set course for the Sol system and activate cloak."
"Aye sir."
With orders given the ship was cloaked and the hyperdrive activated hurtling them towards Sol.
"Estimated time to the Sol system?"
The officer at the helm typed up commands while cheching the navigational sensors.
"Estimated time to Sol system, six hours sir."
Accepting the response he went back to reading the sensors reports.
The Discovery-class Scoutship wasn't as powerful as her larger Warship-class cousins, being only slightly double the size of a Tel'tac. With a standard crew of five it had only standard hyperdrive engines capable of traveling one-hundred and eighty-six light-years in twenty-four hours. There wasn't any real need for the speeds a Warship could reach since they didn't carry any ship-to-ship weapons and their cloak could protect them from any and all forms of detection as it was derived from cloaking technology found in Alteran Puddle-Jumpers.
Six hours later - Sol System
"Sir the source of the distress signal seems to be coming from a ship directly ahead of us."
Colonel Richards looks away from the comms officer and towards the helm.
"Take us in for a closer look."
"Aye sir."
The sensor officer was running multiple scans of the source of the signal ahead, the reading she was getting caused her eyes to widen.
"Sir, sensors are detectiving a vessel ahead, it's massive sir!"
The holographic screen at the front of the bridge activated and brought up the sensor readings. Compiled together the imaging sensors created a three dimentional representation of the ship. It was huge, almost ten times larger than an Asgard O'Neill-class Battleship. Its armaments were fairly primative, but the sheer amount of firepower the ship carried, which included nuclear weapons lead the Colonel to believe that the local region of space might not be too friendly.
"Life signs?"
"Multiple human life signs, several very faint. I'm also reading at least three different types of unknown life signs, non-human. Of two of those types there are only one of each, both are together with a small group of humans. Of the third type there are over a dozen and they're scattered around in two different sections of the ship. One near the center and the other close to the two unknowns and the humans they're traveling with."
"Sir the Sceptre and Krasniy Oktyabr report similar findings" The comms officer reported. "They are requesting if we should transport the group of humans and the two unknowns to our cargo bay's."
"Inform them to wait for the Orion's arrival in two hours. They're better suited to this form of first contact than we are, plus we don't have the proper forces to detain them if they turn out to be hostile."
"Aye sir."
Two hours later
Orion Bridge
"Sir the Apollo, Sceptre and Krasniy Oktyabr have uploaded their sensor reports. They've prepared a summary since they believe the situation requires an E.Q.T.R (Emergency Quick Time Response)."
Reading the summary he decided they were right, the number of human life signs had dropped by half, while the number of the multiple unknowns had increased by the same amount.
"Where are the group of humans with the two unknowns now?"
"They're moving towards what we believe is the ship's docks. Their numbers have decreased and one has for some reason left on his own."
An alarm began going off at the sensor station, the officer manning the sensors was frantically reading and running multiple scans of the ship.
"Sir! The ship has increased speed towards Earth, at current velocity it will impact in forty-two minutes!"
"Alert transporter control to lock onto the group of humans and the two unknowns and transport them into cargo bay two in five minutes, also have any weapons they're carrying redirected to security checkpoint alpha. Inform security to secure cargo-bay two, and alert the infirmary to have a medic check them out."
"Aye sir."
Cargo Bay Two
With a bright flash of light a group of six people appeared in cargo-bay two.
"What the fuck!?"
Johner and Purvis dropped Vriess, the mechanic hitting the floor with an 'Omph'. Call, DiStephano, Johner and Ripley all spun around, confused and attempting to locate any threats. They soon became aware of two important things. One: They weren't on the Auriga any more and Two: They didn't have any weapons. They all turned as two large doors opened, admitting several armed men and a woman carrying some kind of case.
"Greetings I'm Doctor Suzanne Philips, chief medical officer of the Orion."
Johner being the master of his own form of diplomacy spoke first.
"Listen lady, I don't give a crap who you are! Where the hell are we and how the fuck did we get here!?"
Unphased by Johner's outburst since she'd heard worse from the marines on the ship during their monthly medical checks answered his question.
"You're onboard the Tau'ri Warship Orion, as for how you got onboard, I'm afraid you'll have ask one of the scientists on the mechanics of molecular transportation. I'm a medical doctor not a physicist." At that Call's eyes widened. "Right now I'm here to check you all out. We know two of you are non-human so we'll have to perform a chemical analysis of your dna to make sure that we don't give you anything that might accidentaly kill you." With that she and two marines came foward. She ran a medical scanner across Johner, DiStephano and Vriess where everything turned out fine. When she scanned Call she raised an eyebrow.
"Synthetic based lifeform, hmm I'm sure Harlan and the others will be interested in that." As she said it Call stiffened and Ripley pulled the synthetic behind her. Dr Philips noticed and realised what she'd said. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just Harlan and the others will be pleased to meet another synthetic."
Call sighed with relief, and went back to standing next to Ripley.
"You mean you work with synthetics? You don't hunt them down and deactivate them?" The horrfied look on the doctor's face was all Call needed to know how the doctor felt about that.
"Good god, no! Harlan and the rest of the synthetics are concidered free citizens, they've even set up their own government with democraticaly elected leaders." She wrinkled her nose. "However, they could have chosen something more original than 'The Democratic Republic of the Synthetics'." As she spoke about the synthetic republic, which Call was extremely interested in, she quickly scanned Ripley who she discovered was a clone that seemed to be engineered to incorporate a small amount of non-human dna. Finally she scanned Purvis and detected a parasitical organism inside him. From what she could read it was gestating inside his chest, and with no obvious way out she could only think that it wasn't going to be pleasant for the poor man if the thing was allowed to go to term. She quickly pulled out a small communicator and activated it.
"Dr Philips to transporter control, emergency transport to medical stasis pod, lock on to the individual directly infront of me!"
To the shock of the other five, Purvis disappeared in a bright flash of light.
"Dr Philips to infirmary, prep the patient in medical stasis for surgery, he is carrying some form of parasite that should be removed immediatly." Call informed her that the parasite was an alien lifeform that had gotten loose on the ship and slaughtered the majority of the crew that didn't manage to escape. The infirmary having heard Call through Philip's communicator awaited further instructions. "Possible threat to the ship is high, recomend the parasite be terminated."
There was a confirmation from the other end.
"Well that's that sorted. So would any of you like to meet the CO of the ship?" They all nodded.
Ten Minutes Later
Orion Bridge
"Power foward Pulse Cannons to fifty percent. Load drone launchers one-through-six."
In the last ten minutes the remaining human life signs had terminated while more of the parasitical lifeforms had emerged. The only remaining human life sign was now aboard a ship just leaving the USM Auriga as the hull proudly had writen on it. Not wanting him to get away, Jacob had ordered the ship to be disabled and the human transported to the brig.
Ripley and her group had arrived just in time to inform him of who the person on the ship was just as he was about to let him leave the system. Call and Ripley had quickly explained what the lifeforms were and that they killed everything in their path without hesitation, using other lifeforms to breed, they were almost as bad as the Wraith. Now they were going to ensure none of them survived.
"Pulse Cannons charged. Launchers one-through-six armed. Awaiting orders."
"Target the Auriga's primary reactor. Fire!"
Six pulse cannons and six drones shot towards the massive ship, each shot tearing through the hull and ripping the fusion reactors to pieces. The resulting explotion was like a small nova, the entire ship and everything that was unfortunate enough to be within a hundred kilometers was vaporized.
Ripley and Call breathed a sigh of relief, glad it was finally over. But it was Johner who said it best.
"Damn, those were some fireworks!"
Now to find out what to do with their guests. However the decision was taken out of his hands when Call spoke up.
"Major, on behalf of Ripley, myself and other synthetics I request asylum from the persecution of the United System Military."
To Be Continued....
Author's Notes:
Well here's reality number five, the Preds would probably show up later. Also I decided to start this reality a little differently.