Chapter 12: Last Second

Braced for the oncoming impact Mitchell felt rather surprised when instead of the jumper crashing into the hard surface of the planet and him being thrown forward and flattened against the windscreen he saw a bright flash of blue light and instead landed on the floor of the Odyssey. Around him, the rest of SG-1 and others began to stand up around him, as surprised to be alive as he was. Mckay opened his eyes and looked around. "Oh-" he said. Some Major that Mitchell had met before, but never got to know stepped forwards and said "Once again, SG-1, welcome aboard the Odyssey."

Back in the SGC Colonel Carter sat thinking about the Alterus mission. Mitchell walked into the room.

"Well, Carter, it certainly is amazing to see how interesting you find that wall…"

His words snapped her out of her thoughts, and she turned her gaze quickly from the wall to face him.

"Look, Carter, there was nothing we could have done. The place went up in flames, city, bugs ZPMs, the lot. Daniel's been bemoaning the loss of the city, while Mckay was muttering about the ZPMs the whole time, all the way back through the gate." He paused, and then almost laughed. "You've got to give him this – He's good… who would have thought of a mutating bug killing agent?"

"I know, Mitchell, but something's wrong here… Why would Ba'al destroy Alterus once he had it in his grasp?... Why didn't the Ori attack – by the time the Odyssey turned up, everything was gone. And Ba'al must have been beamed to somewhere…"

"So what you're saying is…"

"I'm saying I don't believe Ba'al would destroy Alterus…"

"Well, the Odyssey's sensors picked up a massive explosion on the planet, and now we can't get the gate to Alterus to work."

"Well, sir, the gate wasn't working anyway. I never really thought we'd be able to gate back in…"

Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. "Anyway, who knows? Ba'al is a Goa'uld – they're all slightly nuts, right? Maybe he didn't really know what he had in his hands."

"I don't think so, sir." Said Carter. "He knew exactly what he had… Ba'al always does…"

Ba'al watched as the lights in the dark activated, and the darkness faded away.

He watched a mixture of other Ba'al clones and Kull warriors work at preparing the facility for the purposes of the Ba'al System Lords, who from here would grow in power and might and eventually reclaim what he had lost to the Replicators, the Ori, and the Tauri. The Ba'al System Lords he thought… That'd be interesting – for a while at any rate. By the time the Tauri worked out he hadn't been destroyed he would be so deeply entrenced in this place there would be no removing him. If his information was correct he was now in possession of the last Ori warships in this galaxy, and this force was greater than any that another could boast of. New clones to run the facility and new Kull warriors to fight for him would be created. With the technology of the Ancients at his disposal now, he would upgrade his remaining two Mother Ships, and Al-kesh to become almost as powerful as the Ori warships, armed with the devastating drones weapons Ancient shields, and ZPMs. Soon he would re-conquer this galaxy.

Ba'al looked around the control room of his new city.

The Overmind stirred from restless slumbering. It was dark again now, and safe to re-emerge. The tiny eggs embedded in it's own silk of a past generation began to hatch, several dozen new creatures for the Overmind to fill. The tiny creatures, each the size of a small pebble began to scuttle away, away from the shiny, polished surface they now found themselves on. Within seconds they fell to an equally smooth floor, very similar to that of their last habitat. Identical, in fact.

In a dark lab, in one of the thousands of rooms of Atlantis the scourge of Alterus began to spread once more.

To be continued... (in a sequel!)

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