A/N: May have overdone it a little with the background story... But I hope y'all don't really mind me messing around with Ancient mythology..

Reviews are welcome!

Chapter 11 – The Forbidden Ones

"Yes. I'd love to hear the story about how those little bugs came into existence." Said O'Neill.

"Ok. Let me think." Minos started.

"It was a long time ago. Extremely long, even before my time. Atlantis was still situated on Earth. The Ancients, my people, ruled over the Milky way. There was no war in the Milky Way, only peace. The Goa'uld did not exist yet, and humans had not evolved further than monkeys. It was far before I was born, that the replicators were created.

In that time, the Ancients were at the peak of their power. Mass production of what you call ZPM's meant an everlasting amount of energy available, city ships like Atlantis were situated where we saw fit, and the Ancient fleet patrolled the borders.

But then suspicion rose in the Higher Councils. A meeting was called between all the councils of every planet the Ancients resided upon. During that meeting, from which the contents were never released, the Councillors reached a decision. They were afraid, very afraid. I do not know for what, but they were. Many ships were built.

Hundreds of battle cruisers and warships were constructed by all the shipyards around the empire. All the retired veterans were re-commissioned into war and every city ship was supplied for an everlasting war. The outer colonies were abandoned, and every piece of Ancient technology was either destroyed or was shipped to the strongholds of the Ancients.

Those strongholds, who now go by the names of Earth, Dakara and an uninhabited planet that was called Proclarush Taonas. Many city ships were situated on those planets, and the solar systems of those planets were mined for materials for war. The Ancients destroyed a planet in the process, a planet which resided in the solar system of Earth, between the four rocky planets and the largest gas giant.

The remains of the planet, which contained useless materials for war, formed an asteroid belt. All the naquadah in the solar system of Earth was mined by the Ancients for warships, guns and cannons. Then, one day, they all left. They were sent to fight a great war, greater than any other in the history of the Universe. The memories of the enemy against which they fought are lost in time.

But the fear of that enemy was so grand, that it was forbidden to pronounce their names. They were called 'the Forbidden ones' because of that. Every Ancient, man, woman and even child, was used in the war machine in that time. Either as an soldier on one of the thousands of ships, or as a miner on one of the gigantic mining ships of the Ancients.

The shipyards kept spewing out ships, guns and cannons, but to no avail. The Ancients were losing the war. The Ancients, designers of the Stargate, conquerors of the Milky Way, were being defeated. Battle after battle was fought inside the void around the Milky way, but nothing worked. Ships and soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds, and the Ancients kept losing ground in the Void.

The forbidden ones kept creeping closer to the borders of the Milky Way. The Ancients were losing this battle for survival. The most advanced race ever to have existed in the known universe was about to be wiped out by an enemy without a name, without a face.

The Ancient war machine turned on maximum capacity. Star systems were being stripped of ore, the energy of entire suns was taken and stored in giant buffers of warships, but at little effect. When the Forbidden ones reached the edge of the Milky Way, a final plan was devised. The final plan that would mean the death of all but a few of the Ancients.

The Ancients built City Ships and drones, the only weapons powerful enough to damage the Forbidden Ones. All City Ships, save for one, were to be sent to the home galaxy of the Forbidden ones. All the Ancients that had survived the onslaught of the Forbidden Ones, were called to Atlantis.

The Ancients plan to end the threat once and for all consisted of two parts, each unbelievably advanced and daring, even for the Ancients. The first part was the destruction of their home galaxy. Every City Ship available was sent to a star in that galaxy. There, the City Ship would enter the star, until they reached its core. The Ancients had devised a weapon that could destroy everything in a light-year radius. Everything, planets, stars, black holes, but also the weapon itself.

The destruction that weapon started was imminent. The exact moment it reached critical energy, the entire solar system it was in was doomed. No escape possible, not even for the Forbidden Ones. Only, the power necessary to utilize such a weapon was immense. Too large for even a city ship, or a whole fleet of them, to handle. It required a star. Every molecule and atom that star existed of fell prey to the enormous power thirst of those weapons. Immediately after it was powered up, whole star systems faded out of existence.

The resulting chaos was immense. The armies of the Forbidden Ones were unable to think. Some fled back to their home galaxy, in an useless quest to render assistance where possible. Others kept attaching the Milky Way, but without their tactics and superior numbers they were killed. Most of them started warring amongst themselves, destroying ships and fighters in the process. But none of them reached the Milky Way.

That is why the second plan of the Ancients was abandoned. That plan would involve the destruction of the entire Milky Way, and probably several galaxies around her. That plan was that Atlantis, the oldest and most powerful of all the Lantean City Ships, was to be sent into the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way. If the weapon was utilized there, the power of the black hole was sufficient to destroy the galaxy.

But the Ancients never needed to utilize that plan. The destruction of their home galaxy had annihilated every hint of economy the Forbidden Ones had. With their supplies dwindling, and different factions warring over the remainder of the fleet, the Forbidden Ones vanished from this area of space.

It was believed for a long time that the Forbidden Ones had vanished from this area of space. The Ancients back then were so confident of themselves that they could defeat anything in their path, that they were blind for their own weakness. The war against the Forbidden Ones had destroyed the Empire. Only the Ancient capitol city, Atlantis, remained intact and unscathed on Earth.

Many centuries thereafter, the Ancient population grew. Within time, the Ancients started to regain hints of their old power. Colonies were re-founded on planets long lost, defensive stations that were abandoned after the war were being manned again, and the ancient fleet was trying to rebuild itself.

But the Ancient civilians had enough of the war. They did not trust the power of the high council, so they separated it into different councils, all having only a small piece of the original might of the high council of Atlantis. Over time, the military was becoming less necessary. There were little other intelligent races in the Milky Way that posed a threat. Science flourished. With little else to do, no one to trade with and not enough ships or the will to expand, they turned to science.

After many long years of hard warfare, the knowledge of weapons and shield of the Ancients had reached a halting point. Research and experiments were conducted in other ways, robotics for example. They advanced in that field further than they could ever imagine. Their society had turned back to logic again, instead of war.

It was only natural, with the state of the Empire, that they turned to science when rumours of the Forbidden Ones reached the edges of the galaxy. Rumours became persistent, they turned into stories and those stories turned into the truth. The Forbidden Ones had rebuilt themselves, and they were bent on revenge.

The Ancients however, had bigger troubles. Though the Ancients are immortal in most aspects, they can be killed by violence and disease. Very little children were born in that age, virtually none. Violence, accidents and diseases kept eating away little bits of the Ancient population, one at a time. The Ancients figured they were a not powerful enough to stop the rumours of the Forbidden Ones yet again.

So they turned to science. In one giant effort, all the scientists Atlantis could procure were set on one task. Find a way to destroy the Forbidden Ones, once and for all. The enormous advances in science meant that the Ancients had a head start on the Forbidden Ones. Their ships were technologically superior, but the Forbidden Ones ruled in numbers. Vast fleets of thousands of ships were detected in their home galaxies. Millions upon Billions of soldiers waiting to kill every Ancient they could find.

The Ancients had to stop them. So they built the replicators. Self-replicating blocks that could form themselves from every metal they could find. Intelligent though robotic life-forms, capable of turning a planet into replicators in a matter of months. And they did. The replicators replicated themselves incredibly fast, and within years their numbers far exceeded those of the Forbidden Ones.

The replicators were controlled by the Ancients themselves. For each replicator mother ship, each the size of a small moon, was a control chair. Specifically built so that only that control chair could control a specific mother ship and adjoining fleet. They left for the galaxy of the Forbidden Ones, never to come back.

And they did. All the planets the Forbidden Ones lived on were flooded under a massive wave of replicators that swept over the galaxy like a huge tidal wave over a small beach. Every remnant, every hint of the Forbidden Ones was soon destroyed. They searched galaxies far and wide for any remnants, but they found none.

After the task for which the replicators were created was done, they were abandoned. Most were destroyed, formed into one juggernaut of a mother ship and sent into a black hole. Some were brought back to the Milky Way, to stand guard over the Ancients. But eventually they too were destroyed.

Then the plague came. Out of nothing, suddenly there was a disease that eluded every experiment or drug the ancients threw at it. Even the technology that later became the sarcophagus couldn't offer relief for a prolonged time. The time of the Ancients had come to an end. They spread out their own seeds, a second evolution of themselves, to the planet Atlantis had been living on, and they left.

They travelled for a long time. Incredibly long, there was nothing than Atlantis and the blackness of space, separated from each other by the city's vast shields. The ancients left for the Pegasus Galaxy. I was born that time, but I remained on Earth. Several other Ancients did. I was very young at that time, just barely aware of what happened.

But I do know that there was no technology at all on Earth. The new evolution of the Ancients had only barely begun. We fled to the Nox, a species we had met on previous occasions. They were not as advanced as we were, but it sufficed. The Ancients that remained in the Milky Way led a sheltered life, living in the shadows of civilization instead of the forefront. No more could we be bothered if one planet evolved faster than we had planned. No longer could we be bothered if one sun blew up, annihilating a civilization. No longer, we cared for the actions of others."

Minos stopped talking, and everybody sat in complete silence. Until they were awakened from their thoughts by a beep.

"We have arrived." Said Thor.