Welcome back to another great episode of Stargate: The Million Year War.
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Pegasus Expedition Fleet. Pegasus.
"Teyla, Ronon, talk to me." Sheppard ordered over the FMC.
"As we said several gates have gone offline recently. But the only once we know about are space gates." Teyla replied from the scout ship that had picked them up.
"Only space gates? So that rules out the Genii, they can't go into space."
"But they can still dial a space gate." McKay reminded him
"True, but who would gain something by taking down space gates? Certainly not the Genii. The only others who can travel between systems are the Wraith, but they have never destroyed a gate before." Sheppard said
"Commander, I'm picking up Wraith ships." The navigator of the scout ship that picked up Teyla and Ronon said over the link.
"Wraith? How far out are you?" Sheppard replied
"Two hours. But the Wraith are on a course that will take them between us. It looks like there is a planet with a space gate along their course."
"Copy that. I'm taking the fleet to intercept. What can you tell me of the fleet?"
"They're to far out, but looks like a few hives."
"Ok, rendezvous with us at that planet, stay cloaked and drop out of hyperspace outside the system so they don't know that you're there." Sheppard said as he sent the coordinates to the fleet. Half a minute later the fleet jumped towards the planet.
"McKay, what do we know of the planet?" Beckett said nervously
"It's the planet with the Tower. You know the place that is a copy of Atlantis, only a bit more… natural."
"The planet that Sheppard visits so often?"
"Yep, that's the one."
"Hey, I can hear you." Sheppard interrupted
"How can you do that? This is a private conversation." McKay said
"I'm currently the leader of the fleet, so I can patch into any FMC to talk or monitor a conversation and I was just about to ask you if you knew about the planet." Sheppard said
"Oh well, as I said, it's the planet with the overgrown copy of Atlantis. That's all I know and the fleet is still to far our to say anything about, but as far as I can tell there's a couple of hives as well as some escorting cruisers."
"Crap, well the faster we get there the better."
"I agree but the Wraith will get there at least one and a half hour before us." McKay said.
"Crap, in that time they will have culled the entire planet."
"Yes. The scout ship has just arrived and is reporting one more fleet. They second fleet is a few minutes ahead of the Wraith, small numbers and small ships, definitely not Wraith."
"I need more then that."
"Hold on a minute. I'm working on it. The fleets are still two hours out."
"Well work faster."
"I'm trying to. The first fleet could be the Traveler fleet. I'm not sure but it looks that way."
"Wait, the Wraith is chasing the Travelers?"
"From what I can tell yes. It looks like they've been fighting, the Traveler ships are leaking radiation and some of the Wraith ships are falling behind."
"I don't like the sound of this."
Two hours later the two fleets arrived in the system.
"This is the scout ship calling main fleet."
"This is Sheppard. Report."
"The two fleets are indeed Wraith and Traveler. We can see some damage on the Travelers fleet and some minor scratches on the Wraith ships, one of the hives appears to be limping forward, it looks like it's hyperdrive is damaged."
"Stay cloaked and follow them if they jump away. I'm sending another scout ship to take over, but until then stay on them."
"Yes sir. The Wraith have just opened fire on the Traveler fleet, Travelers are firing back. I'm reading hyperdrive activity from the Travelers, they are attempting to jump away. Which should we follow sir?"
"Stay with the Wraith, the Travelers can take care of themselves."
"Yes sir."
"The scout ship should be there in a few minutes. When it arrives you get out of that system somewhere where the Wraith can't detect you, I don't care about the travelers, just stay clear of the Wraith."
"Yes sir. The Wraith have broken in to two fleets, the limping hive and four cruisers are staying behind, looks like they are going to cull the planet. The other larger Wraith fleet is chasing the Travelers."
"Crap. Get out of there right now. The other scout ship is close enough to follow if needed."
"Yes sir. Jumping away in three... two... one... jump."
The scout ship powered up its hyper drive and jumped away to the Pegasus expeditions fleet. Meanwhile the Travelers and the Wraith was fighting a bloody battle, while the Traveler fleet consisted of much smaller ships and much fewer ships than the Wraith they where able to avoid any losses and only suffered minor damage, the Wraith having followed them for many systems knew that they wouldn't be able to hit them with their big guns and so they instead sent out every dart in the fleet.
At the sight of this the Traveler fleet turned around and jumped away, but not before they saw a small blip on their sensors.
"Commander Sheppard come in. This is Navigator Hendricks of scout ship Argo."
"This is Sheppard, what's your status?"
"We have arrived at the system, looks like no one detected us. The Traveler fleet jumped out just as we arrived and the large Wraith fleet are preparing to follow. Orders sir?"
"Follow the Wraith but do not engage and make sure that they do not detect you. If they do you will jump away as soon as possible and return to us."
"Yes sir. Wraith are jumping away. Single hive and four cruisers staying behind and have deployed darts. Preparing to follow Wraith." Argo jumped out of the system and followed the Wraith fleet.
"Rodney, we are about to arrive, I want you and Beckett to stay back and protect the science vessels, scouts and our transports. I'm taking the rest of the fleet to engage that hive." Sheppard said over his FMC
"Come on, I want some action to." McKay complained
"Aye, me to." Beckett said
"Well I don't want to lose those ships or you two so stay out of the fight."
"Fine." McKay said and hung up and Beckett did the same.
The Tower System.
Five minutes later the fleet arrived in the system. As soon as they did that the darts returned back to the hive while the Wraith cruisers moved in to engage.
"Fire at will on the cruisers but target hyperdrive only on the hive." Sheppard said on a fleet wide channel. "Max wing I want you to flank them."
"I'm on it." Maximus said as he took control of his ten cruisers and flew them out of the single carrier class ship which had carried them.
The fleet split up and the ten cruisers formed up into formation, the other ships where less coordinated and flew towards the enemy cruisers in a wedge formation. Max wing made a short jump to the Wraiths flanks, five on each side, and started an attack run, meanwhile the main part of the fleet engaged the Wraith from the front. Soon both sides where firing all weapons at each other, thanks to the Ancient shields of the expeditions fleet their ships where taking hit after hit from the blue Wraith weapons without a scratch.
The Wraith on the other hand wasn't so lucky, because the hive was retreating behind the cruisers the four ships where left alone. One of the cruisers exploded just seconds after the main fleet of the expedition attacked and after that things got worse for the cruisers, Max wing came from both sides and punched on their hull until there was only one lone cruiser left, once the crew realized that they where alone they tried to run, but Sheppard gunned his engines and caught up with the cruiser, he then ended it with a single well placed shoot from the one of the main batteries.
While Sheppard had chased down the cruiser the rest of the fleet converged on the hive, just as the fleet was about to open fire the hive jumped into hyperspace following the other hives.
"Deploy the combat jumpers. Set to search and destroy, I want the darts remaining on the planet dead." Sheppard said
Sheppard's command ship. Pegasus Expedition fleet.
"I'm going after them whether you like or not." Sheppard said angrily
"But we need to retrieve Elizabeth and get her inside her new body." McKay said
"Yes but you two can do that, it's your areas of expertise, my area is to kill things and right now I'm going to kill the Wraith." Sheppard said
"We're not going to be able to talk you out of this are we?" Beckett said
"No, I'm already planing our attack. Now go get us Elizabeth." Sheppard said as he beamed away his two colleagues before jumping away with the fleet leaving only the science vessel, scouts, McKay's and Beckett's command class ships and one Aurora.
"Argo come in." Sheppard said as he opened a channel to their forward scout.
"This is Argo." Hendricks answered
"How's it looking?"
"Bad sir. The Travelers have lost all but two ships and they are in a very bad shape. Wraith have lost three cruisers to suicide runs from Traveler ships. I have also detected that all the worlds the Travelers stop at have had a space gate."
"Damn it. We're coming, but it will take us some time to catch up to you. Next time they stop I want you to plant a receiver on the Travelers ships."
"Yes sir. We will get it done."
"Good. Now what did you say about the space gates?"
"Every system they stop at have had a space gate before, but when we get there there's no gate in orbit around the planet."
"Are the gates there before they get there?"
"Don't know sir. We follow them so we always get there a little bit after them."
"Predict where they are going to stop next time and get there before they do."
"Yes sir."
"Sheppard out." Sheppard said closing the channel. He felt like something was wrong, the Wraith might chase them for a while, but this was ridiculous.
A few minutes later Argo called back.
"This is Argo. Come in commander."
"Sheppard here. What's your status?"
"We got ahead of them and the system they arrived at."
"Good what did you find?"
"There was a space gate here but the Travelers took it on board one of their ships as soon as they got here. The same ship then took a direct hit from a cruiser, so now there's only one Traveler ship left."
"Shit the Travelers are stealing gates now? Did you manage to planet the receiver?"
"Yes sir. The receiver have activated and connected to their ships on board systems."
"Good. Connect me to it."
"Connection established sir."
"Good." Sheppard said before switching channel to the receiver. "This is Colonel Sheppard, Commander of the Pegasus Expedition Fleet. We are in pursuit of the Wraith fleet that is following you. But you are moving away from us, if you want our help please turn around next time you jump. If you do not turn around it will take us a few hours before we catch up to you, if you do turn around we can catch up to you within minutes."
This massage was sent to the receiver, the receiver in turn sent the message along to a string of nanites, who had burrowed inside the hull and connected with the ships systems, when the message reached the end of the nanites it was transferred to the ships systems and sent to the bridge where it was played on every console.
To say that the captain of the ship was surprised by the message would be to lie. But never the less the ship, who had just jumped away from the system, returned from hyperspace, turned around and jumped back to hyperspace. This maneuver was unexpected by the Wraith who turned around several minutes later when they realized what had happened.
"Commander, this is Argo, Traveler ship has made a U-turn and is headed straight back their own path. The Wraith have also turned around but they missed the maneuver and is falling behind."
"Good work. Get back to the fleet as fast as you can. There's no need to be stealthy anymore, fly past them close and make sure that they notice you. Sheppard out." Sheppard said laughing to himself, time for payback.
After ten minutes the two fleets was almost on top of each other.
"Traveler ship. Please exit hyperspace in the next system." Sheppard said over the receiver. The Traveler ship continued for a few seconds and then dropped out of hyperspace, the sight that greeted the ship was not the lone 304 that the captain was expecting, instead it was greeted by the barrels of two command class ships and one Aurora.
"Identify yourselves. I was told I'd meet Sheppard here not an Ancient war fleet." The captain of the Traveler ship said over an open channel.
"Well I'm here ain't I, Larrin?" Sheppard replied over the channel.
"Is that you Sheppard? Last time I heard from you you where still using those small gray ships." Larrin, captain of the ship, replied.
"Well things change." Sheppard replied.
At that moment the Wraith came out of hyperspace. Seeing the Ancient war ships they hesitated at first, but seeing that they where outnumbering them three to one the Wraith charged, slowly at first, afraid of an ambush, but then faster and faster.
"Same as before. Kill the cruisers but immobilize the hives." Sheppard ordered.
When the Wraith came within range of the Ancient ships Sheppard's ships opened fire. Having no shields at all eight of the cruisers where taken out by the main guns of the two command class ships in the first salvo and more followed as the drones launched by the Aurora joined the chaos. Then the single carrier ship jumped in behind the Wraith and deployed the cruisers stored in its hangars, after deploying the carrier simply kept charging towards the Wraith with five cruisers of Max wing on either side and guns blazing.
Soon all that was left of the Wraith was ten hives without engines or weapons and the only loss the expedition had suffered was three damaged cruisers. Then the hives opened their hangars and let out every dart that they had. This massive swarm split into two and moved towards Sheppard's group and the carrier. As soon as Sheppard saw this he activated the anti-fighter weapons on the command class ships, the sheer number of anti-fighter weapons was not something the Wraith where prepared for and the turrets ha soon thinned out the numbers to a few dozen. On the other side of the battlefield the carrier simply retrieved the cruisers and made a micro jump to the safety behind Sheppard's group, destroying half of the darts headed for it in the process. Now with the darts spread into two groups they where easy picking as the cannons made short work of them, that was until the second group came, learning from the first groups mistakes they spread out and tried to flank them. The now re-deployed cruisers added their cannons to the slaughter and soon every dart was destroyed, but a few made it through and rammed the Traveler ship, that was hiding behind the fleet, resulting in several hull breaches.
"All ships beam as many as you can over to the Aurora from the Traveler ship, put them in an empty hangar and seal the door." Sheppard ordered as he himself started to beam out people all over the ship, but even as they worked their way through the ship they could see live signs fade out and disappear until the ship exploded from one last dart that made it through the weapons fire.
"How many did we get out of there?" Sheppard asked his first officer
"Almost everyone. But the Marines stationed in the hangar reports that some of the ones that we did get of the ship are in bad shape; they will probably not make it through the day and a woman is asking for you."
"Get Beckett here right now and transport the ones that are injured to the medical facilities around the fleet. Keep them restrained until I order otherwise." Sheppard said
"Yes sir. Transport of Travelers will begin shortly."
"Good, you have the bridge while I go and meet our guests." Sheppard said as he got out of his seat, left the bridge and headed to the gate room. When he got to the gate room he was greeted by a group of marines who escorted some medics who treated a dozen Travelers with sever injuries ranging from first degree burns to several broken bones to massive head wounds and cuts that forced the injured to hold their guts inside with their hands.
Moving past all of this he arrived at the console and punched in the address to the Auroras purple gate. Moving through the gate he was greeted by even more injured on their way to other ships, but here there where only some minor injuries. Ignoring the looks the Travelers gave him he continued towards the hangar that the Travelers had been beamed to.
When he got there four guards saluted him before opening the door to let him in. Inside the room there was a small collection of Travelers sitting on the floor, one of the was Larrin.
"Hello Larrin." Sheppard said as he stepped inside.
"He... hello Sheppard" Larrin said with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You mind telling me what is going on here?"
"Well we... we found a Wraith... planet."
"So they chased part of your fleet down?"
"No.. the entire... fleet was there... we... we are the last."
"Wait a minute. Your telling me that the Wraith took out your entire fleet."
"Yes. The Wraith have been chasing us for days."
"So why did you start to steal space gates while running for your lives?"
"It was the only plan we could come up with. Take gates and dial to a planet so we could escape the Wraith. But as soon as a ship picked up a gate the Wraith targeted it and fired. My ship is the last one. I thank you for bringing us all her to the safety of your ship, but I need to get back and start repairs on the ship, along with everyone who is not injured."
"There might be a small problem wit that. We didn't beam you out of here because of the fight, we beamed as many as we could of your ship because it was venting atmosphere and then a dart hit something critical, there's nothing left of your ship, it is destroyed."
"What no... no... no... that can be..." Larrin said as a flood of tears streamed down her face.
"I'm sorry. You are free to stay here as long as you wish. I will see to it that you get everything you need and if it is possible we will salvage the remains for you."
"I will need some time to think."
"Take all the time you need. We're not in a hurry." Sheppard said as he turned around and walked towards the door.
Just as he was about to walk out of the hangar he heard Larrin whisper "Thank you". But he simply walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
"No one leaves this room without escort, same goes for visitors." Sheppard said to the guards who nodded in understanding. "Maximus, make sure that they get basic supplies, including beds and anything else they wish for, but no weapons. And prepare another hangar for the people on the hives, same conditions." Sheppard then said into the air.
"I will see to it that they get what they need and have the other hangar ready when the others arrive." Maximus hologram, who had just appeared besides Sheppard, said. "Might I suggest that you recharge the fleet, in case the Wraith have reinforcements somewhere?"
"Good. That might be a good idea as soon as we start to infiltrate the hives you take one or two ships at a time and recharge. But be ready to come and pick us up when we're done."
"Very well." Maximus said and his hologram vanished.
Sheppard walked back to the gate room, seeing that the gate was busy he instead walked over to a set of rings and took them back to his ship. When the rings disappeared into the floor he walked to the bridge.
"Report." Sheppard said as he entered the bridge.
"Dr. Beckett arrived through the white gate just as you left and is currently attending to patients, he says that Dr. McKay is on the way here with Weir and the rest of the fleet. Wraith ships have not tried to move and everything is quite." The first officer reported.
"Good. Now how about we pay the Wraith a visit? Have some marines meet me in the hangar in ten minutes, we're going to rescue the captured people from those hives."
"Yes sir."
"Keep the ship safe. Oh, and I've ordered Maximus to recharge the fleet so don't be surprised if the fleet moves towards the star." Sheppard said as he turned around and headed to the hangar of his ship. When he got there he was greeted by fifty marines.
"Listen up, there's fifty of you here and ten objectives out there, that means that we are going to go in five and five, I want all objectives secured at the same time. They won't know what hit them." Sheppard said.
"Like they haven't realized that it was you who took out their fleet already." Ronon said from the door behind Sheppard.
"I agree, they already know that it was you." Teyla said as she stood besides Ronon.
"Never mind. Just team up five and five and pick a jumper. You have five minutes to get dressed in armor, then we are leaving."
"I'm already done." Ronon said, without wearing armor.
"No, either you get into that armor you got or you can sit this one out, same goes for you Teyla, I know that you don't like to wear extra protection, but use them this one time and then you get to decide for yourselves if you want to use it or not. Now get dressed, you're leading two teams." Sheppard said and pointed towards the jumper the duo had arrived in, where he knew their armor was.
"Fine, but just this one time." Ronon said reluctantly as he moved of towards the jumper to get his armor followed by Teyla.
Five minutes later everyone was standing fully dressed in Atlas armor with PP-90s in their hands, that was everyone except Ronon who wielded his trusty pistol, in front of a jumper.
"Now we go there, disable their jamming equipment and beam everyone we find out of there. Take no chances but don't kill the civilians." Sheppard said before moving inside his jumper. Once inside he sat down and started the jumper, he took of and cloaked closely followed by the other teams, some flying better than others, but surprisingly no one hit anyone else.
After a short flight the jumpers split up with each jumper heading for their hive. Sheppard's jumper headed for the hive that they knew had culled the Tower planet, when he got to the hive he went straight for the hangar and found a suitable platform he landed and left the jumper cloaked before opening the door.
When he got out of the jumper in front of his squad he looked around and noticed that there wasn't a single dart left in the hangar. Moving up to a door and opened it, moving into the ship the expected to find Wraith around every corner they turned around, but there wasn't a single Wraith to be found, worried he turned on his FMC and called Teyla and Ronon.
"Teyla, Ronon, how is it looking?"
"I have not seen a single Wraith on this ship." He heard Teyla say as the FMC was sending it straight into his helmet.
"Neither have I." Ronon said.
"That's not good, keep looking. Also there where no darts left in the hangar of this ship." Sheppard said
"Same here." Teyla said
"And here." Ronon said.
Sheppard hung up and kept searching, after half an hour with out a single Wraith he headed to the bridge of the ship. When he opened the door to the Bridge he took a Wraith stunner straight to the face, but the shield simply laughed it of as it absorbed the blast.
Moving inside the room he took cover behind a console as the rest of his team ran inside taking several stunner blasts, but their shields simply absorbed the impact and then the marines found cover from the blasts. Looking over the cover Sheppard saw a queen and five soldiers, raising his gun he aimed and fired, he managed to take out two of the soldiers with just a few shoots to the head. On the other side of the room a young marine stood up and was just about to take a shoot when the queen fired three red blasts into his breast, taking out his shield, this was quickly followed by a stun blast from a Wraith soldier just before Sheppard blew his head of. The marine fell down on his knees, but thanks to the armor tanking part of the blast he was up on his feet in a few seconds. But by that time the rest of the Wraith where already dead.
"Teyla, Ronon, we found a few Wraith on the bridge, but that's all we have found."
"Same here Sheppard."
"And here too."
"Ok, be on the look out for more. The Wraith queen had a particle magnum, a few shoots took out a marines shield so be careful."
Moving up to the central console he put a few more rounds in every Wraith to be safe. After poking around on the consoles screen for a while he managed to deactivate the jamming field and the culled people where transported out of the ship along with Sheppard's team and their jumper.
THE END
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