Authors' note: The story after this chapter will really start to open up, Please read and review, let me know what you guys think!

Authors Note edit 1

This is the revised chapter 5. Hopefully it's better than the previous one. If it's not, be sure to yell at me! I have the backup somewhere around here...

Chapter 5

I stepped out of the wormhole and mentally activated my shield. I wasn't surprised to see many armed guards at the bottom of the ramp with their rifles trained on me.

General Landry was there too and said, "Welcome back to the SGC Tim."

"Thank you general. It's good to be back."

"If you'll follow me, we'll go up to the briefing room to chat."

"Lead the way." I said smiling with a small wave of my hand.

When we walked up the steps into the operations room, with the armed guards right behind me, I activated my stunner, setting the charge for a few hours of unconsciousness. General Landry, Walter, and all the guards and technicians in the operations room fell to the floor.

"Sorry general, but this is my stop." I said apologetically.

I sat down at the consoles and started a download of everything in the databases. Gate addresses with what they found there, mission reports, tactical analysis of various cultures and species, technical specs of the Tau'ri weapons and ships, and more were all downloaded onto a data crystal I brought with me. After about five minutes of the data transfer a patrol came to the operations room wondering why no one was answering their radio chatter. I entered their minds and showed them what they would expect to see here, Walter and technicians working and even General Landry wondering why they had come down here. I had 'Landry' dismiss them and they all walked away content with the knowledge that everything here was fine.

The download finished and I walked back to the gate room. I mentally dialed the gate and prevented the 'kawoosh' from forming. The event horizon snapped into place and I walked up the ramp. I took one look back at the SGC knowing it might be awhile before I come back. After taking in the scene I stepped through the event horizon back towards my newly budding society.

Making my way to the main computers I added the knowledge I had obtained on my data crystal to the database. I then summoned the nearest replicator to get a status report of their progress since I left. It arrived in a few moments thanks to it's proximity and the transporter booths located around the city.

"I would like a full report of what's happened since I've been gone and to know the maintenance and any changes that have been made to the city. Let's start with sensors."

The replicator stood motionless, almost stoically, and replied, "There have been no contacts on the long range scanners and nothing on internal sensors."

"Excellent. What about the mineral deposits in this system and nearby systems."

"There are seven planets in this system with a total of fifty five moons. There are two gas giants that make up the main holders of the moons, together having fifty three. The system is actually quite rich in minerals and the asteroid belt contains a lot of resources as well. The third planet from the sun has the largest deposits and is uninhabited but habitable. There are already twenty offline mining posts on the moons around the gas giants that were left here from the previous inhabitants. We have checked them out and determined that most of them can be operational within ten days given enough resources."

"Most excellent, I had hoped for such news. Ok, now I want to know what maintenance has been required and all the changes to the city since I left."

"We have had to repair some systems, nothing major, since you were gone but otherwise the city was in excellent shape. As to the changes, we turned on the solid matter holograms that are responsible for hiding the city. They are fully operational and working perfectly. We also checked out all the primary systems and they are all good as well."

"More good news, good. Ok then next is the planning stage. I want all the previous mining sites fully repaired and brought online as soon as possible, if needed get one up at a time to maximize our resource return. Also I want new sites constructed on the third planet and any other planet or moon that would be worth the time. We will also need to construct some mining ships and start mining the asteroid belt. I want a mineral flow as soon as possible."

After my brief talk with the replicator I sat down and started to think of the new ship designs in more detail. I decided that I wanted a more earth-like approach to the power systems for the city and the ships. I decided to have the main power for the city to be generators instead of the potentia, even though the best generators we could make in a short amount of time would output half the amount of energy that a potentia could supply at any instant. I decided this because even though the potentia had the best energy transfer rate, they were essentially batteries and I wanted to have a constant source of energy, one that wouldn't run out eventually. I also wanted there to be more redundancy for the primary and secondary systems. To that end I wanted each primary system to have it's own dedicated energy source (generator), and every two secondary systems to have a dedicated generator, all with the ability to be powered by the main cities' power if there was a malfunction.

I started to design some new ships with specific goals in mind, seeing as how most of the previous Altera ships were actually designed for a little bit of everything. Currently, I wanted a scout ship design, and a few various dedicated warships. I don't have much resources at the moment and it will be getting even lower until most of the mining sites are completed. To that end, I knew I couldn't start pumping out super-carriers.

After many hours in a holo room designing a few ship classes I was done. I had completed a scout ship design and a light frigate.

I sent the specifications of the two ships to the replicators for the shipyard to produce. Until more dedicated warfare ships were designed, we would only construct those two ship types. When it came to ship construction I knew that the Altera method was quite efficient. They used the energy/matter conversion beaming method that the Asgard later studied and developed. The beaming would either take the required materials at hand to construct the ships or lacking that use the energy to matter converter to directly 'produce' the materials in the place they were needed in the exact atomic formula with perfect efficiency. The only problem with the energy to mass conversion method was the amount of power required, thus it was desirable to mine the materials and then use the beams to construct the ships with it, instead of just 'creating' matter from energy.

When that was done I headed to do some homework on the files I got from the SGC. I still had to design the new replicators and I needed to learn the pro's and con's of the ones the Tau'ri had found. I thought about the new base code at length. In the end I decided to make these new replicators with some major design changes. Firstly they would only replicate to repair themselves and keep their number constant, depending on their current task. Secondly they would be non-networked so not all their base code could be changed at once, ending the possibility of 'weapons of mass destruction' against the replicators. Also to be in the new design was a more powerful subspace link, so that they could communicate over greater distances than before.

After the changes were made to the base code I started the construction of the new replicators. They would be human in design as a general form but would change and combine to whatever form they needed to depending on their task. I ordered them to go to the largest mine in the system and construct a major shipyard. Before they left I uploaded the new base code to a crystal and gave the replicators an order to pass the new code on until all the previously built replicators had it.

The next thing I wanted to do was to look at the new armor that earth had developed. I was interested in how powerful it was and if it could be improved at all. I arrived in the design room and sat down at the 3d holographic design interface. I had the computer scan the armor and assemble it in it's 3d structure. On the outside layer was a relatively thick synthetic kull armor variant. It didn't have the same kinetic protection as the original armor but it did have a significant ability to absorb energy blasts in all forms. Underneath the kull armor was a carbon and trinium alloy. This alloy, the computer told me, was quite strong and even pretty flexible. It was quite interesting. What grabbed most of my attention was the rather impressive HUD in the helmet. This HUD was connected to an impressive sensor package and to the rest of the advanced technologies in the suit. People wearing the suit would be able to see normally, or with infra-red or heat sensing filters. They would also be able to hear a higher frequency range than normal. The suit was capable of much higher and lower sound frequency detection and would relay this information directly to the brain of the wearer, allowing them to turn it on or off with a single thought.

I could find someplace for this technology. I thought.

With that taken care of I got into a navis porta and headed to the nearest mining site. Arriving some hours later, I landed the ship in a clearing and lowered the door. This mine is located on one of the moons orbiting a gas giant. It looked remarkably similar to earths flora and fauna. The mine complex had various buildings and constructs. There was one major difference between the Alterran mine and any normal mine from earth. That difference being there is no machinery. With the nanite replicators, there was no need for conventional machinery. They would burrow through the ground directly to the mineral deposits and break them down to the molecular level. Thus keeping the minerals molecular bonds intact. Then the nanites would carry it back to the surface using a strong artificial bond to adhere many minerals molecules to each nanite and take it to the surface or to the closest specialized transport 'booth'.

Each Alterran mine was operated in this matter. Each mine also had a significant form of defense. It was a type of holographic technology. It would cover the facility with an image of what the site was like before the facility was constructed. It also had the handy ability to change itself over time, simulating a real ecosystem. The best part was that the 'illusion' didn't have to be in a forested area, it would work for any type of environment, including desert areas.

These mines were not only incredibly efficient, they were hard to discover. And that made them very very useful.

After I looked over the facility and verified it's working order I went back to the ship. I traveled back to the city and got back to business.

I went back to my quarters to start thinking of the order of events that I would proceed with. I felt that Avalon needed to be more fully aware of the situation happening in this galaxy. To that end I planned to make a little forced reveal to the populace about their planets' situation. They will work together, or they will break apart.