Review Reply's:

Senrab Nomis: The construction method that Atum uses are unknown by the tau'ri / Altera. That is to say they haven't scanned deeply enough to know what method he's using. Those shipyards are able to build a ha'tak in short time, giving the materials are readily accessible of course.

Yea, I think John deserves it. He is an awesome, true character.

Yea, I have yet to bring in the FJN, but no worries there. They will make a appearance in a big way.

Authors Notes: This chapter was written smoothly, the war is just starting! Should have another chapter out in a few days so be on the look out!

Enjoy the chapter and be sure to review to tell me what you thought of it!

Authors Note edit 1

This is the revised chapter 14. 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 14

Orbit of Tollana

Tollana was the go-to point for the joint military operations between the Tau'ri and the Altera. Just hours after the decision was made between them at the SGC, both sides were dispatching forces to the meeting zone.

In a day most of the combined forces were orbiting the planet.

There was many Tau'ri ships in orbit, the entirety of their fleet, 45 of those were the mass produced 305 class warship, twelve 304's, and four of the very powerful 306's. In a few days time the first 307's would be complete and then they would have ship support and heavy fighter support.

The Altera had brought the vast majority of their fleet as well, that consisting of; 20 Clementia class battlecruisers, 8 Ultra Probrum class battleships, and 60 Durus class destroyers, all crewed by replicators with advanced ship AI's.

The Altera counterparts to the Tau'ri class ships were very imposing indeed. In each class the Altera version was about twice as large and just that much more powerful. Just because they were allies didn't mean they were totally equal just yet. The Tau'ri still had to understand the basic principles of most of the technology given to them by the Asgard, the Altera in fact only gave them one piece of technology, and that was being researched at the moment, subspace capacitors.

Where the human ships were crewed by humans, the Altera ships were crewed by replicators. The replicators are the perfect tools and are great for boarding parties and general security.

When all the ships that were coming arrived, they were split up into groups. Each group had almost 20 ships, each one had a Ultra Probrum and Atlas class battleship as the main component and command. Then there were around 14 destroyers consisting of both Durus and Eos class. The last ships to make up the groups were the battlecruisers, Clementia and Daedalus classes, consisting of 4 total per group.

It was decided that it was going to be lead jointly as well. Technically the Tau'ri had the most fighting experience so they were taking the 'lead' but with the Alterans AI having vastly more powerful computational ability they would be providing the larger picture and pointing out everything that the Tau'ri couldn't see, whether that be from short-sightedness, arrogance, ignorance, or imagination.

When the groups were all established and a general rule of engagement was decided upon, each group split up to take the fight to the enemy. It was decided that when any enemy force was discovered, all the groups that could be reinforcements, in time before the enemy group left or engaged in battle, would be dispatched.

As the Tollans looked on, courtesy of the long range sensors gifted to them by the Altera, all 7 groups of ships tore open hyperspace windows and left orbit for their destinations.

Unknown Planet

Atum had split up his massive fleet with orders to take jaffa and human worlds by the dozens. His 600 warships with their massive amount of infantry and soldiers headed in all directions looking for worlds to conquer.

Worlds they found, and worlds they conquered. One world at a time the goa'uld fleet was retaking all the planets that had belonged to the previous system lords and forcing the populations of the planets to become slaves and more soldiers.

In a short time Atum's fleet controlled more worlds than the system lords had ever dreamed of.

Juna

Just a few short days after the first people began to show symptoms, nearly every human being on the planet was dead. The Aschen warships in orbit then started to act as the defenseless farmers and people of the world were nearing extinction. Hundreds of dropships left from the ships in orbit, carrying Aschen civilians, scientists and engineers eager to start their pre-planned actions.

They went down and started construction on vast farms and sprawling cities. Unknown to them, a cloaked Altera scout ship recorded everything that was going on on the surface.

The Beta group of the Altera/Tau'ri ships arrived at Juna together in a bright light show of gigantic hyperspace windows. Immediately the 10 Aschen warships left orbit of the planet and regrouped farther away from it's gravity well, expecting a fight.

Col. Samantha Carter was the leader of this group, and she had the ships under tight reins. She was in command of the UNE battleship, Armstrong. The battlecruisers and destroyers formed around the two battleships and engaged their sublight engines to maximum, closing distance on the Aschen fleet.

The Aschen ships were quite large compared to the destroyers of the joint fleet. They were 1,500 meters in length and looked menacing. The Aschen were known to have greater technology than the goa'uld and Sam expected as much.

Sam didn't want to take any chances so they were going to start the fight with their most powerful weapons. She ordered the charge of the Ultra Probrums' 6 furia beams, their own much enlarged APB called the enhanced Asgard plasma beam (EAPB), and the 2 furia beams on-board the Clementia class BC's.

When they were all charged they waited for Armstrong to enter it's weapons range and all beams opened up on separate targets. Space itself was a glow as the super heated beams of energy tore through the vacuum towards their targets at incomprehensible speed.

Each furia beam and the EAPB was aimed at a different ship, and when these beams reached the shields of the enemy, great flashes of light were seen. The Aschen ships' shields held for brief moments before collapsing to the awesome power of the furia beams, they tore through the ship with ease and came out the back of the ship and continued on into space to disperse in the millions of miles it would take for that to happen. The EAPB, not being as powerful as the furia beams, impacted the shield of it's target ship and broke through after a moments hesitation from the shields. It cut through the very large ship with ease and caused massive secondary explosions all down the spine of the vessel.

Just like that, in one volley nine of the ten enemy ships were out of the battle, either outright destroyed or left drifting in space venting atmosphere. The remaining Aschen warship, after witnessing this wanton destruction, turned and fled into hyperspace.

"Should we follow it?" asked the navigation officer on Armstrong.

Sam thought and replied, "No, just record it's heading and transmit it to the other battle groups. We will proceed to the planet to see if there's anyone we can help down there."

Even though they defeated the enemy in front of them, every one of them saw the footage the scout ship had recorded and knew that it might be hopeless that anyone was still alive down there or could be helped. The crews were saddened by the death of an entire planets' people and couldn't be happy about just killing the people that caused it, they wanted revenge.

Unnamed Planet

As Col. Carters' report about the fight with the Aschen came in, it was quickly decided that Delta group would not be engaging their Aschen enemies in the same manner. The UNE wanted to know the Aschens' fighting capability, not just how pretty their ships look when they are destroyed.

To that effect they passed out orders barring the use of furia beams and EAPB's, at least until they got a good feel for the offensive and defensive capabilities of the Aschen.

Feeling confident in the ships of his command the commanding officer aboard the UNE battleship, named Fraiser, thought about what plan he would take for the coming battle. Col. Abraham Ellis, who was given the command of the Fraiser for the duration of the war, however long that may be, gave the ship captains the new rules of engagement.

Col. Ellis gave the command and all 20 ships of Delta group uncloaked and headed towards the enemy fleet. The Aschen, who had not yet received word that their newly acquired worlds were under attack, did the same thing as their fallen brethren. They formed up together and left the gravity well of the planet.

Delta group had already passed the range where Beta group fired their main weapons, they were determined to find out the capabilities of the Aschen. Not wanting to have their enemies mistake their intention, Col. Ellis had every ship fire their forward batteries at a single enemy vessel. In the moments it took for the 44 APB and 52 forticus beams to hit the ship, it tried to evade the fast inbound weapons fire to no avail. The concentrated weapons fire left virtually no part of the ship remaining when the explosions and decompression's ceased in their prime as everything was reduced to it's constituent parts.

The enemy group, seeing what happened to one of their ships, opened fire when they realized the new arrivals were hostile. From the 9 remaining ships, hundreds of large, green energy bolts were fired at the joint fleet.

The joint fleet weathered the shots well, the Aschen had spread out fire from each vessel so no two targets were hit. The destroyers were hit the hardest, them being the main target and also because they had the weakest shields of the ships present. None of the destroyers lost shields completely but several were down 20 to 30% of their shield strength.

Now having the offensive capabilities of the Aschen tested, Col. Ellis decided to spread the fire from his task force around the ships, trying to judge their strength. All 20 vessels coordinated very rapidly and chose how to spread their shots in varying power. One enemy ship was hit with one beam, a different ship was hit with two, and so on for each remaining 9 vessels. Only the ships that were hit with three or less shots survived, the others turning into bright explosions in the darkness of space.

The ship that was hit with three shots had lost shields and was venting atmosphere, the ships 'below' it were heavily damaged even by their only two and single shots hitting them.

Finally fully knowing the defensive capabilities of these ships, the joint force fired everything they had at the remaining vessels destroying them instantly. They then proceeded to the planet in the vain hope of helping survivors.

Aschen Homeworld

"Tell this council what you have found out!" demanded the leader of the council.

The transmissions officer started speaking in a normal tone, as was common with most Aschen, "It appears that 4 of the planets that we have attacked and occupied have been attacked by unknown forces."

The council mumbled to each other then the leader spoke again, "Only 4? What about our forces, what remains of them?"

The officer shifted uneasily and said, "Yes, only 4 of the planets that we have taken in the first push, the others have not been attacked. As to the defensive forces there, only one ship returned. The captain of the vessel reported that they were attacked by a fleet of twenty ships. Only 3 enemy ships opened fire on the fleet from beyond our forces weapons range and within moments the surviving vessel was the only one that remained, all 9 other ships were destroyed instantly."

The mumbling from the council grew louder and more unrestrained. Finally the leader spoke again, "You're saying that 3 of the 20 ships opened fire and 9 of our vessels were destroyed outright?"

The transmission officer just nodded.

The leader replied, "It's a good thing we hadn't sent the reinforcements then. It would have been unfortunate if these enemies of ours would have seen our true power."

Interstellar Void

The other task forces of the joint Tau'ri / Altera military campaign were searching the galaxy for the rest of their enemies. It had been found out that indeed it was not Atum that destroyed those 4 worlds with biological weapons. The Aschen had done that, and they had been destroyed at those 4 worlds.

It was the hope of the task forces to find any enemy fleets and engage them with extreme prejudice. It would only be a day now until the first 307 was completed. It was being rushed into service at the expense of most 304 and 305 production. It was hoped that the new ship would be completed in time to meet this large force of Atum's Ha'taks that numbered in the hundreds. The 307 would be a key ship in the defeat of such a force, it is truly a magnificent and powerful design.

While the searching was going on, Beta, Delta, Alpha, and Charlie groups helped with the few remaining survivors of the worlds attacked by the Aschen, the peoples unlucky enough to have some small immunity to the aschen bio weapon.

Elsewhere, the Foxtrot group discovered a planet recently invaded by a small contingent of Atum's forces. They entered the system under cloak and began scanning the inhabited planet and it's orbit. There was 4 goa'uld ha'taks in orbit and thousands of ground forces on the planet with air support.

The task force moved into orbit and surrounded the goa'uld vessels. Without warning 5 ships uncloaked around each goa'uld ship and opened fire, the ha'taks were easily destroyed.

Then the Ultra Probrum class battleship, named Avalon, uncloaked and beamed the planet's stargate into orbit. This was done for multiple reasons, for one it made sure the ground forces of the goa'uld couldn't escape, another reason was it prevented goa'uld reinforcements from arriving, or rather if they did arrive, they wouldn't last very long in the cold hard vacuum of space. It was widely known that the goa'uld had no ships capable of going through the stargate that was still in use. The last reason was to allow for reinforcements in the form of puddle jumpers, also known as Navis Porta.

The goa'uld forces under direct orders from Atum had installed enemy beaming counter-measures so that they weren't left open to any form of enemy manipulation that way. It was decided that they couldn't just bombard the goa'uld forces from orbit because of their close proximity to the natives on the world, the task forces would never risk the lives of innocents in this war.

That left them with only one option, ground and air forces deployment.

P7X-824

This planet was freed from goa'uld dominion when the system lords were wiped out. They had been enjoying their freedom and everyday lives, expanding as they saw fit, since the goa'uld had left. That's why when jaffa armies from a goa'uld they had never heard of before came, they thought their lives were over and their freedom would be gone forever.

There was roughly 600,000 humans on the planet and all the major population centers had been over-taken by the new goa'uld conquerors. That is, until the Tau'ri / Altera fleet had come to drive them from the planet forever.

The Foxtrot group had dialed the stargate to Thor for a special request. Before the end of the day, hundreds of human and Alteran / replicator soldiers had beamed down to the planet under cover of cloaking generators. They beamed roughly 15 miles outside of the goa'uld beaming counter-measures to ensure surprise when the attack came. The goa'uld still had air superiority, but that was planned to change when the forces had established themselves on the planet.

Since Earth had been told of the truth of aliens and unknowns, the armies of the world rapidly integrated whatever advanced alien technologies they could for their forces. The result of that was felt in volumes with the UNE forces. A lot of equipment and technology was incorporated into the standard gear packs for the UNE forces, there was also all new units and field equipment that was meant to replace tanks, demolition gear, armored transports, and much more.

Under cover of cloak, the forces expanded the hastily built HQ and fortified it as much as possible. They installed shield emitters and power generators, a command center and artillery pieces, a brig and mess, an infirmary and air and ground defensive weapons.

By the end of that first day, they had established a beach head to re-take the planet on the ground while the ships in orbit would protect it from Atum's fleet and establish a planetary defense grid to protect the planet into the future.

As night was falling all the soldiers on the ground and in the ships were determined to free the innocents on the planet from goa'uld oppression.

Thor, Olympus Shipyard

The sun was coming up and the darkness on the planet was being driven away like a terrified animal running from a predator.

John Sheppard had been stationed here the last few weeks learning everything he could about the new ship he was to be commanding. When he first got the assignment the ship was going to be the flagship of the Pegasus expedition branch of the UNE Navy. That all changed when the war broke out. It was decided by the UNE board themselves that the 307's would be kept in the milky way until they could be spared to leave for Pegasus.

This decision didn't make John very happy, but he, like most other people from Earth, had witnessed the wholesale destruction of planets by the Aschen and Atum. John would damn himself before he would just watch and let such things continue. So while he wasn't happy with the decision to stay in the milky way, he at least respected it.

John woke up at the sudden ringing of his alarm clock and sat up. He stretched lazily as he remembered that today was the day. He smiled, still sitting on the bed, and thought, Today's the day. The first day that I will be commanding the most powerful warship ever constructed in the history of the Earth.

He wondered if this is how all the previous commanders of other vessels felt in the distant past, the first Galley, the first Ironclad, the first navy battleship on earth, the first space vessel made by earth, the 303. He decided that it would've been a similar feeling, though not one of those other commanders would ever have been able to stand against his ship. The biggest and best ship ever made.

John was still smiling as he put his clothes on and got ready for his first flight on his ship. After he was finished getting ready he made his way to General O'neill's temporary office. He stood outside the door and straitened his uniform, then he knocked on the door.

John could hear a shuffling of papers then a familiar voice said, "Enter."

He walked into the office and stood at attention, giving a crisp salute.

"At ease Sheppard. Have a seat," said Jack motioning to the only other chair in the office.

As John was sitting down Jack said, "The government is throwing trillions of dollars into the military and it's expansion and I have to try to work out everything in this," he gestured to the walls of his office, "stinking cubicle."

John just smiled, he liked the General a lot. He kept quiet though because he knew Jack was going to get down to business. He didn't have to wait long.

"So, I suppose your here for the keys to the new car huh?" he asked seriously and yet jokingly.

John nodded and said, "I suppose I am sir."

"Well then it's good timing. They finished the final diagnostics for all it's systems just a few moments ago." Jack paused and sized the other man up, then said, "I hope your good at parallel parking. That thing has a huge turning radius." Jack smiled then continued, waving away his previous comment, "But seriously Sheppard, I hope you know what you're getting yourself into. That is one hell of a responsibility out there." he said pointing out his window towards the shipyard floor.

John nodded and said, "I understand sir. I won't let you down." John thought he was finished speaking but then he blurted out a question, "What's the name of the ship sir? No one would tell me."

Jack smiled for the first time and replied, "Why don't you have a look yourself. It's visible on this monitor." As he said that he turned the screen in front of him around so that John could see it.

John looked at it and felt humbled and intensely proud.

The name of the ship was, "Libertas".

It was Latin for 'Freedom'.

John felt the name of his ship was absolutely perfect.

After a brief finish to his conversation with Jack, he made his way to the ship. Jack watched him leave and said to himself, "Good luck John. You're going to need it."

John was still a couple hundred yards away from the ship when he stopped walking and just stared at the vessel.

It was astonishing. He looked to his left and right and could see the ship extending into the distance.

My 5,000 meter long ship, he thought.

He looked on at every detail admiring it's size and complexity. Before he could bring himself to continue walking, he was beamed away.

He reappeared on the bridge of Libertas. The bridge crew stood up and saluted at him smartly. John nodded with respect and said, "At ease."

He looked around at the bridge finally seeing it for the first time in person. He had been looking at the designs of the ship for weeks and now getting to see it in person it was somehow much more impressive.

In the bridge of the ship, which was in the middle of the ship for ultimate protection like that of the 305 and 306, John sat down in his command chair and tried to bring his thought back to ground level.

"All stations give ready report." he said.

"Navigation: Green"

"Sensors: Green"

"Engines and Generators: Green"

. . . .

He listened in as each system was checked for the final time. Satisfied that everything was in order he said, "Take us into orbit."

The 5,000 meter long ship activated it's anti-gravity engines, inertial dampeners, and sublight engines and started it's thunderous ascent.

Once the ship reached orbit John relaxed his muscles that he hadn't noticed he had tightened.

"How's the inventory of the drone hangars?" he asked.

The 307 class Super Carrier had 4 hangars that made up most of it's bulk. There were two hangars on the side that were essentially underneath the ship that ran along most of it's length. These were the primary hangars and they were over 4200 meters in length and extremely wide. The primary hangars were designed to be able to capture and dock all other classes of Tau'ri ships so they could be repaired, upgraded, and even built in the field.

There were also two secondary hangars that were around 3000 meters in length, and they were located on the side / top of the ship. These were the drone hangars, one exclusively for fighter drones and one for heavy drones.

"Current capacity is 50 fighter drones and 10 heavy drones. Command has stated that we should begin construction of more of each immediately upon successful mission start." said one of the officers.

John thought about those numbers and was satisfied, he said, "Very well, begin construction of more at once. Make the construction priority 2."

The drone hangars had been designed to not only store, but to build, repair, and upgrade the drones. All four hangars had dozens of energy to matter converters and a single neutrino-ion generator that powered them and the construction beams.

Priority 1 was the construction speed equivalent to maximum production per hour, this speed was extremely energy demanding though and had to have power diverted from other neutrino-ion generators on the ship to provide the required energy.

Priority 2 was the maximum construction speed that could be reached by the single generators available in each hangar. While this wasn't the fastest option, it didn't take energy away from other generators that were needed for the ships other systems.

As John ordered priority 2 construction, it began immediately. Within an hour the first fighter drones would be completed. In four to five hours the first heavy drones would finish.

"Take us to the location of Foxtrot group. We will provide defense and assistance for the forces there." John said.

The massive ship changed heading and tore open a massive hyperspace window.

The ship had 15 neutrino-ion generators and multiple other lesser generators, making it the fastest ship in the Tau'ri arsenal.

It entered the hyperspace window and headed toward their allies.