Stargate Genesis

Episode 17

"Seek and Destroy"

The ZPM room at the base of the central tower might as well have been anywhere else in the city. A blizzard of energy weapons fire was falling so thickly that it cut visibility to nothing. The Wraith ships still in orbit overhead had done this time and again seemingly just to remind them that they were there. Seeing as they were still so far out of phase that the blasts did nothing more than unnerve the city's occupants Rodney guessed that they were primarily scare tactics, and they were working.

"Oh thank goodness that's over," said Rodney, breathing into a paper bag to stop the hyperventilating. Around him the blue mist of energy weapons had faded away and he could once again see the three newly minted ZPMs standing atop the pedestal in front of him. There was a slight residual blue tint to everything, but at least the storm had passed.

"That's almost worse than the thumping," he said.

"Indeed," said Kalel, who was ambling around the pedestal with the aid of an aluminum exoskeleton Carson Beckett had fabricated for him.

"I had hoped more of them would leave once they saw we were invulnerable to their weapons," he said.

"They must know we'll have to come back into phase sometime," said Rodney.

"This city is a ship is it not?" asked Kalel. "Couldn't we try to escape before reverting?"

"Possibly," said Rodney, "though without the gate drive I'm not sure we could outrun them, and it isn't really up to me anyway."

~~00~~

Teyla stood in front of Commander Woolsey's desk and looked over his shoulder at a plaque nailed to the wall behind him. It was a commendation from the President of the United States to the staff and military of the Atlantis Expedition for their continuing efforts against the Wraith, and it wasn't the only one. Similar plaques from the Paramount of China, the Prime Ministers of Australia and Canada, the Belgian Minister of Defense, the President of Serbia, of Zimbabwe and Germany, of India, Russia, Portugal, and Greece all competed for space on the wall. Teyla had collected them during the year she spent on Earth urging the planet's leaders to devote more resources to the fight in Pegasus.

Earth was a strange place. It was one of precious few places in the universe where humanity had been allowed to grow and develop almost entirely unmolested by hostile alien races. Unfortunately that circumstance had turned out to be a double edged sword. Without an overwhelming enemy to unite them the Tau'ri had been fractured by race, creed, nationality, and seemingly every other minute detail of identity that could be teased into a reason to fear and hate one another. Their weapons had been sharpened on a whetstone slicked with human blood, but now the enemy they had always needed had arrived.

The plaques represented promises from the increasingly less divided nations of Earth to fight this enemy, and together Teyla believed they would spell the end of the Wraith. The Tau'ri were good at war. She had seen them fight many times, had seen the incredible weapons they possessed used to decimate the Wraith on hundreds of occasions, but it was not until her visit to Earth that she truly understood their destructive power. Earth was a war machine, a garrison of seven billion potential soldiers dotted with enough factories to equip them all. Mass production was itself a weapon; one she had witnessed being used to build an armada of gate ships that would soon sweep across the galaxy to annihilate the Wraith. Those hives that lingered even now over Atlantis were doomed; they just didn't know it yet.

"We're ready to make our move," said Woolsey. "Rodney and Kalel have informed me that the ZPMs are fully charged. The gate drive is still inoperable, but we can use the city's thrusters to try and flee before we return to normal space. Then again if they manage to track us we'll be leading them straight to the alpha site."

"Yes…" said Teyla vaguely. "When you sent me to Earth did you believe your people would fight for us?"

"I believed you could make them want to," said Woolsey. "It's hard to look at our history and conclude that we don't enjoy fighting, but we haven't had such an uncomplicated enemy in a long time."

"We agreed when I returned that we wouldn't run anymore," she said. "That we would fight the Wraith on our terms."

"And so we have," said Woolsey. "The fact that they've shown up en masse to destroy us must be proof that we're doing something right."

"We," said Teyla. "It is we now isn't it? The Tau'ri will take responsibility for every human in Pegasus."

"We can be a little greedy," said Woolsey, "but the cavalry won't arrive for a while yet, and as I said we're ready to make our move now."

"I am tired of running," said Teyla. "When your people– When our people come it will be the Wraith's turn to run."

"And I suppose you'd like to give them a little preview?" asked Woolsey.

Teyla nodded.

"Then we're in agreement," he said.

He opened his laptop and spoke into it while keeping his eyes on Teyla.

"As the civilian head of the Atlantis Expedition I have determined that our current situation necessitates the use of military force," he said. "Let the record show that I am officially relinquishing control of the city and its civilian staff to my military commander until such time as she sees fit to return them to me."

He placed his thumb on the laptop's built in scanner then turned it around so Teyla could do the same. The ceremony was hardly necessary, but it spoke to Woolsey's appreciation for procedure and to the absolute trust the two leaders had come to place in one another.

Woolsey walked around his desk to shake the hand of Atlantis's new commanding officer.

"So now we fight," he said, "on our terms."

~~00~~

Vala ducked and rolled under a sinewy arm as Ronon's fist pummeled the air where her head had been. She came up out of her roll in time to land a sharp kick to his back and using her momentum followed it up with a thwack from one of her bantos rods. Ronon coughed in pain and swung around to face her, tossing a mountain of thick sweaty dreadlocks behind him in the process. Vala marveled that the beast was still standing then resumed her efforts to down him with a faint to his knees followed by a baseball bat style swing meant to catch him in the temple.

Ronon put up a reinforced leather vambrace to catch the blow then launched his fist at Vala's forehead. Her haymaker had left her exposed and more than close enough for his long arms to bridge the gap. There was no way she could dodge. She closed her eyes and braced for the hit. She felt the whoosh of displaced air arrive first, a gentle kiss compared to the pain that followed, but it wasn't the pain she had been expecting. It wasn't the blunt, skull flattening, brain damaging pressure of a deadly pugilist, but the sharp eye watering pain of a bastard older brother flicking you in the nose.

She opened her eyes to see Ronon jump back and dance around her like a boxer warming up. He bobbed and weaved and punched the air. His dreadlocks bounced around in front of his face strobing a mischievous grin.

"You've been going easy on me?" said Vala outraged.

Ronon's smile widened and he shrugged in a non-committal way that told her everything she didn't want to believe was true.

"If I were still a Goa'uld goddess I would have you executed for this insolence!"

"You'd have to catch me first," said Ronon laughing.

Vala opened her mouth to retort, but was cut off by the voice of Teyla Emmagan being broadcast over Atlantis's public address speakers.

"Attention everyone," it said. "In three hours time we will engage the remaining Wraith ships still in orbit over the planet. All officers and military personnel are to report to me for your orders."

~~00~~

"I am sure it can be done," said Kalel.

"And I am equally sure it can't be," said Rodney. "You people are always asking me to MacGyver bits of totally alien technology together like they're all just parts to the same Erector set. Well sometimes there's just not enough duct tape and rubber bands to make it all fit together okay?"

"You have already done it once," said Teyla.

"No, what we did was throw the entire city wildly out of phase by using an established stable energy reserve," said Rodney. "What you want us to do is tap into the weapons-grade naqueda core of a drone to shift it just out of phase then back into phase in a fraction of a second all while said drone is traveling at several hundred miles per hour."

"We will have to use the remaining phase devices gathered from the fallen Wraith," said Kalel, "and I suspect we will need several dozen more before the battle is won."

"I will find a way to get them," said Teyla. "I knew I could count on the two of you."

"We do make an efficient team," said Kalel.

"I miss Zelenka," said Rodney.

~~00~~

When Atlantis's shield rose, signaling the city's return to normal space, darts immediately began to pour from the hives of the Wraith fleet, far too many for the ascending Jumpers to intercept. They dove at speed toward the shield constantly shifting phase in their attempt to break through. Rodney's own phase-altering program raced to counter them, and the sky over Atlantis was painted red and black with fire and ash. Those darts that did make it through the shield were greeted with heavy machine gun fire from Major Romanoff's ground forces and blasts from Ronon's particle magnum.

In the gate room Wraith soldiers slammed themselves against the city's gate shield in a familiar rhythm.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The shield rippled, bubbled, and boiled as the Wraith adjusted their phase shifting devices and stormed through the Stargate. Marines tore them down as fast as they arrived then dragged the bodies back behind their lines to work the devices off their wrists.

Kalel and Rodney had set up a workstation just outside the gate room and were affixing them to drone weapons as fast and as carefully as they could.

"You know we wouldn't have to do this if General Carter had let me take the extra drones I asked for," said Rodney.

"Now is not the time, Rodney," said Teyla, who was splattered with blood that didn't belong to her.

She dropped three phase shifting devices down in front of him before returning to the fray, one of them still wrapped around a Wraith wrist. Rodney went paler than usual. Beside him Kalel finished with a drone and a marine picked it up gingerly before taking it away.

In the chair room Daniel took on the task of sending the modified weapons up from the city to strike at the hovering hive ships. With the added penetrating capability afforded them by the phase shifting devices the drones bypassed the hives' tough regenerative hulls and detonated deep in their sensitive innards. He amused himself by imagining the faces of his Wraith victims as they realized their stolen Vanir technology was being used against them.

In the skies overhead Wraith darts aborted their suicidal dives and fought desperately to down the lethal drones. The tiny fleet of puddle jumpers launched from Atlantis to run interference for them would have been overrun were it not for the sudden appearance of thirty-two F-304s that had launched the moment it became clear that Atlantis was making its move. Now in addition to the drones and the Jumpers, the Wraith had to contend with the crew and pilots of the sole remaining Tau'ri warship in the Pegasus galaxy.

"Give 'em hell boys!" ordered Colonel Caldwell from his seat aboard the Daedalus. "The sooner this is over the sooner I can offload you all to Atlantis for some goddamned showers."

Asgard beam weapons began to rip through Wraith hive ships. The crew of the Daedalus driven half mad by weeks of silently observing these monsters fought like men and, it should be said, women, possessed. Unfortunately, as a relatively large slow moving target the ship quickly became the object of the enraged fleet's ire. The F-304s and Jumpers rallied to her protection, screening her from the bewildered and disorganized assault by darts whose orders had once again been countermanded.

On Atlantis Teyla instructed the marines she had mustered to fall back from the gate room. As before Wraith bodies had begun to pile up on the floor, giving the Wraith that continued to pour through the gate cover to hide behind. Retrieving more of the phase devices had become next to impossible and there were still many more hives to be destroyed before the battle would be over. Teyla hoped to lure the Wraith far enough into the city to pick them off one or two at a time.

Hiding around a corner just outside the gate room Vala held her P-90 to her chest and waited. When she heard her would be prey approach she turned into the opening and fired, but what she fired at was not a big slow drone but a quick witted Wraith lieutenant who had seen her ambush coming. He pushed the barrel of her weapon away then laid her out with a kick to the chest. Lying on the ground unable to breathe Vala felt the powerful monster pin her by the neck with one hand while his feeding hand went to work removing her armored vest. In the periphery of her vision she could see her P-90 had fallen just out of her reach, or had just as likely been kicked there.

Now finished with the business of undressing her, the Wraith looked on the bare skin of Vala's midriff hungrily. He raised his feeding hand and brought it down hard right onto the upturned knife Vala had exhumed from her long black hair. The Wraith screamed in anguish and released her to pull the knife out of his hand. Vala got up quickly and produced another knife, this one from her boot. The Wraith blocked the way to her P-90 and was now armed with a bloody knife of his own. He raised it up and gave an angry hiss before hurling it at her.

Still not fully recovered from the initial kick Vala's reaction time was slow and the blade caught her on the arm. She felt it go in and then the Wraith was on top of her again, choking her. She jammed her new knife into his left side then took another from her waist and shoved it into his right. The Wraith tightened his grip, apparently hoping she would simply run out of knives. His grip slackened when two more went up through his middle. Then a much larger blade came down on him from above and the fight was well and truly over. He rolled off to one side, dead. Vala looked up and saw Ronon examining his Wraith mandible sword. He helped her up then stared down at the knives still protruding from the Wraith corpse.

"How many of those things you got?" he asked.

"How many you need?" she replied.

Ronon smiled and then the two of them got back to work ridding the city of its invaders.

Far above them the battle was very nearly won. The Daedalus lashed out with its beam weapons and downed two of the three remaining hive ships. Shielded by cruisers and a cloud of darts the third hive turned and fled into hyperspace.

~~00~~

Several days after the battle when the most pressing repairs had been made and the gate room had been wiped clean of the mingled blood of humans and Wraith, Commander Woolsey gave the order and Atlantis rose into the sky to begin its trek to its new home on the alpha site.

In the infirmary Carson Beckett tended busily to the wounded, including Rodney who had suffered a paper cut he was certain was gangrenous. Beside him sat Major Miles Romanoff, who had broken two fingers after slamming his fist into the hard bony face plate of a Wraith drone.

"Did that hurt?" asked Rodney, nursing his own wounded finger.

"Not too much," said Romanoff. "How about yours?"

"Oh you better believe it. Paper cuts are the worst kind of pain," said Rodney. "Hey… maybe it isn't said often enough, but we science guys really appreciate having you big military types around when the bad guys show up."

"Much obliged," said Romanoff, "and we big military types are similarly grateful for your efforts, you and Kalel of course."

"Yeah," said Rodney. "You know despite the fact that he comes from a race of ruthless kidnapping aliens he really isn't all that bad."

In their bedroom Vala and Daniel were celebrating Atlantis's victory over the Wraith in their usual fashion, and weren't really bothering to be subtle about it.

Meanwhile Ronon's seemingly bottomless appetite for combat was being sated by marines who had seen him shoot down darts during the battle, and wanted to know where they could get their hands on a particle magnum. He had promised his to anyone who could best him in unarmed combat.

On the balcony of the control room Teyla Emmagan and Richard Woolsey watched the stars stretch away on all sides. Once more these two leaders united by their devotion to humanity shared the bittersweet taste of their victory. The casualties had been relatively few considering the scale of the attack launched by the Wraith, but unlike their Wraith counterparts the human leaders felt deeply the loss of their comrades.

"When the Wraith are gone," said Teyla. "Do you think the humans in Pegasus will be able to live in peace?"

Woolsey waited a moment before replying to give the question the careful thought it deserved.

"I'm not sure," he said at last. "Our people have found no shortage of hostile alien races since we first learned to use the stargates. It's hard to imagine a time when there won't be anyone left to fight but ourselves. No matter how long we fight it seems like new enemies just rise up to replace the old ones. Now we have access to weapons we could hardly have imagined even a decade ago. I can only hope we'll think twice before we start aiming them at each other."

~~00~~

Larrin Shivon walked confidently between the Wraith soldiers that lined her path to the queen's throne. The hive she had beamed aboard was battered and bruised from its recent encounter with the forces of Atlantis, and her own ZPM powered ships had it surrounded. Treaties were all well and good, but if you wanted to keep an old enemy friendly it helped to use the stick as well as the carrot.

As she approached the queen got up and advanced on her.

"You knew," she accused, flecking Larrin with spit in her rage.

Larrin calmly wiped the spittle away then strode passed the queen and took a seat in her throne. The queen's eyes widened at the insult.

"You knew the Vanir weapons would fail us," she continued. "You sent us to Atlantis hoping they would cripple us."

"What I knew," said Larrin, "was that the Lanteans were harboring the last member of our common enemy. I told you as much when I gave you their location. It isn't my fault you rushed off to fight them without even asking for my help."

"I command hundreds of ships," said the queen her fury intensifying. "What help could I possibly require from the likes of you?"

"A lot obviously," said Larrin. "Just how many of those hundreds of ships do you think will remain loyal to you now that you've shown them all just how incompetent a leader you really are?"

The queen bristled. Bits of foam were starting to collect in the corners of her mouth.

"You Wraith certainly do have an interesting command structure," Larrin continued. "So much simpler than the one I'm accustomed to. As I understand it a queen only remains a queen so long as she can prove herself worthy of the title, and if I were a Wraith I'd say your worthiness is somewhat questionable right now."

"It is not your place to challenge me, human," said the queen. "You are as an ant under my boot."

"Then crush me," said Larrin, standing up and removing a knife from her belt.

Even as she wielded it in the face of their leader the Wraith in attendance did nothing to stop her. Whatever their queen thought, they had sensed instinctively that this human woman had issued a very real challenge, and after their crushing defeat at the hands of a woefully outnumbered and cornered enemy they wanted proof that their obedience had not been misplaced.

The queen drew near and her voice took on the seductive will bending overtones that are the tools of control used by all Wraith queens.

"You will kneel down to me before you die, human," she said.

The words seemed to exert a physical pressure on Larrin like heavy chains had been laid over her shoulders, but she was nobody's servant and held her stance.

"Kneel," the queen tried again.

"I will not," said Larrin through gritted teeth.

She gripped the knife until the blunted nubs she had shaped into the handle for the purpose cut into her skin, drawing blood. The mild pain blocked out the still reverberating voice of the queen and Larrin felt the chains lift. While the queen continued her attempts at mind control Larrin lunged and dug the knife deep into the queen's thigh. Then rather than remove it she twisted the knife ninety degrees and drew another from her right boot. This one she rammed sideways into the queen's calf.

The queen growled and grabbed at her, but Larrin leapt behind the hobbled Wraith and planted a third knife in her back before giving it a kick to drive its short handle too far in to be easily removed. The kick dropped the queen to one knee. Her wounded leg on the floor she steadied herself with one hand pressed to the ground. Larrin came around to look down on her and smile.

"Kneeling suits you," she said, then stamped hard with the spikes of her boot on the palm of the queen's feeding hand. Blood erupted from the holes she created and the queen looked disbelieving at the slowly healing wounds that marred her feeding pads. Larrin came down to her level and placed the barrel of her particle magnum, to the queen's throat.

Unintelligible with rage and pain the queen merely growled her hatred at Larrin and grasped at her with clawed bloody hands. With the knives still lodged inside her the queen's body was having difficulty repairing the damage they had done. The one in her back was allowing blood to seep into her lungs and a thin trail of it was escaping from her mouth. The two in her leg made it impossible to stand.

"You're weak," said Larrin. "Your hive deserves better."

Slicked with blood as they were the queen's hands scrabbled and slid over the gun as Larrin pushed it forcefully into her mouth. In her death throes the queen cursed her, but the sound was choked by the intruding weapon and the rising stream of blood spilling from her mouth. Larrin pulled the trigger then wiped the blood and saliva from her gun on the dead Wraith's silvery hair. Then she stood up and took her rightful place on the throne.

Written by Andrew Marron

Story by Andrew Marron and Caleb Palmquist