A cloaked puddle jumper flew into the cavernous hangar bay of the 1st Wraith Hive ship that'd been targeted for boarding. Fortunately the Wraith ship didn't have doors obstructing entry, instead they had an atmospheric containment field partway through the maze of twists and turns separating their hangar from the cold of space.
Mike Stevenson piloted the navicula porta through the entry corridor with ease, then hovered in place for a moment while he searched for the best landing zone. Off on the side were several doors leading to the interior of the Hive with dart niches in the walls above them. On the other side was a much larger landing platform, with the interior doors farther away. Two of the Wraith's small transports were sitting side by side in the center, but the platform could easily have held a dozen more along with a slew of darts.
Mike chose one of the empty smaller platforms and flew towards it. When he arrived he tilted the jumper's nose up until he was looking at the 'ceiling' above him, with numerous darts nestled against the walls. He watched his distance reading closely and lowered the jumper aft-first towards the ground.
When he was within a meter he detached the special add-on and felt the jumper lighten as well as heard a muffled 'thump' as it hit the deck. He leveled out the jumper and landed beside what looked like the bottle half of a broken beer bottle. The base was circular, but on one side there was a bit of a rim rising up, which matched the angular cut on the back of the puddle jumper. This provided a small bit of cover along the back side of the mobile ring platform that was now visible outside the jumper's cloaking device.
The back door of the jumper lowered and three Alterrans walked out wearing personal cloaking devices of their own. Once clear, Mike lifted off again and moved away to provide support should any darts redirect themselves to the platform. He had a dozen pesqua and a small energy weapon in the front of the jumper to work with, as well as the element of surprise so long as he stayed cloaked.
All of the Alterrans lugged a heavy backpack beneath their cloaks as they spread out, two of them to flank the entrance and catwalks, and the third to the rings where he deposited his pack on the ground and began to rearrange its components. Nate Stevenson unpacked the mobile shield from its compact form and attached it to the matching niche in the ring platform. It slid into place smoothly, then activated with a thin bubble-like shield covering both the ring platform and a few meters of perimeter around it.
Nate looked up as he heard the telltale sound of pesqua firing just in time to see a Wraith dart explode as it crossed the massive hangar bay towards them. A moment after the explosion he saw two other darts redirecting as well as dozens more powering up as a buzz-like Wraith alarm sounded throughout the ship.
Nate, still cloaked, keyed his wrist-bound communicator as the other two flying darts ate pesqua as well. "We've got darts moving, but the rings are secure. Start sending them over."
The words were barely out of his mouth when the ring platform activated and the concentric bars leapt up from the ground and materialized five tightly packed soldiers hoisting heavy weapons. The men stepped off the platform and took a knee around the edges, but still within the cover of the shield, as they brought their mini-pesqua launchers to their shoulders in preparation for more incoming darts.
The rings activated again and deposited a fully armored Ronon, Kiryk, and three other runners that the Setidan had rescued and recruited. They stepped off the platform and moved outside the shield, where they waited for the rest of what the ground troops had come to call the 'bad-ass squad' to ring in. Three more rescued runners materialized along with Ford, who had temporarily joined the elite squad in lieu of his more recent captaining duties. Ronon's personal replicator Ares materialized as well, and the five additional troops quickly joined up with the others, leaving the rings clear for more of the 'conventional' troops to arrive.
"Ares, get the door," Ronon ordered as the group jogged across the pad towards the interior entrance. The replicator sprinted ahead of them and inserted its 'hand' into the door controls, using its nanite construction to hack the biological mechanism.
The doors split apart, revealing an empty hall with the sound of approaching foot strikes echoing through the slightly misty interior. Ronon motioned Kiryk forward.
The man nodded and led the way inside, Ancient-designed shotgun in hand. He held close to one side of the wall as his previously tan camouflaged armor slowly adjusted its tint towards the motley bluish color of the Hive's interior. He and the rest of the strike force had flexible, yet full armor covering their bodies, including a force field faceplate on their helmets. If the Wraith managed to chuck them out an airlock the same way they'd dealt with Sheppard's replicators three years ago, they'd be able to survive in the vacuum of space for a short period of time…hopefully long enough to be picked up by jumper or beamed in, assuming they were outside the range of the Wraith's beaming countermeasures.
Ronon worked his way up the other side of the hall as he heard more of his troops ringing in behind them. The Commander of the Lantean troops kept close to the wall to give those behind him a clear shot when the approaching Wraith came within view in what should be only a few more steps…
Ronon fired his heavy pistol as the first Wraith shadow appeared, catching the soldier-class bug in the shoulder, spinning it around and down to the ground. Beside him Kiryk fired a much bigger red energy blast into the chest of the second Wraith to appear, lifting it off its feet and propelling it backwards into the large group of Wraith that were beginning to cluster around the corner. The rest that had come within view took shots from Ronon's men, but the Wraith hesitated from charging forward and instead ducked back behind the cover of the curving corridor, popping out sporadically to return fire with their stunners.
One of Ronon's men took a hit, but his armor's shield absorbed the blast easily. Behind him, Ford readied himself and waited for Ronon's wrist-flick signaling him forward. Aiden took off running towards the Wraith and literally threw himself at them…
Ronon heard weapons fire as he jogged in formation behind the seemingly kamikaze Ford, but he knew the man's armor and shields would protect him from several stunner shots before he went down, and even then his enzyme would insulate him from one or two more.
Kiryk shot one of the downed Wraith that had regenerated and was beginning to rise again in the head with another very powerful 'shotgun' blast, splattering the wall with blue brains as Ronon pulled around the corner and began taking very careful shots over Ford's head as he fought the Wraith hand to hand. There were easily thirty of the suckers packed into the narrow hall, most of whom didn't have a clear shot at Ford.
Tenacious, Ronon thought of Ford as he shot another one that Aiden knocked back towards them. It seems as if he was going to hand them back to the rest of the bad-ass squad one by one when Ford took a hit to his shields that wasn't a stunner.
One of the Wraith held a small pistol that'd fired a green bolt of energy. Ronon had seen this weapon before, and knew it was a potent killer designed to take down replicators. Ford's shields couldn't hold up against much of that.
Apparently Aiden realized that as well, and took the weapon out of the Wraith's hands, breaking its wrist in the process.
"Down!" Ronon yelled.
Ford dropped to his knees.
Ronon and his men peppered the Wraith with their varied weapons, mowing them down row by row with some sporadic weapons fire returning their way. Ronon took one of the green bolts to the shoulder, but his shields held and he kept on firing as his earpiece activated.
"Pull back!" Ryan's voice ordered, being relaying to each and every member of the assault team via an override command. "The Hive ship's power cores are overloading. The ship will blow in less than two minutes. Evac now!"
"Go!" Ronon groaned as his men began to retreat. He covered Ford as he scampered back, shieldless as his armor took a stun blast, with part of it soaking through. Aiden shrugged it off and passed back through Ronon and Kiryk's line. They fired a few more volleys into the mass of approaching Wraith as they climbed over the stack of corpses…some of which were getting up on their own…then retreated back to the ring platform with the rest of their men.
When they got there, there was a small line waiting for transit as well as a decloaking jumper landing beside them as the mini-pesqua launchers spat wave after wave of small glowing missiles at the Wraith darts massing in the hangar that were peppering the protective shields over both the rings and the decloaked jumper.
"Get inside the jumper," Ronon heard Teyla's voice say, seemingly from nowhere as he received an invisible push from behind towards the lowering ramp of the ship.
"Sixty seconds to detonation," Ryan's voice noted in all of their earpieces.
Just as Ronon was about to run up into the jumper he saw a wave of normal-sized pesqua enter the hangar bay from the entry corridor and swarm about inside. He heard the darts explode and fall from inside the jumper as he grabbed a seat, smashing his armored bulk up against the wall to try and make room for everyone else. The cockpit was already full of other runners and Ford, while Kiryk and the rest squeezed into the back along with three Alterrans in liquid armor appearing out of nowhere.
The ship began to lift off even as the hatch was closing and Mike moved them out of the hangar bay at breakneck speed. Behind them the last of the troops, the mini-pesqua launchers, ringed out of the Hive back to the safety of Atlantis sitting a few kilometers away.
The Hive ship's generators detonated before the jumper was past the atmospheric shield, but fortunately there was plenty of hull between them and the explosion, which delayed the wave of destructive plasma long enough for them to build up speed and zip out of the entry conduit before the blast overwhelmed them.
Ronon bucked in his seat as part of the explosion rocked the jumper as it caught up with them, but its shields held up to the quickly dissipating explosion. Those in the cockpit could see both Atlantis's shields and those of the flanking Columnar light up with impacts of both debris and plasma without incident.
"What now?" Ronon asked Teyla, who was squeezed against his chest.
Her facial armor, which looked like a liquid mask of silver, retracted and she pulled her chin away from his now grayish armor, looking up at his helmet with fire in her eyes.
"It seems we're going to have to disable their self-destruct before we board the next Hive."
"How do we do that?"
"We'll come up with something," Teyla said confidently.
"Well, anyone have any bright ideas?" Sheppard asked the small group of Alterrans in Atlantis's war room.
"We have to disable their ability to self detonate before they detect us," Matt pointed out in English, for O'Neill's sake. He'd only just begun the most basic of neural downloads.
"Can we not board the Hive ships under cloak and disable the devices from the inside?" Teyla asked.
"That might be possible," Andara commented. "But there won't be a clear access route from the hangars to the power core. That's where you have to disable their command interface so they can't overload their generators."
"So they don't actually have a self destruct onboard?" Sheppard clarified.
"No," Andara confirmed.
"Why can't we just shoot them out?" O'Neill commented, shrugging. He wasn't really sure if he was supposed to speak or not.
"Then we would run the risk of detonating the power core ourselves," Andara explained sweetly.
Sheppard's eyes suddenly widened with an idea. "How about we shoot something else?"
Andara tilted her head to the side in consideration. "Meaning what?"
"They don't have to be at the core to detonate it, right?" Sheppard asked.
"I don't think so," Andara said, frowning. "They can probably do so from any priority control interface. Most likely on the bridge or the Queen's chamber."
"Cut the command lines," Ryan interrupted as he sensed Sheppard's line of thought.
"There's more than just one," Andara reminded them. "And they're easy to regrow. Even if we took them all out, it'd only buy us a few minutes."
Matt rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "We need to pirate the control clusters…take control of the ship's operating system rather than destroy the command lines."
"We would still have to be on the inside, correct?" Teyla asked.
"Yeah, but I think we can pull off a stealth infiltration," Matt answered. "Andara, do you think we can find a way to jam their ship to ship communications?"
"Not unless you can spare a few months," she responded. "Telepathic communications are notoriously difficult to interfere with…unless you have the same transmitting capability."
"Use theirs," O'Neill suggested.
Sheppard nodded his agreement. "Take one of their ships, then use their own equipment to jam the others." He glanced at Andara. "Could you do that?"
She chewed on her lip, thinking hard. "The Wraith use boosters to connect their natural telepathic network over distances. I should be able to work with that, but not the individual abilities of each Wraith. We would have to keep the ships apart from each other."
"Fortunately they already are," Matt added. "And getting farther apart by the hour. Before long our fleet is going to have trouble keeping their critical systems from regenerating."
"Would a cruiser be sufficient?" Teyla asked Andara.
"It should be," the slightly taller Alterra answered.
"Yeah, but the cruiser's hangar bays have sealed doors," Matt disagreed. "You can't just fly inside. And if we blow the doors they'll be onto us."
"Docking hatch?" O'Neill asked, getting a bit more confident within the group.
"We'd still have to cut through," Matt said.
O'Neill got a quizzical look on his face. "Do you think one dro… pesqua would be enough for them to blow themselves up over?"
"Probably not," Ryan commented.
"Use its hole," O'Neill offered.
Ryan and Matt, the only two Stevensons in the room, looked at each other with almost perfect synchronicity.
"Big enough for a person?" Teyla asked.
"The hole would reseal," Andara warned, "but not immediately with armor. Just a thin layer to regain atmospheric integrity."
Ryan smiled at something he was mentally discussing with his clone. "I think we have a plan…" he announced to the others.
47 Wraith cruisers had survived the initial battle, 42 of which were hunted down and destroyed by the Columnars, leaving 5 remaining due to the fact that they had Humans onboard. One of those five had limped away from Lantea on partially regrown engines and was a good three hours away from the planet when one of the Columnars made a brief hyperspace jump to close the distance.
The armor on the back end of the Columnar moved aside, revealing the hangar bays. Three jumpers flew out, one of which immediately cloaked, and headed for the still somewhat distant cruiser. When they got halfway there the cruiser began firing a single plasma cannon in their general direction…all others on the ship had been destroy and as of yet not fully regrown.
The cruiser would have released darts to intercept the jumpers, had it had any to begin with. Operating on only a skeleton crew, most cruisers in the Wraith fleet were essentially empty, including their dart bays. Still, their choosing to fire back at the approaching enemy ships was a good sign…meaning they weren't ready to blow themselves up just yet.
The two visible jumpers veered away from each other and approached the cruiser from different angles. Each of them fired a single pesqua…a last minute addition to the plan.
One of the glowy missiles hit the operational plasma cannon but didn't immediately explode. It looped up once through the ship and came back down on the cannon, then detonated inside of it. The other pesqua hit the cruiser's remaining operational engine, completely disabling its movement. With those two targets destroyed, the pair of jumpers peeled off and headed back to the Columnar, seemingly content with further disabling the cruiser.
However, the third cloaked jumper moved up alongside one of the extra holes in the cruiser and deposited three small packages on the hull. Each of them had their own small cloaking devices so the cruiser's sensors wouldn't immediately detect their presence. The small, spider-like replicators walked across the surface of the ship and scurried down into the recently bored holes.
Still cloaked, they cut/pushed their way through the thin film already beginning to regenerate over the entry points as the cruiser's atmosphere began to replenish in the affected areas. The small damage done to the regenerating ship's tissue was written off as battle damage, given the mere seconds of time elapsed between the two occurrences and the myriad of power and control lines that had been severed by the pesqua and would continue to cause minor damage before they too resealed.
Now on the inside of the ship, the small cloaked spiders walked off to carry out their assigned tasks.
Mike and Teyla waited inside the cloaked jumper outside the Wraith cruiser's hangar bay door patiently. They knew it would take some time for the three crudely cloaked modified replicators to seize control of the ship's systems and block access to the power core. If at least one of them managed to accomplish that mission priority, the next step would be to open the hangar for the boarding party.
Right on cue the double doors covering the hangar pulled apart revealing a pocketed alcove within the Wraith ship. Mike moved the jumper through quickly, not knowing how long the replicators could maintain control. Once they passed through the opening the two Alterrans knew they now had the advantage…even if the replicators were now destroyed.
The cloaked jumper landed on a small pad next to an access door that led up the spine of the ship. Mike stayed in the cockpit and brought up a lifesigns display of the ship's interior. He modified the sensors and three small square blips were added…with most of the Wraith nearby.
"Get going," Mike told her. "I'll direct you from here," he said as one of the replicator signals vanished. The Wraith around it dispersed and the hangar bay doors began to close, sealing them in.
Teyla saw it too and powered up her liquid armor. The forearm gauntlets she wore melted and spread the silvery barrier across her entire body. Her face was obscured with a liquid sheen, but from the inside she could still see clearly. She walked to the back of the ship as Mike lowered the access hatch. Teyla disappeared beneath her own cloak just before she walked out of the ship.
Mike turned back to the display and saw another blip activate…Teyla's secure homing beacon. The Wraith didn't have the technology to pick up the elusive signal, so the Alterrans felt secure using it to coordinate their stealthed infiltration teams. He watched as she quickly crossed the pad and went to work on the door controls. Either hacking the controls with one of the other gadgets she was carrying or prying them open by force, Teyla got through the door within 20 seconds and moved through the ship's interior at a very fast run.
"Left," Mike told her through their comlink. "Three doors down. Four Wraith inside," he said as another replicator signal vanished.
The four Wraith split up, with two leaving the room just as Teyla got to them. On the display screen in front of him he saw Teyla's signal intensify just before the two Wraith icons winked out. A few seconds later the two inside were gone as well.
"Nine to go," Mike informed her. "Next closest is two levels above you. There should be an access shaft at the end of the hall on the right."
After the cruiser had been secured and the one surviving replicator was retrieved, Andara ringed over to the mobile platform they'd landed in the hangar bay. She immediately went to work on the ship's systems, and within three hours had reengineered the cruiser's telepathic communications' booster to produce the equivalent of 'white noise,' effectively jamming their inter-ship communications everywhere within the star system.
With their inability to inform each other of what was happening onboard their ships, Mike flew Teyla, Sheppard, and three other Stevensons onto the next targeted Hive ship and slipped them aboard unnoticed. The 5 cloaked Alterrans split up after breaching the door to the interior, each of them carrying a heavy backpack, as they quietly made their way to key control clusters that relayed ships' commands and provided autonomic functions for the 'living' ship.
When Sheppard reached his first cluster he placed a small block of replicator nanites on the door controls. They absorbed into the material, then created a small bump on the exterior. John pressed the bump and the door opened.
He glanced around, making sure no Wraith were in sight, then pressed a small side ridge, commanding the block to release from the door. He stepped through into the cluster chamber and reattached the block on the opposite side. When the bump reappeared he pressed it, closing the door and sealing it off from any other commands, which the replicator nanites would block.
Sheppard decloaked and pulled off his backpack. Inside it were four large cubes of black material. Three had identical symbols engraved onto the surface, but the fourth had a separate design of the same carvings.
John pulled out the oddball and activated the dormant replicator.
The nanite cube expanded in volume until it resolved into the form of a thin female, equal in height with Sheppard.
"Awaiting instructions," it said, standing perfectly still.
"Interface with the control cluster and disable any new commands. Keep the ship operating as is. And see if you can tap into their power control systems from here. Priority goes to keeping the reactor from overloading," Sheppard ordered in Lingara.
The replicator engineer didn't ask any questions or respond in any way. It simply walked over to the biological node suspended between floor and ceiling and reached its hand into it, distributing nanites throughout the cluster. Sheppard saw her already petite form lose density as the replicator had to redistribute its limited supply of nanites up and into the node, but it retained its female persona and dimensions.
"Standing by," it announced a few seconds later. "No reactor access from this location."
John pulled out the other three cubes and activated the combat model replicators. Three more females materialized wearing trim black uniforms.
"Stay here and guard this cluster at all costs," Sheppard ordered as he moved back towards the door. He cloaked, then pressed the button to open it.
"Keep the door closed until otherwise ordered," he said from outside the cluster chamber. The nearest of the female guards walked over and sealed the door behind him.
"Cluster secure," Sheppard reported over his comlink.
After all five of the targeted clusters were locked down another jumper returned with a ring platform and the Lantean army began boarding the Hive ship with Ronon's bad-ass squad leading the way. Meanwhile the five Alterrans already onboard ship began loosing their own carnage within the ship.
Sheppard headed back to the hangar bay to help Ronon by attacking the Wraith from behind as they attempted to repel the superiorly armed and armored intruders. Teyla, however, made her way through the ship under cloak, not attacking any of the Wraith she passed by until she got to the Queen's chamber.
She quickly killed the two guards outside with headshots from her wristbound energy weapons. Two more shots on each for good measure and she began working on the door controls. With no more easy open replicator blocks she proceeded to cut the command lines between the door controls and the retraction mechanism… then she forced the door open by hand.
Her personal shields took two hits by stunners when the doors cracked open, prompting her to jump back out of the way. She heard more footsteps approaching the Queen's chamber from outside and quickly reactivated her cloaking device. She squeezed her way through the door in the face of four Wraith guards waiting a few meters back from the door. Once through she circled around behind them and shot two of them in the back of the head, one from each wrist.
When she did that her cloak automatically dropped, and the other two Wraith turned on her silvery form. They raised their stun rifles at her, but she batted one away with her right arm and absorbed the blast from the second with her shields.
She grabbed the second weapon and turned it away from her as she kicked the first Wraith in the gut and knocked it to the floor.
From behind she got hit with one of the potent non-stun Wraith pistols and saw her personal shield indicator drop by 27%. In response she spun around behind the one still standing Wraith and used its bulk to block any further shots.
That Wraith dropped dead to the ground as the male appearing from the shadows fired through the soldier. Teyla jumped to the side and fired a volley of green blasts back at him. He went down hard as more Wraith poured through the door, along with the one Wraith already in the room, standing back up from the kick Teyla gave it.
Using her enhanced Alterran muscles, she leapt up two meters into the air, firing wildly at the doorway as she arced towards the Wraith hoard at an angle. She dropped to the ground three meters in front of them and fired into their legs. Four of them stumbled and Teyla ran into the bunch, taking more stunner blasts on her shields…dropping them dangerously low.
Now forcing them to fight hand to hand, Teyla punched, kicked, and fired her wrist weapons at point blank range, whereas the Wraith's stun rifles weren't built for this close of combat. Teyla methodically fought her way through the Wraith guards, eventually ending up as 'king of the hill' on top a pile of dead bodies.
Some of those bodies began to stir again, so Teyla went around shooting those that were regenerating as she felt a subtle telepathic touch. It was so weak she didn't recognize it at first, but quickly realized it was the Queen attempting to access her mind.
Teyla fired two more blasts into the bodies on the floor then turned her attention to the blue-haired Wraith hiding in the shadows. Her mental domination would have been successful had one of the Lantean boarding parties reached her first, but to Teyla's much stronger Alterran mind the attempt to freeze her in place was almost laughable.
"That won't work on me," Teyla said in the common tongue as she corned the Queen.
The female Wraith snarled at her silvery image. "What are you?" she demanded.
"Your death," Teyla said, shooting her several times with only her right wrist weapon.
The Queen fell to the ground, but wasn't completely disabled. From somewhere on her body she pulled out a small version of the anti-replicator pistol and aimed it at Teyla.
Teyla's left hand rose up…and suddenly the Queen's arm froze in place, a few inches shy of reaching her line of fire. With her right hand Teyla fired several more blasts, including two to the head.
The Queen gasped one last time and fell dead at Teyla's feet.
The Alterran stood there for a moment, steadying her emotions, then she reactivated her cloaking device and left the Queen's chamber to help the boarding party clear out the rest of the ship.
It took over three weeks to board and capture the remaining Wraith ships scattered across the system. Ronon's bad-ass squad led the attack against every Hive ship, but he rotated the rest of his men, insuring that they didn't make mistakes due to fatigue. Of his 40,000 available troops, only 6,000 did he deem ready for heavy combat, and it was from those 6,000 he drew from to fill out his 500 man boarding parties.
Casualties had been light. Those few that died had done so mostly from their own mistakes. Those that stuck with Ronon's battle plan and didn't wander off alone into the Hive Ships in search of personal glory had fought well, putting their technological advantage to good use. En mass, the Wraith stood no chance against Ronon's heavily armored troops. Those that went down from stun blasts still had armor covering most of their bodies, making it difficult for the Wraith to feed on them even if they did have the chance during the melee. Most of those who'd died had fallen to the anti-replicator weapons that seemed to be scattered amongst the Wraith crew. The Lantean armor had protected them against a few shots, but eventually the powerful Wraith energy weapon would break through. Those teams that rotated properly and gave their shields a chance to recharge hadn't been affected. All in all Ronon's Lantean army had quite the victory to boast about.
Over 10,000 Humans had been rescued from the Wraith…included a few Wraith worshipers that had to be separated out and secured in different section of Atlantis. They'd undergo a Lantean review period where hopefully some of them could be 'deprogrammed' and integrated back into the Human communities. Those that didn't would eventually be exiled from Atlantis and all allied worlds…where they would have to deal with the rest of the Wraith in the galaxy when they came to cull them.
Once the battles were over the Alterrans split up again, each going back to their previous tasks. Andara stayed behind to study the captured Wraith ships that had been towed into orbit around Lantea for closer study. Each of them now had a ring platform aboard, so transit to and from Atlantis was convenient enough for her ongoing projects concerning Wraith technology. She was convinced that there was more to the Wraith than had previously been discovered, and she was intent on breaking down their technology and physiology until all had been revealed. The corpses of the Queens had taken her immediate interest, including two juveniles, which she felt might hold the key to part of the mystery. The Alterran biologist would be busy with work for months to come.
Phil, meanwhile, returned to Dracona and the Feriorla with Andara's absence. The race of Humans had become a steady ally in the galaxy and needed the leadership of the Alterra in much the same way that the Jaffa were benefitting from Bra'tac's leadership in Avalona. Though not as militant as the Jaffa, the Feriorla did boast an impressive population along with decent technical knowledge and skills. One day, Ryan hoped, they'd become a powerful, calming presence within that tumultuous galaxy…but for now they still needed a lot of help.
Teyla had left to assist the Traveler fleet in tracking down the remaining Wraith ships and installations within the galaxy. There had already been 11 located Hive Ships that had not participated in the siege of Atlantis, but they expected there to be many more hidden away within Pegasus. Based off of the numbers in the original Lantean/Wraith war, it was conceivable that the Wraith could have as many as 100 Hives still out there, not to mention their easy to construct cruisers and other auxiliary ships. Ryan knew that the Wraith wouldn't be suckered into another massive battle where they could be concentrated and destroyed, so now they'd have to hunt them down one by one, and with only 11 Columnars, some badly damaged at the moment, that was not going to be a quick endeavor…assuming of course they could actually find the Wraith ships.
After the battle at Lantea, Ryan had ordered Janus to deactivate the Attero device and had all the Pegasus gates reactivated. There were too many worlds out there that relied on stargate travel to survive...and he wasn't about to consign them to starvation in order to neutralize Wraith movements. Besides, with their ability to remote control the gates at will, it would be more of an advantage to the Alterrans/Lanteans/Humans to leave them turned on in the long run. To which end Ryan had summoned Ronon back from Yavin a week after the battle had ended.
"You wanted to see me?" Ronon asked as he stepped into the hologram room, which Ryan was still using to coordinate galaxy-wide operations against the Wraith. The locations of allied ships, mostly Travelers, were displayed on the hologram in the center of the room.
Ryan stepped down from the pedestal, but left the hologram turned on. He walked around the perimeter to meet Ronon who was standing just inside the doorway.
"I understand you've given Elizabeth a list of a thousand or so troops to be considered for promotion to Lantean based on their battle performance."
"Yeah," Ronon answered lazily. "Is there a problem with that?"
Ryan crossed his arms over his chest. "Why isn't your name on the list?"
"I've already been offered it."
"And declined," Ryan reminded him. "Why?"
Ronon shrugged. "Don't need it."
"But your men do?" Ryan countered.
"Look, I don't mean to brag, but I'm already as strong as the Lanteans, if not stronger. Most of my men aren't. They could use a bit more strength."
"It's more a matter of efficiency than strength," Ryan noted, "but on that note, don't you want to get stronger too?"
"I can do that with training," Ronon countered.
Ryan inclined his head, conceding the point. "You could, if you knew how."
Ronon's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying I don't know how to train?"
"Not for the big improvements, no," Ryan said evenly, sensing a bit of anger from the Setidan.
"Such as?" Ronon said, now crossing his arms over his chest.
"The more time you have to train, the stronger you can grow," Ryan explained. "One of the big improvements is giving yourself more time. For that, you need to train for efficiency…something you don't know how to do."
"And you know that exactly how?" Ronon said, his voice rising.
Ryan held up a hand. "Do you know why the Wraith made you a runner?"
Ronon's emotions seemed to pause. "Becket said my body had something in it that stopped the Wraith from feeding."
"Yes. There's a protein that blocks a key element in their feeding process. That's why I gave your men that inoculation, those that could tolerate it anyway. Lantean and Alterran physiologies are incompatible with the protein, and the more developed Humans can't take it either."
"All the more reason not to become Lantean," Ronon argued.
"Yes, you would lose that immunity," Ryan granted. "But that wasn't the only reason the Wraith made you a runner…or so I think. When you rescued the other runners, I had Matt run a comparison of your physiologies. You do all possess the protein, but you have something else as well."
"Like what?" Ronon asked, his curiosity quelling his rising ire.
"When we made your ancestors," Ryan began to explain as simply as he could, "it was with the intention that they'd develop the way we did, and over time become like us. When they got far enough along, the Repositories of Knowledge would take them the rest of the way to where we are now."
"You mean the head sucker?" Ronon asked.
Ryan smiled. "Yes, the head sucker. You heard about that from O'Neill?"
"Yeah, we were swapping war stories," Ronon said with a bit of respect. "He's been in a lot of battles."
"That he has," Ryan agreed. "Anyway, the whole idea was for you to become like us after we got killed by the plague. If we hadn't made you, none of us would exist. I started out the same as you, so did all the other Alterrans…even Janus started out as a Lantean."
"That's all good, but what does it have to do with me and the Wraith?" Ronon complained.
"You and the other runners are…let's just say you're an offshoot of the developmental path that my kind came through. You're evolving in a slightly different way, ahead of the other Humans. You're stronger, faster, and braver than the rest. I think that's why the Wraith hunted you when they couldn't feed on you. You provided them more of a challenge…more so than even the original Lanteans."
"Really," Ronon muttered.
"The transformation that I underwent changed me into an old-style Alterran in every way. The transformations into Lanteans only upgrade where you're at now, they don't change who you are. They won't take this…uniqueness…of yours and destroy it. They'll only enhance it."
"If we're already better than the Ancestors…" Ronon argued.
"In some ways," Ryan cautioned. "In a few ways, but you don't live as long because you're not very efficient."
Ronon shrugged. "Everyone dies sometime."
Ryan shook his head firmly. "No."
"No?" Ronon asked disbelievingly.
"No," Ryan confirmed. "What you call growing old is a myth. Your body breaks down because you're inefficient…which means inside you aren't very strong. You might have strong arms and legs, but the rest of you is weak. The training you do," Ryan emphasized by pointing at Ronon's large chest, "trains your arms and legs, not the inside."
"You're saying that if I trained my 'inside' I'd live forever?"
"Possibly," Ryan said lightly, "but you're at a serious disadvantage. Becoming a Lantean would stack the odds in your favor."
"But it's possible without the changes, right?" Ronon said, a bit of eagerness creeping into his voice.
"I wouldn't wager on it," Ryan cautioned, "but yes, it's possible."
"Then tell me how to train my inside," Ronon insisted, staring down at the shorter man.
Ryan was silent for a moment. "Wanna do things the hard way? Alright, I'll make you a deal. I'll give you the knowledge you need so you have at least a spitting chance of success, but when you fail you'll undergo the transformation to Lantean without complaint."
"If I fail," Ronon underscored.
"If," Ryan echoed. "Agreed?"
"Agreed," Ronon said, shaking Ryan's hand.
"Alright, now that that's out of the way," Ryan said, turning back to the hologram. "I need your men to set up garrison units on a number of planets. We'll fix the stargates so they can only dial out, that way the Wraith can't come through on foot or in darts. They'll have to come by ship."
"And my men will signal for a warship when they come," Ronon said, anticipating the next part of the strategy.
Ryan nodded. "We'll have a Columnar there within half an hour. Your men will have to hold off any landing parties and darts until reinforcements arrive. Eventually we'll set up some small pesqua launchers on the surface, which the Lanteans in your army will have to man."
Ronon rubbed his goatee thoughtfully. "We're going to start taking away their feeding ground?"
Ryan smiled vindictively. "One world at a time."