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Joe Lawyer
I didn't think the self destruct was a good idea. They have phase cloaks and teleporters so it's a lot easier for Jumper Gothic's group to escape danger so less reason to worry about getting captured.
Jump Chain Gothic 4 - Confederation
Part 5
Annwn. Milky Way Galaxy.
"Did you ever look at me like that?" someone asked.
I turned to see Miranda, who came and sat down beside me.
"She's pretty" the former Cerberus operative then said.
That she was.
"She's an Alterran" I said to Miranda "I mean sure I know she's days old because she's clone I had made, but she has the memories of a woman who lived millions of years ago. She saw Atlantis leave Earth, and she must have seen a lot of other interesting things to".
Rather than act jealous she laughed.
"You want her for her mind rather than her body" Miranda joked "You must be the first man to ever really mean that, and you didn't even say it".
Well her body was nice too, but yes it was her mind that interested me.
"Is that Ambassador Quinn in there with her?" Miranda asked.
Indeed it was.
"The original Ayiana knew Jonas Quinn, at least for a short time" I said "I'm hoping that a familiar face will help her to cope with what's going on".
Finding out that you were the clone of women who'd been dead for years. Having the memories of someone who lived millions of years ago must be very strange.
"You cloned her for a good reason" Miranda reminded me "Information on a certain Ancient treasure".
Well yes that had been the point, but Ayiana was a person not a data storage device I couldn't just demand information. When I deemed her ready, then I would question her. For now it was best just to keep an eye on the woman. I didn't known if she was stable physically or mentally I'd rather find out in a controlled space than have something go wrong later.
(Line Break)
Annwn. Milky Way Galaxy.
"What was the question you meant to ask me earlier?" Ayiana asked.
We'd started talking, mostly about my version of the Book of Origin which was available via the omni-tool I'd given her. I'd gifted her with the device a so that everyone could understand her, our omni-tools came with Star Trek style universal translators.
Plus it was hard to get a word in given Doctor Jackson's questioning, he seemed to want to know everything about the Alterrans, and given his passion for history I couldn't really blame him.
"Ah, yes," I said, while leaning forward a bit. "Do you know what the Clava Thessara Infinitas is?"
She nodded.
"Then it's real? You know what it is?" I asked.
I struggled to hide how thrilling I found this.
"Where did you hear of it?" she asked, ignoring my question.
That wasn't an easy to answer, so I fudged the truth just a little.
"It's a legend I came across while studying your people" I answered "It's supposed to be an Ancient storehouse of riches, and it was something that the Goa'uld Athena was rumored to have been searching for. Some people thought it was purely a myth, but if you know what it is than I'd like you tell me".
That was why I'd gone to the trouble of bringing an Alterran back into existence.
"Clava Thessara Infinitas" Jackson said slowly. "The key to infinite treasure".
Judging by the confused look on Daniel's face he'd never heard of it before. Hopefully I could convince him not to share this information with his people. Lucky for me Jackson was the decent sort who wouldn't betray a promise.
"I suppose you could call it that. It's one of our closest guarded secrets" Ayiana told me "Many of the Alterra didn't even know of its existence".
Now I was even more eager to find out what it was.
"But you know?" I asked.
I really hoped she did.
"Yes," she answered simply.
No one spoke for a moment.
"Maybe someday I'll show it to you" she then said "If you don't find it yourself".
This was disappointing.
"You're really going to let me get this close then hold out on me?" I asked.
It looked as if she would.
"By the way, you have the pronunciation wrong. It's Cla-Va-The-Sa-Ra-En-Fin-At-Es" she told me.
Why did the pronunciation matter?
"Cla…At?" Daniel said "That's a 9 symbol stargate address, isn't it?".
Now I understood.
"Of course the key doesn't contain or display the gate address it is the gate address!" I half yelled.
A Stargate address is a coordinate system used by a Stargate to determine the position of a target gate in the Stargate Network. They are composed of a series of glyphs, at least seven depending on the intended destination, which when entered in the correct order allow the Stargate to establish a wormhole with another gate at the destination.
A seven-chevron address is the basic operating mode of the Stargate, allowing the gate to connect to any other within a galaxy. The first six mark the destination and the seventh is the point of origin.
This kind of address uses the least amount of power. The DHD present with most Stargates has a power source sufficient to dial such addresses nearly indefinitely; the oldest known Dial Home Device found in Antarctica was still capable of dialing fifty million years after it was created, though its cold fusion reactor core was depleted shortly after it was recovered.
Eight-chevron addresses are used to dial extra-galactic gates. In this address, an additional chevron is added between the destination and the point of origin, which serves as a distance calculation. Intergalactic addresses require more power than is provided by a standard Dial Home Device, requiring 10 times the power input of a standard seven-chevron dialing, but most advanced races are able to substitute in their own power sources to easily dial intergalactic destinations. DHDs are incapable of dialing such addresses without a special control crystal, which is present only on Atlantis or another system which can calculate extragalactic addresses, like the Stargate Command's modified dialing computer.
The ninth chevron bypasses the normal, more useful location-based network addressing in favor of hardware-based addressing. Thus, the ninth chevron is used for traveling to a specific gate, or place with a gate that doesn't have a fixed point in space. For example, Destiny; is a ship which doesn't have an exact point in space (as it is always moving). Dialing nine chevrons for a specific gate, is like a password for that gate.
In the case of dialing Destiny, the point of origin had to be Earth, regardless of where dialing from. This allowed specific travel to Destiny's gate, and the address would never be invalid as long as the symbol for Earth was the 9th chevron.
"But 'At' is Earth's point of origin," Daniel Jackson "So how would we dail that address?".
It must be like Destiny's address, when dialing that ship you had to use Earth as the point of origin no matter where you were. In this case whatever glyph meant 'Es' had to be used as the point of origin
"Hold on is 'Es' the point of origin for Dakara?" I asked.
According to Jackson it was.
"So like how you need to be on Earth to dial Atlantis you need to be on Dakara in order to reach this infinite treasure" I stated.
Made sense as Dakara was the first world in this galaxy that Alterrans landed on, so while both Destiny and Atlantis came from Earth, the Alterrans were building stuff long before then. So this infinite treasure, this storehouse must have been built back when Dakara was the capitol planet not Earth.
"So are you going after this infinite treasure?" Jackson asked.
I nodded.
"Of course" I said "Do you have a problem with that?".
He shook his head.
"Not me, but to the IOA it looks, at least on the surface, like you're setting up some kind of empire" he said "And now your going after an Ancient storehouse, that can of thing is what worries them".
But only because it threatened their power, not because they felt that having an empire was wrong.
"Well I'm building a confederation of planets not an empire, and some of those planets will have democratic governments" I told Jackson "But if by empire you're actually thinking that I'm going to around conquering planets then your leaders are right".
In fact I'd already done it once.
"I'm sorry," Daniel said, taken aback by this admission.
At this point I figured that I better sooth him.
"Well conquer might be the wrong word" I correct "Liberate might be more accurate. I plan to invade the few worlds still under Goa'uld control and to bring them into the Confederation. Someone needs to sort out the humans of this galaxy I've decided that it will be me".
Which was why a storehouse of Ancient stuff was so tempting. I didn't need more weapons, but there was still a lot of knowledge I could do with, such as how to make ZPMs.
"My people had an empire" Ayiana said.
This shocked Jackson.
"I thought the Ancients were more democratic than that" he said.
Why he'd thought that was a mystery, the Lanteans were ruled by a council of important people just like the Asgard, the Tok'ra and the Jaffa were. Democracy was a strange and very human idea.
"What led you to that assumption?" Ayiana asked.
"Well, for starters, what little I know of the ways of ascended beings, there is some form of consensus required for certain actions to take place" he explained.
Ayiana frowned.
"The ascended beings aren't my people, they aren't like us" she stated.
While I'd met people who didn't care much for ascended beings, I was one of them, Ayiana actually seemed a little hostile towards them.
"I didn't mean to offend you" said Jackson.
Ayiana's bad mood had already lifted.
"You concern yourself too much with offense and the feelings of others. Focus your attention on the truth, however pleasant or unpleasant it might be" she said.
Jackson nodded.
"Okay" he then said "Then answer me this. How can either of you choose autocratic rule over democracy?"
I had my reasons.
"Democracy allows people to come to power by basically winning a popularity contest" I said "And before you say anything your democracy allowed that asshole Senator Kinsey to become vice-president".
Ayiana had a better argument.
"In order to establish an effective structure you must have stable leadership. Democracy doesn't allow for that, as can remove a capable leader in favour of a lesser individual simply because they deem their 'turn' to be up. Can you not see how foolish an approach a stable government that this is?".
She might be saying that at me more than Jackson as I planned to give up my position as leader of the Confederation to someone the repersatives of worlds that had joined the Confederation chose to lead. Which was somewhat democratic.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," Daniel said, repeating the old saying. "I've seen it time and again with the Goa'uld. I've seen it happen to myself in a virtual simulation. The turnover of leaders insures that no one individual gets the opportunity to become a tyrant".
"Power doesn't create tyrants, corruption does" I debated "and the Goa'uld became tyrants due to their genetic memory and overuse of the Sarcophagus, not just because they had power. You're oversimplifying the case. And like it or not, democracies are usually rife with corruption".
At this point I realised that while this was an interesting subject to discuss I actually had more important things to do. Like finding out what the infinite treasure actually was.
(Line Break)
SGC. Earth.
"I thought we'd have to go to Dakara for this" Jackson said as Ayiana did something to dialing computer.
She'd already installed a power generator, one I'd provided, to the gate, so that it could draw upon the extra power needed to open the gate to the Infinite Treasure. Thankfully General Landry was more than happy to assist us in reaching some storehouse full of goodies as long as Earth got its cut. Which Ayiana had agreed to, and I couldn't really argue as she was the last living Alterran
"No we can use any gate that isn't from the Pegasus galaxy" I told him.
That didn't clear matters up.
"My city-ship has a Pegasus gate, which are more advanced than other gates, at least in some ways, the produce more stable wormholes and that means a comfortable trip through the gate".
Milky Way gates made for a rough trip the first few times you used them, but you did adapt to it and after a dozen trips or so you barely noticed the discomfort. Due to their newer design, Pegasus Stargates also automatically become the dominant gate if placed in the same region as an older model, which was why'd taken the Genii one with me because the planet Annwn already had an older style
"The last Alterrans, those who didn't ascend, fled to the Pegasus galaxy, and their successors those we call Lanteans, built the Pegasus gates, but they're not designed to link to other galaxies because the Lanteans feared the the plague that wiped out the Alterrans would reach their new home. So I can't reach this Infinite Treasure with a Pegasus gate".
Atlantis' gate was special in that it could reach Earth, but I didn't know how it was modified, and since the Pegasus gate network was currently down I hadn't seen any need in being able to reach that galaxy via gate travel. Now I would have to seek out that knowledge.
Someone announced the connection and the Gate opened. Before anyone could send a MALP I removed something that was stuck to my belt, which was the next generation of probes. It was still a floating sphere, but it was much smaller and thanks to Mass Effect tech its mass was near zero.
This was a stealth probe that could move about quickly and remain cloaked at all times. Left to its own devices it would fly around gathering information on what was going around the gate of any world the probe was sent to. But Cortana, my AI, could link to them as long as the gate was open and direct them.
The first generation of probes, or drones as they were sometimes called, had been heavier and larger, the size of bowling balls, this probe was like one of these things Jedi used when practicing how to deflect attacks with their lightsabers.
I had no doubt that Tali, who was working on the probes when not upgrading the Delta Flyer, which I had gifted to her, would have a new kind of probe up and running soon. One with inbuilt weaponry and a defence shield that could provide fire support for each member of team.
We also had plans for our version of the probes Anubis had used, that looked Star Wars probe droids, but right now at lot of our industrial capacity was going into providing the Progressive Party of the Free Jaffa with weapons, ships and other supplies.
Should the two main Jaffa factions go to war I wanted the side I was allied with to have the better equipment, as this would help them win, and should they win I would have a lot more influence over the Free Jaffa Nation, which could be handy.
The downside was that many of my own projects, such as building small ships, like fighters for the Confederation was going to have to wait a while.
"What the hell is that thing" Cameron Mitchell asked.
These days SG1 was made up of a team led by Cameron Mitchell, and members included Daniel Jackson, who spent a lot of time elsewhere, Teal'c's grown up son, who was called Rya'c if I remembered correctly. There was also a new Samantha Carter in the form of Jennifer Hailey, who was a Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. She was small, but cute.
There was no Vala either as I'd left here on Atlantis, and they couldn't send her back to this galaxy via the Gate because even after months and months they still hadn't hunted down all the Wraith ships. Assuming the Asgard hadn't given her a life home I really should go pick her up and some point.
"My group's version of a MALP" I told the Colonel "It will gather intel for us".
The Tauri MALP also went through, and while it was slow compared to my probe it could at least carry supplies, which may come in handy. Perhaps I should have Tali work on something that could carry supplies through the gate for us, or better yet maybe some kind of off road buggy would be useful, although we did have Puddle Jumpers so maybe not.
Ayiana came down to join us and walked into the gate without concern. Lucky for her my probe was reporting a breathable atmosphere on the other end of the wormhole.
"SG1 you have a go!" the General called out.
My Cameron, the terminator not the air force officer, and I were already leaving.
(Line Break)
Stargate Hub. Outside the Gate Network.
"Where are we?" Jackson.
I had a feeling that I knew.
"The center of all Stargate hubs," Ayiana said as she walked over to come sort of control console "From here you can access the Stargate networks in many different galaxies, and the hubs which are outside the gate network. There are many galaxies with gate networks, my people seeded them all".
Seed ships weren't just sent out ahead of Destiny to plant Stargate on many different worlds across the universe they also created entire gateworks in nearby galaxies if the display I was now reading was to be believed.
"The key to infinite treasure" whispered Daniel Jackson
I facepalmed.
"Of course the Alterran people valued knowledge of the universe over anything material" I said, mostly to myself "So naturally any storehouse of treasure would be the means obtain that knowledge!".
And here I'd been expecting a storehouse like one of Merlin's vaults, or even a library of knowledge. How wrong I had been. And this explained why Ayiana hadn't simply explained what the infinite treasure was. She'd wanted us to discover it for ourselves because that was part of gaining knowledge.
"So you don't get lost" Ayiana said while handing each of us a device she'd gotten from a hidden compart in the wall "Don't lose them".
The device she'd given a copy of to everyone was a Ancient remote control. It was a computer that had a touch screen and several buttons down the right hand side, labelled in Ancient. It didn't looked that different from some of the high tech stuff you could get on Earth in 2018. So I figured that this tech must be something the Alterrans built a very long time ago.
I knew the device I held in my hand to be similar to devices that could be found on Destiny. They had two primary functions: Kino control and Stargate dialling. A device like this could be used to control Kinos like one would fly a remote controlled plane, or set them to various search modes. The screen displayed the video feed to the user, as well as any relevant sensor data. Which I could do with my own probes and my omni-tool.
During missions through the Stargate, it can tap into the Stargate network and display all the available addresses in range of the gate. By selecting an address, the gate is dialled automatically. As planetary Stargates along Destiny's course have no DHDs, they are essential for the explorers to return to Destiny.
Though the device lists the available gates in range, no information is given as to their destination or position in the network. Which meant even with this device we could get lost in another galaxy. Perhaps there was someway to increase the level of information the devices provided like a software update.
I had no idea how this device would work in the Milky Way or Pegasus galaxy, as those Gate networks were much more complex than the older versions of Gate networks, but I figured this device would allow a person to use this hub and the hubs it connected to in order to access the networks of different galaxies.
Upon reading the provided addresses and comparing them to the stored gate address on my omni-tool, I knew one led to the hub which contained a gate that was linked to the gate that in turn led to the moonbase I'd handed over to the Tauri. Which explained why Ayiana hadn't been concern about sharing information about this place to the Tauri.
They would have found this hub on there own sooner or later. They would have figured out how to access it from their moonbase, Colonel Carter might be working on that very thing right now. She was smart enough to figure it out without help so it was better for Ayiana to explain things before anyone started messing about with the hubs.
Ayiana then went over to a wall which slide away to show a number of Ancient weapons, pistol shaped energy weapons that I knew were called neutralizers. The Asurans used a similar weapon, and Lanteans had their own version. She made sure it was set to stun and then attached to her belt. Which was smart as she was millions of years out of date and had no idea of the dangers out there,
"Why do we never find the cool space guns" I heard Mitchell moan.
More than likely Earth's city-ship had a whole armoury somewhere, but it would be sealed away. I'd never even bothered to check if Annwn had a stash of such weapons as I had more than enough weapons as it was. But even if they didn't there was nothing stopping him from going over that storage container and taking one or more of the energy weapons.
Ayiana's next action was to hand out the kinos, which could be linked the small computers she'd given us. Clearly she wanted us prepared for any further trips through the gate.
"So what exactly is this place?" Mitchell asked, now that he was done sulking.
I'd expected that Ayiana would explain things, only for some reason she didn't.
"Basically it's like midway station, but for several galaxies" I answered.
That got me some blank looks and I soon realised the Midway station had never existed in this timeline, and likely never would.
"Middway what?" Hailey enquired.
I thought fast.
"Midway station is an idea I heard about" I said, trying to be as truthful as possible "The idea is to take a bunch of Stargated from the Milky Way and link them together in a line that reaches out into the void between galaxies. One Gate dials the next and the next so that you don't materialize until you get to the end of the chain. That gate is on board a space station which is between the Milky Way and say Pegasus. You'd then go to the Pegasus gate that is also on the station and that would involve one gate forwarding you on a series of gates until you got to the end in say Atlantis. It would remove the need for a ZPM".
Jennifer Hailey seemed delighted by this idea.
"I so have to run that by Colonel Carter" she said.
Since the Tauri did have a base in the Pegasus galaxy they might consider it worthwhile to set up a version of Midway Station, and I'd just given the idea away for free. I really ought to be more careful about what I spoke about. Still when building the station they'd no doubt some to me for help with supplies or whatever and then I could get in on the action.
"Anyway this station links to the station that your moonbase is linked to" I explained while checking the control console "So from here you could reach Earth two ways, either go back through the gate we came through or go to the Milky Way hub and reach your moon base, and take a shuttle from there. I assume that's what you use the puddle jumpers you found in your city-ship for".
I was now starting to think out loud as I looked over the control panel, which was actually five separate devices all linked together.
"From here you can reach a total of 36 galaxies, one for every glyph on a Milky Way gate, but there are 39 gates here" I said "Three of them must led to places the Alterrans may have wanted to keep off the gate network".
Ayiana was still keeping quiet on the subject. She seemed content to let us figure things out for ourselves.
I knew there were 54 at least in the local cluster so perhaps the Alterrans had been intending to expand their collection of gate networks at some point.
"That hub must in be the Othala Galaxy" I said to anyone listening "The Asgard moved there after leaving the Ida Galaxy".
When visiting the new Asgard homeworld I'd mistakenly believed that they had towed my Aurora-class to the Ida Galaxy I'd been wrong about that, and I suspected the Asgard hadn't corrected me because they didn't want people knowing where there new homeworld was. That or it had simply never come in conversation.
The Othala galaxy was chosen by the Asgard as the new location for their home after they were forced to abandon their original home galaxy due to the increasing threat of the Replicators. They settled and rebuilt their civilization on the planet Orilla.
"How many gates are there?" I heard Jackson wonder.
I pondered this.
"Well 39 symbols with 1 always being the point of origin leaves 38 symbols so..." I started to say.
"2,760,681 possible stargate addresses in the Milky Way galaxy" my cyborg body guard told everyone, having worked it out less than a second "All of which can be dialled from a single DHD".
I trusted her maths.
"Given that estimates for the number of stars in the Milky Galaxy is at least 200 billion according to some estimates that's actually a very small number of solar systems that could have a gate. Slightly more than one percent of one percent".
Few people understand just how massive even a medium sized galaxy like the Milky Way actually is.
"And that's the maximum number of possible Stargates based on the 36 symbols" I said "Estimates for the actual amount of Stargate in the Milky Way vary, but it's considered to be in the tens of thousands at the most. perhaps only a few thousand realistically. Which is why randomly dialing even when you know the point of origin for your world, and that you need seven symbols will almost never work. More than two and half million possible address and only a few thousand actually go anywhere".
This didn't even take into account gates that had been destroyed, buried or moved.
"And there's 36 Stargate networks, Pegasus included since the Lanteans replaced the original gate network in that galaxy after Atlantis left Earth, but you might be able to dial that hub" I said next "There are 1,623,160 possible stargate addresses in the Pegasus Galaxy for example, but the amount of gate addresses that actually go anywhere could be in the hundreds. Which means tens of thousands of worlds across 36 galaxies, maybe hundreds of of thousands, that's a lot of exploring just using the gates, and the devices you've been given will let you link to nearby gates when you enter these new galaxies".
I was sure they'd figure out the rest. While some of the Tauri were arrogant tossbags, they did have a lot of clever people working together at Stargate Command so I was sure they'd suss it all out.
"Okay so not infinite treasure" said Doctor Jackson "Still that's lot of worlds to explore".
Yeah that should keep the SGC busy for the next few centuries at least, and given the sheer amount of gates out there both my group and the Tauri could keep exploring without ever bumping into each other. Of course I had a reality drive so it might be awhile before I started checking out the whole of the local cluster.
Still I should be prepare for when the SGC awoke some timeless horror that was currently dormant in one of those galaxies. They were in the habit of doing that. Assuming of course all the possible threats in the local cluster hadn't been wiped out by the replicators. Hopefully that was the case.
As for me I didn't intend to use the hubs until the Confederation was a bit more organised. I still had plenty of other realities to visit and some tech that I wanted to pick up so I would be busy for quite some time.