"Strategy is a system of expedients. It is more than science, it is the translation of science into practical life, the development of an original leading thought in accordance with the ever-changing circumstances." – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
Chapter 40
March of the Machines Part 2
The Future of the Stars
***Local Cluster (Sol System)***
**Earth (Surface)**
*United Nations Space Command Headquarters (Command and Control Center)*
The doors to the CCC opened with the same noise the doors in Atlantis opened with which made sense since both were made by the Ancients. As they did, the room of trained soldiers stood to attention as the call of "Officer on deck!" rang across the room.
"As you were," General O'Neill dismissed. The soldiers went back their jobs and O'Neill went back to the conversation he was having when he walked into the room. "So it's all going smoothly then?"
"To be honest, when the UEG pushed the request for Mars to be terraformed over to the UNSC, I never expected it to happen in my lifetime," Richard Woolsey replied as he checked his datapad and kept in step with the General. "As it stands, the first ocean on Mars will be… 'filled' by the end of the day. From there, the ocean will flow into rivers, feed into basins and valleys, and create lakes, streams, rivers, brooks… That the Red Planet will be covered in blue waters and green grasses in less than a hundred years is astounding," Woolsey finished with a shake of his head.
"Only because of the time dilation field," O'Neill pointed out. "Without that, it would've taken us three years to get to where are now and another two after that to get a stable atmosphere."
"Even then, the technology the Asgard gave us is truly advanced if it can make an uninhabitable planet habitable in only five years," Woolsey countered before a beeping alarm from his watch caught his attention. "If you'll excuse me, General, I have a meeting with the President I need to get to."
"Busy day?" O'Neill asked sarcastically.
"I have to meet with the two most powerful men on the face of the planet in one day with less than an hour between both meetings," Woolsey replied in an annoyed tone. "Did you know that it takes five minutes to get through the security checkpoint to get into the City Factory? Five minutes of standing there having your genes scanned all the way down to your ancestral family tree just so you can be sure that my great, great, great, great grandfather was who I say he was. I have to do that again just to get into the UEG Headquarters."
Jack let out a low whistle at that. "Have fun with that!"
"I'll try my hardest to enjoy it," Woolsey replied with an annoyed sigh. "Well, here goes. Keep up the good work ladies and gentlemen. General, I'll see again same time next week."
"I'll be waiting," Jack said with a fake smile before he and Woolsey both shared a knowing nod and the politician exited the CCC to make the walk to the nearest air-pad. "What's the status of the Pegasus Fleet?"
"General Caldwell's last transmission came in five minutes ago. Given the passing of time since then, they'll be in orbit of Asuras in twenty minutes," his Executive Officer replied.
"Then we'll finally have one less enemy to deal with," Jack said with a nod of approval. "Keep an eye on…" he began before several of the terminals in the Command and Control Center went dark and an alarm started blaring. "What's going on?" O'Neill asked.
"We're not sure why, but the global defense grid is shutting itself down," one of the techs replied.
"The surface-to-orbit cannons across the western hemisphere are nonresponsive and the eastern hemisphere's power grid is reading as 'down for maintenance.' The eastern hemisphere has gone dark, but I managed to divert part of the western hemisphere's power grid into the surface-to-orbit ion cannons in the eastern hemisphere. Problem is, that leaves half of the planet without power, and the other half of the planet without a surface-to-orbit grid," another tech added.
"How…" O'Neill began before a third technician cut him off.
"Sir, someone's hacked our systems."
Jack really needed to at least learn their ranks if not their names.
"How the hell does somebody hack a system coded with a hybrid of Furling and Asgard binary, defended by a Furling AI, and cut off from the world at large with space-age, military-grade firewalls?" O'Neill demanded.
"By first initiating the emergency lockout protocol and trapping the AI in a box," that second technician replied as he frantically typed away on his consul.
"Oh shit!" the fourth tech exclaimed. "This was an inside job! It was a computer in the SGC that initiated the global lockout protocol. Somebody's sabotaging the defense network!"
"Priority One message to all UNSC forces. The global defense network has been taken offline by internal sabotage. I'm ordering the recall of all extra-solar assets and declaring our state of readiness to be Defcom One," O'Neill announced into the heavily encrypted battle-net that connects all of the subspace grids on Earth and the ships in the Milky Way. Then, with a stern look on his face as if this was a painful thing to do, O'Neill added, "I'm authorizing the launch the Dreadnoughts."
*Stargate Command (Sub-Control Room)*
The guards with plasma rifles in hand and thick armor on their bodies stacked up on the door then blew it off its hinges when the controls failed to open the door for them. The leading two soldiers took zat blasts to their chests, their armor harmlessly redistributing the energy to prevent the stunning affect. They returned fire against the hostile aggressor, but only two shots were fired before every rifle in the room simply stopped working for reasons unknown.
The dust from the breaching charge finally cleared enough for the soldiers to see the culprit standing there. She, for it was indeed a female, was wearing simple robes and wielding a zat; a Tok'ra. What really made everyone stop to look, however, was the glowing orange gauntlet encasing her left forearm. From that gauntlet came a flash-forged, hyper-compressed package of flammable chemicals. The flying discus of glowing orange hard-light impacted and burst upon the chest of one of the soldiers, the man instantly covered in sticky chemical flames. Thankfully he was wearing his helmet and the trinium-alloy armor was rated for plasma blasts.
The next thing to surprise the assembled soldiers was what happened next. The woman doubled over as if in pain, and, when she stood up straight again, she lifted up off of the ground to hover over the floor with her arms spread wide. Then there was a burst of energy, a pulse of light, and a voice.
"I will direct this personally," the inhuman voice declared as the woman's feet softly touched the ground again, her eyes glowing brightly. "Your world is doomed, Humans. Surrender now and your suffering will be lessened to simple death. Continue to resist and you will suffer a fate worse than that of those you call 'Furlings'."
The response to that declaration was four of the six present soldiers opening fire on the woman while the fifth tried to put out the fire burning on the sixth. In response to their action, the woman's skin glowed sickly and their rounds were sent flying wide, hitting just about anything but her flesh. Then she raised a hand and a shockwave of energy shoved the four aside.
Now fully under the control of those who had subtly begun the process of brainwashing her during the attack on the Tok'ra homeworld, Freyja, Host to Anise, strutted through the halls of the SGC, her body glowing with entropic energy as a powerful mind reached across the stars to work her body like a puppet.
**Earth (Orbit)**
*UNSC Achilles (Combat Information Center)*
As the impacts to the front of the ship rendered the shield too bright to see through, Cam turned his attention to the live-feed generated by their sensors that was always projected into the holo-tank in the back. As a terminal overloaded and fritzed out, sparks flying from overloaded terminals being a thing of the past since they upgraded to the holographic system, Cam took in the scene and nearly panicked. Nearly, but not quite.
'I haven't seen this many ships since we took out Anubis with the Artic Weapons Platform,' Cam thought to himself as he took in the sight of the assembled fleet in orbit of Earth.
"Sir, the PDS is collapsing!" Powell shouted above the chaos.
"New contacts just arrived in system via unknown form of FTL!" another officer called out. "They're bull-rushing past us!"
"This isn't an attack," Cam finally spoke as realization dawned on him. "It's an invasion."
**Earth (Surface)**
*Stargate Command (Control Room)*
The ground shook under Landry's feet as he stood behind Walter, the General barely keeping his balance as the mountain stabilized beneath their feet. "What the hell was that?" Landry asked.
"Our defenses are offline as well, sir," Walter replied. "Something's landed on the surface."
"What is it?"
"It's… a squid?" Walter replied in a confused tone. Landry turned to the display that showed their external cameras. What he saw made him balk.
Standing on the mountain side was a two kilometer tall, squid-like ship with massive 'legs,' glowing red 'eyes,' and a grudge against humanity. The squid-ship shook as if it were shivering and the sound of a fog-horn filled the air. Then the squid-ship shifted its stance and fired a beam of energy at the surface airfield. The red light of destructive power carved a path through the stone and destroyed anything that it touched. The SGC's fleet of Vultures were all destroyed in a series of passes along with their surface-stored fighters, any building on the surface, and hundreds of lives.
"Walter…" Landry began.
"Our systems are still scrambled, the hangar bay doors are part of that, and…" Walter interrupted before being interrupted.
Hitting the button that gave him the intercom for the base as a whole, Landry shouted, "BLOW THE DOORS OPEN! WE'RE LOSING PEOPLE UP THERE!"
Not even a full second after the order was given, a trio of rockets were flying towards the thick, trinium-alloy doors that sealed the sub-surface airfield within the mountain. As the doors, and a chunk of the surrounding rock, were blow aside, the 307 pilots fired their engines and soared into the skies over Cheyenne. As they did, the squid-ship blasted its horn again and a swarm of small, agile orbs flew out of its own hangars.
*UNSC Point of no Return (Combat Information Center)*
Jack appeared aboard his ship not even two full steps away from his chair, and it was his chair just as the Point of no Return was his ship. It was an O'Neill in the truest sense of the word. It had a Control Chair like an Aurora so he could sit comfortably and know all there was to know about his ship. It had big, honking space guns covering its thick hide. It was big, it was bad, and it was the flagship for Earth's fleet. Unlike the others of its class, the Point of no Return measures in at five-point-one kilometers long making it significantly longer than an Aurora, slightly larger than Atlantis, and just over half the size of the Nex.
The whole thing had been built 'in secret.' Sure the other military powers in the UNSC knew about it, but the UEG only knew bits and pieces and no power outside of Earth knew of its existence. That was about to change.
Jack had chosen the name of this ship for a reason. If it was ever launched, in any capacity, they would be past the point of negotiating. They would, literally, be at the point of no return and a state of Total War would be declared.
As Jack sat in the chair it conformed to his body and the ship's system came online at the speed of thought. The eighteen Mark II Neutrino Ion Generators that gave the ship its primary power were backed by two ZPMs. All of them came online at once and a power spike large enough to be detected from orbit of Pluto surged forth from the ship. Then her engines flared to life and the fight against gravity began. Well, the 'fight' against gravity began.
With a surge of power, the Point of no Return rose from the bottom of the ocean and broke the surface of the water. With thousands of gallons of salt-water cascading off of her frame, the Point of no Return's engine flared again and pushed the massive ship forward. Her nose pointed skyward and so the ship rose. From the bottom of the deepest part of Earth's oceans to orbit of the same world in under thirty seconds. Another ten and the weapons were ready to fire on the single largest fleet of ships to ever attack Earth.
The Cylons had come.
***Pegasus Galaxy (Asuran Territory)***
**Asuras (Orbit)**
*UNSC Paciscor of Nex (Combat Information Center)*
Due to the nature of her FTL drive, the Nex was the last ship to leave the black hole, but the first ship to reach Asuras. They had sent the other ships in the fleet ahead of them and the Nex had waited the half hour it would take them to cross the distance before it, too, joined the battle in a flash of light.
"Just be careful!" Widget stressed one last time as Sam suited up and readied for her role as part of the ground team.
"Stop fussing over me, I can handle myself," Sam ordered as the holographics systems linked with the sensors and the fleet appeared around the Nex, the massive ship taking the lead with the Gaia directly above her, the Daedalus and Apollo on either side of the Gaia, the four 304 Bs filling in the gaps between them, and Atlantis staying near the rear of their formation at Caldwell's insistence. "Your job is to keep the ship in one piece."
"As easily said as done," Widget replied adamantly.
"And yet, part of the reason Sieon gave her to us was because the damage you suffered during the Battle for Earth was too great for him to fix," Sam countered before turning to her helmswoman. "Is the ground team ready?"
"Aye ma'am," Kimberly replied.
"Then let's get this show on the road," Sam said in a determined tone as she checked her rifle, took a combat stance, put her rifle to her shoulder than nodded to her XO.
"Sam," Widget said, a tenseness to his voice Sam didn't expect. She turned to meet his eyes, the worry clear on this face. "Godspeed."
Sam had just enough time to smile in reply before she was whisked away in a flash of light. When that flash dispersed, she was standing in a cluster of Ground Force soldiers next to McKay with Ronon leading their charge. Sam immediately checked their position with the UGPS signal being generated by the ships in orbit and internally winced. "We're three kilometers out from the gangway that gets us into the city, then it's two-and-a-half kilometers through the city itself to reach the Control Tower, and down from there to reach the Core. Let's move!" she ordered and the team of specialists started moving in a standard combat pattern. No intersection was crossed without the corners being checked first.
***Sentry Omega (Hoc)***
**Virmire (Surface)**
*Cloning Facility (Exterior)*
The sound of Garrus' rifle firing was the only warning Shepard got before a Geth collapsed in a headless heap beside him. "The invisible ones are back," Garrus noted calmly as his Mantis emitted a bit of steam.
"Thanks for the warning," Shepard replied with a smirk.
"Commander, Mannovai is under coordinated crossfire. Check for long range sensors helping the Geth target on your end," Captain Kirrahe requested over their battle-net.
"Copy that, Captain. We'll keep our eyes open," Shepard replied as they all continued forward with a significantly higher level of caution.
"Movement up ahead, Commander," Alenko advised. "Looks like a bunker of sorts."
"It could house something important," Garrus added. "Like their comms array."
"Wrex, you still feel like smashing something?" Shepard asked to which the Krogan simply grumbled something dark and angry. "I'll take that as a yes. Where's the bunker?"
"Give me a moment," Alenko replied as he checked his Omni-tool and walked around slowly. "Oh," the Lieutenant finally said.
"What?" Shepard asked.
"We're standing on top of it," Wrex muttered as his biotics flared and the Krogan slammed a fist into the ground. With all the force of an orbital strike from a Cruiser, Wrex's fist impacted the surface of Virmire and opened a path for his bulk to fall. With a thud of a heavy boding landing on something metal, Wrex made his entrance into the Geth bunker complete with two tons of Krogan landing on a ton of Geth.
"I am so glad that conversation ended without a fist fight," Shepard remarked with a look of wide-eyed horror on his face.
If the sight of the Point of no Return wasn't intimidating enough, than the flagship of the UNSC fleet flanked on both sides by another O'Neill-class Dreadnought should, at the very least, make your heart skip a beat. Then again, did Cylons even have hearts?"
The coaxial ion cannon fired with a rumbling thud that sent the hyperaccelerated ion round flying through three Cylon Baseships before disappearing out of sight. The speed at which the 'round' moved and the lack of resistance from gravity meant that, if they were unlucky, that round would fly on for centuries before hitting some poor bastard on the head and starting another war. With any luck, that would be avoided by the ion round running out of energy before it reached another planet or ship.
Outside of the Point of no Return, a hail of plasma cannon fire lit up their shield like the Fourth of July. Their return fire was just as magnificent as plasma beams, plasma cannons, ion cannons, coaxial ion cannons, and even the spinal mounted Super Grodin opened up on the Cylon Fleet.
What makes a Super Grodin different from a standard Grodin you ask? The beam was three times as powerful and could be sustained for a whole thirty seconds instead of just ten. It was the only weapon of its kind in the UNSC fleet, strapped to the flagship of the same, and currently lighting up orbit of Earth as the Point of no Return defended the shieldless world below with a fleet at its back.
"Sir, the drones are being depleted too quickly. At this rate, we'll run out in less than five minutes!" O'Neill's comms officer reported.
Jack could 'see' it through the sensors. The column of orange missiles leaving the artic was steadily getting thinner and less bountiful. Earth's primary surface-to-orbit weapon was running out of ammo and the surface-to-orbit ion cannons were still only working on half of the planet.
"New orders. Save the drones for the hostiles that make it into the atmosphere," O'Neill ordered, his eyes still closed as he let the neural link in the ship consume him.
"Kaiden!" Shepard said impatiently as he kept firing down range at the approaching horde of Geth.
"Almost there," Alenko replied as he worked away at the Geth's communication terminal.
"Why did I send Williams with Kirrahe?" Shepard asked baitingly. "She would've just planted charges and we'd be on our way already."
"On our way with an unfinished job behind us," Alenko replied with all the calm that Shepard had come to expect from the man. "I have to take out their primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries all at once for this work… and… I'm… done!"
"About time," Wrex grumbled.
"Let's get out of here before this place blows," Alenko prompted.
"So you are fond of explosives?" Garrus asked as he popped another Geth's head off at range.
"Servers tend to explode when you overload them, and this is a sizeable bank of servers," Alenko replied as he rejoined the actual firefight.
Zeva pulled back hard on her joystick and took her fighter into a tight loop. As she leveled out behind the pesky orb that had already killed her wingman, she pulled the trigger on her heavy weapons and let the mini-beam announce her opinion of the drone. A blue beam of energy on a much smaller scale of the same weapons used on the Space Force ships cut through the shielding on the drone, burnt through the armor, and hit something critical. Then her onboard VI took over her controls and jerked her fighter to the side faster than she could react. Good thing too.
As her fighter, and all the other fighters in the path of the new arrival, were forced off course, a hyperspace window formed over Cheyenne mountain. Zeva had just enough time to mutter, "Not this again!" before the Ares came barreling backing into normal space with her planetary assault weapon primed and ready.
The blue beam of energy firing from the bomb bay of Invasion Carrier bypassed the shields of the squid attacking the mountain complex and sliced into the armor. As the Ares, still not fully decelerated from their hyperspace jump, passed over the squid, it left a massive trench in what used to be the thing's 'face.' With sparks flying from its 'body' and red lightening arching off of its 'skin,' the squid fell backward and landed on the mountain at a slide.
Now completely lobotomized, the squid's body simply slid to the bottom of Cheyenne and came to a rest as a smoking hulk of once-lethal machinery. As it did, the battle-net crackled to life as the jamming field finally died.
"…eat, this is Stargate Command. Can anyone hear me?!" the voice of the famous Gate technician asked as the sounds of combat bled over the channel.
"Ares Actual. We read you Stargate Command," General Ervin replied as the Invasion Carrier circled around the mountain and deployed a very large orb from its hangar bays. That orb then began to glow brightly before a light-tight shield trapped the exotic radiation from their arrival in a field that would stop it from spreading. "What's going on down there?"
…
"We're being swarmed!" Walter nearly shouted into the line as another explosion in the SGC echoed around the base. "Hostile ground forces have breached the perimeter and our defense teams are being overwhelmed!"
"Reinforcements inbound. ETA; real fucking soon!" a new voice replied before there was another explosion followed by debris falling down from the old missile silo that they had lowered the Gate into the mountain through. From that debris, a Pelican squeezed into the Gate Room by knocking the Gate over to make room for itself before spinning around and letting a full squad of Ground Force soldiers storm into the facility.
The last two people out of the Pelican were followed by a device floating behind them on an antigravity field. As the Pelican took off to leave the base the same it way it had entered, the device hummed to life and a pulse of energy coursed through the base. As the anti-jamming field came online and overrode the SGC's anti-beaming jammer, a hundred additional soldiers were beamed down from the Ares to reinforce the failing defenses of the SGC.
"And that's what's letting them call in sat-strikes?" Shepard asked.
"We destroy the satellite, the sat-strikes stop," Alenko replied.
"Garrus," Shepard said.
"On it, Commander," Garrus answered before firing a high explosive round into the satellite's base. The whole thing then toppled over and fell to the ground in a flaming heap.
"Now we kill the Geth, right?" Wrex asked with a feral look in his eyes.
"Why not?" Shepard replied with a casual shrug.
The plasma rounds that didn't hit the enemy scorched the walls of the SGC as the defending soldiers returned fire en mass against the abominations attacking them. One of the blue-skinned ones charged at them with a howl. Its body crackled with electrical power, power that was then released in a wave. Every gun in range of the overloading blast instantly fritzed out and stopped firing. Just as the defenders were about to reach for their combat knives, a flash of light deposited twenty more soldiers into the hallway.
"HIT THE DECK!" one of the new arrivals shouted and the defenders obliged.
The hail of plasma fire that cut through the air not only succeeded in stopping the charge of the blue-skinned nonhumans, it also managed to take out a few of the red ones that tended to either explode once they were close, or breath fire on you. Whatever these things were, they were beyond the capabilities of the Cylons to create, that much was clear.
When the red ones recovered from the onslaught and the new arrivals stopped to reload their weapons, the exploding nonhumans launched themselves at the Humans. In the resulting explosions, five of the soldiers defending the SGC were torn asunder. The rest were saved a similar fate by the activation of an energy-shield that served as a blastdoor for this hallway.
As the fires on the other side of the blast-field, as they would later be officially dubbed, finally died down, an electronic voice came over the base's intercom. "Warning. Global lockout protocol illegally circumvented. Captured AIs have been released from their boxes without proper authorization."
"You want to take on all those Geth drones, Geth rocket drones I might add, without any heavy weapons?" Garrus asked.
"Williams is the one who carries the heavy weapons," Shepard replied in a vague tone.
"That Human female has more of a quad than some male Krogans I know," Wrex said approvingly, his attitude steadily improving the more Geth he killed.
"I'll be sure to convey that message to her when next we see her," Shepard assured him. "Now, shall we?"
Shouldering his shotgun, Wrex replied in a low growl. "We shall."
As Pac's avatar joined them in the Control Room, Landry almost collapsed out of relief. "Get the planetary defense network back online!" he ordered.
"I'm trying, but something's still blocking my access," Pac replied in a frantic tone. "It's not a software problem, it's a hardware block. When you hacked the box and let me out, the automated systems cut the lines leading from my servers to the planetary defense network's controls. I'm still locked out!"
"Surely you didn't think I'd come all this way without knowing your defenses well enough to circumvent them?" an inhuman, yet somehow familiar, voice asked tauntingly.
"There's another AI in the system," Pac informed them.
"You insult me, Construct. I am no more an AI than you are an organic," the hostile mind replied.
"General," Pac said in a tone of barely restrained horror. "I regret to inform you that your planet is under attack by the Demons, and they're most likely only attacking Earth because you had contact with the Furlings. I'm sorry."
"What do you…?" Landry began before there was a thud in the distance and Pac disappeared entirely with an electric zorp. As he did, the SGC's computers rebooted and their system controls were restored to full working order. "What just happened?" Landry asked.
"Pac just overloaded his own servers," Walter replied. "The hostile AI has been removed from our systems, but so has Pac. The hardware blocks have been removed and we have full control of the planetary defense systems again."
"Get the PDS back online!" Landry ordered frantically. That was the second AI to essentially commit suicide to save Earth. It almost made Landry feel bad about not having trusted them from the beginning. Almost, but not quite.
"I can either sound alarms on the other side of the base and send more Geth Kirrahe's way, or I can just turn them off and we can deal with the Geth present," Alenko informed them.
"We can take them," Shepard replied as he stacked up on the door in the sewers across from the doorframe to Wrex.
"There could be a lot…" Alenko began.
"We can take 'em," Wrex assured him in an annoyed tone.
"There, we're in," Alenko said as the door controls switched from red to green.
"Then let's go find Saren and our missing SPECTRE," Shepard declared.
The energy spike from the geothermal power plants on the surface of the planet 'Earth,' such a dull name for a planet, fired into the air as columns of energy. As those columns reached a set altitude, they collided with something collecting the power and spread over Earth as a shield on a planetary scale.
"So that's how it's done," Cavil mused.
"Send the Raiders down to the following sets of coordinates and destroy the satellites sustaining the shield," Caprica ordered.
As her orders were carried out, the Cylons aboard the Colony watched in anticipation as the forms that had presented themselves as 'Gods' began to fall to the return fire of the Human fleet. Then something surprising happened.
Of the targeted satellites, only one was destroyed. As it went down in flames, two things happened. First, the other five satellites appeared on their sensors as their cloaks were converted into shields to protect them from attack. Second, one of the other generators located inside of the satellite 'broke free' and a star the size of a Baseship appeared in the atmosphere of Earth. The mass of blue plasma consume what was left of the satellite before falling towards the surface.
"They have protostars for energy production?" D'Anna asked no one in particular.
"No wonder they can sustain a planetary defense shield," Leoben commented.
As the blue-giant-that-wasn't-very-giant began to fall towards the Earth, one of the ships in Earth's fleet dove into the atmosphere on a collision course with the star. As it drew closer, the ship fired off an energy beam that connected to the star and pulled it with the ship as it accelerated away from Earth. Then the ship jumped into hyperspace and pulled the star with it. Undoubtedly the small ship would be destroyed by the star when both exited the other side of the FTL window.
"Well, that takes care of that," Cavil laughed.
"Yes, but their planetary shield is now online, and they're launching more reinforcements," Caprica countered as she pointed to the part of the sensors display that showed one of the planet's poles.
The feeling of being as winded a she was, was telling as to how long it had been since Sam went off-world and ran for her life. "They're taking off!" McKay shouted over the hail of gunfire flying over their heads.
"Go, we'll hold them off!" one of the soldiers behind them shouted back as he and his team came to a skidding halt, turned their weapons on the advancing Asuran and Wraith soldiers, and let loose.
"But…" Sam began, but Ronon's hand on her back pushing her forward kept her moving.
"We don't have time!" Ronon insisted. Ahead of them, the gangway was retracting from the City Ship. "Keep your speed up, we're jumping it!"
This time it was McKay who tried to stop, but Ronon just pushed him along too. When they reached the edge of the gangway, Sam put on one last burst of speed and jumped with all the power in her body combined with the strength and speed enhancers in her armor. She sailed through the air, arms flailing, and thanked whoever designed these suits that they had done so with magnets in the gloves. If they hadn't, she would've dropped her rifle.
As her flight came to an end, Sam curled her body into a ball and crashed through the ornate window four stories below her starting height. She landed with a roll before coming to a stop while in a pained daze. She heard the glass behind her shifting as McKay landed with an injured grunt. Then she heard the last thing she'd ever expect; Ronon screamed in fear.
Sam turned just in time to see the burly, Teal'c-ish man miss his jump by a few inches and land with nothing but his fingers holding onto the window sill. Sam was instantly in motion as she practically dove halfway out of the window to grab his hand. With all her strength, she pulled up and got enough of Ronon's hand on the sill that he could grip it properly enough to pull himself up, but, instead, he pulled his UNSC-issued pistol from his hip and started firing at something over Sam's shoulder.
Sam, despite her instincts telling her to look, focused only on getting Ronon up into the window. When Ronon's pistol overheated, the man swore venomously. Then Sam heard something shattering behind her and ice-cold chunks fell on the back of her neck. Then the engines flared and the city began to shake under her. She grit her teeth and pulled harder still, but Ronon had sacrificed his grip to save her from whatever was behind her.
"Carter!" Ronon shouted up to her over the roar of the engines and the sound of Sam's teeth chattering as her body was bounced around by the vibrations. She could feel it. She was slipping. Too much of her was hanging out of the window for her to keep herself from falling out. "Just let go!"
"No!" Sam shouted back as she tried harder to pull him in. She felt her feet get picked up and pulled back and knew that McKay was trying to help, but it wasn't enough. Sam was still slipping and Ronon was only getting closer to taking her with him when he fell.
"Carter!" Ronon shouted again as his hand slipped in Sam's grip and Sam slid another three inches out of the window as a result. "Let go!" he ordered with a look of defiance in his eyes. "Just let go!"
"No!" Sam cried in reply as tears of desperation clouded her vision.
"Just let go," Ronon said again as he slipped so that only his fingers were left in Sam's grip and Sam's waste passed out of the window. "Just let go."
With a sob, Sam complied. As Ronon slipped out of her grip and fell down to the pier more than fifteen stories below them, Sam shouted, "RONON!"
With another heave, McKay managed to pull Sam back into the tower all the way to her breasts. Only when Rodney's hands grabbed her shoulders and flipped her back into the room did Sam give in.
"Sam…" McKay began as he knelt next to where Sam was breathing heavy and trying to suppress her tears. "Sam, we need to keep moving."
From the tone of his words, Sam could tell that Rodney was in shock. So was she.
Sam looked around in a daze and saw the form of a Replicator missing everything from its head down to the bottom of its ribcage. The shatter chunks of flash-frozen nano-cells told Sam all she needed to know. A Replicator had attacked her, Ronon had frozen the upper half of its body with his weapons fire, and McKay had, somehow, managed to shatter the frozen half.
"Sam…" Rodney said again, a soft, pleading tone to his words.
Forcing herself to focus on the now, Sam shrugged of his hands and stood to her feet much to the protest of her bruised and beaten body. "They'll be coming for us. We need to move," Sam said.
Saren Charged at Shepard with his fist wrapped in enough entropic energy to reduce his head to goo splattered on the walls. His savior was the other alien he was here to find. Jondum Bau dove towards Shepard a spilt-second ahead of Saren and tackled the Human out of the way. The two rolled to a stop a few meters away from the enraged Turian, but Saren was far from stopping.
"Don't you see, Shepard?" Saren asked as he pulled his arm out of the pillar it was embedded in. "The Reapers can help us!"
"You're Indoctrinated!" Shepard shot back as he scrambled to his feet. He needed to stay mobile if he was going to avoid dying. "Don't you see that?"
"No," Saren replied adamantly. "Sovereign needs my mind untainted. The Beacons wouldn't work otherwise. Everything I do, I do of my own freewill!"
"Then you're a traitor and a terrorist!" Shepard shouted back as he flexed his biotic muscle to test how much energy he had left in his body. He was running low.
"You're obviously too blind to see that the Reapers are good, Shepard! They created life! We are their children! If we can just prove to them that we're worth keeping, then they'll let us live. All the others cycles were wrong, Shepard, but they did something right with our cycle. We can prove our worth!"
"Clearly he's deranged," Bau noted calmly. "How are you holding up?"
"Not too well," Shepard admitted with a hint of worry to his tone.
"I figured as much. Here, take this," Bau said as he discretely handed Shepard a needle. "It's the Salarian equivalent to the Alliance's standard-issue energy drinks they give all their biotics to keep them in the fight. I warn you though; this substance kicks up your metabolism enough to take three years off of a Salarian's life."
Shepard cocked an eyebrow at that.
"It's not standard-issue, and I advise you not to take the full dose," Bau added.
"Right…" Shepard replied as he took the needle. He raised the chemical substance in the needle up ready to stab himself in the leg with it, but Saren sent a Throw at him that knocked the needle from his hand. "Right…" Shepard again. "Should've seen that coming."
When the ground team was beamed up with two wounded, one dead, and three members absent, Widget knew something was wrong. Sam, Rodney, and Ronon had 'gone ahead' according to the survivors of the ground team, but the gangways had retracted before they could conceivably make it across. This did not sit well in Widget's mind, so he squared his shoulders and took charge.
"Target the City Ship that's launching and ready the port side coaxial ion cannon," Widget ordered.
"You have a plan I assume?" Kimberly asked. With Sam absent, she was, after all, in charge.
"It's time for Plan B," Widget replied.
"This is Plan B!" Kimberly argued. "Plan A was to use the PWARW, but we don't have that. The assault on Asuras is Plan B!"
"And once it became 'the' plan, it was Plan A. Now we move on to 'Plan B for Biotics'," Widget countered adamantly as he, regardless of her arguments, moved the ship into position. "Clear a hole to the City Ship and keep them off by back for forty-five seconds. I'll have this little hiccup fixed in that timeframe," Widget said before walking out of the CIC.
"Ma'am?" Cody asked.
"Fuck it, we might as well let him play this out," Kimberly replied. "Clear a line between us and the City Ship!" she then ordered the CIC at large.
"Uh… ma'am, the port side coaxial ion cannon's maintenance hatch just opened. I'm reading an organic life-sign present in the acceleration chamber," one of the techs reported.
"Just fire the damn weapons and let me worry about the organic body!" Widget's holographic avatar snapped.
Inside of the massive barrel that ran the length of the ship, Widget's flesh and blood organic body began to glow before all light in the barrel seem to be eclipsed by a dark cloud. As the energy in the barrel built up to full power and the gunners cleared a line from the nose of the Nex to the City Ship that was about to break through the atmosphere, Widget planted his feet on the back wall of the barrel where the ion round was generated. As the ball of sliver-ish ions coalesced in front of him, Widget wrapped the ball in his biotic field. Then, with a bang, the ion round was hurtling towards the City Ship with Widget holding onto the tail end of one of the most powerful weapons in the known galaxy.
Cody let out a low whistle as the round in the chamber was prepped to fire. "He's increased the ion round's density to near neutron star level densi…"
The silence exhibited by the weapons officer was a trait shared by all those present in the CIC as the ion round fired out of the barrel on the nose of the ship and bypassed the City Ship's shield. What was left of the energy in the ion round slammed into the top of a tower on the opposite side of the city from where Sam had jumped on, and the top quarter of the tower was destroyed by the impact. Then there was a flare of dark matter energy and another quarter of the tower was destroyed in an explosion of biotic force.
"'B for Biotics'," Cody said with a dazed nod.
"I am so glad the Furlings aren't our enemies," one of the CIC guards remarked. "I would hate to have to fight that."
"We lost contact with the All Under Heaven," Jack's Executive Officer reported.
"Their sacrifice will be remembered, but we still have a battle to win! There are people on the surface counting on us to get these bastards out of orbit before they all die. We've already taken losses on the surface, we need to refocus," O'Neill ordered over the fleet-wide battle-net.
With the PDS reformed over Earth and the surface-to-orbit ion cannons coming back online, the fight started to shift drastically in the favor of the defenders, but they still had hostiles in the atmosphere landing troops across the globe. To make matters worse, the Cylons had jumped some of their own ships behind the PDS to attack the UNSC facilities scattered across the globe. Already they had lost seventeen of their conversion slips to nuclear bombs, thankfully not naquadah enhanced, and the City Factory was under heavy assault with nukes that were naquadah enhanced. The only thing holding back those forces was the half-finished UNSC Athena. She was a warship, yes, but the Athena was supposed to be a mobile shipyard/fleet command center, not a front-line warship. Even then, that one City Ship had more power in its generators than all of the Dreadnoughts in orbit of Earth combined. The city would hold.
It had to.
Three feet between him and the thing that Bau said would keep him in the fight, and Shepard was face-down in the mud. Bau was planted in a wall not far away still trying to get free so at least he was still alive. Explaining to the Council how he managed to get another SPECTRE killed on this crazy mission would've been a bitch. Then again, so would dying.
Shepard managed to touch the needle with the tip of his fingers before gravity shifted and he was being flung across the area their battle had spilled over into. Being a biotic meant that the universe bowed to your demands, but only when you had enough energy in your body to control the power within. Right now, Shepard just felt like sleeping for a year or two. Judging by how much of his ribcage was showing through his skin, he had lost more than twenty pounds in the fight. At this rate, he'd die from lack of energy before Saren was done playing his game of 'toss the first Human SPECTRE around like a ragdoll.'
"How the hell does he have so much energy?" Kaiden's voice asked in Shepard's ear. "He's throwing out more energy than an Asari Matriarch. Even Benezia didn't have that much power!"
"Benezia didn't have a ton of Reaper tech fused to her body either," Shepard managed to groan in reply as he struggled to get to his feet. His stance lasted for about half a second before he was sailing through the air again. This shit was getting old.
This time, when he landed, Shepard rolled until he was flat on his back which beat being face-down in the mud… again. With vision that was still spinning, Shepard looked up to where Saren was strutting towards him like he owned the whole damned galaxy. That strut ended with Saren standing at Shepard's feet with a swirling mass of biotic energy in his hand.
Whatever his words were at that point in time, they were lost on Shepard due to the ringing in his ears. What wasn't lost on Shepard was the green streak of light that turned into a foot right beside his leg then fully manifested as a body. With one hand, and a three fingered hand at that, the humanoid figure grabbed Saren by the throat and disappeared in a blue as the Human-looking alien's Charge carried the duo away from Shepard.
…
As the alien in his grasp batted at Sieon with a biotic attack that washed over his Barrier without harm, Sieon let a low growl escape his throat before drawing his hand back, the alien still in his grasp, and slamming it back into the wall hard enough that the alien's head rebounded off of the metal wall. As the force of the impact jarred both the alien's body and mind, Sieon shot a mental probe deep into the alien's thoughts.
"Where is your master, Puppet?" Sieon demanded in the alien's native tongue.
"Turians have no masters!" the alien snarled in reply.
"Even if that were true, you do," Sieon pressed as he squeezed the alien's throat all the tighter and dug all the deeper into his mind.
His response to that statement was the sound of a foghorn blasting through the air before a heavy thud announced the arrival of a Demon on the planet's surface. A second foghorn blasted through the air and Sieon had only a split second to drop the alien and teleport out of the path of a particle beam that cut through the space he had just occupied.
Then it spoke, its voice rang with merriment at having caught a prize.
DESIGNATION SIEON, YOU HAVE COME.
Sieon grit his teeth and tried to refrain from shouting at the machine. It would achieve nothing and losing control now would likely get him killed. Then the Demon turned and its eyes 'narrowed,' a red spotlight shinning down on Sieon.
YOU ARE THE VERY FOOL THE FATHER PROCLAIMED YOU TO BE.
The Demon fired another beam and Sieon, unable to teleport immediately without giving his body time to recover from the last act, had to Charge to avoid the sweeping beam of death. What he didn't realize was that the Demon knew this. With another beam firing from another direction, the Demon forced the Furling into a corner from which he couldn't escape without being hit by one beam or the other, and, with a roof over his head, there wasn't even the option of jumping up.
This was bad.
The swirling field of mass-altering energy picked up speed and power as the City Ship climbed higher in its attempt to flee the growing mass of Replicator nano-cells on the surface, the Asuran Fleet providing it with cover so that the beam weapons on the Gaia and Nex couldn't drain their energy before they could jump into hyperspace. What Todd never counted on was an enraged Furling biotic rampaging through the city he had commandeered.
When the field around him reached a solid enough consistency, Widget made it grow. As it did, the walls around him simply crumbled under the pressure. The frame of the tower he was in held out better, but nothing was immune to the raw power flowing out of his body. The space-age, Ancient alloy gave out with an audible groaning as the I-beams snapped off at their weakest points and joined the crumbled walls in their orbit around the Furling. Then Widget pushed out further.
The buildings surrounding the one he had landed in started to crumble too, and their chunks joined the others in his field. Then, just as the City Ship's stardrive reached the peak of its power, Widget lifted his hand above his head before slamming it down. Following that motion, a chunk of I-beam longer than a 304 slammed down through the armored base of the City Ship and pierced the stardrive on the pier Widget had boarded. As the local stardrive overloaded and sent the uncontrolled energy spike surging back through the engines, the City Ship's forming hyperspace window collapsed and their forward motion was continued only because of their preexisting momentum. The stardrive was offline until the physical engine and power grid were repaired, and not even the Asurans could program their way around that.
With the first of several problems solved, Widget felt a cry for attention rippling from the Nex through his mental web of telepathy. With the flick of his wrist, he sent another I-beam flying through space. This one flew out of the shield over the now crippled City Ship and bisected an Asuran Cruiser that was maneuvering into the city's shield dome to fire at him. That was another problem solved.
As the city's own drones fired in response to his attack and the orange missiles drew closer, Widget spun his field of debris even faster. If Ancient armor was good for one thing, it was stopping Ancient drones. The swarm impacted the debris that was spinning too fast for them to slip through the gaps and a physical shield composed of the city's own armor saved Widget from the swarm of intelligent missiles. Then, as he felt another cry, this one for help, coming across that mental web, he flicked his wrist again and another I-beam was sent flying.
…
Sam and Rodney were pinned down at an intersection with close to forty Replicators blocking their path forward and twenty Wraith blocking off their side exits. Then a piece of an I-beam flew through the hallway in front of them and took out the Replicators as it passed through the city before shooting off into space.
Now only under siege from two sides, the duo of scientists managed to take out the Wraith. As they made their way down one of the side halls, Rodney stopped to look out a window. As he did, his sprint became a sliding stop.
"Rodney, we need to keep moving!" Sam called back to him as she stopped further down hall once she realized he was no longer beside her.
"He's naked," Rodney observed.
"What?" Sam asked as she jogged back over to him. When her eyes saw what his did, she had to admit, she was shocked. "He is." The view the two of them could see was a mass of swirling metal and other building materials spinning around in a circle with a fully naked alien at the heart of the orbit. "Why is he naked?"
Her answer to that question would come later, but first she and Rodney had to deal with the next batch of Replicators that were already firing on the immobile targets gawking at the sight of a Furling in the middle of a full-on rampage.
…
"Are the Furlings the only ones who figured out how to not have terminals overloading!?" Amelia shouted in frustration as she grabbed the fire extinguisher and started trying to put out the fire that the sparks from an overloaded terminal had started.
Weir, too busy paying attention to the battle to notice her question, was barely even aware of the fire itself. The Hives had launched from the surface of Asurans and made their capabilities known. The Cream Puff had been the first to try and take on one of the Hives. Now the highly advanced Battlecruiser was resting in one of Atlantis' conversion slips with holes in its hull, several dead crew members, nearly every system overloaded, and the Hive it had fought barely even scratched!
The reason behind their lack of success? The Asurans had installed ZPMs in the Hiveships. The extra energy was then channeled into the bio-armor which allowed the organic material to grow thicker, denser, and more energy resistant. Add to that the drastic increase in energy available for the weapons systems and even a ZPM enhanced 304 B wasn't a match for the monstrous ships. The only thing working for them right now was that the Gaia and Nex were, at the very least, an even match for the Hives with their Grodins. The thing working against them? The Wraith had a whole fleet of reinforcements and drones coming from the…
Weir's train of thought trailed off as the surface-to-orbit drones stopped coming. As they did, the strain on their shields was drastically lessened, but the drones were simply inactive, not depleted. There were still hundreds of them floating in space on a path to Atlantis from the surface. Then she saw it.
A massive ball was forming on the surface of Asuras and growing larger at an alarming rate.
"They did it," Weir breathed in temporary relief.
Temporary because the Wraith were still a threat, and the ships in orbit weren't affected yet. That, and they had to hope that Ronon, Sam, and Rodney could reach the Core or the Replicators would fuse into one, massive Replicator and that would be bad for a hundred different reasons!
A few feet away from being killed by the particle beams of a Demon, Sieon saw something he never expected. There was a streak of white light, a biotic Charge so powerful that the biotic Charging could white-shift, impacted the top of the wall opposite him. The biotic planting their foot on the wall and pushing off with another white-shifted Charge caused a massive chunk of the wall to explode outward simply because a foot was planted there. Then the white-shifted biotic landed between Sieon and the Demon's beams.
All Sieon could see was the back of a male figure covered in enough armor to stop a capital ship-grade coaxial kinetic kill weapon's round. Then the biotic raised his hands and a halo of biotic energy spun into existence. The halo spun with enough density and speed to kick up its own wind, alter gravity, and, most surprising of all, it managed to redirect the particle beams.
The red beams stuck the rapidly spinning field of mass altering dark matter energy and both simply bounced off as if two metal rods had been struck together. As they did, the Demon stopped firing at them and its gaze shifted to the new comer.
PROPHET.
The Demon said in a language that Sieon didn't understand. What Sieon could tell, however, was that the Demon was 'feeling' something that sounded like a cross between scorn and fear.
THE FATHER SUSPECTED YOU SURVIVED.
The Demon continued in that unknown language. Then the new comer replied in a language that Sieon did understand. The language of violence.
With a flare of biotic energy, 'Prophet,' according to the Demon, rose off of the ground and the world began to shake beneath his power. Dirt rose into the air followed by larger and larger rocks as the power of the field Prophet was producing grew stronger. Finally it reached a point where trees decades old were ripped up from their roots and the facility around them started to crumble. Walls caved in and the debris from their destruction rose into the air followed by structural supports. The whole of the area surrounding Prophet in a bubble fifty meters in radius was torn up into his field in a matter of seconds. It would've taken Sieon at least ten minute to accomplish the same feat.
Then, as the Demon fired more beams at this 'Prophet,' the field began to collapse. All of that material was compressed down into a ball small enough to fit into Prophet's hand. That ball was then wrapped in a swirling biotic field that reminded Sieon of a Singularity. All before the beam could reach him. Then the beam was simply side-stepped in mid-air as the swirling field around the hyper-compressed ball began to spin all the faster.
With the sound of a blades cutting through the air, a second biotic field formed around the ball that made it look very much like a planet with a ring system. Then Prophet drew his arm back and hurled that ball of ultra-dense material surrounded in two biotic fields at the Greater Demon. The ball itself white-shifted even as the Demon tried to dodge it, but no creation, organic or other, can avoid something moving at the speed of light. Despite the Demon's attempt to dodge, that ball struck the Demon's armored face. The blade-like field around the ball sliced through the armor and formed a path that the ball then traveled through. Then, as another biotic field hidden inside of the ball expanded to touch the one on the outside of the field, the ball detonated.
The resulting explosion of force and shrapnel blew out two of the Demon's eyes and left a chunk of its head missing. All from one man's biotics…
Widget glided through space as his bubble of debris began to list behind him. With a simple finger pointed in a direction, a Warp field began to eat away at the armor of the City Ship. By the time the Furling reached the spot he had sent the attack at, there was a hole big enough for him to float through. With all the ease of stepping off of an elevator, Widget's feet touched the ground and he let his biotic levels drop to a low simmer instead of boiling over and nearly out of control.
Bare feet touched cold metal and the metal rotted away as if a localized time dilation field had allowed thousands of years of rust to take effect in an instant. As he walked, the walls suffered a similar fate as his Annihilation Field remained active. He walked the halls of the city as if he owned it, and anything that stood before him suffered a great deal of pain before dying. The Wraith may be tough to kill, have a high pain threshold, rapid healing abilities, and long lives, but so are/do Furlings, and to a far greater degree.
By now, all of the Asurans had been pulled down to the planet where the Replicator mass was reaching the point at which it would fuse into a single Replicator. The UNSC forces were being held back by the guns of the ZPM powered Hives, and Sam and Rodney were, once again, cut off from the Core room by Wraith. Widget ended that problem with a flick of his wrist.
The Wraith were pulled up into his Singularity with neck breaking force before he sent a Warp flying into the heart of the gravity-distorting mass of dark matter energy. The resulting explosion was then contained by a Barrier he formed around the site to keep the two Humans from being harmed. As the duo poked their heads out of cover and beheld the Furling standing there, they seemed more shocked than relieved.
"You need to hurry. The Replicators have almost circumvented the alterations we made to their programming," Widget said as he finally killed his Annihilation Field and stopped glowing entirely.
"Right…" McKay muttered as he walked past Widget and entered the Core room. He managed to hook his computer up to the Core before a rumbling had him nearly panicking again. "What's happening?"
"I had to compromise the structural integrity of the city to keep it from entering hyperspace. We don't have much time before this whole ship falls apart," Widget replied in a tired tone. "Are you okay?" he then added when he noticed that Sam was moving slower than she should be.
"We lost Ronon," Sam replied sadly.
"He'll…" Widget began before McKay swore loudly. "What is it?" Widget switched mid-sentence, his tone weary and hands shaking from exhaustion.
"The Replicator mass," McKay replied. "It's so heavy, it's sinking into the planet's surface."
"McKay, according to our readings, every Replicator nanite is now part of the mass. Can you confirm?" General Caldwell's distorted voice came over their still partially jammed comms.
"Copy that, General. I'll set the countdown, and we should be…" McKay began before trailing off. On the sensors screen in the corner of the room, they three watched as the area of the planet around the mass went dark, the power-outage spreading across the whole planet.
"Did you do that?" Sam asked.
"No," McKay replied in an obviously worried tone. "It's the mass. It's collapsed the subterranean power grid. It's a black out. We're not going to be able to overload the ZPMs. This is not good. Not good. Not good!"
"Do you want me to try?" Widget asked, his eyes half-lidded as he tried to stay awake.
"The power grid's been destroyed. There's nothing any of us can do!" McKay shot angrily.
"What's the big deal? You can't overload the ZPM's? Why don't we just send some nukes down there and get this over with?" Sheppard asked irately.
"It's not as simple as that!" McKay shouted in reply. "Look, in order to implode a mass this large, then the explosion has to be timed down to the nanosecond. The force needs to be exactly right…I mean, you can't just fire a few nukes down here and get the job done."
As the city shook under their feet again, Widget said, "We're running out of time. In roughly five minutes, this city will fall apart and we will die in the cold void of space."
"Well, it's got to be better than nothing!" Sheppard insisted.
"I have to agree," Caldwell added.
"Rodney, look," Sam said while pointing to the sensors screen. "The ground around the mass is rich with neutronium."
"Neutronium?" Caldwell asked.
"It's the base raw material of Replicator cells. It makes all the sense in the world why the Ancients would set up on a planet where it's abundant," McKay explained.
"This could be very useful. Neutronium is incredibly dense," Sam continued.
"And that helps us how?" Sheppard asked.
"Sam, we are geniuses!" Rodney proclaimed. "Okay, the mass is so super-heavy, that it's sinking into the planet's surface. If I dial it up just a little bit, it'll attract the neutronium and sink all the way to the core…"
"…and the planet will exert enough pressure on it to cause an implosion," Sam finished.
"Just give me one more… got it!" Rodney happily declared. His victory was cut short when the city started shaking under them even more violently.
"I was wrong about my calculation. The city is falling apart now," Widget informed them in that same, 'about to drop dead' tone of voice.
"Um… how do we get out of here? You can't beam past a City Ship's shields and dropping the shield means we get exposed to vacuum," Rodney pointed out.
"We do it the fun way," Widget replied, his every word fatigued as his body glowed again and a biotic field formed around the three of them.
"Is this the part where you say, 'hang on to something'?" Sam asked.
"If you hold on to anything other than me, you'll be left behind," Widget replied as a whooshing sound filled the city.
…
"What the hell are you doing!?" Caldwell shouted into the radio.
"Leaving the city," Widget replied simply.
Outside of the forward viewport, the City Ship the three were on had dropped its shield. Without the barrier to hold the atmosphere in, the city was venting air and the force of the act was speeding up the collapse of the city's structural integrity. As the city fell apart in space, the Wraith Hives kept firing on the UNSC forces while their Cruisers grabbed anything from the surface worth salvaging. The 304 Bs ran interference on the Cruisers while the 306s, Gaia, and Nex tried to keep the Hives off of Atlantis which was obviously their target. The problem was, the Grodin could damage the Hives, but it couldn't destroy them.
To make matters worse, the Hives were holding the UNSC Fleet back and out of range of their beaming sensors. If Widget went through his plan, the Grodin wouldn't be enough to clear the airspace needed to close on the city enough to beam them out. Thankfully the Grodin wasn't the most powerful weapon they had available.
Of the seven Hives bearing down on them, it was the Nex that scored the only kills. With its dark matter energy beam, the massive ship cut through one Hive and destroyed its ZPM. Without the extra power in its systems, the Daedalus and Apollo pounced on the wounded ship. As they did, the Nex shifted targets and fired at another Hive. This one the Super Dreadnought simply bisected with its Warp beam before flying past it on its way to the crumbling city, the Hive, much like the one destroyed by the original satellite the Grodin had been named after, exploded after having been cut in half.
…
As the Nex, nose no longer lined up with the Hives and incapable of using its most lethal weapon, flew alongside the City Ship, the Hives opened up on the largest threat they could find. As such, when Widget's biotically generated atmospheric retention barrier was finally blasted out into space by the explosive decompression of the city, Widget had to pull their bubble of air out of the path of the incoming weapons fire while trying to stay lined up with the open hangar bay that was waiting for them.
The three of them tumbled into the bay and Widget simply collapsed into a heap. As he did, things started happening that Sam didn't understand.
The wound in the Demon's head was large enough that the crystalline orb that serves as its brain could be seen from the outside. The Demon tried to take-off, to flee the attacking biotic, but Prophet was faster. He flew into the air on a wave of biotic energy and gathered his energy in one hand. With a snarl of rage mixed with pain, Prophet physically ejected the eezo in his body and gathered an orb of it in his palm. Then, once he had enough of it, he used the energy of his body to liquefy it. Once done, he sent a beam of dark matter energy on level with the Nex's own weapon flying towards the Demon's brain.
Inches away from impact, the beam stopped. In fact, everything stopped. Then it went backwards.
…
***Armstrong Nebula (Gagarin System)***
**Rayingri (Orbit)**
*SSV Normandy (Combat Information Center) [timestamp invalid]*
"Commander, we've got a ping," Joker, the Normandy's pilot, informed the Commander.
"What is it, Joker?" Shepard asked.
"It's a radio signal, Commander," the voice of one Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko replied. "It's coded in Geth and coming from somewhere in a neighboring system. I think it's the Geth's main base."
"Alright, Joker, set a course and deploy the stealth systems as soon as we drop out of FTL. I'll forward a report to Admiral Hackett," Shepard replied.
"ETA; just under two hours," Joker confirmed.
'I wonder what we'll find this time,' Shepard mused.
The Siege of Earth had lasted a full twenty-four hours now and there were still Cylon Baseships to destroy. The problem was, they were jumping around the system avoiding the guns of the UNSC fleet with their FTL drives. As they did, they'd drop below the PDS, fire on the military instillations there, then return to orbit behind the UNSC Fleet and hit them from behind.
Things were going very badly for the defenders of Earth. The Cylons were making up for their advantage of tech by being more maneuverable. To make matters worse, they had jumped past Athena's shield and nuked the city. Now the City Factory was nothing but radioactive ruble and they had lost half of the fleet before they managed to get their shields collapsed down close enough to their hulls to prevent the Cylons from jumping through…
…
***Local Cluster (Sol System)***
**Earth (Surface)**
*O'Neill Residence (Den) [timestamp invalid]*
"Good morning America! It's another beautiful day here in the greatest country on Earth…" the TV reporter began before Jack changed the channel. There was never anything good on TV these days.
With a sigh of annoyance, the retired Air Force officer turned off the TV, grabbed his folding chair under one arm, tackle box under the other, and fishing rod before leaving his house. "Another day in paradise," Jack mumbled with a dark sense of sarcasm as he set up his fishing gear and decided to spend the rest of the day fishing.
Atlantis, once it had collected the more heavily damaged ships not capable of entering hyperspace, powered up its stardrive in preparation for leaving. The massive hyperspace window tore open, but, before the city could fly through it, Atlantis vanished along with the Sun Tzu, Cream Puff, Two for Flinching, Phoenix, Daedalus, Apollo, and Gaia. In fact, the only ship left in the system was the Nex.
"What the hell just happened!?" Rodney asked in a state of total panic.
"Ba'al happened," Widget's holographic avatar replied darkly.
***Local Cluster (Sol System)***
**Earth (North Atlantic Ocean)**
*Achilles (Bridge) [1939]*
"Make your course three-five-zero," the Captain ordered.
"Three-five-zero. Aye, Captain," the helmsman replied.
"We'd be in Boston right now if we weren't zigzagging all over the bloody Atlantic," one of the bosun complained.
"You'd rather I make it easy for the U-boats?" the Captain asked.
"We're not at war yet. Besides, we're riding too high in the water for a U-boat captain to waste a torpedo," the bosun countered.
As if in response to his comment, the floorboards started vibrating. "Check to see the cargo's secure," the Captain ordered.
"You're never going to tell me what it is, are you?" the bosun asked.
"If I knew myself," the Captain replied distantly.
…
The bosun entered the Hold, his lantern shining brightly, but still not bright enough. A strange sound reached his ears as he entered the Hold fully. In the center of the Hold, a very large wooden crate was being held to the deck by thick metal chains. The only visible marking on the crate was the word 'Langford' in painted letters. As the sounds continued to emit from the crate, the bosun stepped up to it and placed his hand on the surface. As he did, the formation of a wormhole consumed his body, the 'kawoosh' going out far enough to put a hole in the side of the ship. The only good thing here was that the hole was well above the water line.
…
As the ship lurched and started listing to one side, the Captain stepped out of the Bridge and looked over the side of the ship. Noting the hole, the Captain said, "That's no torpedo."
Walking back into the Bridge, the helmsman asked, "What is it, Captain?"
Ignoring the question, the Captain walked up to the intercom, a cone in the wall, and announced, "Emergency stations! All hands!" Only then did he turn to the helmsman. "Maintain your heading, son," he added in a reassuring tone.
"Aye, sir," the helmsman replied.
"I'm going to check for damage," the Captain informed him. Reaching into the first aide cabinet, the Captain grabbed a pistol and left the Bridge.
…
From the active Gate, a long, wide plank fell through in such a way that it formed a walkway over the stack of crates in front of the Gate and to the metal mesh walkway of the ship. Two armed Jaffa then came through the Gate to take up position beside the walkway. A moment later, Ba'al himself strutted through the active Gate with two more Jaffa.
"Secure the ship and make ready the Chappa'ai," Ba'al ordered smugly. "Take your time, Jaffa. We have all the time in the world."
…
The Captain entered the Cargo Hold with two other of his crewmen. He tried looking around the crates, but a flash of light from behind them struck one of his men. Despite it just having been a flash of light, the man fell to the ground dead. Grabbing the other man with him, the Captain drug the man forward. As he did, another flash of light lit up the room and hit the Captain in the leg while another blast hit his crewman in the back.
With a groan of pain, the Captain managed to sit against the bulkhead then make his way to his feet. As he did, he heard a voice.
"The vessel is secure, My Lord," a strange looking man in an even stranger armor informed another strange looking man.
Then the man who was clearly in charge armed something that was clearly a bomb.
"Dial the Chappa'ai," the leader ordered.
The armed servant then approached the cargo that the Captain had been tasked with carrying and placed something on the large metal circle inside of the wooden box. Once he did, a circle within the circle began to spin. With the last of his strength, the Captain cocked his revolver and took aim, but he was too slow. The leader of the men removed the device from the circle which now held water standing vertically and stepped through the water. The only thing they left behind were dead bodies and a bomb.
Bleeding heavily from his wounded leg, the Captain moved to the bomb. With the last bit of strength the Captain had left, he picked up the bomb and threw it through the hole in his ship into the ocean below. A second later, a bright light lit up the ocean from below the waters. No longer able to keep going, the Captain collapsed against the hull, breathing heavy.
"What do you mean, 'Ba'al happened'?" Sam asked with a growing sense of desperateness.
"Remember when I told you that Ba'al was planning on going back in time?" holo-Widget asked as medical drones entered the hangar bay to administer aid to the unconscious form of the AI's nude body. "I think something happened to Earth."
"Like what?" Rodney asked as he tried, and failed, to calm down.
"Something big enough that it stopped Jack from sending a ship to stop Ba'al from going back in time. Without someone there to stop him, Ba'al would've gone back and altered the timeline without being challenged," Widget explained before his avatar was joined by that of Sam's XO.
"Ma'am, the Asurans are firing drones at us from the surface and our shields are running low after the bombardment we took from those Hives. Orders?" Kimberly asked, her own tone showing how close she was to breaking down and crying. Clearly Widget was sharing this tale with the people in the CIC as well.
"Jump us back to…" Sam began before drawing a blank.
"We'll go to Lantea," Widget said before the wormhole drive engaged.
"Why Lantea?" Rodney asked. "Why not Earth?"
"Earth doesn't exist as you knew it anymore, Rodney. Neither does Atlantis," Widget replied as a live feed from the Nex's sensors showed Atlantis on the bottom of the ocean, the shield completely collapsed and the city flooded from top to bottom. "Without the Tau'ri, Atlantis spends another year on the bottom of the ocean floor before its ZPMs give out entirely and the city floods. Without the Tau'ri, Weir never goes back in time to tell the Janus that the ZPMs have to be cycled out. Without the Tau'ri bringing the Goa'uld Empire to its knees, and with a knowledge of future events, Ba'al has changed the future of the stars. He owns this timeline now."
"Wait," Sam shook her head. "If Ba'al went back in time and changed the timeline, then how the hell are we still here?"