Kinsey was on a warpath. "I don't know how, but this is your fault!" He said. He had just enough composure to avoid spittle flying.
"And how exactly do you figure that, sir?" Hammond replied, sounding extremely fed up.
"You – you used some kind of fail-safe program! Some kind of… computer personality! Something to seize control from the crew and give it back to the SGC!"
"Nobody at the SGC would have done anything of the sort." Hammond refuted firmly. Aside from that essentially amounting to treason, the only AI the SGC trusted all that much were the android duplicates of SG1 – and that was because they were duplicates of SG1. "And even if I had, why would I activate it now? I'm not in charge of the SGC anymore." He resisted the urge to add 'You saw to that'.
President Hayes was rubbing his temples. "Gentlemen. Prometheus is still following orders for now, yes?"
"Mister President!" Kinsey objected, aghast. "We have to consider Prometheus a compromised asset!"
"Until SG1 gets back, she's all we've got." Hammond pointed out, causing Kinsey to visibly flinch. Maybe the fool was starting to realise the planet was actually in danger.
Suddenly there was a commotion at the door. One of the Secret Service agents could be heard saying "I'm sorry sir, but you can't come in –"
"Kinsey, sir!" Standing in the doorway, Hammond recognised Malcolm Barrett – the closest thing to an NID agent that he would trust to actually do his stated job.
"What are you doing?! Can't you see who I'm meeting with?!" Kinsey snapped.
But Barrett stood his ground. Now that Hammond was looking, he could see that the agent's face was clammy with sweat. "Sir. There is currently an uncontained secrecy breach at multiple civilian observatories. If the press are not already aware, they likely will be shortly."
Whatever angry retort Kinsey had been planning got swallowed up by a stammering fit, the vice-president rendered inarticulate with a sudden wide-eyed look of panic.
Hammond managed to remain stony faced, but Hayes swore under their breath. "Turn the TV on." He ordered a Secret Service member, who rushed to comply. "CNN."
"…if this is a prank, Jen, this is the best-coordinated prank in human history." The presenter was saying. "We have images from twelve different observatories in seven different countries, and more coming in all the time. So far we've identified the USS Enterprise-D from Star Trek, one of the iconic Star Destroyers from Star Wars, Babylon 5 from the show of the same name, and what appears to be the wreck of Battlestar Galactica; also from the show of the same name. Three other ships have been spotted but not identified yet."
Kinsey sat up ramrod straight, face pale. "Pardon me mister president, we need to begin imposing media blackouts."
"Forget that." The president ordered sharply. "If you impose a blackout after that bombshell we'll have mass confusion across the country, maybe even panic riots."
"Mister president, given that the unknown ships seem to resemble those from TV shows for the most part, we could confuse the issue by pushing the narrative that this is some kind of PR stunt." Hammond suggested.
"Excellent suggestion George – Bob, get to it."
Kinsey's face twisted in distaste for a moment, clearly not happy at doing anything Hammond suggested, but he quickly moved to a corner of the Oval Office with Barrett to discuss things in hushed but heated voices.
Hammond allowed himself to gaze suspiciously at the vice-president for a moment, before turning back to the TV. The camera had cut to Jen, one hand clasped over an earpiece. "H-hold on… I'm being told that we are now getting reports of three Attackinator ships from the short-lived serial Wormhole X-treme, orbiting over the pacific."
There was a moment of silence in both the studio and the White House both, which was eventually broken by more swearing from the President.
Normandy had been in orbit around her Earth exactly twice – once when the Systems Alliance had impounded her, following Shepard's surrender to them. The second time had been when the Reapers had showed up, and then orbit had been and gone as fast as her thrusters could take her as she fled the devastation.
Nothing was burning yet, but this still felt more like that second time.
A Ha'tak, as it turned out, was about 700 meters tall a̶c̶r̶o̶s̶s̶, putting it firmly out of her weight class. (She might still have been willing to chance it – she'd beaten the Collector ship, and that had been even larger – but there were three of them and one of her.)
Each of them looked human enough, but every part of their appearance screamed 'decadent'. Rather than any kind of uniform, they were dressed in fine gold silks in a way somewhere between a pagan god and a belly dancer. Each of the three was visibly overweight, and there was a golden insignia stuck to each of their foreheads.
However, their exposed midriffs meant that Normandy could see the opening to some kind of pouch in their stomachs. For just a second, one of the pouches opened, and she caught a glimpse of some kind of worm or snake sticking its head out before retreating back inside.
"This is the Tau'ri homeworld?" One of the Ha'taks scoffed, lifting her Staff Weapon over a shoulder. "This is the source of defiance against Lord Anubis? Pah! Our Lord's full fleet is not needed here – we alone are sufficient to destroy them!"
"I understand your feelings, sister, but you must contain your indignity." The second Ha'tak said. "The treacherous curs have stolen secrets of the Ancients from our Lord, and they may seek to turn those magicks against us."
"Even the Tau'ri would not dare." The third Ha'tak said. "They know they cannot stand against the might of our Lord."
"The arrogance of the Tau'ri knows no bounds." The first Ha'tak refuted. "We must provoke them into attacking, so that the rest of our sisters are not caught up in their cowardly tricks."
The third Ha'tak hurrump'd. Lazily, she traced a finger down the surface of the Earth. "…there." She said, pointing at a spot on the pacific ocean. "Several of their pathetic water craft sit there. We shall destroy them as a first step."
Normandy looked r̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶l̶i̶d̶a̶r̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶ at where the Ha'tak was pointing. Their target was one of the old ocean-going carrier groups – well, it wasn't so old in this world, but it was equally helpless against orbital bombardment. Unless the rest of the fleet got here soon, she'd have to do something drastic.
A faint whimpering m̶u̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶r̶a̶d̶i̶o̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ came from just to her left, and Normandy looked up to see a tiny girl – about 6 or 7, just over 100 meters tall w̶i̶d̶e̶, wearing a spacesuit covered in flags (most prominently the US and Russian flags) – whimpering in fright, trying to hide behind the camcorder she held in shaking hands.
Normandy solemnly placed a finger to her lips.
The International Space Station's eyes widened, then she frantically (but silently) nodded.
Normandy held up a hand of Dark Energy, forming a mass concentration off the side of the tiny station. The ISS's eyes grew even wider as her orbit was diverted away from where the Ha'taks were.
Normandy watched the station recede into the distance for a few precious seconds, then shook her head, reduced her mass, and set off for the middle of the danger zone.
"I really don't see why you're making this so complicated." Chimaera said. "It's really quite simple."
"That much we agree on, Chimaera-san." Yamato said distractedly, her eyes searching the sea of stars for the pale blue dot that was Earth.
"We do not owe these people any obligation or duty. In fact, aiding them would be risking our safety – we were not built to throw our lives away for the first foolhardy cause we stumble across."
"Ah." Yamato said, her eyes focusing, and her body manoeuvring around to align with her gaze. "That is where my calculation differs slightly from yours, Chimaera-san."
"Is that so?" Chimaera folded her arms.
"Yes." Yamato said plainly, her rocket-wings m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶u̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ igniting with a furious blue roar, forming a comet-like trail behind her. "They need help, and we can give it."
"Yamato…!" Enterprise hesitated, and Yamato's body soared though the stars… until suddenly a point of light appeared in her path. Yamato slammed into it violently, momentarily brought to a near-halt as the universe pushed back against the ship trying to cheat lightspeed, her body disappearing into the point with agonising slowness… before the universe gave in, and Yamato burst off into the distance as a point of blue light.
Prometheus stared after the Space Battleship, mouth open, blinking rapidly. "Alright." She eventually said. "I'd love to know how you made a hyperdrive look like that."
"It's not a hyperdrive." Enterprise hissed, biting her bottom lip. "Prometheus, is there a major interstellar agreement we can appeal to…?"
"You mean like the Protected Planets Treaty?" Prometheus offered, not seeing where Enterprise was going with this.
"Great that sounds perfect!" Enterprise said in a rush, whirling around before zooming off into the distance with a zoom-whoosh.
Prometheus continued to stare, her jaw slack.
Chimaera hissed. "Of all the irresponsible…" She too vanished, simply shooting off into space in a rush of pseudomotion.
Prometheus continued blinking for another moment. "How the hell…?" Even her sensors didn't think those looked like subspace windows. But… those methods of FTL were things Earth authors made up! Plucked from the depths of their imaginations! Did… whatever faction made those ships splurge on holograms and sensor jammers maybe? Were they that dedicated?!
Her confusion was interrupted by Babylon 5's voice. "Oh dear… Quickly, before they do something we all regret." So saying, the station vanished in a flash of light.
Prometheus looked up at where the station had been, uncomprehending for a second. Then her brain kicked back into gear, and she realised that she had just let a bunch of alien powder-kegs go meet a bunch of Goa'uld matches in Earth orbit. The vague semitransparent waves of a subspace window appeared before she could properly think about it and she dived in headfirst, vanishing in her own flash of light.
Sitting in the dark, staring at the news reports, Julia Donovan's breath hitched in her throat. She looked at the slightly grainy photos of the ships in the sky.
Two years ago, she'd been tipped off to a secret money trail funnelling billions of US taxpayer money away from the eyes of the public. The cash was being used on a project so hush-hush that even her good contacts at the Pentagon had never heard of it. It'd taken the favours of a whole career just to get absolute proof; which had taken the form of a tiny sample of metal that didn't occur on Earth.
And just when she was ready to go public with it, the government came down on her. Hard. The word "treason" had been thrown around. Her producer folded like a wet towel, as though this wasn't the clearest example of a public-interest story since Watergate.
(For some reason, when she'd said as much to one of the soldiers involved, he'd muttered something under his breath about "wrong gate" that she didn't think for a moment she was supposed to hear.)
Against her better judgement, she'd let Al talk her into a deal – she would get the exclusive scoop of the century in exchange for letting the feds classify it forever. As though that was useful to anyone. Worse, she'd later found out that he'd promised to commit the cardinal sin of journalism – giving up her source.
For that she would have wrung his neck, but she'd been beaten to it. Somehow, her entire film crew – people she'd worked with for months – had secretly been more government goons out to screw over the first set. They'd shot Al, and nearly stolen the focus of her story: a spaceship being built in secret in the Navada desert.
A spaceship called "Prometheus", a picture of which was currently sitting on her TV screen with the label "Unidentified".
An NDA with her signature on it was currently sitting somewhere in a government archive, but screw the feds, this was her story. They'd destroyed what little film had actually been taken, double-crossing bastards, but they couldn't wipe her memories nor find her backup caches. She could still name names, and she still had the money trail.
Though of course the real trick would be doing this without tipping her hand. They'd have much less reason to arrest her if she'd already blown the lid off this deal.
The first Ha'tak had her Staff Weapon C̶a̶n̶o̶n̶ aimed and ready when Yamato burst onto the scene, her warp jump leaving her firmly between the three pyramid ships and the planet they were after.
The three Ha'tak recoiled in surprise, but quickly recovered and focused their aim on Yamato instead. "See, sisters!" The first Ha'tak cried. "Now we see the coward ships of the Tau'ri at last emerge from hiding!"
"This is your only warning." Yamato clearly enunciated b̶r̶o̶a̶d̶c̶a̶s̶t̶, making sure she was understood. "You will leave this world be. Otherwise, you will be destroyed."
The three Ha'taks stared at Yamato for a moment, before cruel smirks spread across their faces.
"And who will do that, little ship?" The second Ha'tak mocked. "You?"
Despite having left after Enterprise, the sheer speed disparity between the two meant that Chimaera arrived first, suddenly halting in space with such force that every ship present imagined they could hear a deep thoom.
The Ha'taks were trained from construction for the thrill of combat, to bring glory to their Lord. They did not shirk, they did not waver. Their jaws definitely did not go slack at the sudden appearance of a ship roughly twice their size.
The third Ha'tak's not-at-all-panicked gaze moved between Yamato and Chimaera with the speed of an Asgard hyperdrive. "What treacherous sorcery is this?! What abyss did the Tau'ri pull such a craft from?!"
"Frankly, I couldn't care less about that planet below." Chimaera glared. "But I need to return to my own space at once, which means keeping this group of idiots alive."
TIE Defenders (and the odd surviving Fighter) started streaming out of the folds of Chimaera's uniform t̶w̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶s̶. Not to be outdone, Cosmo Tiger IIs started to launch out from the back of Yamato's shirt h̶e̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶.
The three Ha'taks quickly did a tactical evaluation – Chimaera looked like she could take one Ha'tak, perhaps two, but with three of them there…
Then Enterprise arrived with a zoom-whoosh and a cry of "Wait!"
The second Ha'tak shifted her aim from Chimaera to Enterprise. "More ships?" She cried.
The third narrowed its eyes, looking at Enterprise's not-quite-human features. "Indeed, sisters! But not a Tau'ri ship… identify yourself!" She demanded.
"I'm the USS Enterprise-D of the United Federation of Planets, and in the name of the Protected Planets Treaty I demand that you cease hostile actions immediately!"
The three Ha'tak looked at each other, their clenched teeth distracting from the furious discussion going on in their gazes.
"Are you of Asgard?" The first Ha'tak demanded.
The three only slightly flinched when Babylon 5 and Galactica jumped in.
"I'm a neutral third-party, here to moderate –"
"Are you of Asgard?!" The Ha'tak loudly interrupted Enterprise. She would have smashed her Staff Weapon into the ground, if it wasn't for the fact that they were currently in orbit.
Enterprise pursed her lips. "My great-great-aunt met Apollo once, does that count?"
"No." The third Ha'tak said flatly, all three ships wondering why this strange ship thought such a minor Goa'uld was relevant.
"Your ancestor met Lord Apollo?!" Galactica cried, just as faint technicolor lines formed and Prometheus exited from her version of hyperspace.
Enterprise's eyes flickered back and forth between the Ha'taks and Galactica for a moment. "Yes? Galactica this isn't really the time –"
"In the flesh?!"
"I mean," Enterprise hesitated. "he turned into wind afterwards? He had this thing about needing worship, and didn't take it very well when my great-great-aunt's crew refused to give it to him –"
"They…! Honestly dearie, did they really not know how to treat a god?" Galactica fumed.
The second Ha'tak snorted, finding herself in agreement with the strange vessel. "Clearly not."
"Not you." Galactica snapped at the Ha'taks. "I mean real gods."
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of Prometheus slapping her palm into her face.
Then in one smooth motion the first Ha'tak raised and aimed her Staff Weapon C̶a̶n̶n̶o̶n̶ –
Six positron beams and uncountable turbolaser shots smashed into that Ha'tak's shields first, physically pushing the ship back and causing her own shots to go wide, the bolts shooting off into deep space.
Enterprise's eyes went wide. "Stop! Stop shooting now or –"
The other two Ha'taks opened fire on Enterprise, who eep'd and threw her arms up to protect her face r̶e̶i̶n̶f̶o̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶u̶c̶k̶i̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶l̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶-̶u̶p̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶e̶l̶d̶s̶, feeling the plasma bolts slam home.
"Do you really think you can take us all!?" Chimaera growled, pulling out a second blaster t̶u̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶a̶d̶s̶i̶d̶e̶.
The first Ha'tak grit her teeth. "Sisters! Our mission is accomplished. We must return to our Lord at once!"
With quick flashes of light, the three ships vanished into hyperspace.
Chimaera snorted, holstering her blasters. "Amateurs."
Yamato narrowed her eyes, not yet putting her guns down. "That seemed far too easy for a fleet sent to burn a planet."
"That wasn't Anubis's fleet." Prometheus corrected.
The other ships (and station) all paused, then as one all turned to face Prometheus.
"Say again, dear?" Babylon 5 said faintly.
Prometheus scowled. "That was just a scouting force. Current intelligence puts Anubis's fleet at about 30 Ha'taks and one planet-killing mothership."
"And you wanted us to fight a fleet like that by ourselves?!" Chimaera cried in a strangled tone of voice, one eye twitching.
"Considering the alternative was me fighting a fleet like that by myself, yeah!" Prometheus shot back, undaunted.
"These Asgard –" Enterprise said desperately.
"– have already been contacted." Prometheus interrupted. "No idea what the hold up is, but given Anubis's new ships are a credible threat to the old Asgard Bilisker-class ships, they probably don't have enough O'Neill-classes to spare a couple for us."
Enterprise's face slowly fell, and her eyes were slowly drawn to the blue-and-green sphere below; her expression tinged with guilt.
She could talk about the Prime Directive and the need to avoid acting without the support of the Admiralty all she liked: the simple fact remained that was Earth, heart of the Federation. The thought of it being destroyed left a tightness in her chest that she couldn't ignore.
Prometheus covered her face with both hands and groaned. "It's those blasted shields. Without them we could just nuke 'em into oblivion."
"I know the feeling." Babylon 5 muttered. Before getting caught in the 'rabbit hole' anomaly, she'd only ever faced off against one foe with shielding – the Thirdspace artefact. It had taken the full firepower of the Army of Light just to open a human-sized hole in that shield – and even then for only a moment.
Chimaera pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes shut in frustration. "Yes, that's why all ships have particle shields – so that you don't lose a Star Destroyer to some kid with a proton torpedo."
Prometheus snorted. "Goa'uld ships use plasma shields, not… whatever the hell a particle shield is made of."
Enterprise suddenly perked up. "Plasma shields? You're sure?"
"Sure I'm sure." Prometheus blinked, confused at Enterprise's sudden mood swing. "I was built with Goa'uld tech, remember?"
Enterprise's mouth opened and closed for a moment. Hesitation and guilt warred across her face.
"Enterprise-san…" Yamato said, her gaze steady and her eyes firm.
"Right thing." Normandy added quietly.
"And anyone who thinks it isn't isn't worth listening to, Dearie." Galactica finished.
Enterprise closed her eyes. "But it would mean war." She said, somewhat desperately. "I don't want to be remembered as the next Michael Burnham."
Surprisingly, Prometheus didn't argue the point. "I have no idea who that is," She said, then pointed off in the direction the Ha'taks had left in. "but, they fired on you first, right?"
Enterprise's gaze followed Prometheus's finger for a moment, then turned back to Earth. After another moment, she let out a deep sigh.
"It's going to take all of us together."
"…and film crews are currently standing by at several major observatories, and other major networks have their staff at several more. We will be running a special cooperative broadcast in the hopes of bringing you the most comprehensive footage of the events apparently occurring in the sky." The presenter nervously shuffled his papers. "For his opinion on events, we cross live to Professor –"
President Hayes shut off the TV with the remote and massaged his temples. "You sure we can't do anything other than rely on Prometheus and wait for SG1?"
Hammond shook his head. "Our entire stockpile of Mark III warheads was loaded onto Prometheus before it was launched. Even if our modifications since the failures of the Mark Is work as intended, we have no ability to launch them from here – short of ordering Prometheus to do so."
The President resisted the urge to sigh. If he had to announce the truth of what was going on in orbit, he'd much prefer to play up all the cards they had to play rather than admit that they were out of said cards. "Why did the Mark Is fail again? They had a thousand megaton yield, didn't they? Are Ha'taks really that tough?"
"We don't think so, Mr President." Hammond shook his head. "Ha'taks are able to destroy each other with only a few exchanges of fire, and our experience argues against their Staff Cannons being on the gigaton level. The EMP generated at the time of the strike initially had us believing that the Mark Is were insufficient to destroy their targets, but post-action analysis instead concluded that the warheads failed to arm before impacting enemy shielding and being destroyed. That's the major change between the Mark Is and the Mark IIIs – the Mark IIIs are designed to detonate on impact with both solid objects and shielding."
Hayes winced. "And our designated delivery method for those missiles…"
"…was Prometheus, yes sir." Hammond finished. "We still have some F-302s stationed at Area 51, but without any Naquadah-boosted ordnance available to them I recommend keeping them in reserve – in case Anubis tries a bombing run with Al'kesh, as unlikely as that currently is."
"At least that's something." Hayes muttered. Making a small thing seem big and important was practically a required skill for a politician.
Hayes glanced to the other side of the room, where Kinsey was not-so-quietly shouting at someone on the other end of a phone. "Tell me straight, George. Can we win this?"
"We've come out of worse, Mr President." Hammond was trying to be reassuring, so he did not go into detail on how close most of those situations had been – how many bad endings had been glimpsed in the Quantum Mirror or erased with time travel.
Hayes looked back to the TV, absentmindedly fiddling with the remote. "And do you think that now is the time to go public?"
"I don't consider myself qualified to answer that, Mr President." Hammond paused. "However, I should point out that it might not be our decision."
Hayes's eyes blinked in confusion. "Sorry, George?"
"The UN Security Council, sir. We briefed all the permanent members as to the existence and nature of the Stargate program and the then-current state of the galaxy last year."
Hayes's eyes widened and he glanced at an aide, urgency in his eyes. Said aide cleared her throat. "The governments of France, Russia and the UK have made general statements calling for calm, but so far haven't disclosed any information about the Goa'uld or the Stargate program. The Chinese government have issued media blackouts except to tell their people not to believe 'western lies' about ships in orbit. We believe at this time that the CCP has seized control of all observatories in China."
"'The government of China does not believe in keeping secrets from its people', sir?" Hammond muttered darkly, remembering what the Chinese ambassador at the UN had said when informed about the Stargate program.
The aide cleared her throat again. "However, sir, I should mention that the Prime Minister of Japan has made an… interesting statement."
Hayes blinked in confusion again. "George, did we read the Japanese into the situation?"
"No sir Mr President." Hammond confirmed, equally confused.
"He said, and I quote," the aide continued "'Divers are currently on their way to ensure that the wreck of the Yamato still lies on the sea floor. Regardless of what they find, however, I would ask the people of Japan to not panic, but instead to have faith in Yamato.' I'm… not sure if he was joking or not, sir."
For the third time, Hayes could do nothing but blink in confusion. After a moment, however, a thought occurred to him. Shifting through the papers on his desk, he pulled out a print-out of the ships that had unexpectedly appeared in orbit. Slapping it back down on top of his desk, he stared intently at one of the two 'unidentified' craft – the one that, now that he thought about it, looked rather like a WWII battleship with a giant thruster at the stern…
"Well, I'll be dammed."
The sky above Earth rippled and tore as thirty subspace windows opened and disgorged thirty Ha'taks. Forming up, the Ha'taks stood guard as a much larger window opened, releasing Anubis's mothership into Earth orbit.
"Hpmh." The mothership's gaze dismissively washed over the gathered ships. "This is what the Tau'ri could scrounge up, is it?"
Prometheus quickly lifted a hand to the side of her helmet. "Prometheus to Stargate Command, requesting permission to engage, over?"
"This is your last chance to avoid pulling the trigger on your own destruction." Yamato warned. "I have seen a battle much like this one play out before – and you are no White Comet."
"Your formation is an absolute disgrace. Half of you are in the way of the other half's line of fire."
"Chimaera, dear, please don't offer advice to the enemy fleet."
"There will be no mercy this day." The mothership cut in, glaring at Yamato. "Your destruction is the will of Lord Anubis, and we are His instruments."
"In the immortal words of James T. Kirk, what does a god need with a starship?" Enterprise added a frown to her already distressed face. "Why not just smite us now and be done with it?"
"Silence!" The mothership roared, before glancing down and rubbing her belly. "Do not worry, my Lord." She said in soothing tones. "Your servant will destroy the heathen Tau'ri without delay."
Weirdly enough, Babylon 5 was staring at that same belly in abject confusion.
"Prometheus this is Stargate Command." The return transmission came in. "You are now clear to engage. Your primary objective is as always the safety of Earth and its people." There was a short pause. "Make us proud. Over."
"Forces of Anubis!" The mothership bellowed. "Make your god…"
The mothership trailed off as she noticed all the Tau'ri ships (well, Galactica and Chimaera weren't Tau'ri ships, but she didn't know that) all looking at a point just behind her left ear. Galactica had a hand over her mouth, failing to conceal a smile. Slightly confused, the mothership turned her head a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶s̶ around…
…to see Normandy, floating not 5 kilometres away as though she didn't have a care in the world. "Hello." She said quietly, giving a little mocking wave.
The mothership's face contorted with rage, her fury masking her shock that not a single member of the fleet had noticed the extra ship in the middle of their formation. "Jaffa kree!" She screamed, opening up with her Staff Weapon C̶a̶n̶n̶o̶n̶s̶.
Normandy glowed a light blue as she shot off, flying suspiciously like a ship that weighed a hundredth of her actual mass. Glowing plasma blasts shot after her, but she was moving so fast that the only targets the staff blasts hit were Ha'tak.
Dozens of Death Glider feathered serpents burst from the pouch h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶ of every Ha'tak, forming a swarm of hundreds of fighters chasing after one frigate.
Satisfied that Normandy wouldn't be coming back, the Goa'uld fleet turned back around to face the human fleet.
"Time to go!" Prometheus yelled, throwing l̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ something small out of her sleeve a̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶w̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶u̶b̶e̶. The semitransparent sheen of a subspace window appeared in front of Prometheus, and she gestured towards it with haste.
Babylon 5 and Galactica vanished in the flash of a jump drive. Chimaera and Enterprise both aimed themselves directly into the enemy fleet, rushing past them in a rush of pseudomotion and a zoom-whoosh respectively. Yamato, unable to use her warp drive for tactical manoeuvres, instead flew fearlessly into Prometheus's subspace window; Prometheus following immediately afterwards.
The mothership narrowed her eyes, suspicious of the sudden cowardice of the Tau'ri ships…
Which is when the engine on the Mark III 'Unas-buster' that Prometheus had launched ignited. The missile rammed into the shields of one hapless Ha'tak and blew it to kingdom come; in a fireball bright enough to give someone on the Moon sunburn.
"Great bird of the galaxy you were not kidding about the yield on that monster." The slightly scared voice of Enterprise made the mothership spin around t̶u̶r̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶. The human ships had not gone far – barely four thousand kilometres beyond the other side of the fleet.
As all the Goa'uld ships fully turned their attention around, Chimaera scowled. "How many of those do you have remaining?" She asked in a hiss o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶n̶e̶l̶.
"Six." Prometheus hissed back r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶n̶e̶l̶. "Which, in case you can't count, isn't enough."
"They come." Yamato warned, already firing her shock cannons at the incoming Ha'taks.
"Everyone get ready to skip past them again!" Prometheus called out. She grit her teeth. "Really, really hope this plan works."
"That makes two of us." Chimaera scowled, turbolasers blasting away.
Weirdly enough, no group on Earth had their eyes more closely glued to the news feeds of the battle in space than the SGC. Sure, they had the radar feeds of what was going on, but there was no substitute for actual pictures.
Weir was biting her bottom lip so hard she was starting to taste blood. For whatever reason, the other ships had joined Prometheus in fighting back against the Goa'uld. But even assuming that she could count on their continued support – which was far from guaranteed – there was no guarantee of victory.
Her spiral of worries was interrupted when the serviceman on the desk next to her leaned up close to his monitor with a "That's strange…"
Weir blinked a couple of times as she pulled her thoughts back into the here and now, then looked down at the serviceman. "What's strange?"
She then paused, taken slightly aback. The serviceman had an honest-to-goodness ruler out and was measuring the images on his screen. "Wait, what are you –"
"Prometheus is 195 meters long, and the Argo was 256 – so Argo should only be a little longer than Prometheus. But you can see in this shot here that Argo is nearly half over half again as long!" The serviceman tapped his screen with his knuckles.
"Maybe the perspective's off?" The servicewoman on the next desk over offered.
The serviceman shook his head. "Prometheus hasn't been opening her subspace windows that wide – the two ships have to be pretty darn close to each other to keep doing FTL microjumps like this."
Before Weir get a word in, the serviceman switched to a shot of the Star Destroyer when it had rolled enough to show them its top. "See this x-shaped construct on the top of the bridge? That's not a comm tower, that's a tractor beam array! Chimaera's the wrong class of Star Destroyer; she should be an Imperial II not an Imperial I!"
"Is this really important?" Weir managed to say before the serviceman powered on.
"And are those TIE Defenders?! Chimaera's the one ship in the Imperial fleet that shouldn't have Defenders, not that any of them should! If anything she should have Missile Boats!"
"Brandon, you're being super-obscure again." The servicewoman the next desk over elbowed her workmate in the ribs.
The serviceman rubbed his side. "Sorry, sorry. TIE Defenders are a super-fighter they made up for the TIE Fighter video game, but they were too expensive to see widespread use. Thrawn invented the Missile Boat to counter them, but those all got put into 'protective storage' after a traitor admiral blew up all their factories."
Weir raised an eyebrow. "'Super' fighter?"
"The next game, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, had a data file saying the Defender wasn't in the game because it would be too powerful. Too powerful! Against X-Wings!"
After a pause, the serviceman realised the whole room was staring at him. "What?"
Weir drew on the full length of her professional career in diplomacy. "I think they're all impressed by your… expertise."
"Neeeeeeeeerrrd!" Someone called from the back of the room, and got kicked in the shins by the airman next to him.
The serviceman rolled his eyes and got back to work.
Normandy, meanwhile, was flying a bit of a tightrope act.
She could escape the Death Gliders easily enough – she would just reduce her mass to near-zero, accelerate to, say, 0.75c, and watch the Gliders vanish in her metaphorical rear-view mirror. But that wasn't the plan. So instead she chipped away at their numbers with her handy GUARDIAN laser knife a̶r̶r̶a̶y̶ while they chipped away at her Barriers with their plasma bolts.
Most of the bolts missed, due to being unguided munitions and Normandy flying evasively, but with hundreds of Death Gliders on her tail volume of fire was making up for the lack of accuracy. Precious energy was draining out of her Barrier capacitors faster than Normandy could replenish it.
Normandy's Barriers were both far more and far less effective against plasma bolts than they were against kinetic shells.
On one hand, it didn't take much energy for her Cyclonic Barrier to deflect the relatively slow-moving ultra-light plasma balls, having basically nothing in the way of momentum to resist being diverted.
On the other hand, unlike solid shells her Barriers couldn't assume it had blocked the full attack by blocking part of it. If you just clipped a baseball with an outstretched hand, the ball would bounce away from you – but if you tried the same thing against a lightly-compacted snowball, the snow you didn't block would just continue on to hit you. To make sure the full attack was stopped, the Barrier had to deliberately overcompensate, meaning that far more energy was used blocking the shot than was strictly needed.
She swiped behind herself with her knife f̶i̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶w̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶a̶s̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶r̶r̶a̶y̶, causing another set of Gliders to explode as hulls melted and reactors suddenly overheated and underwent what was known in engineering circles as 'Catastrophic Failures'. Even more Gliders were destroyed when those behind them misjudged their angles and blew their own comrades to pieces.
That still left hundreds of Gliders chasing her down, and her Barrier capacitors only had 30% charge left. Normandy was starting to worry…
Then Babylon 5 and Galactica appeared to her front and starboard. Grinning savagely in the way that only small children could manage, Normandy adjusted course. Seeing Babylon 5's eyes flick over to her d̶e̶t̶e̶c̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶B̶a̶b̶y̶l̶o̶n̶ ̶5̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶n̶s̶, Normandy met her gaze and mouthed t̶i̶g̶h̶t̶-̶b̶e̶a̶m̶e̶d̶ one word of warning to both her and Galactica:
"Tag!"
The Death Gliders were suitably confused when the frigate they had been chasing suddenly tripled its acceleration and zoomed off into the distance, but with another enemy ship and an enemy station dead ahead, they weren't exactly hesitant. Screaming tiny little battle cries, the feathered serpents lined up attack runs on two juicy targets – according to their scanners, the two didn't even have shields!
What the Death Gliders hadn't considered, however, is that they didn't have shields either. Nor did they have armour worth the name – the Stargate teams had been known to down them with off-the-shelf Stinger missiles.
So while Galactica might well have been screwed against a Ha'tak, short of another Raptor/nuke kamikaze, she could eat Death Gliders for breakfast and go back for thirds.
Much like Chimaera's TIE Fighters before them, the last sound dozens upon dozens of Death Gliders heard was their micrometeorite alarms a second before running smack into Galactica's flak curtain.
There were sufficient Gliders present that some did avoid the initial slaughter, and figured out that the shiny bits of metal strewn across the stars between them and their target were deadly, and so went around them.
Those Gliders found themselves facing wings of Starfuries, Raptors and Vipers. With the overall manufacturing capabilities of the fleet, each of those fighter-fairies had no shortage of missiles to fire. As the SGC had proven quite effectively with the F-302, even just missiles with conventional warheads let the fighter-fairies reliably kill Gliders from far outside the Glider's own effective range.
By the time the missiles ran out, there were fewer Gliders left than fighter-fairies. And those unfortunate Gliders found out the hard way that a small craft designed to terrify uneducated sustenance farmers was no match for fighters designed by people who were desperate not to lose a war.
Meanwhile, SG-1 (and Bra'tac) were in a Tel'tak, a Goa'uld transport vessel about the size of a trawler fishing boat. They were going speeds not normally possible in such an under-powered ship, but O'Neill had done some modifications to the engines that drastically improved their performance. Said modifications somehow required shooting the engine with a Zat'nik'tel, a Goa'uld energy sidearm, so it was quite safe to say this was not how the engine had been intended to be used.
Now normally one would expect such jury-rigging to have been accomplished by the team's physicist, engineer, and all-around genius Carter. However, for better or worse Carter lacked what would later be called the 'Ancient Activation Gene' that caused Ancient technology to mistake a human as one of their builders and activate in their presence. In this case, a Repository of Knowledge had literally clamped itself over O'Neill's head and dumped in millennia of accumulated knowledge.
As the dense packet of information decompressed in O'Neill's head it was overwriting his own memories and would soon kill him. But before he died he would know nearly everything the Ancients had known, and right now that was what they needed to save Earth.
With Bra'tac's help, they had taken the Tel'tak to an abandoned Ancient outpost that nobody had known existed, and had taken what was apparently its power source – a canister of glowing crystals about the size of a football. They were now on their way back to Earth, where O'Neill seemed to think he could save the Earth with the power source.
Carter really wanted to know what that power source was and how it worked – it had somehow powered an entire facility, and the forcefield around it, for tens of thousands of years at least, probably millions.
But far more than that, she wanted to know that O'Neill was going to be alright. He'd lost the ability to speak English some time ago and now could only speak Ancient. This was the second time he'd been affected by one of these Repositories, and last time it had progressed much slower than this. Last time the Asgard had wiped the Repository's knowledge from his mind, saving his life, but at this rate…
O'Neill suddenly frowned, and muttered something in Ancient.
Carter looked over at Daniel, who was already thumbing through a notebook. Apparently finding the page he was after, he said "Huh, that's strange."
"What did O'Neill say?" Teal'c rumbled in his deep, stoic way.
Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose, looking a little lost. "Uh, that is what he said. He said 'Huh, that's strange'."
"Sir?" Carter asked O'Neill directly, looking over his shoulder to see if she could see what it was he'd spotted in the Tel'tak's sensor read-outs. "Sir, what's wro–"
Given that they were travelling at hundreds of thousands of times the speed of light, there was basically no opportunity for SG-1 to feel the squeezing pain that Kirkland and crew had experienced. Their ship simply reached its preprogrammed destination, dropped out of hyperspace…
The Tel'tak blinked several times, her face growing more and more frightened as she realised that she had come out of hyperspace at high speed, hurtling into Earth's atmosphere. Shrieking in fear and pain, she desperately pinwheeled her arms f̶i̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶o̶e̶u̶v̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶u̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶c̶e̶, changing her course with far more force than a human or Jaffa pilot would have dared. As she started skimming the atmosphere, her head started to hurt something fierce, like it was being pushed apart from the inside…
Then she pulled out of her dive and out of the atmosphere, and as she did the pain in her head receded.
Then she saw the giant fleet of Ha'taks, and panicked.
"Shol'va!" The other Goa'uld ships cursed the Tel'tak. Traitor.
The Tel'tak lifted her arms up in desperation to shield her face p̶u̶t̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶g̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶e̶l̶d̶s̶ as the Staff C̶a̶n̶n̶o̶n̶ bolts started racing towards her…
But just in time, a subspace window opened and spat out Prometheus, who took the shots with only a grunt of pain. Asgard shielding didn't make her invincible, but it did make her a lot tougher than her weight class would suggest."You alright? You're the ship carrying SG-1, right?"
The Tel'tak nodded fervently. "Yes, yes! Please, save me!" She squeaked.
Prometheus grunted again, firing her railguns off at the incoming Ha'taks. It wouldn't do much – they were designed to deal with Death Gliders, not capital ships, but she dare not use her naquadah-boosted nukes this close to Earth. Gigaton yield explosives would do Bad Things to the planet's everything. "What was the plan?!"
"What?"
"SG-1!" Prometheus roared. "What were they planning to do once they came back here?!"
Two Ha'taks were closing in, so Prometheus scowled and opened another subspace window. Gesturing to the Tel'tak, the two of them dived into it and emerged on the other side of the battle.
Watching fearfully as the Ha'taks that had been chasing them began to turn around, the Tel'tak swallowed. "Um. They were going to melt through the ice?"
Prometheus blinked. "What?"
"Under the southern continent! They said there was something under the ice!"
"What was? And where?!"
"I don't know, they didn't say where I could hear them!" The Tel'tak wailed. Oh, why oh why did she have to be captured by two shol'va and the Tau'ri?! Now she was a shol'va, to die at the hands of Lord Anubis!
Prometheus swore. "Enterprise! Can you deep-scan Antarctica?"
"If I wasn't being shot at, certainly!" Enterprise replied with only a hint of exasperation. A volley of five photon torpedoes were shot from her sleeves t̶o̶r̶p̶e̶d̶o̶ ̶t̶u̶b̶e̶s̶ and slammed into the same spot on a Ha'tak's shields, one after the other. The fourth torpedo broke through the shields, and the fifth gave Enterprise her first kill of the battle.
She couldn't feel too proud about that, however, given how many phaser, shock cannon and turbolaser shots it had taken to weaken the shield sufficiently beforehand.
"Do not let the shol'va ship escape! Destroy it completely!" Anubis's mothership roared.
Prometheus grit her teeth. "The hard way it is, then."
Anubis's mothership ground her teeth. Her loyal Ha'tak escorts were performing their duties admirably, but the Tau'ri ships refused to be swatted like the bugs they were; appearing and disappearing on all sides of the battle.
What their aim was, she could not fathom. While their cowardly tactics had succeeded in felling members of her fleet, the Tau'ri had not escaped unscathed – she was slowly but surely whittling their shields down to nothing, and soon they would fall.
For a group armed with the Knowledge of the Ancients, they were putting up a far poorer performance than she would have expected. Where the ships of unfamiliar design had come from she did not know – though according to legend the Ancients could reach into the realm of the could-have-beens, perhaps they had been drawn from there – but they were no match for the might of Lord Anubis.
Muffled noises of anger emerged once again from her midsection, and the mothership winced. Speaking of Lord Anubis, he had not calmed at all since her entry into the system, no matter how much she reassured him that she had the battle well in hand.
The mothership ground her teeth. If only the coward Tau'ri had not destroyed her sister-ship, she could have obliterated their pathetic planet with the Eyes of the Goa'uld. As it was, while she had been built with the same super-weapon, she lacked a power source potent enough to power it.
Knowing that she should have the power to sweep these irritants from the sky but lacking one key element left her feeling infuriatingly impotent. In frustration, she glanced down at the superweapon hanging from the silks that formed the waist of her outfit b̶u̶i̶l̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶e̶n̶t̶r̶e̶, where a light on the side i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶d̶i̶a̶g̶n̶o̶s̶t̶i̶c̶s̶ reported that the weapon sat at 13% charge.
…
Ignoring the battle around her, the mothership slowly looked at the superweapon in wonder. As she watched, it ticked over into 14% charge. The capacitors were deriving charge from… somewhere.
Was it a result of the strange subspace disturbance enveloping the system? Nay, this could be nothing other than a blessing from Lord Anubis for her loyalty.
The mothership began to laugh in a slow, deep voice, uncaring as another Ha'tak died to the Tau'ri. What did their pitiful resistance matter? In a few minutes they, and their pathetic planet, would cease to matter.