Chapter 26

Location: Stargate Command, Earth

Date: May 16, 2023

Time: 2100

The meeting was an impromptu one, General O'Neill had been going back and forth with the various generals of the other member nations of Homeworld Defense over a recent disagreement regarding the SG/S teams as well as trying to handle the subsequent dust-up with the IOA over funding allocations and a meeting with the relevant Homeworld Defense think tank after that. This had caused a status update meeting at the SGC to be put off and adjusted as new information was disseminated and the relevant orders were issued in preparation. As O'Neill arrived in a flash of light alongside his few staff officers and a few aides Carter and her own staff were customarily awaiting them, ready.

"Welcome back sir," Carter said as the group went to attention.

"Carter, at ease," O'Neill smirked to the other officers present, "Let's go 'head and get this brief underway, got a few updates for you and some orders."

"Right sir," Carter said as she and her staff shuffled over to their seats, "I guess you'd better go first then."

It only a took a minute for several sealed folders bearing the usual classified markings to be handed out and Carter started to leaf through them as O'Neill took his own seat next to her own at the head of the table, after getting a cup of coffee of course.

"Well, let's get started," he said as he opened the first of the folders, "And first on the list, the SG/S teams, as discussed we're not the only ones training up a company of these troops trying to figure out what it is we need to do as far training, equipment, tactics, and doctrine, the Russians, Chinese, British, French, Germans, Australians, Canadians, Japanese, and Indians have all gotten their own teams filtered and recruited and are getting them trained up. But…now a bunch of the other member countries want their own strike teams after seeing us going through the stand-up process," O'Neill now checked one of his documents, "The Poles, Ukrainians, Finns, Swedes, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and the Turks all want teams because the Russians have a team. Because the Turks are asking for a team the Greeks and Bulgarians now want a team. Because the Indians have a team the Pakistanis want a team. The Israelis want a team, so the Egyptians, Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, and the different Emirates all want teams. Because the Chinese have a team the Koreans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese now want a team. The Argentines, Peruvians, Chileans, and Brazilians each think the other wants a team now all of them are wanting teams. The South Africans, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch, and the Mexicans don't want to be left out and are all handing in or going to hand in their statement of intent to stand up their own teams, and a lot of them want to join our team at the Delta Site."

"Really?" Carter looked up, "That's another…eight thousand personnel, sir we don't have the infrastructure in place to accommodate that."

"I know, that's what I told the different liaison officers, but…because so many countries that want ships are years and years away from getting any, an SG/S team was offered to simmer tensions. We had to get a whole set of budget estimates written up in a hurry, and the IOA didn't like the number we came up with. But, considering many egos way up the ladder were at odds with them saying no, it turned out to be impossible for even the IOA to say no."

"How long does the Delta Site have before we need to deploy these new teams?"

"I managed to get the schedule to be for six months for the second wave of new teams. But we'll have two weeks before the Delta Site has to be equipped to house the first wave of teams."

"Two weeks?" Carter deadpanned, slightly aghast at such a timetable.

"Yeah, our team being at Delta didn't sit right with the Russians and Chinese, and when they wanted to send their teams the others felt they had no choice but to make the same demand," O'Neill sighed, "I talked it over with the liaison council, the Russians and Germans will be arriving on Friday. The Chinese and Indians on Monday, the French and Brits on Thursday, the Canadians, Australians, and Japanese will be here the Sunday after next."

"And…supplies and weapons?" Carter said as she looked at the calendar present in the operations schedule that this would offer the Stargate itself, knowing that they'd have quite a bit more work to do here to prep for these new passers-by. And the issue of sending up to five or six ammunition types was definitely going to complicate things.

New personnel going through the Stargate for the first time had to quarantine for twenty-four hours prior to passing through the gate. They had the reserve capacity to handle such numbers of personnel passing through quarantine, but it took a couple days to get it all prepped.

"Each team's country said they'd send along their own supplies or compensate us to send more of our own. Personally, I don't think the actual teams will mind having a whole bunch of new rations to choose from at chow. But I managed to negotiate the group to qualify and then equip their teams on NATO weapons systems for the trip to the Delta Site with the intent to qualify them on the weapons our team's using, the XM7's, 250's, so-on and so-on, with all member teams bringing along a few specialized systems that they think would be a good idea to cross-train our guys with. The usual stuff, RPG's, ATGM's, grenade launchers, and stuff like that. Homeworld Defense was looking to put some of that stuff through scale trials, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to enlarge the trial and get more troops extra gun time. The caveat though is that we've got to provide the ammo for the NATO standard weapons, but they'll handle equipment, uniforms, and the like."

"And we have the go-ahead for funding for this?"

"Not as much as we'd like, but it'll be workable in the short term."

"Right sir, I'll shoot Cam some of the specifics and we'll have the requisite material ready for shipment alongside the first new teams."

"Good, that was…all I had actually, not much else to update you on that you weren't already apprised of. Now, your turn," O'Neill smiled nonchalantly to her.

"Well sir, we've gotten a worrying reading out of the Colonials' gate room, we know they've activated it a couple of times now. So the timetable we'd estimated for their capabilities had actually been an underestimation of their technology capabilities, and I'd warned against it. But, there we are, the Colonials now have an operational gate program, and they may have already gotten into trouble, we picked up an energy flash from within their gate room, it matches that of an explosion, and the explosion's signature was worryingly similar to what our own C4 gives off."

"Had to be a lot for us to pick up, the Colonials' gate is dug down what…two kilometers deep?"

"And it's surrounded by some complex electronic warfare jamming equipment that…while not proof against our more active short-range Asgard sensors, is complex enough coupled with how deep it is has so far prevented us from getting a complete picture with the exclusive use of our primary long-range sensors."

"But you do have a picture?" O'Neill inquired.

"Yes sir, the explosion took place roughly thirty-one hours ago, we have intercepted no communications on the Colonials' frequencies as to specifics on the incident, but their local security forces went to high alert and they scrambled alert fighters and one of their Battlestars and a few support ships assumed geosynchronous orbit over the island and a series of alerts went out to all of their fleet units. That fleet alert has since been stood down except for their ships in orbit around Aquaria."

"So they pissed someone off, someone with something approximating C4?" O'Neill asked to sum it up.

"And the willingness to use it, yes sir."

"Any potential connection with the incident your people are investigating with Reynolds and his team being ambushed on 464?"

"So far sir, nothing concrete, the timing of their gate activations is suspicious, but we don't have a smoking gun that can say one way or another. As of now, the Colonials are definitely a suspect for us. But…SG-40's report stated that the reported insurgents were meeting with someone that they noted appeared familiar with them and had allowed them into their secure locations. That kind of displayed trust and the first-time Colonial gate activity doesn't jive. How would the Colonials have met these insurgents? Why would they risk antagonizing the Jaffa or the SGC? There's too many questions unanswered to point the finger at the Colonials sir."

"So the investigation is still ongoing?"

"Yes sir, not much in the way of progress, Teal'c's people have provided us some good intel on insurgent activities and we're following up on these leads as we analyze the intel. Nothing concrete yet except for some potential informants and sympathizers. Teal'c is wanting to start kicking in doors as soon as possible to try to flush these guys out into the open."

"He knows better than that, we can't risk showing our hand and potentially playing into the hands of these insurgents and making them go dark," O'Neill shook his head, knowing Teal'c was probably not saying these things because he believed them to be the correct course of action, he was saying so to satiate his own domestic audience, "But he is partially right. We're not going to get anywhere until we start making a move towards acquiring fresh intel and Teal'c's position as Chancellor is tenuous. We can try to help both our causes if we can get a mission planned out which can start getting the ball rolling."

"Yes sir. I'll get our people to coordinate with the Jaffa, we do have one potential location, but it's risky, a human settlement who are also colonists and settlers from a bunch of worlds who banded together to start over after being forced to leave their own homes and have settled on P8F-242. They're all former Ori followers, they've kinda had it rough according to the intel, and have therefore amassed a sizeable stockpile of weapons and various other equipment. Jaffa Intelligence says that the Humans that Teal'c captured on Dakara are supposedly from there. The P90's which were used against Ronac and O'rek we traced to a batch which was sent to anti-Ori resistance members who got captured by the Ori on one of the planets which these people are from," Colonel Beringer, CO of SG-18 and leading officer for the task force, said firmly.

"Ballistics wasn't able to match any of our own rounds to the remnants of what was found in SG-3, the closest match we have on file is our own armor piercing M993's," Carter recollected with expert memory of the events in question, "But the slugs are in really rough shape."

"We did send a number of two-forty bravos to the Jaffa sir, and quite a lot of them were counted as lost during the conflict with the Gou'ald and with the Ori," Colonel Beringer added.

"Seems like a decent place to start," O'Neill nodded at that, "I'll sign off on one of the battlecruisers being dispatched to scope things out with a pair of 307's for covert orbital recon. If you need additional assets let me know and contact Teal'c to start organizing the mission. You know the drill."

"Yes sir," Carter and Beringer replied.

"Alright, the Wraith, where are we at with that?" O'Neill asked now.

"The Jaffa, the Tok'ra, and our other offworld allies and contacts have been informed and briefed what the Wraith can do, and…they weren't exactly happy. But the Tok'ra have come up with an idea, they're planning to install hidden sensors near Stargates at the edge of the galactic disc that are tuned to register the presence of Wraith Darts or ships in orbit. If they catch wind of them, they'll put off a beacon by dialing the Stargate they're linked to through a plug-in with the DHD. An encrypted message will be sent through, and the alarm will be sounded."

"Can it work?" O'Neill asked.

"They're testing it now sir, but even if it does work it'll be a slow process installing them on enough Stargates to get a large enough web set up. The grunt work to track down the Wraith and probably the first to engage them will be the Jaffa."

"Yeah, I figured, what chances do Ha'taks have against a Hive Ship or Wraith cruiser?"

"A Ha'tak can comfortably go toe-to-toe with a cruiser so long as it dictates the terms of the engagement and gets the first shots off. But…it would probably take as many as a dozen to bring down a Hive Ship, and that's if the Hive lets the Jaffa do what they want."

"And our ships can pretty comfortably handle anything the Wraith can throw at us, can the Jaffa muster enough ships to engage the number of Hives that are bearing down on the Milky Way?"

"Yes sir, our intel indicates the combined Jaffa Fleet has roughly one and a half thousand ships spread across their territory while the Tok'ra have a dozen of their own guarding their homeworld. But two thirds of the Jaffa fleet are more loyal to their own local leadership than they are to the central Jaffa government."

"You mean Koramon?" O'Neill noted.

"Yes sir, pretty much. He's been oddly quiet, Teal'c thinks he is up to something, but so far we don't have anything solid to point to anything off. He's usually on the move and his inner circle is locked down tight, generations of rivalry and paranoia have not dissipated as much as we had been led to believe. Local politics and opposing interests make the Jaffa less of a united power and more of a conglomerate. However no one wants to fight the other, but they don't want to cooperate."

"Yeah, well, nothing's new about that," O'Neill shook his head, "How're you doing here? Anything of importance?"

"Nothing that we haven't already told you, sir," Carter nodded.

"Okay," O'Neill sighed and checked his watch, "Right, we've got a meeting with the President and the Joint Chiefs giving him his weekly sitrep. Mind if I grab some lunch?"

Ring Security and Exploration Command, Aquaria

"Right," Admiral Queen sighed as he looked down at his damaged embarkation room which was being patched up piece by piece after the shrapnel and chemical analysis had been conducted, "Three of my people are dead, two of them might not make it through the next few days, and a dozen are hospitalized. Because of that the President has cleared me to hear you out. So I want you to tell me everything I need to know about what's going on out there. Who just tried to destroy my base? Will they try again? And how do we stop it?"

He turned to look at Tyry, the man who was the self-described leader of the resistance to the Jaffa. The man was not at all the kind who would appear as if he were a villain or a warrior. Tyry looked startingly-normal and unassuming. The man was reunited with his daughters in a tearful reunion, and their quarters were monitored to see how they interacted. Queen recognized a family when he saw one, the two little girls fell asleep in their father's arms and Tyry simply laid there with them, enjoying the peace and when the attack had happened the man had reflexively gone to protect them. With his gate room now in rubble and casualties being sustained Admiral Queen was willing to hear out what the man seemed to want to say.

"The Jaffa, they uh…have the support of, as you call them, Earth. Earth arms them with some weapons, provides support, and will fight by their side when it is in their interest. If what I saw in the bay of the cargo was any indication is true, you have now drawn their ire, they want to eliminate you as a threat or get you to bow in submission, it's what the Jaffa have been doing for generations. They used to do it for false gods, now they do it for themselves."

"And what can I expect next? Another attack? A message of some kind? A fleet?"

"Depends which Jaffa warlord it was, if my memory for Jaffa factions is right I'm willing to bet it'll be a threat of additional attacks if you don't offer payment of some form or another. If they know of your wealth, the more they'll demand. That's my guess," Tyry shrugged.

"Payment? What kind of Jaffa are you talking about?"

"A warlord by name of Har'uk, he's…unbelievably wealthy, more gold and silver and naquadah are in his hands than most others, and he is jealously-defensive of his wealth. And he wants more, he always wants more. Only Koramon is wealthier, Koramon's another Jaffa warlord to whom he is loyal, but wants to supplant if my sources are correct."

"So we can expect a threat of additional attacks if we don't offer some kind of tribute?" Queen inquired.

"Exactly, he needs wealth to be able to take the positions he needs to occupy before making a move on Koramon. His wealth tends to buy loose lips, I'm willing to bet that he has bribed the people on the planet we just left and they passed him the gate address to your planet and he then used it, and he's going to blackmail you. He would not send a ship or a fleet, deployment of ships would draw attention, but he has many worlds from which he can quietly operate through its Stargate. If you don't pay him he'll reveal your involvement in the incident, which will draw ire of the Jaffa government and the might of the Taur'i. And I know this isn't the work of the Jaffa government, they would never have attacked you without first attempting to resolve the matter diplomatically rather than resort to an escalation of bloodshed. And if Earth knew that you were responsible then we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. You would have already given me up to prevent your diplomatic position from being compromised."

Queen was intrigued by this. Never once had Tyry claimed to stand in opposition to the Jaffa government itself or to Earth. Every mention of it thus far had clearly pointed to it being a reasonable organization whom the Colonials would be able to work with if it weren't for the fact that there were corrupt powers within that government. And here, with obvious signs and opportunity to pin the blame on the Jaffa government to make an enemy out of the Colonials he didn't. At the same time, Queen knew that the man could also be smart enough to think that the Colonials would theorize that the man had set this up as some sort of false flag operation to win the Colonials to his side. It was difficult to tell, so Admiral Queen remained impartial, and knew the President needed something more substantial.

"And say I don't believe you, that I think you orchestrated this attack? How would you prove it?"

"I sent you my daughters, my children!" Tyry scoffed, standing up in annoyance to prove his point and offense, "Look, I don't know how important your children are to your people, but to me, they are my whole world!"

"And how do I know that?" Queen stepped right up into Tyry's face, "Make me believe you. Convince me."

Tyry sighed through his nose as he wracked his brain, trying to recall everything he could remember about the situation in the galaxy. After a moment, he looked back at Queen, honestly not having any surefire way to make himself be believed with what he knew at this moment.

"I don't have any way to show you surefire evidence. Not from here in your base where I can't reach my people," Tyry explained, "But if you can get me to a planet where we have been able to communicate covertly with our contacts then something can be gained. Get me there, and I can find the evidence to convince you and your government that what I'm saying is true. That it was a Jaffa warlord, most likely Har'uk, who attacked your facility."

"And if I send you through, how can I trust you?"

"Because I want my daughters to stay here, please. I can't stomach the thought of them falling into the hands of any of the warlords who want me dead," Tyry said, but Queen noted that it came across as more of him pleading for their protection.

"I'll have to speak to my superiors, in the end, the decision isn't mine," Admiral Queen informed him, "In the meantime, I suggest you think of anything else you can come up with that will make keeping you be more advantageous to us than trading you to the Jaffa would. You only have your two little girls to motivate you."

Presidential Residence, Caprica

President Adar had read the report many, many times. Each word stung, and the numbers of wounded and three dead made him deeply uncomfortable, knowing that such an alien threat could result in numbers exponentially larger than that. The man had a lot to think about, and in doing so he was seeing something taking shape. The Colonials were potentially being played. Whether it was this man calling himself Tyry, or if it were the Jaffa themselves he could not tell. But, this was a mere suspicion. He had no way to know for sure, much less prove it. Timing and coincidence could only be stretched so far with so much at stake. Then there was the fact his troops had engaged with and killed four Earth military personnel. He had no personal animosity against the operators who'd done the fighting, given the facts and context of the mission and their standing orders being to acquire any technology and intel they could. At the moment, the Colonial gate program was stuck with the hand it was dealt.

He was a hard-headed man, any President of the Twelve Colonies had to be in order to do their job. So, he had his decision already made as Admiral Nagala walked in, this time, by himself without any of his aides. It was one which he knew could see him burn or be lofted as a hero.

"Mr. President," Nagala said.

"Sit down Admiral," Adar said as he shook the man's hand, taking a seat in the couch opposite him, his coat hanging from a hangar next to his chair, the trials of the job showing more than they usually did, "I've made a few decisions regarding developments with the RSEC. Given that there's a definite hostile presence out there with an unknown technological superiority we're going to be effectively cancelling the Kobol Expedition. Now, we don't say that, but delays and issues with preparations and funding are not at all something we're unfamiliar with."

"Understood, Mr. President," Nagala nodded, knowing that this was a huge boon for the Fleet, not having to send out multiple Battlestar Groups away from the homeworlds would relax their shipyards' pressed timetables and let them continue training.

"Next, we're going to be creeping to a higher alert level, again we're not announcing this. No sense in creating a cause for concern or give the Quorum reason to start putting their nose where it doesn't belong," Adar continued, knowing that was something the Fleet had done many times in the past and wouldn't be that big of a deal on its own, "And now for the big decision regarding the RSEC. We're not going to be hiding and giving a potential enemy reason to suspect weakness. I'm approving Rear Admiral Queen's recommendation we continue operations and continue to feel out the human group that this man Tyry claims to be representing. As such, weapons, ammo, equipment, and supplies will be shipped to the RSEC in the event it's determined we should assist Tyry's resistance band, especially if there's a chance we can get a hold of something that can provide the Colonies with advanced technology that we can use to better defend ourselves."

"And Earth? Is there anything we should expect?"

"No, they would have said something by now if they knew we were the ones who gunned down their people," Adar waved it off speaking very sternly, the tone alone as a warning, "And we're not going to say anything more about it."

"Understood sir," Nagala acknowledged with a nod, proving his own personal agreement to the situation.

"Have our engineers taken a look at that ship yet?" Adar now moved on.

"Yes, Mr. President, it's only a preliminary passive exam though. We don't want to deactivate the ship's cloak and risk Earth seeing it on their sensors so soon after stealing it. Intelligence figures it to be best to wait until we can get a second craft which we can acquire through less hostile means."

"At which point if Earth asks they won't have any real way to pin it to us directly."

"We're assuming the ship has some form of identification markings on it somewhere as well, so we want to preferably, once we take it apart, take it apart completely so that no evidence is left."

"Alright, next the report said we had obtained several bulletproof plates from the Earth team, they said the material was far more resilient than our own plates. Any update there?"

"Nothing yet Mr. President, the RSEC's running tests on them to ascertain whatever they can. Same for the other equipment we recovered from the Earth team."

"Their weapons, any update on their capabilities?"

"The carbines we recovered have been tested against our own body armor and helmets as well as ballistic test dummies. Nothing very impressive reported. Our standard issue body armor can withstand their ammunition at what we have counted as standard engagement ranges. Helmets, same story. Basically, their weapons are pretty comparable to our own, even the armor piercing rounds which they had on them. Although the Earth team didn't appear to possess anything analogous to our own explosive-tipped small caliber rocket rounds."

"Then again those were developed for use against the Centurions, and Earth didn't fight the Cylons like we did. So that was expected right?"

"Yes sir, pretty much. And uh…Earth's other equipment we've managed to analyze, nothing really has been reported so far, but the work has only just started, so further analysis may yield more tangible results."

"Got it. In the meantime, standard procedure towards Earth ships is to continue, don't antagonize, because Gods know we wouldn't be able to fight them."