Chapter 173: Ba'al's Machinations Part 5

Base Portsmouth, PT-9521, PT-9521-System, June 23rd, 2000 (Earth Time)

The plan - or desperate gamble - had worked! Jack O'Neill bared his teeth in a grin while he watched the snake fleet get torn up in orbit. Their formation had dissolved into isolated, uncoordinated small groups and even individual ships, and the Alliance frigates were tearing them apart.

A number of Death Gliders and a handful of cloaked Tel'taks had already entered the atmosphere, but they were tangling with Alliance fighters at high altitude, and Jack didn't give them good odds to get into range of the base, much less damage it. On the contrary, trying to reach the base made them easy prey for the fighters - he saw one Tel'tak get shot down from behind by a pair of fighters as it tried to make a run for their target.

"I guess after this, they must realise that we can see through their cloaks," he commented. That would affect their strategic situation, but it had been inevitable - they couldn't actually let cloaked enemy ships do whatever they wanted just to keep their sensor advantage a secret. Of course, some intel-weenie had actually suggested doing that, but the sane members of the Command Council had shot him down. This wasn't ULTRA, and even if it were, the Etherians would never let attacks on soldiers, much less civilians, go through just to keep a secret.

Jack approved of the stance. What good was an advantage if you didn't use it? If you wanted to save it for the best time, you probably wouldn't use it before it was no longer useful one way or the other.

"Sir! The central part of the enemy fleet…"

But Jack had already spotted it. Four Ha'taks had managed to survive two fly-by attack runs and were about to enter the atmosphere - and not, like almost all other snake ships, by breaking up and scattering themselves as one huge meteor shower, but in close formation.

Very close - three of the ships were shielding the fourth with their hulls. That was crazy! One of them broke up under the attack by a squadron of frigates that had hastily changed targets. Another collided with the central Ha'ak and was thrown off-course, plasma forming a fireball around it as it spun out of control - and then vanished in a brighter fireball.

That left two on a straight course for the base. Someone behind Jack gasped.

Damn. Jack scoffed, loudly. "They already tried that, and it didn't work with frigates. Those are Ha'taks and not nearly as tough!" Not entirely correct, of course - frigates were much smaller, and while they had stronger shields and better armour, but once both were gone, a Ha'tak would be able to absorb more damage before it broke up.

More, but not as much as the Alliance ships were dishing out. Jack grinned again when five frigates focused their fire from behind. The last escorting ship shielding the main ship blew up after a second of focused fire tore through her shields.

And then it was the main ship's turn. Beam cannons flashed, and the Ha'tak's shields broke - and it was still out of range of the base.

And then it blew up. Jack started to sigh with relief under his breath - but then the computer started screaming alerts.

"Atmospheric explosion detected."

"Shockwave detected."

"Thermal bloom at lethal levels."

On the holoprojection, the ship had vanished in a huge fireball - so massive, the pursuing frigates had been touched by it as well, and Jack saw their status displays go red at once, followed by at least one 'abandon ship' notice.

But that wasn't the worst. The worst was seeing the fireball engulf part of the planet's atmosphere - and the shockwave running forward.

And hearing the screams outside - the camera feed from the base's perimeter showed the sky on fire!

Jack pushed the general alert button and yelled: "Everyone, take cover! Shockwave about to hit the base! Take cover! Run to shelter! Duck and cov…!"

The entire base shook as if an earthquake had hit, cutting him off - he almost fell to the floor.

And more alerts sounded. The screens were flashing red with notices. Damage detected, thermal energy dissipation - what the hell was that? Sensors and structural integrity damaged, incoming environmental dangers…

He gripped the edge of the table and stared at the screen showing the base outside. The sky was on fire, winds stronger than the worst hurricane he had ever seen were battering the buildings, ash was raining down, though he had no idea where that came from...

It looked like a sandstorm in Hell.

And would be about as lethal. Jack cursed again and started yelling orders - he had people and a base to save, and no time to do it.

Base Portsmouth, PT-9521, PT-9521-System, June 24th, 2000 (Earth Time)

Adora pointed her sword at her target and focused her power one more time. As before, magic poured out in a beam and washed over the man standing in front of her, healing him of everything that was wrong. Or whatever.

She closed her eyes while the man gasped, patting himself down. That was… She had lost count of how many she had healed. Alliance soldiers, freed slaves, prisoners of war who hadn't been moved yet…

"I am… the pain is gone! Praise to the Goddess!"

Right. "I just healed you," she told him. "It's not… it's just magic."

"As they said! You are the light of the people! The Bringer of Hope!"

Those were new titles. Had Priest expanded his list, or were those names the people here had come up with? She didn't know, and she didn't want to ask.

And now the man was bowing - no, falling to his knees and pushing his forehead against the floor.

Adora suppressed a groan and nodded at the two … nurses or orderlies, she didn't remember what function they had after they had rotated a few times, and the two stepped up and gently guided the praying man out of the room.

"Was that the last?" Adora asked.

"Yes, Supreme Commander."

"Good."

She closed her eyes again and sat down in the chair in the corner. She was so tired!

"You know, you could have saved yourself hours of effort if you had waited until we'd have scanned everyone to check if your healing was actually needed."

Adora opened her eyes just enough to focus on Catra, who was leaning against the doorframe and replied: "I wasn't about to wait and risk people suffering - or even dying - before we figure out what happened."

"And that's why people worship you." Catra flashed her fangs in a grin, but the effect was lost somewhat when it turned into a yawn.

"And you spent hours sorting out the fleet," Adora shot back, "instead of leaving that to the commanders and captains."

"Hey! It was my plan that caused the mess, so I fixed it as well." Catra shrugged. "Those are the rules."

"Those aren't the rules." Adora shook her head. "The rules actually are that officers should get enough rest whenever possible so they aren't exhausted when they are needed. Tired people make bad decisions!"

"Exactly!"

"Don't… what?" Adora blinked and opened her eyes a bit more. Catra's wide grin showed all her teeth as if she had just won a contest or something.

"Those are the rules, and since you're the Supreme Commander of the Alliance, you need to get rest as soon as possible."

"Oh, you…!" Adora groaned. "Now that people are healed I have to…"

"...go to sleep," Catra finished for her. "Those are your own standing orders."

Which were broken every time it was necessary, but… "Those orders cover you as well!" Adora shot back.

"No." Catra grinned again. "I'm no Alliance officer. No commission. No salary. No orders."

Adora scoffed as she got up.

"So, now be a good little Supreme Commander and… Hey!"

Adora grabbed her and threw her over her shoulder.

"Leggo!"

Adora ignored her. "Now, where's our bed?"

Catra growled, but after a moment, she relented and Adora felt her relax and basically hang over her shoulder like a bag of wet sand.

"Yes?"

"I commandeered the former base commander's personal quarters," Catra said.

"And you claim you're not an officer in the Alliance!" Adora snorted and started walking.

"I'm not!"

"And what about the actual base commander?" Adora asked after they had left the room. "Did you tell him to leave his own room?"

"He never moved into the quarters," Catra said. "Claimed they were too luxurious."

"Oh." Adora almost stopped. "Is it bad?"

"No worse than Bright Moon's palace, just with gold instead of pastel."

That was pretty bad, but Adora really was exhausted. And she was sure that Catra needed the rest as well. A few hours wouldn't hurt, would they? She stifled a yawn. No, they wouldn't.

They put their masks on - the air was still filled with dust and ash - and left the hospital building. It looked a bit battered - it had been built from pre-fab components carried by the Fleet transports, fortunately, before HMS Bulwark had crash-landed. The sky was still, not glowing, but far more reddish than normal, especially since it was past midnight here, something about dust particles and thermal energy dissipation that Adora hadn't quite understood when Sam had explained.

Whatever. Adora was walking towards the main administrative building when a cloud of sparkles appeared next to her.

"Adora! Have you finish… what are you doing?"

Adora smiled at Glimmer. "We're going to bed."

For some reason, her friend blinked, then blushed. "Really?"

"Catra insisted. And I think we both need this." Adora shrugged, which made Catra gasp in reaction to the movement. "She commandeered the base commander's quarters for us."

"Ah… OK…" Glimmer was still blushing.

But she had been looking for Adora, hadn't she? "Did anything happen? Do you need me?" Adora asked.

"Ah… No, no, I just wanted to check up on you, see if you've finished healing everyone." Glimmer said. "And tell you that Frosta and Perfuma have arrived through the Stargate on the flagship and will work on restoring the planet's ecosystem and atmosphere as soon as possible."

"Good. They can check with Entrapta and Sam about where they should use their powers first." Adora nodded. Their friends had made plans already, but she hadn't paid attention to the details. Something about filtering plants and lots of ice to melt to replace the vaporised water or something - Adora trusted her friends to do this. "No, sorry, but our bed is calling."

"Yeah, sure…"

Glimmer was still flushed, Adora noticed. "Are you sick? I can heal you if you are…"

"No, no, everything's fine. See you tomorrow! Have fun!" Glimmer disappeared with a slight pop.

Catra started to giggle and, despite Adora asking repeatedly, refused to tell her what was so funny.

Samantha Carter stifled a yawn when she stepped up to the screen in the briefing room. It had been a long day and a short night. But then, everyone had been burning the midnight oil, so she wasn't the only one running on a few hours of sleep and lots of coffee.

Although Adora and Catra looked far more awake than they should be if they had been doing what the rumour mill on base claimed. And Teal'c was… Teal'c. He probably could sleep while standing at attention.

But Sam had a briefing to conduct. And data to show.

She touched the screen, and it lit up with her prepared displays. She glanced at the General, but he didn't joke about PowerPoint being a war crime, and so she started her briefing. "Based on the analysis we ran on all the sensor data, the explosion was caused by a Naquadah-enhanced warhead. If the bomb had hit the base - which was the intended target based on the course the ship had taken - it would have been completely destroyed." And all people on it would have died. The small simulation running on the screen next to her showed that.

"Yeah, I think we got that already since it almost destroyed the world." The General bared his teeth in a shadow of a grin.

He was joking, but not as much as he probably thought he was. "The bomb, or, more precisely, the knock-on effects of its explosion, came close to destroying the planet's ecology," she told him, noticing how his eyes opened wider at that. She changed the display on the screen, showing the planet and then the explosion. "Without intervention by the Alliance, the various ecosystems of this world would not recover and likely be unable to adjust to the devastation, affecting other areas. The direct and indirect effects of the thermal energy and radiation released into the planet alone would be enough to cause a catastrophic disruption of the life cycles of most of the fauna. The complete collapse of the planet's biosphere would have been unlikely, but only because certain primitive plants would have survived."

Everyone was staring at her even though that shouldn't have been news to most of them - that was why they had called in Frosta and Perfuma. But even those two looked shocked.

Yes, everyone was still too tired, in Sam's opinion.

"If they had launched that thing from their ships…" Glimmer trailed off.

"Between the sensor jamming, the fighters in the atmosphere and the pursuing frigates, the odds of any missile large enough to carry the enhanced warhead reaching the base would have been low," Bow said. "That was probably why they tried to force their way to the base, or close enough."

Sam nodded in agreement. The Ha'tak had been on an end run when the bomb had blown up. Whether that had been due to battle damage or because the ship's commander had realised they wouldn't reach firing range and decided to detonate the bomb anyway, they probably would never know.

"So, your jamming field saved the base," the General said, smiling at her. "Good work, Carter, Entrapta."

Sam felt pleased but hid it. She had just done her duty, she reminded herself - as had all the others who had fought in the battle. "Efforts to stabilise the ecosystems and deal with the lingering effects of the explosion are ongoing, but preliminary analysis is positive," she went on, nodding at Frosta and Perfuma. "However, the process, while self-sustaining, will take months to years to finish." At which point the filter plants were supposed to die off without the pollution they required. It had worked in the former Fright Zone, but this was the first time they were used on a global scale.

"Good." Adora smiled for a moment. "But we need better defences - if Ba'al is willing to destroy worlds, we have to be prepared."

Sam and Entrapta had some ideas about that. Planetary shields. Missile defence systems. Directed sensor jamming fields that didn't disable the FTL communications and targeting sensors on the world they defended. They all would require massive investments, but data and footage from this battle would likely convince the Alliance leaders to adjust their budgets. If the Goa'uld used such bombs against Earth or Etheria… She shuddered at the thought.

"Adora's healing has taken care of the effects of the radiation, and our filters and masks are more than able to deal with the lingering pollution, so there's no long-term danger to the health of the garrison and staff," Sam continued. "Incidentally, all the wounded who were not evacuated to the hospital ships are back on duty now."

"Did I miss someone?" Adora spoke up.

"All serious wounds were dealt with," Glimmer told her.

Sam nodded and took a step to the side, letting Entrapta take over.

"Now, salvage!" Her friend beamed. "We've got lots of ships and ships' parts to recover! And a lot of ships to repair, so we can use some parts we salvage for repairs. Not too many, though, since they only had like half a dozen Horde frigates." Data appeared on the screen as her hair moved over the controls. "Fortunately, reinforcements will bring the fleet train with them, so we should have most damaged frigates at least partially repaired in a few weeks. But! Full repairs will take months at the currently projected rate." Entrapta pouted. "We just don't have the repair capacity available in this area to handle everything at once - and sending the ships back to the main logistics hubs would take as long. We should build up more repair capacities, but that would reduce our short-term repair capacities. But it would help in the long run!"

It was a sensible plan - the Alliance needed to massively increase their production capacity to win this war - but they didn't know if Ba'al would let them or if they needed the fleet units here repaired as fast as possible to defend against his next attack - and defeat him. They desperately needed more intel.

"So… almost all the ships we can salvage are in space. Because those who crashed on the planet aren't salvageable any more. Except this one!" Entrapta gestured, and a picture of the crash-landed HMS Bulwark appeared on the screen. It was half-buried in a small hill. More data appeared next to the picture, listing the damages.

Sam winced even though she had seen the data before.

"As you can see, she needs new engines - if her engines had been intact she wouldn't have crashed, though the engines were intact enough to let her crash-landed instead of crashing completely - and a lot of other stuff, but the engines are the main thing. And we can't use the yardships until we get her up to space, though that shouldn't be a problem once we have a squadron to coordinate their tractor beams and made sure that the hull's vacuum-proof again. Which is kind of a problem, but everyone should be wearing a vacuum suit anyway for safety reasons. Like in a lab. And we need to…"

As Entrapta went into the details of salvage, Sam stifled another yawn. She needed more coffee, but the General, who looked like he was just one soft chair away from falling asleep as well, was eyeing her with that familiar look that told her she would be ordered to rest after this.

Well, she did need the sleep, and things were under control. For now, at least.

Base Portsmouth, PT-9521, PT-9521-System, June 25th, 2000 (Earth Time)

"Alright, everyone and everything's clear - lift'er up!"

"Commencing operation."

Catra watched as the massive hull of HMS Bulwark was lit up by six tractor beams and seemed to tremble just a bit.

"Synchronising the beams."

"Beams Synchronised. Variables within tolerances."

"Starting to lift."

As the Clone kept reporting, the transport slowly started to rise from where she had buried herself into half a hill. The vast majority of the earth and rock that had been covering her bow had been removed before this operation, which had delayed the salvage, but even so, streams of dirt and smaller rocks rained down on all sides of the ship, forming streams in some sports, as it slowly rose higher and higher. Catra saw larger rocks and entire boulders tumble through the air, one bouncing off the hull twice before hitting the ground. Well, the hull was holed multiple times anyway.

But the fleet transport kept rising, tethered to the six frigates arrayed above her by tractor beams. Soon, she was far above the ground, lit up by the sun.

Still, getting the transport off the ground was the easy part, as Catra knew. Getting it into orbit would be tricky. That required far more fine control than merely lifting it up.

"Closing in."

The six frigates slowly approached the transport, closing the distance until they were less than a hundred metres away on all four sides, with two on top.

"If that works out, they should start an air acrobatic team," Jack commented next to her.

"Do you doubt Sam and Entrapta's calculations?" Catra asked without taking her eyes away from the floating ships above them.

"No. But I don't doubt that some piloting mistake could still mess things up."

That was true. But it would have to be a truly huge mistake - or deliberate sabotage - with all the computers controlling things and the close overwatch and coordination from the lead ship of the squadron. Then again, Catra had seen such mistakes in the Horde. And not just from Kyle. "We'll see," she said.

"Initiating second phase."

Catra saw the engines light up before her ears picked up the growing noise from them, and then all seven ships started to accelerate.

"Target velocity reached."

"On Course."

Catra shrugged as the ships shrank until they were just a speck in the sky. "Looks like it worked."

"All that for a proof of concept," Jack said. "Could have just waited for the yardship to arrive in the system and pick her up."

They could have. But they had limited numbers of repair ships, and picking up a fleet transport from the ground would have still required the help of a few frigates - yardships were meant to recover ships in space. And it was good to know that they could recover ships with synchronised tractor beams; that kind of capability could come in handy in the war. "I guess the squadron will be nicknamed the Heavy Lifters or something like it," Catra said.

"Probably. The Clones don't really get that call signs are supposed to be something to rib people about." Jack frowned in a slightly pouty way.

"It's not a call sign. It's a unit nickname," Catra corrected him. "Those are supposed to raise morale."

"The Clones are too serious; a bit of humour would help them more."

Of course, Jack would think that. "They have a sense of humour. It's just a bit subtle compared to what other people I know think is funny," Catra shot back.

"Hey!" Jack mock-frowned at her, then sighed. "Well, that's over with. Time to get back to paperwork."

Catra shrugged again. "Good luck. I'll check out the terra-reforming efforts."

Before Jack could complain about her skipping paperwork, they saw another frigate appear in the sky. No, not a frigate - that was HMS Albion, the second fleet transport. "That must be the salvaged shield generators," Catra said. "Someone got lucky up there." Or unlucky - often, the shield generators didn't survive when a ship went down, but sometimes, a ship was wrecked after the shields were overloaded and shattered, with the shield generators themselves still intact.

"Won't stop a superbomb," Jack muttered. "The shockwave in the atmosphere makes it too strong."

"But it will protect the base against a closer miss," Catra pointed out.

Jack shrugged. "Might probably be more effective if we used the thing on one more ship."

Catra agreed, but leaving the base entirely unprotected was unacceptable.

"And I can already hear the howling back home on Earth. Everyone will want planetary shields and huge anti-orbital guns and everything else they think will stop such an attack."

"That's what the fleet is for," Catra commented. One enhanced warhead, ten normal warheads… if you destroyed the ship carrying them before it could fire them, it wouldn't matter what had been carried.

"Won't make people feel as safe as having a huge shield protecting the world," Jack said. "We'll spend the money."

"Do you think that was Ba'al's plan? Make us cut back on building ships in favour of building massive shields?" Catra asked.

"Might have been part of his plan," Jack said. "But there's probably more to it. The snake's smart."

But they didn't know how smart. And, more importantly, they didn't know how much Ba'al knew about the Alliance and how many forces he had at his disposal. Without more information, without solid intelligence, they could only speculate, and you couldn't really plan a war on that.

It was like swinging blindly in a dark room and hoping you took the other guy down before they knocked you out. If you had a staff and they didn't, if you were stronger, tougher, better protected, than them, you had good chances. If the reverse was true… you better hope you got lucky.

Catra really wanted to know if she had to hope for a lucky punch (or plan a desperate gamble) or if she could be confident that they were likely to win as long as Ba'al didn't get lucky.

Base Portsmouth, PT-9521, PT-9521-System, June 27th, 2000 (Earth Time)

Reinforcements had arrived. Finally. "Better late than never," Jack O'Neill muttered as he watched the frigates fan out on the holographic display, relieving the various damaged but still serviceable ships on station.

More important was the arrival of Fourth Fleet's fleet train. Several yardships were already moving towards the Lagrange point, where the ships awaiting repairs were gathered, followed by the factory ships, which would supply them with the parts they needed.

And further out, mining ships covered by a couple of escorts were headed to the system's various asteroids to gather raw materials for the factory and refining ships.

HMS Bulwark was first in line for repairs - Jack had insisted on it. If Ba'al sent a bigger fleet and they had to evacuate the planet, they'd need her to get the troops off the planet. Sure, they could stuff the soldiers on the frigates, but that would mean leaving most of their gear, and that would come a bit too close to reenacting Dunkirk, in his opinion. The gear could be replaced - probably with more advanced stuff - but the hit to morale would remain for quite some time.

Besides, the fleet transport wasn't that much bigger than a frigate, and a single frigate wouldn't make much of a difference in a Fleet engagement. Not with the numbers present. To think that just a few years ago, two of Apophis's Ha'taks had been an overwhelming force which would have devastated Earth if not for some luck and a lot of desperate action! Nowadays, the most concern the Alliance would have over an intrusion by two Ha'taks would be trying to make sense of such a move, whether it was a distraction or a mistake, or something even more convoluted.

Whatever. It seemed the Clones had things in hand in space.

Jack turned away from the display and went back to his desk to fight another battle with paperwork. Hell, once he was back on Earth, he had a few things to say about streamlining procedures for handling the wounded when magical healing was available. Those damned regulations were obviously not written with mass healing by She-Ra in mind! Or with attacks that potentially affected everyone on a planet. Someone must have been really concerned about wounded soldiers not getting their due if they were healed too quickly since, if he handled it by the book, they'd end up with a 100% casualty rate on report. Just because, technically, everyone had been dosed with the radiation from the enhanced snake bomb going off and then healed by Adora before they could find out if they were actually in need of the healing or not! Purple Hearts or whatever the limeys awarded for being wounded for everyone!

He couldn't even dump the whole thing on Adora as the Supreme Commander - Catra would find a way to deal with the paperwork, Jack was sure, if only to ensure her lover had some time free to spend with her for the next month or so - because he'd have to process all the reports anyway for that.

Well, at least he had an excuse to delay filing the paperwork 'until the current situation at the front allowed it'. It was a wonderfully vague term, and as the commander for the entire ground component of the operation, he got to define the situation as he wanted.

And he wanted it to be as dire as needed to bury the damn healing paperwork until he could dump it on the same people back on Earth who made the regulations that caused this mess.

He quickly saved all the medical reports in a special folder marked 'not urgent, don't touch' and focused on the reports that actually were critical. Unit readiness was good. Unlike the fleet in orbit, all of his troops were ready for action. Base defences were getting there. The shield generators were coming online - he made a mental note to check on Carter's sleeping schedule. They wouldn't be able to withstand whatever superbomb Ba'al had tried to use, but Death Gliders and Tel'taks would have a very hard time getting through those shields even if they came at it by the dozens. Unfortunately, they still didn't have anti-orbital defences and wouldn't get them in the foreseeable future unless Carter and the other science and technology people here took over a factory ship and built some big honking space guns or torpedos launchers.

Which was actually not that implausible, he realised as he thought about it. If he asked, they would probably do it. But should he ask? They had a lot of other critical tasks, and a factory ship building anti-orbital cannons wouldn't be building parts to repair the damaged ships…

He sighed. As much as he liked to give his soldiers the ability to shoot back at people trying to bomb them - who wouldn't? - having more ships doing that further away from the planet so they couldn't drop a superbomb on another part of the world would be more effective. So, no big honking anti-orbital guns for him.

And, speaking of damaging the entire planet… He checked the reports from the 'restoration task force' aka Frosta and Perfuma. He skipped all the magical and sciency details until he got to the summary. So, the dust in the air would remain for a bit longer - the filtering plants were spreading but hadn't reached the tip-off point yet - but the planet wouldn't dry out or flood in the near future.

In other words, the planet wouldn't die, but his troops would have to wear masks for a while longer. They would grumble about it, of course, but soldiers complained about everything. Even if he gave every one of them a week's leave, they'd complain about not getting two weeks. Or not getting leave wherever they wanted.

He shook his head and started to go over the report from supplies.

Orbit Above PT-9521, PT-9521-System, June 26th, 2000 (Earth Time)

"Your Divine Highness! I mean, Supreme Commander!"

The Clone guard - from Fourth Fleet - had corrected himself, but Adora still narrowed her eyes at him. She was on duty, so she was to be addressed by her rank, not by any… religious title. She still returned the salute, of course, and entered the flag room on Fourth Fleet's flagship, which was now serving as a meeting room for the staff in the system.

"Hi, Adora!"

"Hi!"

"Good morning, Supreme Commander."

"Supreme Commander."

"Supreme Commander!"

She nodded at Glimmer and Bow, then at the other officers in the room, frowned at Jack's overeager greeting and smirk, and took her seat. "Catra's coming," she told them when she saw them eyeing the door. "She just wanted to wait for the results of her analysis."

"Analysis?" Glimmer blinked.

"Of our latest intel," Adora replied.

"Ah." Glimmer nodded. "Well, another opinion can't hurt."

That sounded a bit dismissive, Adora noted. Before she could say anything, though, Catra arrived. She strode inside as if she was on a catwalk - strutting - but Adora could tell from the way her hair was just a little messed and how her tail looked that she had been sprinting through the hallways on all fours to reach the room. But Catra's smirk also told her that she had found something.

"Hey!" Catra waved with one hand, the other holding a tablet, then sat down next to Adora.

Adora cleared her throat and stood. "Welcome, everyone. Now that Fourth Fleet's main force has joined us, we'll have to decide our future strategy. We've all read the status reports, so we know it'll be several weeks until all damaged ships will be ready for service, but we already have enough ships to cover the system and launch offensive operations." She ignored how Jack peered at his tablet; she knew he had read the reports since he had called her about some of the details beforehand and was just trying to annoy the British officers for one reason or another. "Unfortunately, we still haven't discovered a suitable target in the area. The prisoners we took didn't know the coordinates of any system serving as a base for Ba'al."

"We also confirmed that the navigators who knew such coordinates either took their own lives or were killed by Jaffa with special orders," Jack added with a grim expression.

Adora pressed her lips together. How sick did you have to be to give such orders? She took a deep breath. "But several of our spy bots are still out searching, our spy bot network is steadily expanding, and the Tok'ra are focusing on Ba'al's realm, so we expect this to change soon."

Judging by the expressions of the officers from Earth, they weren't very optimistic. The Clones though, both Fourth Fleet's provisional commander, Padre, and the commander of its fleet train, Wrench, were smiling, obviously trusting Adora's judgement completely.

She ignored the guilty feeling that caused inside her and nodded confidently. "So, opinions?"

The Captain of HMS Albion, Captain Baker, spoke up. "We've destroyed a major fleet of Ba'al and took few total losses. Even if this wasn't the main part of his forces, he has to be reeling from the loss. We should capitalise on that and send smaller task forces into his territory to raid targets of opportunity to keep his forces off-balance and reacting to our raids."

Catra spoke up before Adora could comment. That was a little unusual. "We've got an opportunity here. As we already know, Ba'al is running his realm as Horde Prime had been running his Empire - only he knows where everyone is and what their orders are. He deliberately keeps his forces divided and ignorant. That means that even though we are confident that he is reeling from losing a major force and has to be scrambling to replace his losses, his other forces won't panic since they won't be aware of this. However, that also means they won't be able to coordinate their defences. So, we should mass our forces and overwhelm his bases and fleets piecemeal."

"We don't know the locations of his bases and fleets." Captain Baker said. "And depending on how large his territory is, we might not be able to react in time to an opportunity unless we stage forces closer to and inside his territory."

"If he concentrates his forces, then that gives us an opportunity to force a decisive battle on him," Padre said. "If we can destroy his main fleet assets, we can raid his bases at our pleasure."

"Someone has read the IJN's handbook," Jack muttered.

Padre nodded. "Indeed. And I believe that in our current situation, it's an applicable strategy. The sooner we can destroy his forces, and with as much numerical superiority as possible, the better."

"We still don't know the extent of his forces," Captain Baker pointed out.

"We don't," Catra said. "But we can't wait until we do. As long as we can achieve local superiority, we can hurt him without suffering large casualties. And we cannot let him build up his forces."

"That is why I think a spread-out force of small raiding forces would be best - they can strike at his bases whenever we find them and degrade his logistics and industrial assets." Captain Baker wasn't budging.

So, it seemed it was up to Adora to decide on what strategy they would take.

She pushed her chin up a little. "Until the majority of our ships are back in service, we won't divide our forces and render them vulnerable to another massed attack," she told them. "We should have more intel by that time, too."

Captain Baker nodded, apparently accepting her decision. Good.

Now, they had to hope that one of their potential intel sources came through.

PT-9521-System, June 28th, 2000 (Earth Time)

Samantha Carter didn't have to be present at the Lagrange point where most of the ship repairs of Fourth Fleet took place. She wasn't part of the fleet train, nor were routine repairs part of her duties. But between the yardships busy restoring the frigates which had been damaged in the battle and the factory ships churning out replacement shield generators, weapons and other spare parts, what salvage had been gathered from the enemy fleet floated, awaiting disposal. And while it would be easy to simply assign them to be dismantled and recycled, broken down to their components or even base materials and used for repairs and by the factory ships, the Alliance needed every shred of intel they could get - and you could gain a lot of data from a thorough analysis of an enemy ship. She could have supervised that from her lab module with the frigate carrying it stationed anywhere in the system, but if she was on site, she could personally take a look if needed, and she liked that. Not that it had been needed so far.

"We should have done this sooner," she commented while she supervised a bot taking samples from what was left of a Ha'tak. But there had been so much else to Bulwark had to be salvaged, and none of the Clones had any experience with that kind of operation - the Horde simply wrote off any frigates that crashed on a planet. She had been tasked with designing anti-orbital weapons that could be hastily built and installed (and then ended up not built because priorities had shifted - Sam had had flashbacks to procurement on Earth. At least the General had apologised.) and the spy bots still attached to enemy ships had to be managed and checked on regularly so they didn't miss out on crucial intel, not to mention the mountain of other works piling up - literally, back on Earth, electronically here - on her desk.

"Yes!" Entrapta, of course, didn't disagree. "There's so much data to be had here! The material analysis of the hulls shows where they were built - well, not the coordinates, but we can tell which ships were built in the same yard based on the isotopes in the material."

It was not a hundred per cent confirmed, of course - but the building techniques used by Ba'al's yards also showed differences that supported their assumptions. Unlike Earth's new shipyards, Ba'al's used a lot of customised work where individual labourers took the components delivered to the yard and then adapted them to fit into a particular ship. That had been a common way to get around insufficiently tight tolerances in production back on Earth as well and let them draw conclusions about Ba'al's resources. Well, that and the fact that they had captured one of his shipyards with its trained workforce, but any confirmation was useful.

Though that might change if Ba'al switched to Horde yardships and factory ships for production. He was using them, that was certain, but was he able to build more of them and expand production? The fleet he had managed to recruit had limited resources, but if they could rely on Ba'al's slaves and mining bases, that would allow them to focus on building new yardships and factory ships, which would significantly speed up his arms programs. At least Sam's projections said so; there was still hope that there would be the usual friction and unforeseen complications delaying his programs.

"Oh! The analysis of all the beam weapons we recovered - and the parts we salvaged is done!" Entrapta announced.

"Ah." Sam checked that there was no urgent task waiting for her, then joined her friend at the console in their lab module.

"Oh!" Entrapta almost cheered. "They are from the same factory, but we've got at least three different versions!"

Sam quickly checked the data herself. Entrapta was correct, not that Sam had doubted her. The beam cannons showed at least three different variations. "Standard Horde beam cannons, by and large, but there are also small numbers of simplified beam cannons. And here's an even more reduced version."

"Those are less powerful than standard beam cannons, though," Entrapta said. "Did they work up to standard beam cannons?"

Sam switched windows. "All the data we have indicates that the beam cannons were produced by the same factory - or factory ship."

"Hm." Entrapta scrunched her nose as she thought. "And those would have had the designs for the standard beam cannon already. Why produce inferior variants, then?"

Sam grimaced. "Because the simpler versions will be able to be produced in greater numbers and with fewer resources. And they might be able to be produced by Ba'al's workers in new or refitted factories and yards."

"Oh. That would mean he can get more of them to make up for their inferior performance…" Entrapta winced.

Sam nodded. Ba'al was upgrading his entire forces. They had to…

A beep from the main communication console interrupted her thoughts. That was a priority message - the spy bots!

She quickly changed the screens and took a look. A message burst from one spy bot attached to a Ha'tak's hull. Navigational data and pictures - days old, but apparently, the spy bot had just now gotten into range of the network.

She studied the pictures. That was a sizeable fleet - about the same numbers as the one they had defeated. Or even larger. And… "Are they building a space station?" she asked.

"...no." Entrapta sounded uncharacteristically grimm, and Sam turned to look at her. "I recognise that part. They're building a flagship like the Velvet Glove."