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Slave Labour Camp – Erebus – July 2003
With a force-field preventing unauthorised access to the planet through the chappa’ai Erebus was considered secure enough to warrant a limited garrison relative to its strategic importance. Although inhospitable to the degree that only Jaffa could stand to live there for more than a few days, the volcanism of the geology provided ample energy for the production of large quantities of naquadah. The ore was processed in great blast-furnaces with the refined product feeding the needs of the planets zero-gravity dry-dock which was currently producing Ha’tak at record pace to replace those lost by Baal in the recent war with Apophis.
The furnaces, forges and workshops of Erebus were worked by Jaffa who had refused to switch allegiance after being taken as prisoners-of-war. As a result most of them currently bore the mark of either Apophis or Anubis but a few were remnants of earlier wars. There was even a few Jaffa who had once served Ra and who now both stubbornly refused to die or accept that their god had been killed by the Tau’ri years before, the other workers humoured them although the guards just mocked. A small group of Free Jaffa had recently joined the ranks of the unwilling workforce after losing a skirmish with far superior numbers of Baal’s troops on the world Kadesh, but it was rare for shol’va of this kind to end up on Erebus. It was claimed by Baal that this was because generally they were executed immediately on capture to make an example of them but in truth it was of course because in the vast majority of firefights the Free Jaffa were the victors.
Baal had taken Erebus from Apophis over a year and a half before, since then it had helped him maintain an armada that most of the other remaining System Lords could only dream of in an era where Ha’tak motherships were expended like mere Al’kesh. Much of Baal’s fleet had been gutted at the battle over Delmak but he was rebuilding his ability to conquer and project power again rapidly, far more rapidly than Lord Yu who was likely his greatest rival at present now that Anubis had seemingly gone to ground.
It was, Baal considered, a great pity that Erebus could still as yet only produce older style vessels with limited modern upgrades. On the other hand despite being far inferior in speed and firepower to the new ships being constructed in the core worlds of his domain even basic designs that predated the improvements made by Sokar and Anubis were naturally better than no extra Ha’tak at all. Nerus planned to re-tool the shipyard and factories on Erebus for his master as his next major project but for the moment he was still trying to further improve upon the hyperdrive design he had back-engineered from the ships used by Apophis. By using some of the Ancient technology Anubis had managed to obtain in new ways Nerus hoped to tune the hyperdrive to an even higher output without burning it out completely after only limited use. Baal himself wasn’t entirely convinced the podgy goa’uld scientist could manage it but since Apophis had clearly proven the massive strategic advantage that faster ships represented he was willing to indulge Nerus in his current hobby for now, just in case it actually worked.
Even older Ha’tak were invaluable and the one floating in the sky above Erebus was nearly completed. Unfortunately for Baal it was worth even more to another group than it was to him and with their temporary alliance of convenience against Apophis now forgotten the Tok’ra had decided to take a leaf out of the Tau’ri book and steal the thing.
The Tok’ra had never really favoured direct confrontation, they simply didn’t have the manpower, but shifting allegiances and alliances had fundamentally changed the politics of the galaxy and this was about to be proven dramatically on Erebus. Copying the tactic they had once used to attack deep into the realm of Apophis, disrupting his supply lines and causing him to redeploy his armies, several cloaked Tel’taks had landed away from the gate and unloaded troops. However this time it was not the Tau’ri of X-COM that the Tok’ra were transporting, it was instead a force of Free Jaffa under the command of Rak’nor and they were here to not only free their brothers they were also there on a mission to add a Ha’tak to the collection of smaller vessels which had already fallen into their hands.
Rak’nor was still wary of the Tok’ra, they were too much alike the goa’uld not to be so, but he could not doubt how useful they were becoming as allies against the false gods. Ideally he would have preferred another than the often confrontational Malek tagging along as the leader of the Tok’ra contingent too but at least he had some evident skill at combat which they were likely to face much of.
For thousands of years the goa’uld had deliberately kept the Jaffa as ignorant as possible of their technology, they could pilot deathgliders, fire a staff-weapon and even crew a Ha’tak but they had very little idea how it all actually worked. An alliance with the Tok’ra plugged the gap in that knowledge and under the guidance of their returned queen, the famous or perhaps infamous Egeria, they were willing to teach the Jaffa the ways of goa’uld “magic”. In the shorter term they could operate, maintain and repair equipment that the Free Jaffa were largely clueless about such as hyperdrives and long-range communication devices. Already Tok’ra scientists and engineers had been upgrading Free Jaffa Tel’tak vessels with their cloaking system, and more importantly to this battle they had adapted, developed and produced new weapons that complemented the already proven Staff-Rifle.
It had taken a while to cure the Free Jaffa of their predilection for close-combat but once they started fighting in a manner more akin to the Tau’ri they accepted, albeit grudgingly at first, that shooting at your enemy at a range where they were likely to enjoy limited success firing back with clumsy unmodified Staff-weapons did work quite well as a tactic. As Rak’nor launched his attack on the camp guards and the rest of the garrison he felt the usual twinge of guilt resulting from killing fellow Jaffa but he knew it was necessary. The power-base of the false gods remained their Jaffa armies, and freedom for all of his brothers and sisters in the future meant that some who had yet to see the truth had to die in order to bring down the goa’uld.
It was with heavy hearts but a steady aim that Rak’nor and his warriors shot down the loyalists, giving no quarter after their initial offer to accept their surrender was rebuffed. Sometimes the enemy Jaffa did agree to lay down their arms in these situations but usually their sense of honour or their faith in their master prevailed and they fought to the death. The work camp which processed the naquadah ore was situated at the bottom of a steep-sided open-cast mine a few miles from the chappa’ai and firing down into the midst of the loyalists was a simple affair, especially given that Rak’nor had also bought along a few heavy weapons with a longer range and greater power than the standard-issue Staff-Rifle.
A modified version of the armament carried by deathgliders, the Free Jaffa had recently begun to employ shoulder-fired Light Staff-Cannon in battle. A heavy load for the warrior that was chosen to carry it for his squad they nonetheless provided much welcomed additional firepower. For full-scale pitched battles when even more force was required Heavy Staff-Cannon mounted on wheeled gun-carriages and drawn by horses provided it, acting as field artillery. The carriages themselves were provided by the Tau’ri and had sprung suspension, rubber tyres and a metal gunshield made of plasma resistant cydonium armour. Like the Staff-Rifle they were relatively simple innovations that utilised existing weaponry in more effective ways, but they still gave the Free Jaffa much greater battlefield effectiveness than their Loyalist Jaffa foe, an effectiveness that would soon be bolstered by a hand-cranked version of the feared Tau’ri Staff-Gatling that used the same basic carriage as the Heavy Cannon.
The Tok’ra Malek observed dispassionately as the friendly Jaffa killed the unfriendly ones. Rak’nor and his ilk were allies these days but he had spent too many years fighting and fleeing the genetically engineered slave-armies of the goa’uld not to still feel on edge in the presence of them. It was true that many Jaffa now carried within them the next generation of Tok’ra, indeed a handful of those fighting that day on Erebus already had the spawn of Egeria not some goa’uld queen as symbiotes, but it would be a few more years at least before being near Jaffa didn’t cause him to occasionally check to make sure his zat’nik’tel and plasma pistol were holstered comfortingly on his belt.
Bra’tac had been the first to swap his goa’uld symbiote for a Tok’ra one, the former being ritually killed afterwards and then symbolically thrown into a refuse heap. As the symbiote matured he had started to be able to contact it mentally during deep kelno’reem, as the priestess Shan'auc had proven possible previously with her own symbiote the goa’uld Tanith. As yet however it seemed the Tok’ra larvae was yet too young to truly communicate, even with mental images or flashes of memory. According to Bra’tac all the response he had yet to elicit was the prim’ta becoming far more active for a short while, a feeling he described to the great amusement of Egeria as being akin to having eaten too much spicy food the night before and be now paying the price.
Being nearly complete the Ha’tak in the shipyard above already possessed a partial crew and using transport rings they began to arrive to reinforce the garrison and fight the despised Free Jaffa traitors. It had been hoped by Rak’nor they would do this because clearing them out of the myriad winding corridors and chambers of the ship later would have been a far more dangerous task than merely shooting them up in the open as they now got to do instead. Tok’ra intelligence had learned that the weaponry on the ship was still not operational, and could therefore not be used to bombard them from above in support of the guards, but the hyperdrive was finished so if they could take the prize they could get away with it too.
The Jaffa prisoners had been treated with extreme harshness and once the guards who had been beating and summarily executing them on a whim for months or sometimes years on end started to fall they soon rose in a mini-rebellion of their own adding more chaos to the situation. As Rak’nor mopped up and tried to avoid accidentally killing any of the slave-workers Malek, a few other Tok’ra and a third of the Free Jaffa moved onto the next part of the mission, the capture of the Ha’tak.
Getting aboard proved even easier than Malek had hoped and he made a mental note to make sure that the mixed Free Jaffa and Tok’ra crew that would end up running this vessel were going to have much better security. Fighting through the remaining Jaffa on the Ha’tak was made simple by the prodigious use of Shock Grenades plus plenty of zat’nik’tel and plasma-pistol fire, and they had both the Pel’tak and engine room secured long before the fighting had ended below.
Not all of the liberated prisoners were willing to join the Free Jaffa but most were and Rak’nor gave the rest the option to leave through the chappa’ai using the forcefield deactivation device they took from the corpse of the chief guard. The Tok’ra soon got the ship running and after the Tel’taks which had transported them to Erebus were docked and everyone ringed aboard the mothership powered up its engines and broke free of the zero-gravity dry-dock, heading for space at a sedate speed intended not to tax the untested sub-light drive.
When the Ha’tak eventually arrived above the new Tok’ra homeworld after a long and uneventful journey there were already engineering crews waiting eagerly for its arrival. They would prioritise getting the existing weaponry on-line but then they had a long list of upgrades to make including the Anubis upgrades to the shields and capital staff-cannon.
The Tok’ra/Free Jaffa Alliance celebrated their success and looked forward to more to come in future. Baal meanwhile raged then looked for a scapegoat for the loss of a valuable ship, failing to find one he eventually chalked it up to experience and made sure to reinforce his garrisons on other important worlds.
The other System Lords derided Baal for him losing a Ha’tak to Jaffa rabble and a pitiful band of Tok’ra traitors, they weren’t laughing as hard when the Alliance started messing with them too however.
Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – August 2003
‘Any luck persuading Jonas to change his mind?’ Hammond asked O’Neill as they headed at a brisk pace towards the gate room.
‘He wants to go home and help re-build, can’t fault him for that, he’s been thinking about it ever since we got back from the fighting on Langara’ O’Neill replied. ‘I think it was when we were helping out the people on P3X-289 that he made the decision’ he continued, ‘it’s one thing fighting the goa’uld or the Sectoids but missions like that where we’re just helping people or exploring made him think he could be helping his own people instead’ he said.
‘I’m surprised that he stayed with the SGC after we evacuated the people there then’ Hammond replied.
O’Neill shrugged. ‘I talked him into doing one more mission but it doesn’t look like we’re going to gain much from the crashed ship we found on P2A-347 or the people that were aboard’ he said. ‘Most of their technology is inferior to what we’ve already got in the inventory’ he noted. ‘Talthus didn’t even have hyperdrive which is why they had to freeze the passengers and crew in order to get to where they were going.’
Hammond sighed. ‘If he wasn’t inside Dr Jackson I would have punched their Sovereign’s lights out when I explained our plan’ he admitted. ‘Arrogant son-of-a-bitch’ he opined.
‘Martice thought it was dangerous’ O’Neill replied, ‘I still say we should have flushed him and all the other minds that got pasted into Daniel’s brain into that computer core and then pulled the plug’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe the way he talked to Heimdall, she was only trying to help the ungrateful bastard’ he growled.
General Hammond chuckled. ‘Be fair Colonel, it did sound far-fetched’ he pointed out. ‘Take genetic samples from the remains of each of the dead passengers and crew, clone new bodies and transfer the minds out of Dr Jackson and Pharrin into the clones.’
‘Tryan had balls at least, volunteering to go first to show the others it was going to work’ O’Neill responded. The consciousness of the engineer had been transferred to the clone by Heimdall using much the same equipment which had been used to move Egeria into her new body although the Asgard scientist did have to consult with Harlan on Altair to find own how the consciousness-filtering system he used to separate the mind of Teal’c from his goa’uld symbiote had worked.
‘It was surprising how quickly the Asgard could grow a copy of a human being to adulthood’ Hammond remarked.
‘I thought it was a nice touch that she made them all a few years younger than they had been originally’ O’Neill replied. ‘Except for the kid Keenin anyway.’
‘The Sovereign did seem happy with being in his early twenties again, that might have helped seal the deal’ Hammond reasoned.
O’Neill stopped in the corridor and looked around, Hammond stopping beside him wondering what the Colonel was doing. ‘You know if it’s that easy it makes you wonder if we couldn’t get the same treatment’ O’Neill whispered to the General.
‘Have our minds transferred into younger copies of ourselves?’ Hammond replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘That might be difficult to explain to my children and grandchildren’ he said.
‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t mind another crack at the Air-Force Academy’ O’Neill replied. ‘Something to think about in a few years anyway’ he said then grinned. ‘If I wanted to do it all again I could be the only kid in High-School getting a USAF Pension’ he joked as they set off again.
They arrived in the gate room just as their visitor was scheduled to arrive. Carter was already there talking to Daniel about Jonas, who was currently off-duty and had been dragged against his will to a bar in town by Andianov who believed that getting drunk was the solution to all manner of personal issues.
‘Right on time’ O’Neill observed, checking his watch as the stargate came to life receiving an incoming wormhole, the iris closing shut. ‘Well I shouldn’t be surprised they’ve got accurate clocks’ he added as a valid IDC signal was confirmed and Hammond ordered the iris opened again. ‘They can just walk through the damn thing anyway’ the Colonel reminded everyone.
‘Yes but it’s more polite to invite them in this way’ Hammond replied as a man wearing Tollan military uniform stepped out from the event horizon of the stargate and gave a slight bow of greeting. ‘Tesserarius Travoc’ the General greeted him. ‘Nice to have you back on Earth’ he told the Tollan.
The Tollan walked down the ramp. ‘I spent most of my last visit orbiting Earth rather than being on it but thank you General’ he replied. Travoc had been previously sent by his government to inspect the Anubis type Ha’tak now named Admiral Kuznetsov by its new owners and had spent some time examining its upgraded shields and weaponry.
‘Do you think he’d mind us shortening his name to Tess?’ O’Neill whispered to Daniel, it sounded girly but would be much easier to say.
‘Tesserarius is his rank not his name’ Daniel whispered back, ‘it means “Guard Commander”, it was a Roman military rank, probably another linguistic holdover’ he reasoned.
‘Centurion would be way cooler’ O’Neill opined quietly. ‘And how come all your memories about ancient cultures have come back but you still can’t remember owing me fifty bucks from before you got ascended?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Selective amnesia, the human mind is complicated’ Daniel replied unconvincingly. It was the way he wasn’t meeting Jack’s eyes that failed to sell it.
‘Interesting new insignia’ Carter spotted, indicating a patch on the Tollan’s uniform.
Travoc nodded. ‘My people are fascinated by flying animals and when we found out that our likely ancestors used one as their symbol we decided to adopt it in the Defence Forces’ he said. ’Your Ambassador Faxon had something of a role to play there’ he told her.
‘Roman Eagle’ Daniel noted, looking at it. ‘And the symbols below?’ he queried, not being able to read Tollan script.
‘An abbreviation, it stands for “Curia and the People of Tollana” in our language’ Travoc explained. ‘General, if I can present my briefing now, I’m supposed to be at your Area 51 facility giving a lecture on the power requirements of the Heavy Ion Cannon within the hour’ he told Hammond.
‘If you’d care to follow me Tesserarius’ Hammond responded, leading off towards the conference room.
As soon as they sat down Travoc took a small device from a pocket on his uniform and laid it on the table. It immediately projected a holographic image of the galaxy which then zoomed in on an area covering a few thousand light-years. Arrows pointed to the locations of Earth and Langara with legends in English and Tollan. ‘After we located and destroyed the first of Loki’s mining facilities here not too far from Langara’ Travoc began, another arrow appearing on the hologram, ‘we began an expanding search pattern looking for his other installations but it soon became apparent that it was isolated’ he said.
‘That makes sense’ Carter responded, ‘Trinium is only found in amounts economically viable to mine in a small minority of systems’ she said.
‘Yes, my people chose Tollana from a number of possible new homeworlds we had explored because it had a relative abundance of trinium’ Travoc noted, ‘we think that as Loki’s need for trinium for fighter-hulls increased he had to open new mines and they could be widely scattered’ he said. ‘The complex we destroyed appeared to have been built fairly recently, possibly to support his campaign against Langara’ he said.
‘So the trail’s cold and we can’t find out where the little bastard is hiding out?’ O’Neill asked in annoyance.
‘There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, even if we just restrict the search to a small portion it’ll take forever to investigate them’ Carter told him. ‘Loki deliberately designed his technology to be difficult for Asgard or Goa’uld sensors to detect’ she pointed out.
‘Yes, but not Tollan sensors’ Travoc said with a degree of smugness. ‘It took us a while to narrow down the area we needed to look at though’ he admitted.
O’Neill’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve found the son-of-a-bitch?’ he asked.
‘Not yet but we know where to look’ Travoc replied. ‘I don’t know if you know this but the passage of a ship through sub-space causes detectable ripples in the normal space along its course’ he said.
‘Yes, as part of the Seeker Project we placed sensors on satellites around P5C-629 to give early warning of a goa’uld attack on Earth’ Carter replied, ‘it’s on a direct line between us and the bulk of Goa’uld controlled space’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t work for the tiny ships Loki uses though’ she said, ‘not enough hyperspace wake’ she told him.
‘Not enough for your sensors to detect perhaps’ Travoc responded.
‘Way smarter than us’ Daniel observed.
The Tollan smiled. ‘We deployed hundreds of small automated sensor drones and waited to see if we could detect any of Loki’s ships’ he said, ‘once we did we started back-tracking their course deploying more drones as we went to try and narrow down the search pattern’ Travoc continued. ‘Eventually we determined that Loki was operating out of a star cluster between Earth and Langara and we are currently scouting the cluster with phase-cloaked reconnaissance probes’ he announced.
‘Why not go in guns-blazing?’ O’Neill asked.
‘Because we all want to capture Loki alive either to stand trial or reveal the secret of how he manufactures Elerium’ Travoc explained. ‘Our initial findings from probe telemetry indicates that none of the planets in the cluster is either inhabitable or has a stargate’ he said. ‘We have already detected several naquadah-rich systems which are being mined, one system which has trinium and others which have gas-giants or large asteroid belts to supply additional raw materials.’
‘What about military assets?’ Hammond asked. ‘Manufacturing?’ he queried.
‘So far we have found three large space-station bases, all in inter-stellar space between systems’ Travoc replied. ‘They seem to be where Loki is producing ships judging from the fact we have observed far more fighter-craft craft leaving them than docking with them after patrols and there is a steady flow of transport ships from the mines to the space-stations’ he said.
‘Naquadah, trinium and the rest goes in, elerium fuel and fighters go out’ O’Neill said. ‘Sweet target’ he declared.
‘And one we need to take intact like we did the Cydonia Base’ Hammond said.
‘Boarding action’ O’Neill said with obvious enthusiasm before putting on a Cuban accent. ‘In this galaxy, first you get the elerium, then you get the power, then you get the women’ he declared. ‘Heavy Plasma Rifles all round’ he said, ‘Say hello to my little friend, goa’uld hijo de puta.’
‘Movie night last night, we watched Scarface because Daniel had either never seen it or couldn’t remember seeing it’ Carter explained to Hammond who nodded his understanding.
Travoc looked from one of them to the other. this was one of those occasions when he was very happy his ancestors had left this planet. ‘We think that by adapting the mind-shield technology we know you’re working on we can get one of our phase-cloaked cruisers right next to the base without being detected by enemy telepaths, but frankly Tollan guardsmen aren’t up to the job of taking the stations by force ourselves’ he admitted. ‘This would have to be a joint operation, ideally with the Asgard attacking the mining facilities to draw off enemy forces’ he said. ‘We’ve been intercepting enemy sub-space communications and hope to determine on which of the three bases Loki himself is aboard if any, if we can verify his location we can concentrate on taking that one only rather than divide our forces.’
‘With Loki in our hands and an elerium plant we can just destroy the other two bases’ Hammond agreed.
‘The Curia will of course insist that Earth provides all data pertaining to elerium production to Tollana also, rather than simply keeping a monopoly’ Travoc told them. ‘The High Chancellor told me personally to make sure you all understood that’ he said flatly.
‘That’s a political decision beyond my pay-grade son but I’ll offer my assurance I’ll personally recommend that to my superiors’ Hammond replied.
‘I’m just happy to see the Tollan off their asses and doing something for once’ O’Neill said. ‘No offence meant’ he told Travoc as the General gave him a disapproving glare.
‘None taken’ Travoc replied, he knew they were primitive barbarians and couldn’t help it after all.
High Orbit – Hebridan – August 2003
John Sheppard had thought they were yanking his chain when they told him about this mission but once Major Davis managed to convince him it was an actual, sanctioned operation Sheppard practically had to stop himself from bounding around the room in glee. They were actually paying him to do something he would have happily forgone his pension for and he knew that just about every other pilot assigned to X-COM would be jealous, especially Mitchell who usually got these kind of choice assignments.
Despite several attempts to open up diplomatic relations with the Hebridan it had proven extremely difficult to do so. Hebridan had keep itself largely isolated from the rest of the galaxy not wishing to draw too much attention from the System Lords and besides which they didn’t seem to believe that Earth being hundreds of years less advanced had anything much to offer them in terms of an alliance. As a free-market capitalist democracy with an economy dominated by a few mega-corporations it was however believed that Hebridan could however be opened up via trade. They just needed to prove Earth did have something worth buying and ideally make enough of a media splash that the new up-and-coming market opportunity called Earth was worth embracing.
Apparently the corporate sponsor, Tech Con Group, had also thought it was a joke when a delegation from Earth arrived and asked to enter a ship in the so-called “Loop of Kon Garat”, an annual race where new aerospace technologies and craft were demonstrated in competition with each other. The winner of the race would receive a contract with the Deep Space Exploration Division of Tech Con as a valuable prize, plus victory ensured that the entrant’s proven new technologies would attract considerable interest from investors. The fierce competition had driven technological progress to greater and greater heights over the years to the point where Hebridan engine designs not only far eclipsed anything used by the Goa’uld even the Tollan had been surprised by their sophistication and performance.
The Tollan themselves had managed to trade for the latest Hebridan sub-light engine designs, trading one of their stargates, which was delivered by Ghostrider, and some advanced pharmaceuticals for the plans. After that however the trade between them had largely dried up since other than in a few areas of aerospace technology Hebridan was generally less advanced than Tollana and the Tollan still wouldn’t sell most of their own superior technologies to other worlds.
Local media broadcasts had been making cracks about Sheppard’s ship ever since he arrived in the system and landed at the hanger assigned to him. A ground-crew who had arrived through the stargate had met him there and went through last-minute checks and maintenance procedures whilst all the while locals seemed to be laughing at the Avenger’s apparently archaic looking design. It wasn’t the looks that counted though, Sheppard knew, it was what the ship had under the hood which counted and this wasn’t a regular Avenger transport, this was fully customised with bleeding-edge technology and he was damned if he was going to lose.
Making orbit around the planet Sheppard had deliberately been slow and sloppy as he pulled up alongside the other entrants in the race. He turned to his nervous-looking co-pilot and engineer and grinned. ‘Cheer up’ he said, ‘this is going to be fun’ he told him.
Rodney McKay grimaced. ‘Half these systems aren’t properly tested yet, especially not on an Avenger’ he complained. ‘We could theoretically blow up the moment you push the engines to maximum and the extra naquadah reactors back there aren’t just running on weapons-grade’ he said, ‘they’re running hot too’ he pointed out.
‘Just as long as they don’t burn out before we win the race’ Sheppard replied. He hadn’t dealt with McKay much before, he had heard of him of course, the scientist was well-known in X-COM circles as one of the best-and-brightest if also one of the most arrogant and occasionally whiniest.
‘They’re good for a few hours at that level’ McKay replied, he knew that some preliminary joint-research with the Orbanians was being done into a Mark II Naquadah Reactor which could be run just under the critical overload point producing vast amount of power for a short while but that seemed like a sure-fire recipe for accidental meltdown or nuclear detonation to him.
‘Everything working okay?’ Sheppard asked.
McKay checked the displays in front of him, several were just jury-rigged for this mission. ‘Reactors in the Green, Engines...’ he began, then paused ‘also green’ he said. ‘Shields green, avionics green, weapon systems’ he paused again, ‘they’re in the green’ he announced.
‘Is anything not working?’ Sheppard interrupted.
Rodney ignored him. ‘Vector Control Thrusters green, Artificial Gravity green’ he continued unabated, ‘Navigation green, Inertial Dampening green...’
‘You like the checklist don’t you?’ Sheppard interrupted again.
‘Be quiet and let me finish’ McKay hissed. ‘Primary and backup Life Support Systems green, main and reserve elerium tanks full’ he said. ‘Auxiliary power-distribution green’ he finished.
‘So everything is working?’ Sheppard asked.
‘Weren’t you listening?’ McKay responded in annoyance.
‘I sort of zoned out after a while’ Sheppard told him, flipping down the eye-piece of his helmet. The combination of the goa’uld head-up display and the sectoid navigation and control system built into his helmet heading his thoughts gave excellent spatial awareness and drastically speeded up response times. ‘Why did you volunteer for this?’ he asked. ‘You don’t seem like you’re enjoying the mission or even looking forward to the race’ he said.
‘I’m competitive’ McKay replied, ‘and besides which I don’t trust anyone else to understand all the systems’ he added. ‘You nearly got Felger, be grateful you got me instead’ he told the pilot. ‘Felger’s a klutz, we’re all safer if he’s stuck in his office playing with stargate computer code rather than being somewhere where he can cause trouble trust me’ he said.
‘I heard that Major Carter wanted to be in on this one’ Sheppard remarked, ‘we worked together on a project a while back, captured the first Foo Fighter we got intact’ he added. Technically he just prompted the idea but he liked to think of himself as being an out-of-the-box ideas man, implementation was better left to the engineers.
McKay growled. ‘She’s overrated’ he said, ‘cute but overrated’ he told Sheppard.
‘Cute?’ Sheppard repeated quizzically.
‘I like dumb blonds’ McKay told him. ‘I’m going to start bringing the naquadah reactors up slowly, dump the power into the capacitors for the shield buffer for now’ he told him.
‘You’re the expert’ Sheppard replied.
‘Yes I am’ McKay agreed, concentrating as he began to fully power up the ship’s systems.
They were still a few minutes away from the race starting and Sheppard decided to take another look at what the local news networks were saying. He could project the live visual feed from TCNN into his eyepiece and the audio through his headset was actually pretty funny, it was a little like watching a sports channel back home only with even more blatant advertising. TCNN also belonged to the race sponsors, Tech Con, so needless to say it was pushing the race to its viewers hard.
The favourites were a woman named La'el Montrose and a man named Muirios, the latter being regarded as the better pilot whereas the former had the faster ship. The only betting being placed on the “Earthlings” was whether or not they might beat the Seberus piloted by the Serrakin Warrick and therefore not come dead last... the odds were they wouldn’t according to the latest numbers from Tech Con’s network of Gaming Kiosks.
‘Did you put any money on us to win?’ Sheppard asked.
‘I don’t gamble’ McKay replied, looking intently at a screen. He looked up and smirked. ‘So yes I did’ he told him.
A voice came over the loudspeaker in the Avenger’s cockpit. ‘This is Tech Con flight control, standby for race start’ it announced.
‘Boy are they going to be surprised at this’ McKay stated happily. ‘Naquadah reactors to ninety-percent rated maximum, Gravity/Induction Drives coming on line’ he said, turning in his chair to look back at all the machinery filling most of the bay that normally carried a full platoon of soldiers in Powered Armour.
An Avenger was normally powered by a goa’uld gravity drive, one copied from a Tel’tak with a few improvements. Given that they already knew Hebridan sub-light engines could leave any goa’uld craft for dust it was a no-brainer to pull the standard drive and add elerium powered engines, the Gravity/Induction Drives used by the latest model F-302X in fact.
The new F-302X Tranche 2 itself carried a pair of Gravity/Induction Drives, given the Avenger was considerably more massive it had been equipped with eight of them but beyond that the custom built craft had also been equipped with an excessively large elerium tank that meant Sheppard could be profligate with his fuel.
When the race started John Sheppard whooped, put all eight engines to full thrust and then hit the afterburners as McKay squeezed his eyes shut.
To say the commentators and the other race participants were somewhat shocked when the Earthing craft shot out ahead of the pack leaving a blinding plasma trail behind it was an understatement. It out-accelerated every other ship with apparent ease and had already built up a clear lead when Sheppard shut off the afterburners to save them for the long-straight speed-run in the final stage.
Before they got to the end however they would have to deal with the other obstacles and trials which made up the race. The first part was designed to test the defensive capacity of each ship and consisted of a large number of armed drones which would fire at and chase the ships running the course. ‘Coming up on the little robots’ Sheppard announced.
McKay opened his eyes, well the afterburners didn’t kill them at least he thought with considerable relief. ‘Electro-Plasmic Shields on-line and fully charged’ he said, checking the display, ‘shield buffer and reserve capacitor bank at one-hundred percent’ he continued. ‘Preparing to route all reactor power to defensive and offensive systems when required’ he told the pilot.
‘We’re allowed to shoot these things up right?’ Sheppard queried.
‘Of course, didn’t you read the race guide?’ McKay responded.
‘Just wanted to make sure I was remembering right’ Sheppard told him. ‘Nothing on Radar but the Emissions Targeting System has a lock’ he said as targeting crosshairs appeared in front of him, project by the eye-piece. ‘Firing Laser Cannon, Pulse mode.’
The drones were not very well protected themselves and the Avenger blasted several out of the sky as it ploughed through their midst, shield absorbing their own fire. The sheer number of them meant that they were hammering the shield hard, especially given that the other entrants in the race were lagging behind and the attention of the drones wasn’t split but even their collective firepower wasn’t enough to overwhelm the electro-plasmic bubble that protected the Avenger before the rest of the ships arrived and drew away the drones.
‘Shield recharging’ McKay announced, ‘we don’t want to get near that sun with them at less than full power’ he said. ‘Or at least I sure as hell don’t’ he added with a grimace as they headed towards the next stage, a dash through the chromosphere of the system’s sun.
As they headed through the outer layers of the star the radiation and electromagnetic interference being to effect communications badly and Sheppard was annoyed that he couldn’t track the progress of the other ships by listening to TCNN. He knew they were still out in front, and that a few of the ships had already been knocked out of the race already by the drones, but he had been reveling in the commentary, the Hebridan media were astounded at the turn of events so far.
‘You know if the shield failed we’d be incinerated almost instantly’ McKay pointed out.
‘Yeah’ Sheppard agreed. ‘How about some music to take our minds off it?’ he suggested, pressing a button on the console, a record starting which he started to sing along to.
“Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a Ring of Fire ”
McKay turned and narrowed his eyes at the pilot as he started singing the chorus.
“I fell into a burning Ring of Fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The Ring of Fire
The Ring of Fire ”
McKay was plotting revenge when they cleared the sun and headed towards the next stage. As communications cleared up they picked up TCNN once more and Sheppard switched from Johnny Cash to the race commentary.
‘One of the ships is in trouble’ Sheppard noted, ‘it’s heading towards the sun.’
‘Engine failure’ McKay agreed.
‘It’s Warrick, the alien that SG-1 helped out’ Sheppard told him.
‘Sucks to be him I guess’ McKay responded. ‘Oh crap you want to go back and help don’t you?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘We’re supposed to be winning a race here’ he pointed out. ‘Our lead isn’t that big’ he said.
‘If we were falling towards the sun wouldn’t you hope someone would save us?’ Sheppard asked.
‘Yes’ McKay replied after a pause. ‘Plotting new course, if we do this right we should be able to push him away from the star, build up enough momentum to get him out of danger long enough for someone else to rescue him.’
‘We can nudge him shield to shield?’ Sheppard asked.
‘They can absorb kinetic impacts, just don’t slam into his ship too fast, the shields are already going to be under strain from the sun’ McKay replied, ‘and it’s more like a bounce than a nudge, think like it’s a game of pool and we’re the cue-ball’ he advised as Sheppard bought the Avenger around, heading back into the star.
After giving Warrick the fright of his life as the Avenger appeared from nowhere and bounced him away from the star Sheppard rejoined the race finding he was now last and had to hit the afterburners again to try and catch up. The next stage was a test of maneuverability through an unusually densely packed asteroid belt and to the horror of McKay whilst he did shut down the burners Sheppard went through at full engine power using the Vector Control Thrusts to tear through the course whipping around the asteroids like a maniac.
‘Who gave you a pilot’s license?’ McKay exclaimed as they hurtled past a tumbling rock the size of a sky-scraper.
‘You can criticise my personality but don’t ever insult my piloting skills’ Sheppard told him. ‘Ah overtaken another one’ he said happily. ‘Up to third place’ he declared.
McKay tried to concentrate on his job and not look outside. ‘You know that ship Muirios is flying has better performance than we thought’ he said. ‘It’s only in first place because it’s out-accelerating the chick running second’ he said.
‘Maybe he’s using that Ion Pro stuff they keep mentioning on the TV?’ Sheppard suggested.
‘They both are’ McKay replied. ‘He’s getting way better performance out of his ship than everyone else, if it wasn’t for the afterburners he wouldn’t be too much slower than we are’ he said.
‘Then praise be to the afterburners’ Sheppard declared, ‘how much fuel have we got to dump into them?’ he asked.
‘Wait until we get into the last stage and keep holding them on until I tell you we’re going to either blow up or not have enough left to stop’ McKay replied.
‘Now you’re talking McKay’ Sheppard replied.
‘Call me Rodney’ McKay told him.
‘John’ Sheppard replied.
Clearing the asteroids it was down to three ships with the Avenger in the rear. Sheppard hit the afterburners again and they started to make up ground fast, burning precious, still irreplaceable elerium like it was nothing but regular naquadah.
‘Gaining on Montrose’ McKay said as they approached the next ship Now on the final stage a flat-out race Sheppard just had the throttles up and his crewmate tried to ignore the blinking warning lights that indicated they really shouldn’t be treating the engines this way. ‘Bye, bye girly’ he said, giving her ship a little wave as they tore past hot on the heels of Muirios, the human Hebridan in first place.
‘Can you get anything else out of the engines?’ Sheppard asked.
‘No’ McKay replied. ‘We should be nearly past him before we have to give up on the afterburners and we’re still quicker’ he said. ‘Marginally’ he added.
‘So we’ll overtake before the finish line?’ Sheppard checked.
‘Well I hope so’ McKay replied. ‘We can guarantee a win if you don’t mind taking a risk and you can really fly as well as you say.’
‘Spit it out Rodney’ Sheppard told him.
‘If we keep the burners going longer we won’t have enough fuel to stop like I said’ McKay told him, ‘unless we use the planet for aerobraking’ he said. ‘The shield will take it. It’ll probably look more spectacularly dangerous than it really is’ he said. ‘Big trail of fire in the upper atmosphere’ he explained.
Sheppard grinned. ‘I love this plan’ he declared.
In the end it wasn’t the truly exciting photo-finish that Sheppard would have ideally hoped for as they won by a good five seconds which was a huge lead at those velocities. The images recorded on TCNN of the Avenger skipping off the planet’s atmosphere as it aerobraked were damn cool though and he made sure to get a copy made he could show to anybody back home with the necessary security clearance.