I own neither Stargate nor the X-COM franchise. No infringement is intended, no profit is to be made and I'm just not worth the hassle of suing anyway unless you want a share of the wages of an underpaid Civil Servant.
'We are beaten' Morrigan said simply, the fact was inescapable. 'I doubt we have more than twenty-five combat-capable Ha'tak left between all of us, each inferior to his even if we weren't so outnumbered, and the only reason Baal has not delivered the death-blow is because he wants us to bow-down before him.'
'His terms are not so unacceptable' Olokun said awkwardly, unable to look the handful of other System Lords sat around the chamber in the eye as he spoke, ashamed that he had been considering surrender for some time now. 'We get keep a quarter of our worlds and may even rebuild part of our fleets if we agree to recognise his claim to be the successor to Ra as Supreme System Lord' he said. 'It is possible that when Baal's emissary Selknhet arrives that even more generous terms could be offered' he suggested.
'You would happily eat the scraps from Baal's table' Ares responded with a sneer. 'If his lapdog comes with a better offer it is only because he wishes to gloat and massage his ego by appearing munificent.'
Morrigan nodded. 'Naturally' she agreed, 'but our resistance against him for so long at least means we have retained a modicum of self-respect' she said, 'unlike those System Lords who surrendered with barely a fight.'
'Or the three fawning sycophants who compete for his favour hoping to rule by his side' Olokun added. As soon as the war ended Amaterasu, Bastet and Kali would surely be at each others throats figuratively and perhaps literally as each tried to gain the position of Baal's Queen.
'We once all kneeled before Ra's authority, is it really so heinous a prospect to have to kow-tow to Baal instead?' Morrigan asked the others rhetorically. 'It is not like we face the prospect of being ruled by Sokar or Anubis.'
'Those psychotics would have wanted our heads on pikes not merely bowed in submission' Olokun agreed.
Lord Yu had been sitting and listening quietly until now with his First Prime whispering in his ear but now he rose to his feet. 'I will fight to the death' he declared, 'honour demands nothing less' he continued. 'You can surrender if you want to save your sorry lives but I will not!' he thundered.
'Some of us have a few more years of life left before us than others' Morrigan responded sarcastically, they all knew that Yu was sliding away mentally and physically. 'Almost all my worlds are already conquered, my Jaffa but few and my naquadah stockpile almost depleted' she admitted. 'What is the point of fighting on?'
'To prove you are not a snivelling coward' Ares told her. 'I am with you' he informed Lord Yu who nodded his approval. Ares had adopted the persona of a war-god for a reason and it was both unsurprising and apt that he would rather go down fighting than submit.
'To do that is to commit suicide' Olokun said. 'If you are going to surrender to Baal I will likely do so as well' he told Morrigan, grateful that he did not appear to be alone in considering it.
Morrigan looked around. 'I see no alternative' she replied sadly.
Ares threw Olokun a look of disgust before turning back to Lord Yu. 'I think we stand alone' he addressed him. 'So where shall we make our last stand?' he asked simply.
'Nice as it is to hear that you aren't all planning to give up it would be more impressive if the "death before dishonour" faction hadn't given up on the notion of victory instead of glorious defeat' Camulus interrupted from the doorway, an amused smile on his face.
'You're late' Morrigan chided him. 'We agreed to all be here in time to discuss the situation properly and make our decisions before Selkhet gets here' she reminded the last of the independent System Lords to arrive at Hasara.
'I'm sorry, I was too busy defeating one of Baal's fleets' Camulus replied smugly, crossing his arms and not bothering to take his seat remaining by the entrance to the meeting chamber.
'You could have at least come up with a more plausible excuse' Olokun responded. 'You only have a single Ha'tak to your name' he noted.
'Seven actually as of yesterday' Camulus replied. 'I was hoping for more but between battle-damage and some of Baal's more loyal Jaffa destroying their ships rather than be captured I only ended up with another six.'
'Ridiculous' Lord Yu declared with certainty.
'You could not have even matched one of Baal's advanced Ha'tak with your forces' Morrigan stated with certainty. 'Let alone board and capture six with your handful of Jaffa.'
'True alas, but I did have help' Camulus told them. 'May I introduce my new ally' he announced, stepping to one side as a woman appeared next to him.
Olokun frowned. 'The Tau'ri are already our allies and they have not been much help' he said. The humans of the First World had won numerous tactical victories but without a great fleet of capital ships to support them in strategic terms they were rarely able to exploit their gains or even hold onto territory they captured. The Tau'ri Warlord Sharp and his feared First-Prime Rodrigues had bled Baal's armies white, slaughtering Jaffa by the thousands and Kull by the hundreds but they could not win the war with ground troops. Continuing the metaphor Baal could always transfuse his losses and the ever-increasing skill of his armies and the quality of their equipment meant that it was also becoming harder to win the overwhelming victories the Tau'ri needed to even slow him down.
'Aren't you out of uniform Colonel Carter' Morrigan queried of the woman, she was wearing what appeared to be a fairly tight dark-grey outfit rather than X-COM or USAF issue clothing.
'I'm sorry but you seem to have mistaken me for someone else' Carter replied, a smile appearing on her face as the tinny sound of metallic scampering behind her heralded a number of what looked like small robotic insects clattering past her. 'Don't worry I'm not offended' she added sweetly, bending down to pet one of them fondly before standing again.
'Replicators?' Olokun exclaimed in horror. 'You brought them here' he asked Camulus in disbelief.
'The Tau'ri warned us of these... things' Morrigan added, staring at what she now realised must be the replicator copy of Samantha Carter. 'They exist only to devour technology and reproduce' she continued aghast. 'They almost defeated theAsgard!'
'We did defeat the Asgard' RepliCarter responded curtly, if not for assistance from Earth Ida would certainly have fallen. 'And we can help you defeat Baal if you're willing to help us' she added.
'It's a mutually beneficial arrangement' Camulus told the other System Lords.
'You must be insane' Lord Yu declared.
'No, he was desperate rather than mad' RepliCarter corrected the Goa'uld. 'I've just been biding my time until you were so close to defeat that you'd clutch at any lifeline that was offered' she said. 'It's a very simple proposition, I'll help you capture Baal's ships, give half to you and keep the rest and in return you can help me.'
'How can we be of any help to you?' Morrigan asked, trying to maintain some poise and ignore the machines skittering about.
RepliCarter laughed. 'Well you could say that I need the assistance of allies who don't fall to pieces under pressure' she replied. 'I'm proposing a long-term arrangement because even if I did find a solution to the current design flaw among my kind who's to say another won't come up in future?' she asked rhetorically. 'Your technology and materials are inferior to that of the Asgard or Ancients in any case so keeping you around is no real loss' she said. 'That's the difference between me and my less-advanced brethren with me they're sentient but not truly sapient so sometimes they devour when they should cooperate.'
'I would sooner be a slave to Baal than these orac' Ares declared.
'The difference is not only will I let you keep all your own worlds I'll give you some of the holdings of Baal and his allies too' RepliCarter responded. 'Primitive agricultural planets are no use to me whatsoever, you might as well have them' she said.
'She gets his industrial worlds' Camulus added.
'Baal's continuing development of the Ancient technology he got from Anubis means I do have an overriding instinct to control his research and manufacturing facilities but that shouldn't effect you' RepliCarter told the System Lords. 'I might even throw a few bones in your direction, make you more valuable allies.'
Camulus smiled evilly. 'Of course the Tollan and a few others will receive her full attention' he said. 'Do you remember our defeat centuries ago at the hands of the Serrakin' he asked rhetorically. 'It wasn't worth the losses we would take in crushing them but the Replicators will turn their gleaming cities into more of themselves.'
And then we'll deal with the Aschen, the nanotechnology copy of Samantha Carter thought to herself, also smiling. 'It's a very large universe, enough to allow you to maintain your little empires and live how you please' she told the goa'uld leaders.
'What of the Tau'ri?' Morrigan asked.
'If I thought it was possible to coexist with them I'd be making them this offer but it isn't' RepliCarter replied honestly. 'Even if they didn't possess technologies and resources we hunger for the respective natures of our societies mean that we cannot live side by side in peace.'
'But you expect us to believe we can coexist?' Olokun queried doubtfully.
'You've got little I want and you're no threat to me' RepliCarter replied. 'It's far more likely you'll try to betray me than the reverse' she continued. 'Well I've made my pitch now you get to choose' she said, crossing her arms and with an expectant look on her face.
Camulus finally took his seat with the others. 'I've already made my choice' he told them. 'For the rest of you it's kneel before Baal and hope he lets you keep some of your holdings...'
'While kissing his ass' RepliCarter interjected.
'Fight him and surely die in a futile act of defiance' Camulus continued despite the interruption, 'or side with these machines and get a chance to not only get back everything you've lost but also expand the number of systems you own.'
Lord Yu's First-Prime whispered something in his ear. 'The Tau'ri have developed many powerful weapons' Yu spoke up. 'They may yet defeat Baal themselves.'
'Ramblings from a senile old fool' Camulus responded with derision. 'Even if the Tau'ri were to do that after defeating Baal they would immediately declare war on us' he stated.
Morrigan nodded. 'I find it easier to believe we could coexist with these things than we could Sharp of Canada' she agreed, indicating the closest replicator to herself.
'I propose a vote on this new alliance' Camulus announced.
'And before you do I'd like to offer a gesture of goodwill' RepliCarter said. 'To each System Lord that aligns with me I will present you with five Ha'tak that formerly belonged to Baal' she told them.
'And you will be astonished at how fast your ships are if you allow a few of the machines to come aboard and interface with the hyperdrive' Camulus said. 'The Ha'tak we captured from Baal are now ten times as swift as his own.'
'Faster, if you don't mind having to replace the hyperdrives every so often' RepliCarter added.
'And if we vote no?' Ares asked.
'Then after I've defeated Baal I'll come for you' RepliCarter replied flatly. 'Any worlds of yours that I don't want I'll give to Camulus or others that vote yes' she said. 'It's an offer you can refuse, but you really don't want to.'
When Selkhet arrived at Hasara an hour later to offer Baal's terms for their surrender their refusal was surprising, though not as much as when the woman who looked like Samantha Carter of the Tau'ri appeared and punched a hole in her.
The war for control of the Milky Way was about to veer off in another weird direction.
Atlantis – Pegasus Galaxy – April 2005
Travoc had set up a Tollan holographic projector in the conference room which was interfaced with the cities own computer. It was now projecting a three-dimensional representation of the Pegasus Galaxy in the centre of the room with the position of the Lantean system indicated as a single blinking blue dot among a sea of tiny stars.
'With both the ZPM we received from SG-1 and the one from Dagan plugged in we've managed to get the Long Range Sensors up to their full capability and we're now able to detect and track Wraith movements in approximately a quarter of the galaxy' Rodney McKay told the Atlantis senior staff who had gathered to hear how they planned to defend the city. 'Can we show the position of Wraith Hives and Cruisers?' he requested, a number of red dots appearing on the hologram as he did so.
'Not too many near us' Elizabeth Weir, or to be precise the now blond Elizabeth Weir who had been rescued from the past observed.
'That's because we nuked most of the ones that used to live in this corner of the galaxy months ago' Major John Sheppard told her with obvious satisfaction.
'Yes we did and because of that we've got more time to prepare for the main Wraith attack than we would have otherwise' McKay agreed. 'Wraith hyperdrives are slow, even slower than the goa'uld ones were before Apophis and later Anubis managed to squeeze some more speed out of them' he continued. 'It'll be at least three weeks until this cluster of red dots representing the armada heading for Atlantis gets here' he announced, pointing at it.
'How many ships?' the other Elizabeth Weir, the one in formal command of the Pegasus Expedition asked.
'Seventeen hives, over twice that number of cruisers' McKay replied.
Sheppard smiled. 'Sweet' he said, both Weirs turning to him with an expression that made it clear they couldn't grasp what was good about such news. 'That'll more than double the number of hives we've racked up since we got here' he explained brightly.
Janus had thought he was starting to understand Terran humour but now he wasn't so sure. 'Do you have any idea how quickly that many ships can drain the shields of this city?' he asked in dismay. 'You only have one potentia with a practically full charge, one at fifty percent plus a third with barely enough left in it to power the shield for a few hours if it wasn't under heavy bombardment.'
'It will not be that many hives by the time they get here' Colonel Vaselov told him. 'We are not going to sit back and let them come to us.'
'Like they say back in the Milky Way, the best defence is a good attack' Sheppard agreed. 'With the help of our Tollan friends we're going to thin out their numbers a little' he said.
Travoc nodded. 'The Curia has authorised the cruiser Sher-Mal to intercept the Wraith fleet and engage them' he announced. 'It is hoped that a display of our firepower will cause them to rethink their attack on Atlantis.'
'Can a Tollan Cruiser take on that many Wraith vessels?' the dark-haired Elizabeth Weir asked.
'Not in what you might call a slugging match' Travoc replied honestly. 'We have excellent Asgard-supplied shields like your own ships, and backed by superior power-generation but the sheer size and estimated firepower of the Wraith ships means that we would not wish to be exchanging fire with so many for more than a few minutes' he said. 'Our plan agreed with the Captain of the Sher-Mal is simply to jump into the middle of the Wraith fleet and destroy as many as we can before escaping.'
'How?' Janus queried.
'By using Asgard beaming technology to teleport warheads aboard the Hiveships' Travoc replied.
'You have blown up Hives before and that doesn't look like it deterred them' Teyla noted.
'Not like this we have not' Vaselov told her. 'The Tollan do not employ mere naquadah or naquadria boosted thermonuclear devices' he said.
'Yeah, what is the yield of those UFT Bombs you make?' Sheppard asked Travoc.
'In your terms, in excess of ten teratons' Travoc replied. 'They can raze an entire continent' he said without exaggerating. 'We are able to make more powerful devices of course, and we do have a small stockpile of one-hundred teraton warheads kept as a strategic deterrent on Tollana but the Sher-Mal is not carrying any.'
'Not bad for a people that say they're not warlike' Sheppard observed with a wry smile.
'We're not, but we never claimed to be pacifists either' Travoc replied seriously. The Tollan had always accepted the need for the application of military force, their world being heavily defended long before they met people from Earth. They were perhaps more interventionist, and a great deal less isolationist, these days leading to but it wasn't like they had ever had a moral imperative against killing those who would kill them, they just found themselves in that situation more now.
'And a teraton is?' the blond Weir asked. She technically had no authority here, her future position and role still proving very difficult to sort out but for now she was still getting invited to all the meetings so she wasn't entirely out of the loop.
'A teraton is a thousand gigatons Dr Weir, or a million megatons if you prefer' Zelenka explained. His section of the briefing was coming up and he had been mostly going over his notes until now. 'Our standard naquadah-enhanced warhead is a 1.2 gigaton device.'
'Basically the Hive one of the Tollan bombs explodes on is going to pretty much turn into superheated plasma instantly' McKay told her. 'No need to trigger any secondary explosions in order for the ship to be completely destroyed, it'll just be a bright flash and an expanding fireball made from what used to be eleven kilometres worth of spaceship' he said.
'Makes our next-generation Mark IX look like a cherry-bomb' Sheppard said appreciatively.
'We can but hope the Wraith are equally impressed and run away in terror but assuming that doesn't happen what do we do next?' Weir-in-charge asked.
Colonel Vaselov signalled for the hologram to zoom in. 'Our study of wraith technology, in particular the crashed supply ship we found and the cruiser resting on the ocean floor, indicates that they have severe limitations not only in terms of speed but also endurance' he said. 'The radiation that ships are exposed to during hyperspace travel is particularly harmful to the organically-based vessels used by the enemy and means they have to pause several times on long journeys for their ships to... I believe "heal" is an appropriate word' he continued. 'The Sher-Mal is considerably faster than the hives so it will track them and attack them at will but we also plan to hit them with a larger force at least once as Major Sheppard will explain.'
Sheppard meshed his fingers in front of him. 'It's likely that the Wraith will want to stop to feed before starting the last leg of their journey' he said. 'Given the course they're on, how far they go between resting their ships and the population of the planets on the way we can make a reasonable assumption that they'll stop at a world we've identified that's only a few light-years away and has enough "food" to supply their needs' Sheppard continued. 'It's got a stargate in orbit which means we can get our Puddle-Jumpers there as well as our Avengers and by that time Daedalus should have arrived so we'll have a second capital ship to support the Sher-Mal.'
'It is an eighteen day journey and they are supposed to be launching today, or tomorrow at the latest, so she should be here for the fight' Vaselov agreed. It had been suggested that Atlantis should send a ZPM back to the Milky Way through the stargate to enable the first 304 Class ship built to fully power its Asgard hyperdrive and make the journey much faster, however based on the speed of the Wraith approach it had been deemed an unnecessary waste of a still irreplaceable resource.
'If they don't stop there we'll just send the jumpers back to Atlantis and attack the Wraith with our hyperspace-capable ships alone' Sheppard told them. 'We've got such a speed advantage we can hit them and be back here to rest and re-arm long before they can reach Atlantis' he said. 'When, or if, they do finally get here with the hives we haven't managed to destroy our own ships will support the defence of Atlantis.'
The hologram changed again to show the planet Lantea rotating in space with the the city floating on the surface of its single massive ocean clearly marked. 'The defence satellite we recovered and relocated from its original position is now positioned in a geostationary orbit almost directly above our heads' Zelenka announced, the satellite now showing as another dot thirty thousand above following the planet as it turned. 'It is now equipped with a shield generator from one of the goa'uld ha'tak motherships destroyed by drones above Earth plus a goa'uld cloaking device that will at least greatly reduce the distance at which the Wraith detect it' he said with reasonable confidence.
'The problem is that even if they don't detect it before it fires as soon as it takes out the first hive we shoot it at the rest are going to open up on it with everything they've got' McKay noted. 'Even with all the naquadah generators we've packed in there to power the shield as well as reduce the recharge time of the weapon to a minimum it's not going to be able to score very big before it's blown out of the sky' he said.
'Which is why it is only part of our orbital defences as you well know Rodney' Zelenka responded, annoyed by the interruption. 'As well as the Lantean-built weapon satellite we also have a number of our own less powerful though still highly destructive AG-3X satellites with more hopefully arriving from Earth able to be placed in orbit before the attack' he said. 'The AG-3X should be more than capable of burning deep enough into a hive to damage or destroy critical systems or fired at a mere cruiser be able to cripple it' he continued. 'Unfortunately the sheer size of wraith vessels means that they are not the truly devastating weapon they were against the Ha'tak of Anubis but they are certainly not going to be ignored and will likely draw fire away from the Lantean satellite as well as the city itself.'
'What about the ZapSats?' Sheppard queried.
'Our laser-armed satellites are simply not going to be able to inflict enough damage on a Hive or even a cruiser hull to bother firing them at capital vessels' Zelenka stated. 'Therefore they will be tasked with trying to keep wraith darts away from the more valuable assets and I think we all know what a ZapSat would do to a mere dart even at hundreds of kilometres of distance.'
Sheppard laughed. 'Those poor little suckers don't even have shields' he said amused by the mental image of darts as flies around an electric bug-zapper.
'On the subject of ZapSats in addition to those we already have in orbit we are being sent a handful of a new model which uses elerium-crystal beam focusing to increase laser strength by an extra fifty percent and is powered by a mix of standard Mark I and prototype Mark II Naquadah generators' Zelenka announced. 'The Mark II burns out after fifteen to twenty minutes but during that time it produces 600% as much power output' he said. 'In those fifteen to twenty minutes the ZapSat's electroplasmic shield will be almost impervious to anything short of capital-ship weaponry and instead of the laser cannon only being able to fire once every twelve seconds it reduces to six.'
'Excellent' Vaselov responded with satisfaction. 'The fewer darts we have to handle the easier it will be for the F-302 and Jumper pilots' he noted.
Zelenka signalled he wanted the image changed again, this time to show the city of Atlantis itself. 'As you know we now have three Heavy Ion Cannon emplaced, one of the end of each of these piers' he said, the piers changing colour on the projection. 'Unfortunately we cannot fire the cannon through the city shield but we can retract the shield so that the ends of the piers are outside the bubble enabling us to fire in support from the surface while the majority of the city remains protected from orbital bombardment' he said. 'The Heavy Ion Cannon do have integral one-way shields of their own so they should be able to survive a well-targeted or lucky hit and we have placed three more shield generators on the ends of the other three exposed piers where we have placed batteries of both laser and elerium plasma beam cannon as normally carried by our own fighters.'
'The plasma beams can start hitting darts at just over fifty-klicks away' Sheppard commented. 'At twenty they'll be in effective range of the laser cannon too but before they get near that close we'll open up with nuclear-tipped SAM's' he said.
'Low kiloton warheads, nothing extreme' Colonel Vaselov noted. 'The missiles our F-302's will be firing at the hives in space will be far more impressive' he added, looking forward to climbing into the cockpit of his fighter.
'We'll evacuate all non-combatants to Earth for the duration but we're confident we can really mess up the wraith because they're just not used to coming up against serious opposition' Sheppard said. 'Hopefully we won't even have to use up any of the Drones we're getting from Antarctica but we've always got those in our back pocket.'
Janus looked around. 'You cannot seriously be this confident that you can defeat seventeen hive-ship, all their escort cruisers and thousands upon thousands of darts this way' he said, nonplussed.
'I am afraid that your people always overcomplicated the problem of dealing with the Wraith' Vaselov replied, smiling as he would to a child. They had considered the plan using the DHD virus and the Aterro device but it would take too long to safely plan and implement so it was being kept for another day. 'How do we deal with hostile alien ships that don't have shields Major Sheppard?' he asked.
'With great big buckets of concentrated sunshine Sir' Sheppard replied, grinning. 'As many of them as we need to get the job done' he said.
Cheyenne Mountain – Earth – May 2005
'We're sure about this?' Brigadier-General Jack O'Neill asked, hoping it was just a bad dream or another intel screw-up.
'The Asgard cannot confirm exactly what happened because they lost all contact with the ship they sent shortly after it arrived but when they sent three of their O'Neill Class warships to investigate what happened to the science vessel Daniel Jacksonall they found was wreckage scored with signs of gunfire from goa'uld vessels' Major Davis replied. 'It looks like it was all a trick to get hold of the anti-replicator weaponry.'
'Goddammit!' O'Neill swore, thumping his fist down on his desk. 'Have they gone freaking nuts, they've sided with the freaking Replicators for Christ's sake!' he exclaimed, almost as much bewildered as he was angry.
'The Asgard are, let's not put this mildly' Davis began, 'they're pissed' he said. 'We all thought Lord Yu was trustworthy, at least for a goa'uld, so when he asked us for help saying the Replicators were attacking one of his worlds the Asgard sent a ship to help right away.'
'And got ambushed' O'Neill said, trying to make himself calm down by taking a few deep breaths. 'It wasn't Thor aboard was it?' he asked.
'No the Asgard ship was being commanded by a scientist named Kvasir, he may or may not still be alive, we won't know until the System Lords start talking to us again' Davis replied.
'I've got a few things to say to them' O'Neill growled.
'So far they're not answering our calls on the goa'uld frequencies' Davis told him. 'Most of what we know is coming from the Tok'ra' he said. 'It seems that as soon as they ambushed the Daniel Jacksonand gave the anti-replicator weapon to Colonel Carters duplicate for study the Replicators started attacking Baal in full force, keeping some vessels for themselves and handing the rest to Lord Yu, Camulus, Morrigan and the others in the anti-Baal coalition' he continued. 'Baal is trying to hold them back but he's losing more battles than he's winning and his numerical superiority isn't going to last long with the killer-lego capturing his ships.'
'What are X-COM and the IOA saying?' O'Neill asked. He had only gone home for the night, went to sleep after a few beers watching the game and by the time he got back to the SGC "Disaster Davis" was there (never a good sign) and everything had been turned on its head.
'The politicians are trying to come up with a response' Davis replied. 'In the mean-time X-COM say they no longer consider our alliance with Lord Yu and the others in place and will take military action against them as appropriate however the IOA has not endorsed that position.'
O'Neill frowned. 'Where does that leave the Protectorate?' he asked.
'In terms of our treaty with the System Lords we don't know' Davis admitted. 'We're not sure about the Asgard Protected Planet's treaty either' he said. 'Daedalus is already on its way to Pegasus and they've got problems big enough of their own that the IOA don't want to recall her, so for now we've adopted a policy that any goa'uld ship that enters the Tau'ri Protectorate will be fired upon.'
'So are we still at war with Baal?' O'Neill queried.
'Yes but that might change I suppose if the IOA decides we need to back him against the Replicators' Major Davis replied. 'I'll keep you posted' he said.
'Just so I know when to tell the SG Teams to stop shooting at his Jaffa' O'Neill replied. 'We're at war with the Replicators but so far we're not at war with their goa'uld allies.'
'Officially we are not at war with Lord Yu or the others as yet' Davis confirmed. 'But the forces under Commander Sharp's might be fighting them soon, if they're not already.'
O'Neill groaned. 'And the Asgard...'
'Are at war with the Replicators like always and may declare war on the System Lords allied to them at any moment' Davis told him. 'The Tok'ra and Free Jaffa are currently trying to determine which they should be on, they'll probably lean towards Baal though if he starts losing bad like we will I imagine.'
'Okay, I think I've got a handle of this now' O'Neill announced after another deep breath.
Davis looked shifty. 'No you haven't' he responded. 'I haven't told you the best part yet' he said.
'Oh, please do tell me the "best part" Major Davis' O'Neill replied sardonically.
'Just before you called me in I received a note telling me that another player just entered the game' Davis replied. 'Loki's ships have started attacking the Replicators and Replicator-allied goa'uld.'
Jack O'Neill nodded slowly. 'Okay' he said slowly. 'So our enemies, enemy is the ally of our enemies, enemies, former-allies enemy' he worked out in his head as best he could.
'I wish it was that simple' Davis replied.
'You think that was simple?' O'Neill responded in disbelief. 'It barely made sense to me and I said it' he declared.
'It is when you hear that Loki is offering to form an alliance' Davis replied.
'You mean with Baal?' O'Neill surmised.
'No' Davis replied. 'With us' he said seriously.
O'Neill looked at him, looking hopefully for a sign this was just a delayed April Fools joke at his expense but alas seeing no such indication in his expression. 'It's at times like this I wish I knew where the key to my desk drawer was so I could keep a bottle of scotch in it' O'Neill told him.