“So Rodney, what is that?” the newly promoted Colonel John Sheppard asked his more scientific friend Rodney McKay. He was referring to the device that sat in high orbit around the sun that the Daedalus was sitting a respectable distance away from. They, along with Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Dr. Carson Beckett, and Dr. Jennifer Keller, were chosen to investigate to find out what had happen to theFirestorm. It was well known that the Firestorm crew was going to be made majorly of scientists and though Eric didn’t mind that, he did mind, though, being considered nothing more than a science experiment. Which more than a few scientists did, much to his chagrin. Rodney was among this crew for about five minutes until John set him straight with his secret weapon, a lemon. So it came as no surprise when he was given several hours to get to the Theta Site, he decided to take the long way to stall. They immediately knew something was up, when halfway through his journey he contacted Atlantis with coordinates to a star system and sensor readings of an Ancient Device. He was streaming real time when he was cut off, but it was enough to see that he was pulled in violently when the Firestorm got too close. That was the reason why they were a good distance away; they couldn’t tell what had happen to the Firestorm or what the device did and were not about to lose two vessels over it.
“I think it’s some sort of long range transportation device. The raw data we got from the Firestorm's sensors along with the visuals show that that weird gate at the center of that thing when combined with the tuning like forks, cause a ripple in space-time, which caused the Firestorm to be pulled in the first place. This shouldn’t be possible! That stargate shouldn’t even be able to work!” the canadian scientist said typing irritably at his tablet.
“Apparently it is, because there isn’t speck of debris from the Firestorm to be found,” Colonel Caldwell said from his set in the command chair. “Besides this thing was made by the Ancients, who invented the stargate. They probably know a lot more about the inner workings of the gates than you do Doctor,” the Colonel said with a smirk hidden by the status report of the Deadalus that he was reading, earning a glare from the egoistic scientist.
“Anyway,” Teyla interrupted before an argument could breakout, “If it is like the gates, would it not go somewhere with another one on the other side? Wouldn’t Eric just use that to return from where he is?”
“Maybe the device that works as a DHD is damaged or he just doesn’t know how to work it?” John said hesitantly. “Or he could have gotten sidetracked.”
“We won’t know unless we follow him into the gap.”
Rodney made a face at that thought, “If this is like the gates, there could be hundreds of them. We could wind up in a completely different galaxy than him and have the same problem he’s having, not being able to communicate with Earth which he would have done as soon as he could.”
“That is an easy fix, just bring some of the communication stones. Those things have an unlimited range that we know of, use little power, and take up less room than a P90. Add to the fact that the Asgard beaming tech can be used to make anything we need so long as we have enough power to do it, we could easily last long enough to find him. We could also grab a gate to stay connected to Earth with, so if we do find the Firestorm you can easily hook it up to the ZPMs onboard and if we need more power we might be able to to route power to the gate with the solar dives to recharge like they try to do on the Destiney, but failed because of the the age of the thing,” John replied.
Rodney muttered something indecipherable before nodding in agreement that he had a point.
“Colonel Caldwell, contact Atlantis, let’s see if we can do some exploring.”
------Firestorm’s hangar bay_---_
“This is so not cool,” Rainbow Dash said as she did a lap of the bay for the hundred plus time. “I am so bored.”
“I don’t see why. The commander of this vessel gave us access to the ship’s database. Sure it’s only voice with pictures, but I still learned a lot about the Tau’ri,” Twilight said as she listened to a tablet.
“Really? Like what? Are they same sort of super ponies that can shoot lasers from their eyes or have super cool powers?” Dash asked as she tried to grab the tablet.
“Well, first they are related more to apes than equines. Two they don’t have ANY powers or magic whatsoever. Three, stop grabbing my tablet and I will tell you what they can do,” Twilight said as she pushed Dash away a bit. As the multicolored mare settled down, Twilight began anew.
“They are interesting to say the least. Accounting to this, though, they have only been in space for about twelve years and already have taken down three major galactic threats and are working on the fourth.” At this Dash raised an eyebrow.
“Twelve YEARS? And they have all this already?! Either their years are a lot longer than ours or someone is laying on the propaganda thick,” Dash said as she waved her hooves around in disbelief.
“The Chief said that we are going to be in hyperspace for about an hour and this says that a day is twenty-four hours long with three hundred and sixty five days in a year.”
“Same as ours?”
“Yes. Well this says seventy years ago they found an artifact. This artifact turned out to be a device that was determined to create one way wormholes to another device which they labeled as a stargate. They figured out how to work it about fifty years later, taking a team of military personnel and scientists to another planet. There, they found out that their galaxy, The Milky Way, was under control of an alien parasite called the Goa'uld. Which are snake like creatures that take control of a human for a host forcefully. After nearly having a bomb sent back through the gate, they decided to leave it alone until an attack came through the stargate forcing the country which had the stargate at the time to form Stargate Command to find a way to protect their planet with a secondary objective of getting rid of the Goa'uld System Lords. A few years later they managed to build their first starship, the Prometheus, by using reverse engineered Goa'uld ship tech.”
“Wait, wait, back up a bit. They were fighting a spacefaring race without SHIPS!” Dash said in utter disbelief. For a race to go up against a spacefaring race for any amount of time and not be blasted into oblivion from orbit is unbelieveable. “How?”
“Apparently they found allies. Their first ally was the Asgard who put their planet under their protection that kept the Goa'uld out of their system, while the stargate allowed them to strike without worry of their planet being attacked. The only reason why the Asgard didn’t take care of the Goa'uld themselves is because they were too busy with a threat in their galaxy, the Replicators.” At this Dash nodded in understanding. The Asgard was their shield and the Tau’ri became the Asgard’s sword.
“Another ally was the Tok’ra, a sect of Goa'uld that objected to the ways of the System Lords and only took hosts that volunteered, hurt or sick, and still the host still had a say in things. They had a massive network of spies and connections and made espionage into an art.
After the downfall of the Goa'uld was all but assured, the Tau’ri helped the Asgard against the Replicators. The Replicators were advanced robots capable of reproducing themselves indefinitely, consuming all available resources in an area to create more of themselves. They could absorbed energy from weapons fire and take over most technology. Turns out their low tech firearms were extremely effective against the block form Replicators compared to the energy weapons the Asgard used. There later came a form of Replicators that were made of nanite cells that was only able to be destroyed by the Replicator disruptor, built by the Asgard in conjunction with the Tau’ri, that rendered each block inert.”
“So they are fast when they fight and probably don’t pull any punches,” Dash said in thought. “That two threats. What’re numbers three and four? Oh and how many ships do they have and what’s their fighter specs, if you have it?” Dash said. She then raised an eyebrow, “They do have a fighter right?”
“They have seven ships counting this one. The others are theDaedalus, Apollo, Odyssey, Sun Tzu
, and George Hammond of the Daedalus class, and the Prometheus the lead ship of her class which just got reinstated for production. Their fighter is the F-302 space superiority fighter armed with two railguns and four missiles and, wow, we need to get this, is hyperspace capable, rated for intra-system travel.”
“Now that is cool! Hyperspace capable fighters! I wonder how they got the drive small enough to fit, cause I remember that AJ said a hyperdrive could only be so small before weird stuff starts happening,” Rainbow Dash said thinking of how that would open up new tactics and how to counter them.
“Well it said that it was for intra-system jumps only so it’s likely they drop range for size.”
“Well there is something that will be helpful to trade for, but for what?”
“That is above our pay grades, Dash.”
“True, now the other two threats”
“The Ori were ascended beings from another galaxy enforcing, quote ‘Follow my religion or die’ unquote. That’s all it says. I wonder why,” Twilight said as she fiddled with the screen.
“Probably something to do with what they did to defeat them. Maybe something that they are not proud of how they had to defeat them.”
“Maybe Dash, though I shudder to think of what would make them feel like that, since what history I have found show that on their own planet they had battles in wars that made the wars that we had on look like schoolyard scuffles. With deaths in the millions on ONE side.’”
“Yikes. I see why you feel that way and if that is true than I can somewhat believe that they could do that in roughly twelve years.”
“Chief Migzaiz told me about the Wraith. How I understand it is that the Wraith are to the humans as the Senris are to us.”
“That has to be a problem.”
“It would be if they were in the same galaxy and if they didn’t have an ally in a Wraith called Todd that didn’t make a serum that took away the need for them to feed on humans and let them eat regularly,”
“That is helpful,” Dash said surprise that such thing was possible.
“Indeed it is...”
“Twi what’s wrong?” Dash said as she saw her old friend had paled and felt her shock flow from her though their bond of the Elements.
“A-a year ago their homeworld was attacked, they still aren’t done counting the dead which, at last count, was over ten million. Also apparently that their government was hiding the stargate for all that time, so the attack and later disclosure of the stargate sent shockwaves through the population,” she said quietly thinking that sure they lost a lot more beings than that in all but never that much at once on the same planet in one day. “Dash these ponies are hurt and angry. If what this says is even half true than they’ve been fighting with not even a twentieth of their total potential, Dash. Just think what will happen if they go all out on something.”
Dash said nothing, but did shudder. Then jumped as the ship deck shuddered a couple of seconds later.
“Hmm, its seems that their hour and our hour is the same. So I guess he will be callin...” Twilight was cut off as she was surrounded by a flash of light.
“Or he will be teleporting you up there,” Dash said with a smirk as she imagined her friends face as she took off for another lap. Only to be hit by the wall as the vessel shook and shuddered as alarms went off.
__--__\
“You know the rules about interfering, Janus.”
“I didn’t interfere.”
“You did.”
“Really, tell me where it says in the “Rule of Ascended Beings Book” that I can’t descend to replace two crystals and do a little recalibration on something I barely finished making before I ascended. Because last time I checked we couldn’t use our powers on the lower planes which I didn’t. Especially since every other thing I made either went rogue or blew up specultaly.”
“...”
“Ha, you know I’m right, so you can do anything to me.”
“You are impossible.”