Relativity

by Stargate

  “Nine drones, quadrant four. Six drones, quadrant three,” Teal’c reported, glaring at his sensor console.

  “They brought friends,” Carter began to say, but the Jaffa was still speaking.

  “Three drones, quadrant five. Three drones, quadrant one. All targets show attack orientation, Major.”

  Sam pumped more power to the Glider’s sub light engines and extended away from the ball of debris she had created. Carter hazarded a look up and around, and saw the headlong approach of the drone force that dappled the scanner screen. Glaring white bolts of coherent energy flashed soundlessly past the cockpit, and distantly she registered the sphere-shaped fighter she’d seen on Kytos vanishing inside an expanding plume of green fire. Static rumbled over the intership com channel.

  Beyond the edges of her immediate arena of battle, the bigger and slower ships of the Pack flotilla drifted with streaks of fire and crystallized gas leaking from their hulls. Hundreds more flashing drones swept and dove around the large vessels, tearing into them. Here and there, heavy wattage beams or plasma flares issued out and swatted at the robot fighters, but with every passing second there seemed to be more and more of them.

  Sam spun back into the fray as Vix’s fighter shot past her and she destroyed two more drones that came hot on his tail. The Pack leader’s ship waggled its wings in a gesture of thanks.

  “I read critical failure on a grain lighter in quadrant two,” said Teal’c. “It is about to explode.”

  Carter inverted the Death Glider just as the vessel Teal’c described became a brief, tiny sun. She felt her throat tighten. “How many people were aboard that ship?”

  Vix’s answer was grim. “Eighty families, with livestock and hydroponics.”

  The major’s jaw stiffened. “Vix, we can’t hope to counter all these drones face-to-face. They’re being commanded from the main Aschen vessel. We need to target that, cut off the head.”

  “We cannot leave the flotilla undefended,” came the reply, static lacing the words as a Death Glider in red livery imploded nearby.

  “You’re fighting a defensive battle,” Sam pressed. “You’re engaging on the Aschen’s terms, not ours. We have to turn things around, get in their faces…”

  Teal’c grunted in agreement. “Colonel O’Neill has often opined to me that a good offence is the best defense.”

  “I won’t divert all my interceptors for a fruitless attack on the mothership,” he retorted. “We must hold off the drones until the Pack can enter hyperspace. To stay and fight risks death for us all… I must think of the safety of the clans.”

  “The Aschen have been tracking you for months,” said Teal’c, “what makes you believe you will be able to avoid them now? Mirris will not allow you to escape.”

  “Two!” Carter snapped. “Just give me two fighters! You tie up the mass of the drones defending the flotilla and I’ll loop around, strike at their command ship. It’s worth a shot…” She glared out at the battle as another capital ship exploded. “For all our sakes.”

  Vix’s voice came back a moment later. “Two interceptors, then.” He called out on the general channel. “Noa, Kiq? This is Vix. Form up on the Tau’ri’s Glider and follow her orders.” The warrior’s ship crossed over Sam’s canopy and she saw him nod in salute. “Good hunting, Major.”

  “Right,” Sam replied, steeling herself. “Time to put your money where your mouth is, Carter.” She pushed the throttle bar forward and powered toward the Aschen vessel, with a pair of dart-shaped Calaian fighters riding in on her engine wake.

  “Interim report,” demanded Mirris, striding through the rows of cubicles in the command nexus. Geddel turned from his operations podium near the hologram dais and blinked at her with watery eyes. She could feel the fear coming off him in waves. The fool’s arrogance had made him so bold that he had dared to openly oppose her, and her violent physical response had shaken the sub-director to the core. Aschen never raised their hands to one another; it simply was not done. But the pleasure it had brought to Mirris and the lingering after-effect of Geddel’s new fear— an echo of the way all the crew now looked at her— made that old thinking seem outmoded and dull. She smiled thinly as she watched him scramble to obey her orders.

  On some internal level of consideration, Mirris knew that Geddel had actually been correct. Her dealings with the Pack nomad Ryn, her obsession with the Tau’ri and the hateful sorrow over Mollem’s death, these things had gradually worn away the veneer of Aschen detachment bred into her. He accused her of taking on the traits of these inferiors, and she had. Mirris had become like the Earthers in her quest to destroy them; perhaps she should have found an irony in that, but the immediate promise of destruction occupied too much of her thoughts.

  Geddel brought a holograph of the combat zone into life. “Uh. Drone attrition within acceptable parameters, Administrator.” His voice was more nasal than usual where his nose was swollen from her assault. “The migrants are incurring ongoing losses. I estimate they will have depleted their forces before our own losses reach the midway point. Some smaller tonnage ships are attempting to move out of the engagement area, but these are being tracked and will be eliminated once main threat forces are destroyed.” He swallowed. “The planetary attack continues. Ground drones have isolated the Tau’ri encampment and continue to assault it.”

  She nodded. She was pleased. “This is adequate. Ensure that no-one escapes through the Stargate or into hyperspace. I want no survivors.”

  Geddel did not acknowledge her order and she shot him a look. The sub-director’s attention was on the holograph. “Administrator…” He began, as if he were fearful of bringing something unpleasant to her attention.

  “Speak!” she barked.

  He pointed into the ghostly image. “A flight of migrant fighters have broken off from the main engagement and are making a high-velocity approach toward our ship.” The display reformed to show three small craft, one of Goa’uld design, the other two of Calaian construction. “It could be a probing attack…”

  “Three fighters?” Mirris’s scorn was withering. “Have the drones obliterate them.”

  “I cannot,” Geddel winced as he replied. “All drone units have been deployed to other targets.”

  She bared her teeth. “Then bring the beam cannons on line. I want them turned into vapor.”

  “I read multiple power nodes, transmission antennae and energy conduits,” said Teal’c, running his gaze down the scan results coming in from the Aschen mothership. The Death Glider’s targeting grid highlighted the vital systems inside the alien vessel, but the profusion of them was so vast that he could not be sure of the best place to strike. He relayed this to Major Carter.

  “Yeah, Aschen use a centralized network for all their main systems,” said the major. “I noticed that when we took a look around their harvester back on Volia. All their power infrastructure channels emerge from a core location, but they modulate the pattern so it merges into the background clutter on a scanner.”

  “I take it you have a method of defeating this concealment?”

  She nodded. “After Volia, the Pentagon wanted some tactical analysis in case the Aschen decided to show up again, and I came up with a way to isolate and track their power grid.”

  The Jaffa paused, framing his next words. “Major. You are aware that if Colonel O’Neill and his…counterpart were captured by the Aschen, then it is most likely they are on board that vessel.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah, I know it. And I know what his orders would be right now if I could ask him.” He heard the slight catch in her voice.

  “We must proceed,” he replied.

  Carter nodded and toggled a control on her panel. “I’m broadcasting this to everyone. Tune your sensors to this sub-frequency modulation, and then aim at the big glowy thing.”

  Teal’c raised an eyebrow as the major’s algorithm shifted the scanner’s point of view; abruptly there was a clear line of sight to the Aschen s
hip’s central generator.

  “This is Noa, I have the target,” called the Pack pilot.

  “Kiq here. I see it too.” The delta-wing fighter peeled off. “I’m going in.”

  “No, wait!” Sam cried. “We need to concentrate our firepower! It’ll be heavily protected—”

  “My mate was on the grain lighter!” snarled Kiq. “I do this for him!”

  Carter threw the Death Glider after the Calaian ship, with Noa’s fighter right beside them, but they were too late. A blinding wall of white light, so strong that it even penetrated the polarized canopy of the Glider, seared the Jaffa’s eyes as the Aschen vessel opened up with its anti-ship cannons. Designed to punch holes in other capital ships, the beam turned Kiq’s fighter into a brief sketch of black and gray before it vanished. Teal’c blinked furiously at the purple after-image on his retinas.

  “Ugh,” managed Carter. “Can’t wait. We have to hit them now.”

  He worked the control console and poured power into the Death Glider’s guns. “Weapons at optimum, Major.”

  “Noa, ready on your command.”

  “Targeting…” Teal’c saw the gun cues converge over the hot spot on the Aschen ship’s hull, even as the anti-ship cannon tracked to follow the fighters. “Now!”

  Death Glider, delta-wing and Aschen warship all fired in the space of the same heartbeat.

  Raw, unchained energy punched through the brass hull of the mothership and boiled away vital components, severing conduits and spilling vast crackling floods of electricity through a dozen decks; but all of this happened an instant before the anti-ship gun erupted for a second time and disintegrated Noa’s fighter, even as the pilot’s kill shot left her guns. The backwash slammed into the Death Glider and tossed it away into the blackness, throwing Carter and Teal’c against their restraints and pushing them past the point where the ship’s protective integrity field could keep them conscious.

  All through the Aschen ship the constant and ready flow of power from the energy core stuttered and dimmed. Lights flickered, life-support became unstable, drives choked on gulps of plasma; and on the vessel’s secure holding level, a contragravity generator unit failed completely.

  One second they were off the ground, steady as a rock, both men engaged in little more than a grimacing contest, and the next —

  O’Neill swore out loud as the cage fell to the deck and cracked open all along one side. He bounced as it hit the floor, rattling around like a dice in a cup, finally tumbling out and across the metal deck in an undignified heap.

  Jack ached absolutely everywhere as he hauled himself back to his feet amid the flickering lights and the trilling sounds that had to be some kind of alarm siren. Like his cell, the old man’s cage had also broken open on impact where the bio-plastic split against the metal floor. As quickly as he dared, afraid that the other man could have broken something, O’Neill dragged him out. He got his cellmate to the edge of the room just as the lights came back on at full strength and the mangled cages rose slowly and unsteadily back into the air.

  The old guy blinked and pushed him away. “Get off me.”

  “Oh, fine. A thank you would be nice.”

  “For what? You think we’re any better off out here than we were behind bars?” He jerked a wrinkled thumb at the cages.

  “We’re free,” the colonel retorted, “that’s an improvement from where I’m standing…” He massaged his knee. “Ow. Oh, I think I pulled something.”

  “Free?” said the old man, unconsciously mimicking his action. “This is a class six Aschen auxiliary control craft. Crew of a hundred or so, plus twice as many automated security drones. Getting past them to a teleport terminal would count as being ‘free’. Standing around nursing a damn gimpy knee without so much as a butter knife between us, that ain’t anywhere near the same.”

  Jack eyed his counterpart. “You are a sour old bastard, aren’t you? Even grandpa had more yuks than you, and he was the meanest cuss I’ve ever met.”

  “Bite me,” snarled the other man, getting to his feet and limping away.

  “Look,” O’Neill called after him, “like it or not, you and me are in this situation together and doing nothing about it won’t end well for either of us. Maybe you do have a good reason for screwing around with history, and maybe you don’t. But whatever happens, I know you don’t want to see Jade killed. If you are me, then there’s no point in lying to… To yourself. Deep down you don’t want to see anyone die needlessly, not when we can do something about it.” The old man paused, listening, and he continued. “What do you say we get the hell out of here, and try to straighten this mess out before someone we both care about gets hurt?”

  The other man turned slowly and gave him a scornful stare. “You’ve been thinkin’ up that speech a while, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, “a little. I thought it was pretty good. Did you buy it?”

  “A little,” repeated the elderly soldier, and he gave a sigh like the weight of the world was pressing him down.

  Maybe it is, thought O’Neill.

  Something that might have been a smirk touched the craggy face of the old man. “A pair of Jacks. Not much of a hand.”

  “We’ll play what we’re dealt. That’s what we always do.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The wheeled forms of the Aschen drones came on regardless, rolling over the sparking hulks of their fallen counterparts, shrugging off all but the heaviest caliber gunfire. The stale smell of spent cordite and ozone was heavy in the damp jungle air and it collected in Daniel Jackson’s lungs, tight in his chest like acid heartburn. Close by, Colonel Reynolds dropped back into cover behind a plastic equipment crate and detached the ammunition magazine from his M4 carbine. Daniel saw a thin stream of smoke curling from the barrel of the assault rifle, the heat of so many rounds fired dissipating from the weapon. Lasers crackled as they lanced lines of white light over their heads, mingling with the strident chatter of automatic rifles. There was a small war unfolding on the surface of Kytos, confined into the space around the SGC encampment.

  “Aim for the wheel hubs,” Reynolds was saying into his radio. “If you can’t penetrate the brain-case, go for a motion kill instead.” The colonel slammed a fresh magazine into place and went back to the ready. “Doc! How’s your ammo?”

  Daniel looked at the pistol in his hand. He’d fired his last shot several minutes earlier. “Spent,” he admitted. “Colonel, we’re not going to be able to hold them off much longer. We need a new plan.”

  Reynolds aimed and shot out the wheels of another drone. “At this stage, I’m open to any suggestions!”

  Jade was near, steadily putting blast after whooshing blast from Teal’c’s staff weapon into the advancing machines. Jackson glanced at her. “The Aschen have a beaming terminal out there somewhere. If we could destroy it, we’d cut off any reinforcements…”

  “Gotta get to it first,” said Reynolds, “and if you hadn’t noticed, we’re kinda boxed in here, Doc. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “The only way to stop the drones en masse is to terminate the control interface, and that’s aboard the command ship.” Jade threw a nod toward the night sky, where silent glitters of light showed evidence of the Pack’s battle overhead. “Also impossible to get to.”

  Jackson ducked as a beam fanned out and cut a burning slice through the material of a tent to his right. “We’re not going to win a war of attrition with those things!” he snapped. “There’s got to be another way to reach the ship…” Then all at once, he had it. “The pod!” he shouted. “Your time-pod! It’s just a glorified personal beaming device, that’s exactly what you said about it!” He continued off Jade’s nod of agreement. “We could use it to transport someone to the Aschen ship, couldn’t we? They’re in near orbit, close enough to reach, right?”

  Jade nodded again. “Maybe, but it’s not going to happen. General Hammond took all my equipment when you captured me. The pod I was using is
in Doctor Lee’s lab back at Stargate Command.”

  “Yes, it is!” Daniel said with a tight grin, “but the one your Re’tu friend had on him is here.”

  “Hell, Doc, you think you can rig that thing to beam someone up there?” demanded Reynolds. “Before we get overrun?”

  “I’ve had extensive experience with Ancient technology—” Jackson began.

  “Whatever!” The colonel waved him away. “Just go do it, double-time!”

  Daniel broke into a run, and Jade came with him, the two of them racing across the churned mud of the campground as weapons fire hissed and spat all around them.

  “Report! Report! Or do I have to beat it from one of you?” Mirris yelled, spittle flying from her lips in open rage. The intendants in the cubicles around her recoiled as if she had struck them, and their behavior made her want to do exactly that. Her hand strayed to the beam pistol holstered beneath her robes and she considered for a moment which crewmember would be least useful, the most expendable, in order to display her towering displeasure. The flickering lights of the command nexus threw a hellish glow across her anger-contorted expression.

  Geddel curtailed her murderous thoughts with a strident nasal reply, at last giving her what she had asked for. “Momentary power fluctuation. System parity loss at power core. One of the ship’s energy regulator arrays was destroyed by enemy fire. Automatic self-repair is under way, power is re-routing.” He gulped nervously. “I read a twenty percent loss overall throughout primary vessel systems.”