Chapter 44 – The Die is Cast

SGC, Terra

Harry stood patiently waiting at the elevator doors to the twenty eight sublevel of the SGC with Sam, Daniel and Teal'C. It had been ten minutes since the gate guards had secretly phoned ahead that Jack was on his way, and five since he and SG1 had waited in the busy intersection of this level.

Finally the elevator opened to disgorge a few Airmen and Spec Ops troops before Jack finally disembarked, clutching a worn looking crossword puzzle that Sam had cut out of a newspaper. It was a 'bet' and actually her latest scheme to get Jack out of his 'intellectual' shell. It amazed Harry quite a bit that many people forgot that to make it as a qualified Air Force pilot, you had to have perseverance, good eye sight and be extremely smart – so when they wrote off Jack O'Neill as a 'low IQ lightweight' they were seriously deluding themselves. Sam was convinced that the Colonel just did it to make people underestimate him – which was quite true – and to Harry it was clear she also wanted Jack to drop the 'clueless act' with her.

Jack came to a stop and looked at them shrewdly. "How long have you been waiting there?"

Daniel tapped his watch meaningfully. "You said 'half an hour' an hour ago."

"General Hammond's waiting." Sam told her immediate superior who approached with a near smug look on his face, and handed her the apparently finished crossword.

Sam scanned the crossword. "The fate of our galaxy is in the balance and you've been sitting in your truck, finishing this?"

Jack held his hand out expectantly. "I believe it was double or nothing."

She held her hand up in reply. "Okay, 23 across, the atomic weight of boron. The answer is ten."

"Yes." Jack nodded expectantly.

"You wrote the word 'fat'."

Sam folded it up and handed it back to Jack who snatched it back with mock irritation on his face. "Your point?"

They followed the Colonel giving amused looks to each other all the way to the Briefing Room, where SG3 was already waiting for them.

Jack nodded as they all stood behind their seats. "Harper, Reynolds."

Colonel Reynolds gave a casual salute. "Jack."

Sam resumed her previous explanation patiently. "SG-3 spotted a Goa'uld reconnaissance drone while on the planet where they found the colonnade. Since that obviously means the Goa'uld were aware of its existence, SG's 3 and 5 will be providing back-up. If General Hammond approves the mission."

Jack was rather distracted today it seemed. "What mission?"

General Hammond entered the room from his adjoining office. "Good morning, everyone." He pointedly looked at Jack "Nice of you to join us."

"Good morning, Sir."

As soon as Hammond took his seat, everyone followed suit. Harry opened his own briefing folder and skimmed it with a worried frown.

"I've read Doctor Jackson's report on his translation. Given what happened the last time you encountered something like this, I'm surprised you're so willing to take on this mission."

Jack frowned. "So am I, Sir."

Daniel coughed. "Jack."

"Daniel?"

"This is the greatest repository of knowledge in the known universe. We can't let it fall into the hands of Anubis."

"Well, there's that."

Harry also chimed in with another compelling reason. "There's also the fact that if Anubis gets it, he'd derive the location of Atlantis. If he sends a fleet it's inevitable that he and the Wraith will clash, possibly exposing the fact that our Galaxy has a very large human population, and it will send them clambering to develop better Hyperdrives to get here."

Jack nodded with a grin. "And that."

"From the mission file I've read, it's one of those things that whips up from the wall, grabs your head and rearranges your brain, right?" Reynolds asked for clarification.

Harry shook his head. "Sort of. Using the Repository in an untrained manner like Jack did is not recommended. He wasn't controlling it properly and it just blasted all its contents into his mind, and that drained all its power in the process. Think of it like a Q&A machine. You ask a question and it downloads only what's relevant to answer it."

"General, we're suggesting we extract it," Daniel proposed. "Harry can use it, and perhaps he can train others to do the same."

"It's certainly possible, General. Atlantis's database is essentially the same thing, only the Repositories are much more 'user-friendly', so to speak. Now with a database on Earth it means that if, God forbid, Atlantis should be lost we'll not lose our access to all that knowledge. A backup if you will."

"I can definitely see the value in that," Hammond agreed. "Recent intel suggests that Anubis has become a serious threat to dominate the rest of the Goa'uld in a very short time. We can't afford a single all powerful Goa'uld – we need to knock Anubis out of the game, once and for all, and this Repository might just have what we need to do that. You have a go. And be careful people."

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P3X-439

SG1 emerged from the event horizon and made way for the eight Swords under the control of SG3 and 5 to emerge. The Swords were also now fitted for an Anti-Air capability; with a modified M32 40mm Launcher that fired an ingenius round called Bloodhound, which would launch itself into the air initially using standard solid propellant, after which it would unfold into a small guided missile. There was very little room left for a warhead, but when that explosive was a properly scaled naquadah potassium reaction, it would pretty much take out a Death Glider with a single hit and even an Al'kesh if a group of Swords worked together. In addition, if paired with a MALP Mk2, it could act as a subspace relay for the Swords, so that even if the Gate shut down, they would continue to operate via the powerful subspace communication array in Tranquility Base on Luna.

Harry felt rather safe among the eight UGCVs that trundled along with them, it was rather strange.

Jack turned to the Sword which was marked with the name of the SG3s commander. "Reynolds, set up a defense perimeter as you see fit. Hold the gate 'till we get back. SG5 you're with us."

The Sword in question replied 'You got it!' from its small internal speaker.

When they were out of 'earshot' or rather 'microphone-shot' Jack leaned over to Harry. "That felt damn weird, ordering a robot about."

"Technically, you're not ordering the robot."

"I know; it just felt weird, almost wrong somehow."

The moved along the crisp green grass that surrounded the area of the Stargate, it was also rather hilly, but thankfully their destination was already within view. A large ruined statue, almost fifteen meters high. It should have been larger, but the massive seated figure had lost its head to the either the erosion of time or a direct hit from an energy weapon, probably both.

The Swords deployed in a perimeter around it as Harry and Daniel walked around the statue to view it from all angles whilst the rest of SG1 found a seat in the large shadow that it cast.

He and Daniel then moved closer, and spotted an open hallway of sorts formed into the base of the statue, which was covered in to the brim in Alteran inscriptions.

Harry headed over to one section of writing behind a column. "This planet was one of the Alteran's core worlds in this part of the Galaxy. It makes sense for a Repository to be here then."

"Yeah," nodded Daniel absently, reading the inscriptions on another column intently. "Hmmm, this also used to be a statue of a great leader of theirs…name's worn off."

Harry moved to the next column in the row. "This just talks of this specific planet's history within the old Alteran domain."

Daniel skipped past to the next. "Okay, this is promising…it says, 'To any of our own who may come, find the legacy within."

Harry laughed. "Oh, that's typical Alteran double-speak. The knowledge of the Universe is both a journey within you – which leads to ascension and an external one of the material realm."

"Any progress, gentlemen?" Jack appeared with Sam and Teal'C following behind.

"Quite a lot actually."

Daniel looked confused. "Huh, we have?"

"I said that it was double-speak, I've only covered what it meant from one point of view," Harry explained.

Jack smiled wryly. "We could have Goa'uld on our collective asses any minute now."

"I know Jack, I was going to say that from a second, more literal point of view…the legacy," Harry reached over to the column and pushed his hand against the inscription.

Sam, who had been scanning the other side of the wall, let out a startled exclamation when the organo-metallic shape of a dormant Repository suddenly phased into existence right in front of her. She retreated hastily to press her back against the column, well out of reach of the machine. Jack and Daniel rather comically imitated her.

"Now we just have to figure out how to get it out of the wall."

Harry moved carefully closer, focusing his thoughts clearly. The device had already linked to him via its integrated artificial telepathy. "I've got that part covered." Whereas before the Repository would latch onto someone who was eagerly seeking the knowledge and download everything…now Harry was sending it clear instructions on what to do.

The Repository shrunk, contracting further and further, until it was no more than a ten centimeter perfectly uniform cube, which was now sitting in the camouflaged alcove it had laid dormant in. Harry picked it up carefully. "You've seen a universe in a bottle. Here's a universe of knowledge in a cube."

Jack squinted oddly at the thing. "It's so…small."

"The Universe rarely conforms to what we expect of it, Jack."

"SG1, we have Gliders incoming!"

Everyone brought their PR8s to bear in reflex and crouched behind the columns. Harry carefully secured the Repository cube in his backpack, and joined SG1 behind cover as the whine of Death Gliders speeding through the atmosphere reached their ears.

A flight of five Gliders screamed in from the east, strafing the ground with plasma fire that snaked towards their position. Harry willed his chromesuit to materialize the standard hand held M32 or 'Six-pack attack' as it was called amongst STO troops, due to its large six shot drum ammo feed.

Jack and the others put in sound cancellation earplugs before he screamed. "SG5 take those suckers out!"

The four Sword UVs had also reversed into cover, but now advanced slightly to make sure their integrated M32s had clearance. Muted deep thumps and a slight whiff of smoke from the thick barrels heralded the Bloodhound rounds shooting four hundred meters in the air, whilst deploying their control surfaces before a micro-graviton pulse engine boosted them to seek their programmed targets.

Five bright flashes forced them to look away as all five Gliders were destroyed and reduced to nothing more than fiery fragments that rained down on the area.

"We got what we came for! Retreat! Harry cover our tracks!"

He nodded and rushed over to the alcove, placed a large slab of C4, stabbed in a detonator and sped to join the sprint back to the gate. The SG5 Sword unit fired more Bloodhounds into the air, as they trundled alongside.

This time the four smart devices streaked through the air at over two thousand feet per second to concentrate on an approaching Al'kesh. The resulting explosion was deafening, and made the team doubly grateful for the sound dampening earplugs.

Harry added another explosion when he triggered his C4, which would hopefully convince Anubis that they had destroyed the Repository rather than risking it falling into the Goa'uld's 'hands'.

By the time they reached the Stargate, the SG3 Swords also sent more Bloodhounds into the air. The rounds had in simulations not been detectable by the crude sensors on a Death Glider, being generally too small. As such, the Gliders still in the air were flying in panicky evasive maneuvers.

Harry didn't even bother with the DHD and reached out to mentally interface with the Stargate. The event horizon just fizzled into existence with no unstable vortex at all, forming the wormhole to Earth. Jack tapped on his GDO and bodily grabbed Harry, who was too surprised to do anything to protest and was pushed through.

Harry stumbled out onto the ramp, barely keeping his M32 in hand whilst retaining his balance. "Damnit Jack!" He paused to collect himself, ripping out the earplugs, before heading down the ramp to an alarmed General Hammond.

"What happened?"

"I've got the Repository, General, but Jack saw fit to toss me through with it."

"He did the right thing, Commodore."

"I know."

Sam stumbled through next, looking a quite dusty, followed shortly by Daniel.

Harry stopped her. "Where are they?"

She shook her head ruefully in reply. "They were rather eager to use their own M32s."

Finally, Jack and Teal'C, looking even more sweaty and dusty rushed through.

"Honestly, we have the Swords for a damn reason, you know?" Harry groused.

Jack's grin was decidedly satisfied. "Couldn't resist firing off a few of these babies."

The MALP came through next, followed by SG5's Swords who were reversed, as they trundled down the ramp. SG3s appeared, and were firing their PR8s on full auto into the wormhole. Reynold's unit emerged last.

"Defenses up!"

Shield and Iris covered the mouth of the Stargate. There were six man sized flares against it before the wormhole shut down.

Jack's grin turned shark-like. "Ouch."

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Doranda, Pegasus Galaxy

Emerging from the orbital Space Gate, Puddle Jumper 5 extended its nacelles and the instant it had viable thrust, rolled and burst onto a new course to take it into a low orbit of the planet below. John Sheppard was finding it strange being in the seat directly behind the pilot, and he wished he could take the controls, but it was currently well in hand. Not by Rodney, who still couldn't fly in a straight line, or Ford, who was many things, but not a stick jockey, or even Teyla…who obviously couldn't pilot the ship as it wouldn't work for her.

No, sitting at the controls, was the former 'Chief Engineer' of the Lantean warship Aurora. His medium-length hair was the colour of obsidian, and he wore it in a precise style. His skin was still cream-colored due to the lack of exposure to the sun, despite his fellow Lanteans practically sunbathing every day to get rid of the complexion that was a leftover from the Cloning cycle. He had hollow cheeks and his dark eyes were intent and searing in their intensity as he piloted the Jumper.

The Lantean known as Ustheus turned his gaze to Rodney, who was seated next to him at the co-pilot station. "Are you detecting any life on the planet?"

"Nothing. Life signs are negative."

Ustheus' jaw clenched. "I guess it was too much to hope that any Dorandans survived. They were one of the finest examples of an enlightened human race in the Pegasus Galaxy, and their finest minds had worked with us on a number of occasions."

"Wraith probably wiped them out for that reason," Ford shook his head grimly.

"Yes, but it seems my people and Dorandans did considerable damage before the end," Ustheus pointed ahead.

John looked through the forward viewport and whistled in appreciation. The Jumper was now flying through a truly massive debris field, composed of mostly unrecognisable hull fragments, ranging in size from fist sized slivers of metal to house sized sections, then finally…

"That was a hive ship," Teyla pointed out the easily distinguished organic metal that the Wraith used. An entire forward section of what had been part of a Hive ship had seemingly been blasted off and was floating and tumbling, with its orbit slowly but surely decaying.

"Something put a lot of holes in it alright."

"That's hopefully good news," Ustheus put the Jumper on an atmospheric entry vector.

"Whoa," objected Rodney. "Clearly this Secret Project of yours is some sort of weapon…what if it attacks us?"

"Dr McKay, the Arcturus Project was not a weapon system per se. It was a new form of power generation, and if it was going to attack us, it would've done so the moment we exited the Space Gate."

The Jumper was now among thick clouds, which virtually covered the entire surface of the planet. When it finally emerged below it, they were greeted with a scene of pure devastation; there had been a city below, and it was practically destroyed down to the foundations…everything was crumbled and dust. The only signs that remained of it were the artificial radial lines of fairly wide roads.

Rodney frowned into his station, his mind reading and interpreting data from the sensors. "I'm picking up faint energy readings coming from ahead…ten degrees starboard."

Ustheus turned the small scout craft and the horizon shifted, and immediately a few kilometres distant there rose a completely intact and near pristine building out of the devastation. It had the classic merging of angular geometries and rounded edges that were characteristic of Lantean architecture. Prominent on top of the twenty meter tall building was a rounded and lethal looking energy cannon with multiple emitter barrels, aiming upward into the sky.

"Very nice," Rodney commented with appreciation at the sight of the weapon.

"Thank you, but I can't take credit for it, Dr McKay. Arcturus' was Janus' idea." The Lantean brought the Jumper into a smooth turn, around the building, bringing it in for a landing on top of a round platform jutting out of the side.

"Time Drives, Subspace Destabilizers," Rodney listed incredulously. "Is there anything he didn't invent?"

"Janus was a singularly brilliant individual, if somewhat of a…there's this wonderful expression I read in your literature…a loose cannon, that describes him rather perfectly. He ignored Council edicts time and again to cease research into all the areas of knowledge we had long ago decided not pursue, due to their dangers. The only reason he wasn't thrown into the Brig was that the Council couldn't afford to give up the chance that one of his insane experiments might result in the end of the Wraith. His mind was focused completely on solving the Wraith problem once and for all, but no matter what plan he devised…there was always some unforeseen problem that ended everything in failure."

John commented wryly, "We call that Murphy's Law."

Ustheus frowned. "Murphy?"

Rodney explained. "It's just the reflection of a mathematical idea that, given a sufficiently long time, an event which is possible will almost surely take place, usually the worst case scenario."

"I see," he nodded in understanding, "let's see if we can't possibly break this…law then."

88888888888888

Ustheus led the way through the darkened building that lit up for them as they passed and they emerged into what had to be some form of large central control room. The spacious room had numerous dust covered consoles littering it, including the distinct floating database holograph screen that lit up automatically. Its design practically mirrored those found on Atlantis.

The fully lit room with the eerie near-blue lighting that Lanteans seemed to favour, revealed two skeletal human-looking bodies, lying off to the side against a wall.

John crouched near them, looking over the decomposed near-petrified flesh. "I got two bodies here. Can't tell if they were fed on by the Wraith."

"I got three more over here." Ford declared from a small dead-end corridor he had found that led off from the control room. "I think they were Lanteans, the clothes look similar to what you guys like to wear around the city."

"We will come back for them," Ustheus looked sadly at the bodies, then headed over to the main database console and began working.

"Okay, is this why there's practically nothing in the Atlantis database on this Project?" John sighed in irritation.

"Partially, like all of Janus' work, it was kept secret from the general Lantean population. The Council feared the public outcry against the avenues of science they were allowing him to explore. Only they and the top military leaders and ship captains like Herodotus were briefed on this. There's also the small matter that this method of power generation is extremely dangerous and…delicate."

"Hang on a second," Ford frowned, "I thought ZPMs were like the ultimate power source, why were you guys looking for another form?"

"Potentia's are time-consuming to create and as you know they have limited life-span for generating power. Especially once you engage a power hungry system. They reach maximum entropy and they become useless," Ustheus explained. "The Council also wanted the benefits of Potentia power on our warships without the risk that they could be captured and used by the Wraith. The Potentia could be plugged out and carried too easily, if it was an integrated system on the other hand, the crew could make sure to sabotage or destroy the technology, and the Wraith had no hope in the Universe of reverse engineering it."

"So how does this improve on that?"

"This," Ustheus gestured vaguely to the room around them, "makes a ZPM look like your alkaline batteries in comparison. Project Arcturus attempts to extract vacuum energy from our own space-time, making it potentially as powerful as the scope of the universe itself."

Rodney turned to Ustheus. "It strikes me as something you would have tried first, even before ZPMs."

"And we did," the Lantean confirmed. "Extracting vacuum energy from our own space-time as opposed to an artificial universe in a bottle is much more complicated."

Rodney snorted at that apparent understatement. "Well, because we actually have to live in our own universe, it would present whole range of problems."

"Quite," agreed Ustheus, reading intently what was being displayed on the holoscreen, "and it seems they actually did carry out a test."

"Really?" Rodney's eyebrows shot to the roof, "then why is this planet in ruins?"

888888888888888

Commander's Office, Atlantis

"The logs indicate there was a major malfunction." Ustheus reported sombrely to General Theron and Captain Herodotus. "The Arcturus scientists were forced to shut everything down, including the weapon. Afterwards, the Wraith sent more ships despite their heavy losses, the Dorandans were slaughtered."

Theron nodded in understanding. "So if the malfunction hadn't occurred, the planet could have been saved?"

"Possibly, the scientists running Arcturus were rushed into testing before they had perfected a means of effectively controlling the power output. In addition, they ran into the problem that finally caused them to stop working on it altogether."

"And that is?" Herodotus asked intently. Aurora had shipped out on its mission to the Wraith shipyard before this had happened; he had dearly hoped in the past that Arcturus, combined with the Wraith Hyperspace Jammer would be the death knell of the accursed race.

"Exotic particle generation," Ustheus said the word as if it was something foul in his mouth. "The very act of trying to contain vacuum energy from our own space-time creates an environment where the laws of physics cease to apply. As power output increases, new and exotic particles are continuously created and destroyed inside the Reactor containment chamber, interacting with each other and with the field itself. Eventually particles are created that cannot be predicted in this space-time, and they breach the containment field as hard radiation."

"That's what killed the five Lanteans we found," John pointed out. "And while the Wraith did attack the planet and damaged it severely, it turns out they weren't responsible for levelling it to the ground. It was Arcturus itself that did that."

Herodotus was astounded. "What?"

Ustheus sighed deeply at yet another massive loss of life that could be attributed to his people's failings. "Arcturus began to overload after it had begun operation and firing on the Wraith fleet. They had to run the Gluon weapon on continuous fire as a release valve to prevent catastrophic containment failure. The scientists barely managed to shut it down, and they lost their lives in the process, but not before it destroyed everything else on Doranda. It's the reason why the building is the only thing left standing."

"So it proved a doom instead of salvation," Herodotus' shoulders visibly sagged.

Rodney raised a casual hand. "Uhm, I've actually got an idea…"

"You think you can make it work," Theron narrowed her eyes sceptically.

"Yes," the Canadian scientist shrugged simply. "I'll be the first to admit, you Lanteans are brilliant geniuses, but you don't think like we do."

"That's readily apparent," Ustheus said wryly.

"You've got ZPMs on the one hand, an artificial region of subspace time in a bottle," Rodney held up his left hand. "And an Arcturus Reactor in the other," he held up his right, "that creates dangerous exotic particles during its operation." He put his hands together, figuratively combining them. "You take an Arcturus Reactor run it normally, and create a channel or unidirectional bridge from which to siphon off the exotic particles and push it into a clean ZPM for storage; much like you would store nuclear reactor waste."

"The space-time in a ZPM is limited, it would eventually reach maximum containment, and such a ZPM would be extremely dangerous…" Ustheus was completely aghast at the idea. "If it ever destabilized…you could conceivably destroy an entire star system with it."

"Aha, not necessarily, the EP filled ZPM is highly charged and not subject to entropy. If it could then be utilized as a ZPM normally is, only this time to power the Arcturus containment field itself…"

The room as a whole considered the idea in thoughtful stunned silence.

"The idea has merit, Dr McKay, I'll give you that," Ustheus' eyes were contemplative as he did the complex theoretical math in his head. "I can think of nothing that would make it impossible to do. The creation of the connection between Reactor and Potentia, not to mention safely using such a charged Potentia will required extensive research and testing."

"Make it happen, Ustheus," Herodotus stated firmly. "We cannot let the death of the Dorandans be in vain."

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Earth, Luna 1 Orbit, Milky Way Galaxy

The cloaked Puddle Jumper was steady on its course towards the far side of the moon. At its controls Harry felt satisfied as to its performance thus far. He had finally gotten around to repairing the Jumper that had been damaged at the Battle of Visuban. He had also taken the opportunity to improve the capabilities of the Jumper.

Whereas before it would only fire Alteran Drones from the drive nacelles, it now also featured two of the new fighter sized versions of the PR8s, which gave it a self-defense ability that was not ammo dependant. He had also installed a supplemental naquadah power source that powered a Tollan Phase Shift system in conjunction with the Cloak to turn the Jumper completely intangible to the normal Universe. Any weapon fired at the ship would simply shoot through as if it wasn't there. There were some basic improvements to the structure too, that gave its front a more aerodynamic aspect and much bigger and wider 'window' to give the pilot a better view of the world around him. Even though, if a pilot fully submerged himself into the cyberspace of the craft he could 'see' in all directions, if that mental interface system went offline…well the Mark 1 Eyeball was a never fail backup.

"Are we there yet?"

Harry shook his head. "Jack, the ship isn't going anywhere."

"I know," the Colonel replied pointedly, "it's just that this is not something one sees every day."

"We're going to be seeing more of the same in the foreseeable future."

The Jumper slipped behind the moon relative to Earth and Tranquility Base came into view. Their eyes were not on focused on that, however. Hovering in orbit two hundred kilometers above the surface of the moon, in a neat formation was a total of twenty one starships. Ten of them were Asgard O'Neill Class Battlecruisers. The Alteran Dreadnought and Cruiser, Achilles and Artemis, brought it up to twelve. Then there were five Orbanian Cruisers, which were roughly equivalent in performance to the three Terran Destroyers, Prometheus, Deadalus and Apollo hovering next to them, both in size, firepower, speed and shield generation capacity, whilst lacking any fighter carrier capacities.

But the ship that really stole the show was the brand new Terran Cruiser; the TSS Agaron.

"Sweet!" Jack said appreciably.

"Say hello to the CA-304," Sam commented from the rear seat of the cockpit cabin.

"Eight hundred and ninety meters of pure destructive fury, this is what will beat the Goa'uld and have the Wraith for desert," Harry gestured to the steadily growing sleek ship at the heart of the fleet formation. Visually, it resembled the basic shape of its DC-303 cousin, only upscaled slightly more than double. It also did away with the dorsal flight deck and only had a much smaller ventral deck for carrying F302s. It made up for this though.

The ship carried none of the old Particle Beam Cannons; all energy weapon mounts now sported the infinitely more potent Neutron Cannons. The Phalanx Interceptor Grid was even more densely weaved over the hull, with Rail Guns as backups and anti-fighter point defense. Its missile tubes were like the 303, and since the ship was bigger…it had consequently a lot more missiles it could fling at the enemy at one time.

And if that wasn't already impressive enough, then there was the weapon that would make the CA304 the potential 'war winner', and was the main reason for the ship having much less fighter carrying capacity.

"Now those are what I'm talking about," Jack enthused with a pumping fist of victory. There were twenty two double barreled fully traversable turrets running the entire dorsal length of the Agaron, and twenty along the ventral. Each barrel was twenty five meters in length, with a bore of a meter and lining the interior at five meter intervals was gravitic engine coils not that far removed from a Death Glider engine. Also added to this recipe was Interial Dampeners – which reduced the relative mass of what was inside the cannon to zero.

This was the Galileo Mass Accelerator or GMA.

Theoretically, it could shoot a nineteen thousand two hundred ton projectile of solid tungsten, (which was what a cubic meter of tungsten weighed) and propel it at a target. Not that the SGC would ever consider using such a valuable metal in an inefficient manner as that. The GMA could fire anything that was put in its tubes, as long as it was under a certain mass threshold, at a staggering two thousand five hundred kilometers a second.

And that was nothing, for when the ship accelerated to its maximum sublight speed and fired at a target that was relatively stationary, such as a planet, or a ship, that the projectiles would have a kinetic impact velocity of half the speed of light. This equated to over eleven gigatons of destructive force. It could take a shaped projectile of iron and essentially crack a planet. The ammunition it could fire were varied and wide ranging.

"Will she last any longer in a firefight than the Prometheus Class?" Jack wondered.

"Considerably, sir," Sam replied emphatically. "She's powered by two Mark 4 Liquid Naquadah - Lithium Fusion Reactors; they output triple the power of the previous Mark 3. She can take a beating that would utterly destroy a DC and give it back threefold."

Harry willed the Jumper onto a new course that would take it directly to the Achilles.

"It's too bad we won't be going on the Agaron," Jack lamented.

"You just want to be the first to fire the 'big honkin space guns', Jack," Daniel cheekily commented. "And I dare you to deny you wouldn't use those exact words when you give the order."

Jack gave a mock annoyed glare to Daniel. "I still can't believe the STO gave the Agaron to Colonel Chekov. This is supposed to be the class that will liberate the Galaxy, and we give the first one off the production line to a Russian."

"Jack...all four DC ships have American COs, the STO rightly felt that the next ship needed a Captain from another country," Harry explained.

"Why not a Brit then..."

Any furtherance of Jack's argument was stopped when the Jumper smoothly entered the Achilles' Small Craft Bay and landed on a designated parking spot. Harry mentally linked with the ship and he and SG1 were instantly beamed onto the Bridge via the internal transporters.

Harry took a seat on the Control Chair and gestured for the four members of SG1 to take their own seats. These were also Control Chairs, but were isolated to a specific system. While Harry could essentially manage the ship on his own, the old adage of two heads was better than one, or in this case, five heads, held true.

He could focus exclusively on flying the ship in battle, whilst Jack and Teal'C handled the various weapon systems, and Sam managed power distribution. Daniel would keep his mind on the sensors for the most part and could also use the Transporter system offensively if the situation called for it, but would mostly just be an observer.

Harry initiated a com line with the Asgard vessel that held the Battle Group Commander.

"Achilles to Sigurd, we are aboard and all systems are optimal."

A hologram screen appeared on the Omniview Bridge, "Understood, Achilles," Thor replied. "The fleet is nearing final readiness for departure; we are just awaiting word from two Orbanian ships." Harry could hear the subtle note of irritation in the Asgard Supreme Commander's voice.

"Well, they better get their asses moving, we can't exactly spring a surprise attack if the surprisees have already moved on," Jack groused.

Thor tilted his head and his black eyes flared open slightly. "I shall encourage them then to get their 'asses' into their ships."

"Beam them there if you have to. We're not gonna screw the pooch on this one, just cos some Orbanian forgot to go to the toilet."

Thor nodded and the holoscreen vanished as the com line was closed.

They spent the next nineteen minutes mentally interfaced with the systems of the Achilles, doing last minute checks and familiarization exercises, when finally the word came through to all twenty one ships.

Battle Group One was ready.

All ships broke orbit smoothly and arranged themselves in an X formation, cruising forward one tenth of light speed. Agaron was the first to enter Hyperspace, mostly since it was the newest ship; if something went wrong the other twenty ships were there to immediately assist.

Nothing went wrong though, and the rest of the battle group sent themselves hurtling into Hyperspace.

The image of subspace pulsed around Harry and SG1, as he reflected on the battle that was ahead of them. It would not be easy, and it was a certainty that there wouldn't be twenty one ships returning to Tranquility Base, but there was nothing more to be done. They had cast their die; the rest would be in the hands of Fate and the Creator.