Pre-story notes: The story is set in 2015, so about 4 years after the last canonical events in the Stargate setting occurred. Because I'm making this set in the same cannon as another story I'm working on (don't worry, the only effect it'll have is on background statistics and maybe a reference or two) there are some differences in the Earth of that setting. The largest differences are that the SGC and its technologies are known to the general public, though are neither confirmed nor denied in their existence (despite having two BC-304s take part in a public ceremony in the other story). There are still things that are not known to the general public, such as the transporters and the Wraith. The reason for this is slow revelation of things during a major disaster that happened in 2000 in the setting and had large effects that lasted years on Earth. Hard to care about the government keeping the Stargate secret when half the planet died from a single even and its fallout.
The changes which do have an effect on the SGC are the creation of Homeworld Command was the same, but the name is Sentient World Observation and Response Department, but everyone calls it S.W.O.R.D. for short. The fleet is also larger as a benefit of hot building in hiding, as well as the time passing. The fleet's size is 26 BC-304s and the Destiny.
Anyway, if you're still reading at this point, then on with the story.
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Adar looked over the file in his hand for a long time. He knew what was in it, but he debated himself weather he wanted to open it. Knowing was one thing, having it show itself to your face, that was another.
With his left hand, he took the glass of brandy he had been using more by the day. Downing the contents in a single shot, he laid the file on his desk and looked over its contents.
Mobilization reports. Fleet deployments. Personal statistics. It was all things he already knew; he just hadn't had them in a single report. The Colonial Expeditionary Force was ready, that's what was important. He quickly flipped it to the last page and signed his name. That was it. In the morning his secretary would take the file and within 3 days the CEF would leave Picon orbit and make way for the first Anchorage on the way. Then they would go to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. And then eventually they would reach the last one, and that's when it would happen.
He poured himself another glass.
As he consumed its contents over the next few minutes, he thought about the future. His popularity was higher than ever before, dwarfing that of any president since the charter was signed. The media loved him for giving them all the hot stories they wanted. The military loved him for the blank check he gave them. Industry loved him for the new equipment he had provided them. And the people loved him for all that and more.
He poured himself another glass.
Looking at the drink's container, he thought about what his significant other was doing. Not his wife, that whore was on the other side of the system with the future minister of the interior. No, he was thinking of the minister of education. She had been very mixed on all of this. On the one hand, she had been like all the others in her support of the new technology at their disposal. She had even become the public face of it for a short time, having her breast cancer cured in minutes and with no visible adverse effects.
But she had voiced her concerns as well. Unlike most of the other ministers, the bunch of yes men who went along with anything the council said, she had been against the operation. Not openly, she had to hold the image of the united government after all, but in private she had made her position on the matter clear. It was wrong, it would backfire in the long run, it would make things harder then it needed to be. And he would probably be remembered as the worst president to ever live in a few decades when the fallout was clear.
He knew she was right. He also told himself he didn't care, though his ever emptying bottle begged to differ. This was one of his biggest mistakes, but he knew there was one he would truly be remembered for, the one which outshone them all.
He poured himself another glass.
His bottle now empty, he placed it into his desk next to the others. In better times it had been filled with papers, but he didn't need the space anymore. Not since his biggest mistake had been made.
There was a knock at his door.
"Sir, he's here." One of his security guards told him.
"Let him in." He said. He quickly downed what remained of his brink and set the glass aside.
The man who entered wore a dull, grey suit that reminded Adar of the old religious suits that some Sagittaron religious groups wore. He didn't know why they wore those clothing, but he sure felt that they fit their personality.
"Hello mister president." The man stated.
"Hello Borren." He replied. Showing his the seat, he wondered for what was far from the first time if the man and his people where capable of feeling emotion. If they did, they sure didn't show it.
"Is this an inconvenient time?" Borren asked.
"No, no, it's fine." Adar replied. He honestly didn't feel like dealing with the man who had changed his nation. For all the technological wonders they had brought, the medical treatments, the weapons, he just hadn't been getting enough sleep the past few days for him to want to deal with him. "So what brings you here at this hour?"
"The expeditionary force, I would like a transfer to be allowed." Borren informed him. He handed Adar a piece of paper. "My people would be very grateful if two of our battleships where to be allowed to partake in the operation. They wouldn't need to be supplied by your fleet, so there wouldn't be any logistical impact by their presents in battle."
Adar quickly looked over the paper. Nothing implying that either ship's captain would take command of the operation. But also nothing about who they would follow the orders of.
"The ships would be autonomous in the battle. It is not as if their coordination would be critical. The Tau'ri have but one warship after all." Borren explained to him. Adar shrugged it off. It isn't like the Earthers could have built many more ships in the decade since the Aschen had last contacted them. He quietly signed the paper.
"And is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about? This isn't something that couldn't have been handled during my regular hours."
"There's the matter of the Sagittarons. Many of them continue to block the entry of our medical technology into their world." Borren explained. "It was one thing when they simple stopped using the bureaucratic system; however these latest moves have been quite violent."
"Yes, yes, and we have the perpetrators of the attack in custody and will have them dealt with accordingly." Adar replied.
"I see. However I believe you must understand that we will be withdrawing our offering of the life-extending drug from that world. At least for the foreseeable future."
Adar would be lying if he said it was a surprise. The world was always a thorn in the side of the government, always being against whatever progress the colonies where making either for political or religious reasons, usually both.
"I understand, though I am also disappointed. Despite the actions of some extremists I'm certain that there are a large number of people on that world who would like to use the drug."
"We shall continue to offer it to all who would take it." Borren replied. "We will simply not set up medical centers on that world."
"I see." Their meeting ended in silence. Borren simply left, not even excusing himself, as he always did.
Adar opened his desk and took another bottle out.
He was glad the drug reinforced the liver; though he knew that even if it didn't he wouldn't have cared.
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"Welcome back sir." The Aschen central operations director said, welcoming Borren back. The large space station once known as Ragnar had been a welcome, if not up to their standards, home for the fleet of survivors from the once capital world of the old confederation.
"Thank you Koah." Borren replied to his wife. "They have approved of the request. Our revenge is finally at hand."
"That is good to hear. And what of the backwater world?"
"There was no objection to our pulling out. We will begin phase three of the plan."
One of the technicians turned their head at the comment, but did nothing to draw attention to themselves. Koah and Borren started to walk down to the command center.
"And what should be the concentration?" Koah asked, referring to the sterility drug.
"100%. That world is far too unruly and rebellious."
"Complete sterilization, are you certain?"
"Yes. We can use survivors from Picon and Caprica. There will be a few generations where the three worlds will not produce at their maximum potential, but it will work better in the long term then allowing the colony to continue into the new age. Their world will act as the new capital." As Borren explained his reasoning, the technician followed from a distance, being careful not to bring attention to themselves.
The technician faked attention to their PAD, scrolling threw it idly while occasionally looking up to look where he was going. He just happened to be going in the same direction as the two.
"So the hour is at hand. These Colonials are more naïve then we could have hoped for. With the balance of technology they have I'd almost think a deity had chosen these people to be the base for our new empire."
"Koah, I fear you have been spending too much time with these people to be thinking such as that. We were tremendously lucky, that is all."
"Oh course." Koah replied. As they entered an elevator, a technician moved quickly to get in with them.
"Sorry." The man said. He didn't look up at them as he fiddled with his PAD.
"How are the children coming along on the lower decks?" Borren asked to kill time.
"They are coming along better than expected. Current re-estimates put their maturation at 12% ahead of schedule."
He took a moment to crunch numbers in his head. "That puts us at about 5 years ahead for full repopulation."
The elevator opened, and the three walked out into the station's command center. The large room had a dozen people at computers running the day to day operations of the station. With how effective the automatic systems where, most could go days without needing to even touch their computers. Because of this most where using their own PADs to perform other functions. Why waste all your attention on something that required almost none of it, after all?
But diverting ones attention between different jobs also makes it harder to notice something outside their work happening that shouldn't. In this case it was a technician who ripped open a panel and preformed "routine maintenance". Or at least that's what everyone working there simply assumed, if they took notice at all.
His job was simple, download everything they had. His system wasn't strong enough to hack the communication's array, so he did what he could. He knew it would be only a week for the fleet to reach its destination. That was too soon. The fleet was supposed to leave in a month.
Jonathan O'Neill quietly cursed himself. The weekly checkups had been the day before; it wouldn't be until the day before the invasion that they would learn about the change.
The download finished, he put the panel back together and made his way to the elevator. He took a moment to stop when he was half way there, turning his head. He spied the terminal that displayed a Stargate held down three decks. It was defended by two automatic turrets. But the DHD was right there. If he could get to it….
"What are you doing here?"
Jonathan used all the training he had to not jump as he herd the question. Turning around, he faced the operations director and the head administrator.
"Routine maintenance, ma'am." There was a long silence before Koah replied.
"Not anymore. We need someone to fix the cryobays down below."
"Understood." Without another word, he went to the elevator and signaled for it to take him to the lower decks. With how simple the work was, he wouldn't need to have his full concentration on his task to get it done fast enough to be believable. He would just need to look at his PAD every now and again to not have anyone question why a two hour job would take him two hours instead of one. That would give him enough time to come up with a plan.
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"I don't believe this, they're really pushing up the launch date this much? This soon? What the frak is the brass drinking?" Saul took the orders from Picon as well as could be expected.
"It's to be expected. I don't know how the Aschen do it, but the last ships to come out of Scorpia where done sooner than expected. The fleet's going to be larger than the original plan called for." Adama replied. The two sat in his office as they dissected the latest orders from command.
"Two of their battleships though. How are we supposed to handle having the two most powerful ships on this mission working on their own? We may outnumber and outgun them a hundred to one, but those dame accountants could end up getting in our way. The last thing I want is a blue on blue." Saul took a swing at his glass, only to find it was empty. Adama passed him the bottle.
"And here I thought you hated those people."
"I do, Bill. By gods I do. But you really think they wouldn't take out a few of our ships if that happened?" The two sat in silence for a long moment.
"You know, it's funny. Everyone still thinks of the Aschen as 'them'. Other than 'us'. I wonder if that'll ever change, or if the Earthers will ever not be 'them' either?" Adama thought out loud.
"From what some of the less well-off colonies have to say, I don't think so." Saul replied. The two didn't know what they would do after the operation was done, but one thing was certain, it was quitting time. Neither would have anything to do with the occupation.
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"And so the brave men and women of the expeditionary force shall set forth and bring about a grand unification of the human race once more. For the first time in thousands of years the children of Kobol shall again be one under the gods."
As Adar's speech came to an end, Borren almost had a hint of a smile on his face. Almost.
"It's almost entertaining to watch their ignorance." Koah stated as the video cut to a pre-recorded program about the assembled fleet and explaining the sheer size of it. 300 warships, 200 logistical support ships, 200 troop transports. Half a million infantry, just as many sailors.
"Maybe, but we still have not accomplished our mission. We cannot rest until the task at hand is finished." Borren added. He used his PAD to determine how the addition of the sterilizing agent into the Sagittaron water supply was going. So far it showed promise, in two months the needed quantity of the agent would be ready, and within a week of completion it would be within every aquifer the world had. Once that was done it would be only a year before the agent would become inert.
Three decks down, Jonathan did his move. It was this time which had the most possibility for success. The crew was distracted by their main duties in relation to the mission they had. Large amounts of power from the station's core was going towards the communication's array as the small fleet of Aschen ships sent information to each other.
Entering the right deck, he found it abnormally empty even by the standards of the large station.
Opening a panel, he quietly set the system to loop the footage from the room and turned off the alarms. With that done, he walked up to what passed for a control room for the gate. The lone figure was preoccupied with their work and didn't notice his approach. That was their mistake as he quickly snapped their neck.
Now all that stood in his way was the two turrets. The hardest and most risky part of his plan where behind him. The two undefended turrets had a major flaw. They didn't know he was an enemy, and they couldn't turn enough to face him if they had. Disabling them took only the effort to pull out their power cords from the wall.
Standing before the DHD, he was at the part where things would need to move fast. The moment he pressed a single button someone somewhere would realize what was happening. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before someone came down. He had estimated his window would be twenty seconds.
Taking a deep breath, he pressed the first button. By the time he had reached the sixth, he could hear an alarm going off in another section. By the time there was the whoosh, the alarm had stopped, but he knew they were coming. Not wasting a second, he jumped through the gate.
By the time guards had entered, the DHD no longer showed the gate address he's dialed. They could find it, but it would take time, time for him to dial seven other addresses in a galaxy wide dash to get them off his trail.
When he reached the eighth world, he dialed home.
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"So they're coming early." General Landry said with a sigh. "It's bad enough they had a fleet of that size coming our way, now they're only four days away."
"How many ships could we have here in time?" Director O'Neill, who was on a speaker phone, asked.
"Twenty-two. Task Force Hammond will never make it in time."
As the general and the director continued to speak, Jonathan let his mind drift as the two went on about things above his pay grade.
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Over the four short days of transit between the colonies and Earth, the colonials prepared for the plan of attack, or what passed for it when they outnumbered the enemy a hundred to one. For its part, S.W.O.R.D. made every preparation it could with the little time they had. The gathered ships prepared for battle, the stations in orbit prepared for battle, and the few cities which had shields had them tested time and again. The Destiny was moved from Earth orbit to the rings of Saturn to hide its existence. The control chairs in Antarctica on Earth and Atlantis on the moon where activated continually to test the abilities of the systems and make certain they were working at full potential.
On the fourth day, far too soon for those in charge of both sides, the forty-third jump by the CEF occurred, and the skies high above the Earth where filled by hundreds of warships.
Outnumbered eleven to one, the might of the Tau'ri prepared once again to defend its home.