"They're right behind us! DIAL THE GATE!" Jarvis bawled as he sprinted towards the DHD, periodically firing his LMG blindly into the darkness to either side of him.

Llewellyn, Nesbitt and SG-16 had been busy – upon hearing Taylor's description of the creature's natural night vision and apparent susceptibility to bright light, they had dropped every flare they had around the gate, and planted Claymores.

Llewellyn stood in front of the DHD, and even as he sprinted, his lungs burning, Taylor could see the chevrons on the gate lighting. Behind him, something was snarling and gaining on him, so he spun quickly and squeezed the trigger on his carbine, firing blindly into the night – in the muzzle flash of his rifle, he caught a brief glimpse of innumerable teeth of impossible sharpness and two blazing discs locked on him, mere feet away. He was facing forwards again and running with every last joule of energy he could muster, his muscles screaming even before he heard something snarl and yelp and crash into the ground right behind his feet. He'd emptied almost half his magazine before the creature dropped.

With a roar, the gate activated. Claymores detonated and orange tracer fire leapt from the marines stationed there into the darkness – the aliens were closing from all sides. Almost solid lines of orange tracer streaked the other way many times faster, and Taylor heard SG-16's marines yelling in panic and screaming in agony. He knew from grisly experience that some of those screams were final.

With so many flares around the active gate, Taylor could see the DHD's front panel was off, the glowing crystal interior mostly hidden behind a dozen blocks of C4 stuffed into any cavity in the device the engineer could reasonably fill.

Taylor wanted to scream to everyone to get through the gate, but his lungs wouldn't let him. As he careened headlong towards the inviting blue pool, his vision beginning to blur, he noticed everyone was already running into the gate, many of them still firing, and dragging bodies through, a few of them still screaming.

A long burst of carbine fire screamed past his ear, followed by the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground behind him. A bestial gurgle signified the assailant's death, but Taylor could now hear distant deep humming getting closer.

"Sir! You're the last one!" Llewellyn said, lowering his gun and handing the detonator to Taylor. As soon as the small electronic device had passed into Taylor's hand, the Lieutenant sprinted for the gate, helping Jarvis drag a marine through.

Taylor didn't stop moving, even as the ground around him began to explode with alien weapons fire. Lines of orange stitched the air in front of him, and he heard something hit the DHD with considerable force, but he continued heedless. He risked a quickly glance over his shoulder, and he knew the view he saw would give him nightmares for a long time. Dozens of the wolf aliens were closing in on him at speed. A vast shape loomed over them in the sky, and Taylor realised with a shock that it was a tremendously large vehicle. Forked dart shapes sped towards him even as a wave of snarling fur sprinted forwards. His body wanted so desperately to stop, to give up, but he powered forward, feeling the comforting sensations of gate travel…

…and the cold, bright, oxygen filled environment of P7T-434. His legs gave out and he collapsed, his lungs sucking down crisp, freezing air like he'd been underwater for an hour, but he knew there was one last thing to do.

His thumb wouldn't move.

With a supreme effort, he willed the oxygen-starved digit into life, throwing the switch on the detonator.

Nothing happened. The wormhole's event horizon didn't destabilise and evaporate as he'd expected it would with its DHD and power source knocked out, there was no hail of shrapnel. Instead the Stargate remained open, and this gave Taylor a sinking feeling.

Panting, and with Jarvis hauling him to his feet, he held out the detonator to Llewellyn.

"It didn't blow…it didn't blow…we've got incoming hostiles!" he blurted, breathlessly. He realised with a start that the alien weapon's fire that struck the DHD must have destroyed the detonator – Llewellyn was too good an explosives expert to have fouled up the charge or detonator, he could almost do it in his sleep.

"Major, we're ready for them."

His vision and thinking clearing as oxygen returned to his system, Taylor scanned the area. He wondered how accurate Colonel Reynolds' assessment was – the gate was still open, but nothing had yet come through, and for a reason he couldn't place his finger on, that worried him more than if the werewolf aliens had immediately followed them through.

A space had been cleared in front of the gate – a kill zone tens of metres deep. SG-3 were already prepared, the elite, highly experienced unit's combined small arms trained on the still active gate. SG-27's tents had been hastily dismantled to give clearer lines of fire, but the F.R.E.D. and the crates it had carried were further back now, employed as cover by SG-3. Spread out through the heather were two additional SG teams – one of them Taylor recognised immediately as SG-26, the first British Stargate team, bizarrely wearing desert gear and looking tired. As soon as he spotted Major Hamilton's face, his radio crackled.

"Next time you escalate a major crisis, can you do it after my team have had at least an hour to recuperate? We barely got back through the gate before we heard what was happening."

Taylor simply grinned in response, too tired to do anything else.

The other SG team he thought was the SGC's one and only US Army team. But there were more. Taylor knew it was standard procedure that at all times the SGC maintained a sizeable immediate response combat team, two squads of elite, heavily armed USAF Security Force airmen, ready to charge through the gate at a moment's notice. He also knew that their chief role in the SGC was to rescue and provide covering fire for pinned down SG teams, and that they were drawn from the same platoon that also supplied the gate room defence teams. He was simply surprised and grateful to see them here, wondering how Landry had decided that the situation would warrant their presence.

Colonel Reynolds had the three remaining marines of SG-16 alongside his team, one of whom was a bloodied but able Captain Kuznetsky in the middle of reloading his rifle. A terrified looking Dr Lee crouched behind a stack of metal cases towards the rear of the camp, holding a Beretta in one shaking hand. Next to him, Sergeant Siler was aiming at the gate with a P90, an open crate next to him filled with the compact weapons. Taylor realised that SG-21 had been reduced to two marines, one of them injured – and neither of them Major Werner. Taylor felt a pang of guilt when he saw that his team were all present, even if they were far from unscathed.

Despite the left arm of his fatigues being ripped and saturated with blood, Jarvis half dragged and half supported him to where the rest of SG-27 had collapsed. Already, the big sergeant was readying his Minimi LMG, crouching behind the nearby F.R.E.D. as he discarded the near empty box magazine for a fresh one and pulled a spare AT4 launcher from the squad cargo vehicle. Moffatt was already bandaging his injuries, but the sergeant barely noticed.

With oxygen flooding his system, Taylor was already beginning to feel better – years of mountain climbing and marathon running had given him a remarkable recovery rate. Quickly and expertly, he pulled the magazine out of his weapon and slotted a fresh one in, before opening the grenade launcher and inserting a 40mm shell. Reynolds handed him a quartet of M16 magazines taken from an ammunition box at his feet, which he gratefully took and stored in his tactical vest.

"You can thank Dr Jackson for this little gathering, Major. He's the one who convinced Landry to commit all available troops – and he's the one who'll be in the general's office if he's wrong."

"Colonel – I think it's safe to say that won't be happening if what we saw is any indication. This might not even be enough, but it's a start."

He turned to Moffatt, Halverson and Nesbitt.

"You three, grab P90s and move towards that hill – take Dr Lee and SG-26's specialists with you, and keep moving. If we can't hold them off here, the Apollo will be in orbit in a few hours. They'll beam you out." he said. "Llewellyn, Jarvis, stay with me."

"One moment sir – Doctor, the crystal. I think it's important." Llewellyn said, handing the new Asgard crystal to Nesbitt.

"What the hell..." Taylor muttered, staring at the artefact with surprise.

"With your permission sir, I'll explain later."

Taylor nodded.

The gate rippled.

"Here they come!" Reynolds shouted.

The aliens stepped through, snarling and brandishing their battle-axe weapons like a Jaffa staff, and Taylor suddenly realised that the axe-head was little more than a bayonet on a rifle as the high-pitched scream of the weapon filled his ears. The weapons fire, eerie in night, was somehow more chilling in bright daylight. There was almost no space between each round, just an almost unbroken line of red hot projectiles screaming out of the axe-gun's barrel. The closest thing he could compare it to, in both sight and sound, was the fire from a Phalanx C-RAM demonstration, a concentrated burst of blazing orange lines.

As the guns swung around, spraying the defender's positions, Taylor got his first proper look at their attackers.

It was the first time he'd seen the creatures in full daylight. Up close, they looked far more alien, and threatening, than they did through night vision goggles or binoculars. But the overall werewolf image was still hard to shake. One of the two wolves had fur that was a dark grey-black, the other silver and grey. Both had pupil-less eyes a deep shade of orange. But strangest of all, their teeth and claws were silver – bright, almost polished silver. An asymmetric, chaotic uniform of hide and metal plating partially covered both, and he noticed on one of them that half of its face bore a bizarre tattoo like marking – an intricate pattern of jet black skin where no fur sprouted, a brand.

"Fire!"

The armour plate on the chest of the black-furred werewolf erupted in a shower of sparks as the first burst of fire found its mark and dropped the snarling alien. The silver one began to sprint forwards with startling speed, but combined fire toppled it quickly. Two more were right behind it, firing their odd axe-guns wildly – somebody screamed as the almost solid looking streams of orange projectiles found a target. As they fell, four more appeared.

Quickly, the aliens began to emerge from the gate faster than the massed guns of the humans could fell them, and even with the humans staggering their reloading, the wolves were using the lull in gunfire to surge forward with unnatural speed. They were getting too close, and as if to confirm this, he saw one of the lupine beasts run up to a terrified airman desperately trying to change the magazine on his MP5, raise it's axe-gun above it's head with a roar and bring the massive blade swinging down with horrific speed. The airman disappeared under the blade, the view thankfully hidden by the dense waist high vegetation. Taylor winced.

"Fall back!" he heard Reynolds shout. Taylor crouched, sighted, and loosed off a burst. The werewolf's chest plate danced with sparks as the bullets impacted, but the creature simply turned and fired in his direction. Cursing, Taylor dodged the stream of orange as it tore the heather to shreds where he'd been. Picking himself up, he crouch-walked backwards, snapping off another burst at a different werewolf. Looking for cover, he half-saw the recipient of his gunfire stagger and clutch it's chest before continuing forward unfazed. Taylor cursed again – they were harder to kill than he thought, that was why the SGC soldiers been so quickly overwhelmed. It was looking like it took almost half a magazine to put one of them down. He grasped the pistol grip of the AG-C launcher on his weapon and pulled the trigger.

The 40mm high explosive shell landed amidst a trio of the warrior-wolves, all three disappearing in the subsequent explosion.

Jarvis was next to him, his LMG chattering away.

"What are they doing?" the sergeant breathed. Every single one of the aliens was not just walking forward out of the gate, they were stepping to the sides…almost like they were making way for something. Something big.

"Crap…" Taylor responded, scrambling to break open the grenade launcher, pull the expended cartridge out and slot a new one in. He had a bad feeling he would be needing it very soon.

The blunt, solid nose slid smoothly through the gate, a rounded mass of dull, dark grey metal streaked with crimson. It glided through effortlessly, a lumpy, solid looking vehicle that hovered just above the ground. It was larger than a Puddle Jumper, but in his eyes definitely not built for flight, and as it exited the gate, various parts of its body extended and locked into new positions.

"Those are turrets." Jarvis said, dropping his LMG and slipping the AT-4 off his shoulder on reflex.

With a high pitched shriek, the turrets opened up, spewing unbroken lines of orange at the fragile pink apes dashing around in front of it. One marine didn't even have time to scream as the alien weapon fire, almost like a beam, sliced him in half. The black mineral ground was ripped to shreds, explosions of jet black volcanic rock rippling across the surface where the screaming arc of orange projectiles touched it, racing towards a cluster of SGC soldiers behind cover.

"Jarvis!"

Taylor needn't have bothered. The rocket streaked towards the hovering tank. An instant before it would slam into the thick grey metal, it exploded, and a shimmering scarlet field appeared briefly over the vehicle's skin. The turrets halted, turned in his direction.

"Holy crap, it's shielded!"

Other soldiers were following suit though. Two more AT-4 rockets hurtled towards the alien vehicle, and twice more, the explosions revealed the blood red energy field protecting it. The tank itself barely swayed, it's turrets swinging around and tracing arcs of fiery needles as it slowly advanced. The boulder they were hiding behind wouldn't provide much protection against so much incoming fire, but at least the alien vehicle was no longer firing at them.

"What the hell do we do, sir?" Jarvis shouted, pausing to fire his LMG at a newly appeared werewolf. "We can't take another thirty-eight minutes of this!"

"We won't need to – the naquadah reactor will detonate in approximately six minutes!" Llewellyn screamed back, ducking as a burst of alien gunfire streaked past him before returning the favour.

"We won't last one Lieutenant!" Taylor bawled over the din of human small arms fire, pained screams, the shriek of the alien weapons and the snarling of the aliens themselves. The tank was moving closer, and the humans were almost out of anti-tank launchers. Fire raged through the heather, flames licking at the Stargate as the sky blackened. Blue white light from the gate flooded the apocalyptic battleground.

"We need to get everyone away from the gate sir, the blast might come through."

Taylor sighted and squeezed the trigger. All three rounds found their target, and the alien fell, it's wounds pouring thick, black blood.

"Llewellyn! How much C4 have you got left?" Taylor bawled as he slid further down behind the F.R.E.D. and reloaded yet again.

The aliens weren't just emerging and firing, they were moving to the sides, and Taylor groaned. Something he'd seen earlier had troubled him, and now he thought he knew what it was.

The silver and red arrowhead punched through the gate and came to an immediate stop, splitting in half and expanding instantly to reveal the oddly curved central section. As soon as Taylor had seen the first alien fighter, it had occurred to his subconscious that it was almost the right size for gate travel. As sparks erupted from its armour, it pitched upwards and shot into the sky.

"Stinger, now!" Kuznetsky yelled from the other side of the battlefield. He'd been prepared – Taylor had been sure Werner had apprised him of the situation immediately after the first air attack, and now he knew.

The missile streaked upwards, and for a moment Taylor thought the alien fighter would escape, but a moment later, an orange and red fireball put that doubt to rest. The Stargate was still active though, and there was no telling how many more of those would emerge. Did they have enough Stingers? Did they have enough time?

A sucking sound made him quickly turn his eyes back to the gate. The thing that emerged was not a heavily armed werewolf – it was a larger version of the fighters, hovering a foot above the ground. The front end was double-pronged and pointed, the top a flat surface occupied by a turret spitting a stream of orange and swinging around wildly to open fire on the fragile pink targets. It looked like a large aircraft, and as it came through, large bat-like wings spread out, and the vehicle picked up speed and lifted its nose. Taylor suddenly realised it was towing something, a train of perfectly gate-sized cylinders.

A renewed wave of gunfire slammed into the tank's hull, but instead of throwing off plumes of sparks, the hail of bullets left bursts of red light that swept over the vehicle like a ripple in a pond. Behind it, the aircraft accelerated rapidly and disappeared into the sky, dragging a train of cylinders. Another emerged and departed, then a third. The wolves seemed to be trying to put as much material as possible through the gate. The troops, even the tank, were little more than a distraction to occupy the human defenders.

As the gate rippled constantly with large aircraft towing trains of cylindrical pods, the tank opened up on one side. A ramp descended even as the red shield shimmered, and out of the vehicle six more of the werewolves had emerged, but these were different. Two of them carried different weapons – these resembled warped internal combustion engines wrapped around a hollow cylinder with a narrow silver spike poking out of the business end. The weapons must have been heavy, because they were on straps of leather and spiked chains and looked difficult for even the unnaturally strong wolves to carry.

A deafening sound filled Taylor's ears, and the smell of ozone filled his nose. One of the new weapons had discharged, a thick, painfully bright line of blue white light had streaked out of the cannon and blown a huge crater in the ground near where SG-3 had been. Black dirt showered the area. To his relief, Taylor saw the marine team had thrown themselves clear in time and were beginning to pick themselves up.

"Llewellyn! Get behind the gate, set your charges and topple it! Take out the conduit and drop the gate, now!"

Nodding, the engineer pushed himself into a run even as Jarvis and Taylor unleashed both of their weapons on full automatic. The Welsh soldier sprinted towards the dense vegetation, dodging the fires and corpses, and abruptly changed direction and headed straight for the gate, heedless of the wolves turning to train their axe-guns on him. Unless the wolves could be distracted, Llewellyn was as good as dead.

Taylor yanked the pin out of a grenade.

"Fetch!"

The wolves that had emerged from the tank quickly swivelled their heads to stare at the small olive green globe sailing through the air towards them. Seconds later, most of them were on the ground. Jarvis finished the few that weren't.

But the wolves kept coming. The tank still moved slowly forward, flashes of red periodically erupting as stray bullets slammed into its shield. There were at least two dozen wolves on the field – and the gate was still open.

Moffatt turned and looked back, her face a mask of guilt. The area around the gate was a vision of hell. A large, squat looking vehicle was chewing up the SG teams down there, and even over the din of gunfire, alien and human, she could hear men screaming in pain, crying out for help.

"This isn't right. I should be down there." she said. Before she realised it, she was running back towards the battlefield.

"Kelly – you're not leaving us." Halverson called out.

There was a loud boom and a cloud of grey brown smoke rushing away from the Stargate. A second later, the large grey ring toppled forward into the shredded black rock, dragging blackened Asgard cables out of the ground like the roots of a tree downed by a storm. The debris of the battle worked better than Taylor had hoped, forming an impromptu iris, and quickly the puddle in the horizontal gate destabilised and evaporated. Seeing this had taken the werewolves by surprise, Taylor aimed and fired at the nearest alien with renewed energy. Next to him, Jarvis was doing the same, desperately trying to wipe out the remaining aliens.

As the two heavy-weapon wielding aliens fell, the others followed, until one final wolf remained. It was different – it was bigger, almost its entire body was covered in ornate black and blood red armour, and it wielded a brutal spiked mace in one hand and a weapon that looked like a hellish cross between a meat cleaver and an AK-47 in the other. But the worst thing was that the massed gunfire simply bounced off a field of scarlet energy projecting from its armour. Even 40mm grenades exploding in its chest merely made it stagger as its personal shield rippled and flared under the strain. Between the tank and this apparently high-ranking wolf, the remaining human defenders stood little chance.

Untroubled by the hail of bullets, and seemingly by the destruction of all its fellow warriors, the armoured wolf raised the cleaver-Kalashnikov. Streams of fiery projectiles spewed from the weapon, shredding what remained of the equipment cases and ripping into the ground. Two more marines fell to the weapon as the creature advanced. The unnerving stuttering snarl it was emitting could only be laughter.

"Fall back!" Reynolds yelled. Already, several of the surviving marines were racing far away from the almost unstoppable monstrosity as it advanced alongside the seemingly invincible tank. Seeing its prey escape, the creature stopped, hunched, and leapt into the air, landing in front of a terrified marine.

"Bloody hell…" Taylor murmured as the wolf jumped – it had cleared a height of fifteen feet in his estimation, and a distance of almost thirty. And it made sense. Seeing how strong the aliens had been on a high gravity world, he should have known how powerful they'd be on a planet with gravity lower than Earth's, like P7T-434.

As the beast raised its mace, the marine cowered and tried to crawl away backwards, sliding down a short slope. The wolf never saw the missile hit its chest.

Jarvis dropped the expended AT4 launcher and collapsed against the shredded, overturned F.R.E.D., his arm, head and legs bleeding.

Taylor sprinted towards the cloud of black and grey smoke and flash of fire where the monstrous creature had been, running around behind it. As he'd anticipated, the creature was still alive, but barely. Its weapons had been thrown far away by the blast, its armour was shattered and blackened, its personal shield crackling and fizzing, and black blood covered the ground. Using the stunned wolf's armoured tail as a step, he launched himself upwards onto its back and slammed the grenade into the gap in its neck armour.

The alien reacted quicker than he'd expected, swatting him away with its now empty hand – he felt something inside him break and the talons rip into him as he flew through the air and crashed into the ground, but he didn't care.

In a flash of orange and black, the creature ceased to be.

The tank / APC remained, a seemingly invincible war machine capable of single handedly wiping out all the remaining human soldiers. Jarvis had used the last AT4 to save the marine, and Llewellyn was out of explosives. Small arms fire pattered ineffectually against the scarlet shield, accompanied by the occasional explosion of a grenade. Nothing seemed to touch the hull.

A solid line of blue-white brightness crossed Taylor's vision, and on reflex, he stopped and blinked. When his eyes cleared, the tank was on the ground, not hovering above it, and reduced to a scorched, twisted wreck smothered with flames.

He followed the retinal after-image back to its source – one of the alien heavy weapons, now in the hands of Nesbitt, Halverson, Moffatt and Lee. Taylor had never been so relieved to have his orders defied.

"Glad to see you all in one piece, Major." Landry said as Taylor limped into the briefing room. Nesbitt, Halverson, Llewellyn and Moffatt were already seated.

"Uh…several pieces inside, actually sir. But Dr Lam tells me it's not as bad as it looks, or…ah…feels." He winced, sitting down slowly. Moffatt slid his glass of water closer so he didn't have to stretch as far. The armoured wolf's swipe had cracked three of his ribs, and the subsequent collision with the ground had done nothing to improve matters. On top of this – literally – he had three large gashes from the alien's claws. The Wolverine jokes were already circulating around the SGC.

"And if you think that's bad, you should see Jarvis." Nesbitt muttered.

"I have. Dr Lam assures me that Sergeant Jarvis will be back on duty in a couple of months or so. He took a remarkable number of hits from the alien flechettes, but luckily, none of them hit anything vital. In fact, they pulled twenty-three of these out of him." Landry said, tossing a small transparent phial to Halverson. Inside, a tiny silver dart no longer than her thumbnail rattled around. She handed it to Nesbitt.

"It's trinium carbide." Landry said. "Dr Lee's analysis of the alien weapons recovered from 434 has shown they fire those at a rate of thousands a minute at hypersonic velocity. Normal body armour just can't cope. Individually they don't do much damage compared to one of our bullets, but at the rate they fire them…"

He didn't need to finish. They'd already seen what happened.

"In fact, trinium seems to feature heavily with these aliens. Their armour uses alloys of it, and even their biology incorporates it to a remarkable degree. That, I am told, is why their teeth and claws are silver, and why they are so resistant to damage. As for the other weapons, the few remains suggest they are…uh…" he stared at the file in front of him, "'endo-atmospheric charged particle weapons'. Doctor?"

"Lightning Guns." Nesbitt offered solemnly. "They must be inertially dampened, otherwise the recoil would kill the user as well."

"Sir? Shouldn't the other SG teams be at this briefing?" Taylor asked, grimacing. Landry sighed.

"SG-3 and what remains of SG-16 were debriefed yesterday, while you were still in the infirmary. SG-25 and 26, as well as the remains of the alert teams were dealt with this morning. And, as you know…none of SG-21 survived."

Taylor felt angry, sad and guilty. An entire SG team wiped out in an ultimately pointless mission.

"It's my fault. That entire team died because of me…" Halverson began.

"Actually, it isn't. Sorry I'm late, General." Daniel said from the doorway. He crossed the floor and sat down at a spare seat, sliding a file towards her.

"Dr Jackson informed me that he came to the same conclusion you did when he read the tablet – he just had access to other resources that shed light on the details." Landry said.

Halverson was speechless as she scanned the first page of the file.

"You mean…if I'd been given access to the Odyssey's core to research that tablet, they might not have died? This might not have happened? For G - " she began, quickly trailing off. Taylor was staring at her.

Landry opened the file and pulled out a photograph, sliding it down the table to Nesbitt.

"This is what the Apollo sent back to us from their reconnaissance flight through 434's system. That, as I'm sure Dr Nesbitt will agree…is a black hole. A small one."

Nesbitt looked up from the photograph in front of him, his mouth agape.

"A black hole…the other star! But there's no way a star that size could become a black hole. Not naturally, at least…oh, wow." He said.

"Hmm. This was orbiting the black hole." Landry said, producing a second photograph. The new image showed a star field, and in the centre of the image, a complex structure of curved silver fins and flattened cylinders.

"We know of only a handful of races capable of artificially collapsing masses into black holes. This structure is almost seven hundred miles wide, it's Asgard, it's using the black hole as a power source, and according to Colonel Carter and Dr Lee, it's generating the resistant subspace barrier you described. The Apollo found it too, as well as debris consistent with a scout ship. More importantly, they found identical installations, all powered by small black holes, in the systems of the other addresses on the tablet. The barrier encompasses an entire section of the galaxy almost one hundred light years in diameter."

"How's nobody encountered it before?" Moffatt said.

"Nobody knows, but we've got theories." Daniel said. "For instance, anybody who sends ships into the region that never come back eventually stops sending ships. And it's too far off the beaten track to be worth expending a lot of time and resources."

Halverson sat, chewing her lip.

"It isn't a vault. It's a prison. It's…" her demeanour changed swiftly, from contemplative to energetic. "In Norse mythology, there is a tale. The Norse Gods, the Aesir, who lived in Asgard, were afraid of a wolf called Fenrir, so they bound him in an unbreakable ribbon called Gleipnir. I think those aliens we encountered were the basis for the Fenrir myth…and probably every werewolf legend and the basic human distrust of wolves as well, thanks to the Asgard."

"Like the Ancients instilled a negative association of fire in many human societies so we would know the Ori were trouble." Daniel said.

"And the ribbon, Gleipnir, wasn't a ribbon, it was a chain…a chain of satellites, holding back a wolf-like race. These...Fenrir. What concerns me is that the tale goes on. It says that at Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world, Fenrir would break free and have revenge on his captors."

"And, unfortunately, that also tallies." Landry said. "The Apollo took some detailed readings of the installations. They're failing. The barrier is still impassable, but within a matter of years, it will fail, and these aliens, these…Fenrir, will be let loose on the galaxy."

Nesbitt coughed.

"To some extent, I'm afraid they already are. Those ships leaving the gate? The Apollo detected hyperspace activity near the planet around the time they would have made orbit. If you're right and the Fenrir have been trapped in that prison for thousands of years, waiting for revenge on the Asgard, it seems likely they sent out a small expeditionary force in those ships. They've probably been looking for a way out for ten thousand years. I don't even want to think what they'll do now they're free."

"Isn't it obvious? They're going to try and bring down the barrier, let the rest of their people escape."

"That can't be allowed to happen." Taylor said grimly. "And if the Gleipnir system is failing, any chance we had of simply burying the 434 gate and forgetting about them disappeared. What really worries me is that we showed them there's a way out, and even though we're pretty sure the mark II generator detonated, I wouldn't count on the Asgard control crystal being destroyed. They strike me as a tenacious and unstoppable race – if they know there's an escape route, they won't rest until they've found it. And with people on the outside, the odds aren't in our favour."

The phone's ringing was remarkably loud, not least because it was 3am and the bedroom's two occupants were fast asleep.

"Yes? Who is this? Of course I'm him you imbecile, get to the bloody point!"

Major General Sir Richard Bullock sat bolt upright, all trace of irritability and fatigue forgotten.

"Of course they'll say it's our fault, but that doesn't matter. This is playing right into our hands! Have they heard the proposal? Right…what does the I.O.A. say about this? And the Prime Minister? Really? Good. Alert the rest of the committee, and arrange a meeting for the morning. We can't fail now – and we'll give the bloody Yanks a run for their money, ha ha!"

He replaced the receiver and lay back down, but he knew it would be a while before sleep took him again.

In the meantime, ideas flitted through his head. They had the International Oversight Advisory's approval, and now the Prime Minister's too. Even better, playing the guilt and grim responsibility cards had been their masterstroke, and had all but forced the Pentagon to agree to the proposal. They would get as much access to the Stargate as they needed, and the budget had been approved – of course, it would mean the Royal Navy would have to reduce its planned fleet of new Astute-class submarines by two, and the two new aircraft carriers would need to be delayed while a lot of the funding was temporarily redirected. All that remained now was to actually begin construction on the new British military base, made the more difficult by its location, sixty-three thousand light years away.

After all, there were wolves at the gate.

Well, that's the end of the first installment of Stargate: Ragnarok. I'm already working on Part 2, "Wolves At The Gate". Let me know if you want to see more, what you think of the characters, the story, the aliens...anything. Thanks for getting this far!