Unending
It had, to coin a phrase, been a bitch of a day.
The SGC had gotten word from Thor that the Asgard High Council wanted to meet, and as the Odyssey hovered over Orilla, Thor beamed aboard our cool new ship. Things have a way of not always going to plan, and if you told me what was going to happen next, I would told that you were nuts.
Hello, Thor," I said, "Long time no see!"
He did that black-eyed-blink-blink thing, and replied a tad snippily that they'd been busy.
"I am sorry. I have been otherwise occupied. As mentioned in our communication, the High Council wishes to meet with you, to explain in greater detail, but there is not much time. General, with your permission, a number of Asgard are prepared to beam aboard immediately to begin installing various technological upgrades to this ship."
How could we refuse an offer like that? Mitchell practically drooled all over him as he mentioned ray guns, but I managed to contain myself. Barely. That big honkin' space gun around the corner thought always gets the blood pumping!
But, as it turned out, the meeting became far more serious. My old buddies, the Asgard, were dying, and they offered us all their knowledge and technology. It was their legacy to the Fifth Race. Christ, it felt like someone punched me in the guts, but, what can't be changed had to be endured, and surprisingly, Mitchell actually got it the quickest. He said they were going to commit mass suicide, and once we had their legacy, our legacy was to witness their demise.
God, sometimes I hated my job, but nether-the-less, we agreed.
Anyway, Thor got busy and explained the Asgard computer core was equipped with its own power source so it wouldn't infringe on the Odyssey's ZPM. When the upgrades were completed, the core would be fully integrated into our systems. See, I can listen when I have to. No Nintendos passing through me that day!
More Asgard beamed aboard and as they roamed around the ship, I could see that Sam had become upset. So had Thor, and he did try to help her...me...us, understand.
"Please do not be sad. The end of my people has been a long time coming. We have made too many irreversible mistakes in our development. Hopefully, you can learn something from it. My only regret is that our physical weakness has left us incapable of helping you further."
The little guy was all class.
Then a giant crap cloud descended and covered us all in...crap. Out of nowhere, three Ori motherships dropped out of hyperspace, and like that, Orilla and the Odyssey were lookin' down the barrel. We took one hell of a hit and, of course, the hyper drive had still been offline. We diverted all energy to the shields; I ordered full sub-light and Odyssey plus an Ori ship moved away from the planet. The nightmare proceeded to progressively get worse. The surface of Orilla suddenly erupted with huge explosions, and after a moment or two, the entire planet exploded sending shock waves throughout space. We needed to get away from the radiation and powering up the Asgard weapons we blew the mothership to pieces and skedaddled.
Did I mention crap cloud? Well, two more Ori ships appeared and we knew...we were being tracked.
Mitchell is like me, a glass half full guy, and he said. "At least we now have weapons we know will destroy an Ori ship."
Carter? Not so much half full than completely empty, and she rained on his parade. Albeit, nicely.
"Well that's not gonna do us any good if they can track us wherever we go. I mean eventually, the Odyssey's gonna come up against more than she can handle."
Teal'c did the whole inscrutable Jaffa thing with his eyebrow and asked the awkward question. I knew he'd be the one to ask it.
"Is it possible the Priors can detect the new technology given to us by the Asgard without the help of the Ori?"
And Carter just had to answer..."I suppose the new power source could be giving off some sort of unique energy signature that's detectable from sub-space. However without further experimentation, the only way to find out is to shut it off and see if that stops the Ori from following us."
"Do it," I said with naiveté that comes from being clueless. Naturally, she hadn't finished bamboozling me.
"The problem with that, sir, is that the new Asgard core is currently tied into every system on this ship. We would have to drop out of hyperspace and isolate the core from the hyperdrive controls, and that could take some time."
See, to me that sounded okay! So, we dropped out of hyperspace, and bingo, those uninvited visitors came calling again. We took several heavy hits and always good under pressure, Carter got the hyper drive online and we once again lucked out. But, that wasn't the end of our problems. Nope, to make sure we weren't tracked, Carter explained we needed at least thirty minutes to get the hyperdrive system separated from the core.
Drat! I thought. Now, alarm bells started too gently but oh-so persistently ring in my ears.
I wanted to know if there was a planet with a Stargate we could 'gate home from, and apparently, P3X-474 was just about close enough for us to limp to. But, Daniel being Daniel, had a philosophical difference of opinion. He said we couldn't destroy the Asgard legacy and I had to agree. After all, how would it look to the other races around the water cooler come Monday? We manage to destroy Agard knowledge in under a day? Not good. So, we dropped off the crew and hoped they could dial out before the Ori came, and then three motherships started to beat the crap out of us again. We destroyed one, but we all knew the Odyssey couldn't take another hit. I called out for Carter to pull something brilliant from her butt, and she did.
The Ori warship fired on the Odyssey once more, but the beam stopped in mid-space. Coulda dropped a pin on the bridge we were all so stunned.
Carter briefed us afterwards, and trust me, what a story it was.
"So thanks to Asgard technology, we are in a time dilation bubble. While time may appear to be passing at a normal rate for us, in fact, years will pass inside the bubble while mere fractions of a second pass outside the field."
Ever the optimist, I said, "You won't need that much time, though."
"Hopefully not, sir. My plan is to try and make the necessary modifications to the Odysseyso we can take it out of phase. Then, when we shut down the time dilation field, the blast won't hit us."
Daniel approved! "That would be good," he said, always the master of understatement. Mitchell looked kinda bug-eyed and babbled about time. He should have known not too actually ask for an explanation, but, as he was new, I didn't slap him upside the head.
Carter rubbed her metaphorical hands together and explained something I had no idea about, but pretended I did. Daniel cleared his throat and wasn't fooled. Teal'c did that eyebrow thing while Fruit Loops... giggled. Sam, to her credit, ignored the peanut gallery and continued with her what ever the hell it was.
"The Asgard core has time dilation field technology built right into it. It was a quick and easy option. I'm actually gonna have to recreate some of Merlin's out-of-phase technology from scratch with what we have on-board. And it could take a while."
Daniel beat me to the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
"Just to be sure, how long is a-a while in our time?"
"I'm not exactly sure. But we have enough food and water for three months." Carter sounded so damn sure of herself, and I always believed her. When did she ever let me down?
Three months? Nah, I told them all, trust me, we'd be home in time to let the dog out! That was almost fifty years ago, and now, among my friends, my family, and my love, I will die aboard this god-awful ship. You know, I expected no one would mourn the passing of Jack O'Neill, but that won't happen. Damn it; guess I should have let the dog out after all.
The End
