This Isn't Kansas

Authors Notes: This is an idea I've been working on for a while. I already have a few chapters of this fic done but due to a number of factors I won't be publishing them all at once as I want to continue focusing on some of my other works. To avoid confusion this story will be split into a series of interconnected parts each a few chapters or so long.

Summary: Returning from Orilla the Odyssey engages in a fierce battle with the Ori the outcome of which catapults the ship and her crew into a different universe full of dangers beyond anything encountered by the SGC before.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to wrangle around for my own authorial amusement. Robotech and Stargate regretfully remain the property of Harmony Gold and MGM respectively so no one sue me.

Part One: Arrival

Chapter One

General Hank Landry felt a confusing mix of emotions as stood before one of the few view ports on the Odyssey, gazing out upon space. The cause of his turbulent emotions was the beautiful blue and green world that the Daedalus-class cruiser was currently orbiting, or rather the diminutive but technologically highly advanced aliens who called said world home.

A week had passed since they'd arrived here in orbit of the Asgard homeworld Orilla after the long hyperspace flight from Earth. A week since Thor, the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet, had transported aboard with news that was unbelievable as it was tragic. A week since they'd been told that the end of days had come for the once mighty Asgard race. Seven productive but also very sad days since they'd been told that the Asgard were giving the whole of their immense knowledge, all their incredibly advanced technology to Earth before ending their lives in a single massive act of racial suicide.

Like everyone on board the Odyssey the knowledge that the Asgard would soon be extinct didn't sit well with him. The Asgard had been Earth's allies and protectors for so long that knowing they soon wouldn't be there anymore, that they would be for the first time in years be truly on their own, was a deeply uncomfortable, somewhat frightening prospect. It certainly put a downer on any sense of euphoria that Hank might have felt at being given the advanced technology of the Asgard. Technology that would go a very long way towards protecting Earth from anyone who wished her and her people harm; especially the vampire-like Wraith and the religious fundamentalist Ori. Yet somehow that prospect did nothing to make up for the fact that the Asgard would soon be no more, living on only in human memory and in the technology they'd be using to fulfil their destiny as the Fifth Race. It had led to a melancholy air being present throughout the ship as the crew slowly, privately tried to come to terms with the inevitable.

Mentally shaking himself Hank tried to shake off his increasing depressing thoughts but found it far from easy to do so. Especially as he knew from Colonel Carter's reports – reports that reading between the lines hinted at Samantha Carters own anguish at the knowledge of the Asgard's fate – that the upgrades to the Odyssey were almost completed. The Asgard really only had to bring the computer core they'd installed online, make a few final calibrations to the ships newly enhanced power grid and all would be done.

I wish there was another way, Hank thought looking back at Orilla just as a small Asgard vessel passed by below them – descending to the planet as the Asgard brought the last of their people home from distant outposts and settlements across the Ida Galaxy for the last time. The sight filled him with sorrow for what he knew would soon follow, though naturally it didn't break through to show on his face. I wish there was a way to save them from the disease that's slowly killing them, he thought, but there is no way, short of the Ascended swooping in to help – which is as likely as Hell freezing over – there is nothing anyone can do to save the Asgard race from extinction.

The sudden whooping blare of the battle stations klaxon brought him out of his thoughts just as the intercom blared to life. "General Landry to the bridge," Major Kevin Marks said his voice echoing off the trinium-titanium alloy bulkheads. "Repeat General Landry to the bridge."

"Now what," Hank muttered as he abandoned his position and headed towards the Odyssey's bridge a few metres from his previous location in the commanding officers quarters.

"What is it, major," Hank asked as he stepped onto the bridge whose lights had dimmed slightly to combat levels.

"Sir three ships just came out of hyperspace sixty thousand kilometres out from the planet," Major Marks reported, his tone grim. "Ori motherships, they're approach Orilla, their shields are up and weapons are being powered."

"How did they find us," Hank asked as he settled into the command chair a millisecond before a dull rumbling boom echoed through the hull and the Odyssey shook as brilliant lance of energy from one of the Ori ships slammed into her hurriedly raised, newly upgraded shields.

"Unknown sir," Marks replied as another searing yellow beam slammed into the shields shaking the ship but otherwise doing no harm. "Shields are holding," he reported just as the intercom crackled to life.

"Sir," Colonel Carter's voice reported. "The Asgard just disembarked, Thor said we need to leave now. But it's going to take a few minutes for me to get our hyperdrive back online."

"Understood," Hank, replied before looking at the helm. "Get us out of orbit."

"Yes sir," the young woman at the helm answered bringing the Odyssey's gravitic ion sublight engines to life and angling the small Tau'ri warship out of orbit of Orilla.

"Sir one of the Ori ships is pursuing us," Marks reported as the ship took yet another jarring hit from the Ori beam weapon. "The other two are moving into orbit of Orilla, I think they want to invade the planet."

"Is there some reason why we're not jumping to hyperspace," Colonel Cameron Mitchell's voice abruptly said startling Hank, who glanced over to see that the team leader of SG-1 had come onto the bridge, with Daniel Jackson and Teal'c only a few steps behind him.

"Carter's working on it," Hank replied as the ship shuddered under another attack. If there is one thing I can say about the Ori they're bloody persistent, he thought a moment before a moment before the sensors bleeped an urgent warning even as the ship shuddered as the Ori fired at them again.

"Sir sensors' are picking up a massive build-up of energy coming from the planet," Marks reported in a combination of concern and sorrow. Sorrow as like everyone else on the bridge he knew what the energy spike would signify and concern for the safety of the Odyssey given what was coming, especially with their shields already being put under strain resisting the powerful Ori weapons fire.

"Everyone hold on tight," Hank, ordered bracing himself on the arms of the command chair. All around the bridge the crew did the same.

As the Odyssey charged out in open space, only just managing to keep on the edge of its pursuer's weapons range the other two Ori motherships settled into orbit of Orilla and prepared to commence an initial orbital bombardment. Though fully confident of the inevitability of their victory, they did have the power of the gods behind them after all, the commanding Priors weren't about to take chances with the Asgard. The little grey aliens were after all a very old, very powerful race one they would be foolish to underestimate. Bombarding major defence and fleet installations prior to landing their crusaders was simply good tactical sense.

Abruptly sharp energy spikes registered on the sensors of both motherships as devices that had been built over the last few months by the saddened, but accepting, Asgard race activated. Immediately safety systems were overridden and the containment fields on dozens of neutrino-ion generators failed releasing the massive amounts of energy contained within into normal space. Huge explosions erupted across the surface of Orilla as generator complexes instantly dissolved into their component atoms. The sheer heat and force of the blasts sending a wave of flames across the entire planet as the atmosphere caught fire, instantly incinerating anything on the surface in a firestorm of biblical proportions.

Simultaneously devices buried in Orilla's crust detonated sending massive pulses of energy down into the planets mantle and core pushing the nuclear elements present there to and past critical mass. The resultant thermonuclear explosion was colossal and instantly ripped Orilla apart, shattering the planet as if it was made of brittle glass and briefly giving birth to a new sun to light the collective souls of the Asgard race on their way to Valhalla.

Travelling at FTL speeds the subspace blast wave of the detonation smashed into the two orbiting motherships before the commanding Priors could even begin to process what was happening, let alone react to it. The wave instantly stripped away the powerful shielding surrounding the motherships; tearing the energy bubble apart as if it were nothing and not a barrier that had so far defeated almost all attempts to penetrate it by conventional means. Milliseconds later massive chunks of semi-molten debris from the crust and mantle smashed into both ships ripping them apart in less than a second – the flashes of their destruction being lost in the brilliant flare that accompanied the complete annihilation of the once lush world of Orilla.

The subspace radiation and blast wave continued travelling outwards from where the planet had once been, slamming into both the Odyssey and the last Ori mothership. Fortunately for both vessels the wave had lost a great deal of its destructive force by the time it reached them; the shields protecting both vessels flared brilliantly they didn't buckle under the strain of resisting the momentary onslaught. As the flare of stressed shields faded away the final Ori mothership fired upon the Odyssey again, unleashing another brilliant spear of energy from the massive particle beam weapon in its bow.

Bridge

USS Odyssey

General Landry held on grimly as the ship rocked with the latest blast from the Ori ship that was still on their tail despite the best efforts of the helmswoman to shake it off.

"Shields down to sixty percent," Major Marks reported a moment before the intercom on the arm of the command chair came to life.

"Sir the hyperdrive is back online," Carter reported. "But we need to get clear of the radiation cloud left by the explosion before we can open a hyperspace window."

"Understood," Hank, answered a millisecond before another blast from the Ori ship shook the ship and make sparks shoot out of an overloaded junction box at the back of the flight ops section that made up the rear of the bridge.

"Shields down to fifty percent," Marks reported grimly. "One minute thirty seconds till we clear the radiation cloud."

"We're not going to make it at this rate," Cam Mitchell said equally grim knowing that even with the ZPM powering them the Odyssey's shields were far from indestructible – even Asgard technology had its limits after all.

Hank thought frantically for some way to improve their chances, as there was no way he was going to let the Ori win and destroy the Asgard's legacy. The Asgard legacy that's it, he thought thumping the intercom. "Colonel Carter can we use the new Asgard energy weapons," he asked.

"They've not been tested yet sir," Carter cautioned.

"No time like the present," Hank replied as the ship shuddered under another yet another attack from their extremely persistent Ori friends. "Helm come about, Major Marks power the energy weapons. Fire as soon as you bear."

"Yes sir."

In a move that the considerable larger and much more cumbersome Ori mothership couldn't hope to match the Odyssey veered sharply to port and climbed upwards before swooping down so it came at the Ori vessel from both above and behind. Immediately small bolts of blue light erupted from the Ori ship as secondary pulse arrays around the perimeter of the oval shaped vessel started tracking and firing upon the much more nimble Earth ship. The less powerful but still dangerous pulse weapons slammed repeatedly into the Odyssey's shields, setting the weakening force field aglow with the strain of repelling the righteous fury of the Ori. Even as the shields flared newly added turrets on the Odyssey swivelled around and locked onto their target as power flashed out of the ZPM, through miles of hyper-conductive conduits and into the capacitors of the newly installed energy cannons, instantly bringing them online.

For a moment more, nothing happened then a brilliant thin whitish-blue spear of energy erupted from the first of the cannons. Instantly the beam crossed the distance separating the two ships and set the Ori shields aglow before fizzling out. Immediately a second beam lanced out, then a third and a forth. For the first time in the experience of any Ori crew a mothership shuddered violently under enemy fire, its dorsal and aft shielding flaring a brilliant white under the strain of repelling the powerful Asgard weapons.

Two more beams in rapid succession struck the shields, the sixth beam partly punching through to scorch the ivory-coloured hull of the mothership. A seventh beam erupted from the Odyssey and instantly sliced into the hull of the Ori ship through the hole that had opened in the overstressed shields. Armour and the hull metal underneath vaporised as the beam cut deep into the normally mighty vessel inflicting horrendous damage and knocking everyone on board off their feet. Debris and the bodies of dead and dying crewmembers flew into space as the beam shut off as multiple compartments across three decks suddenly and violently decompressed. Internal force fields activated and emergency bulkhead doors slammed closed isolating the damaged sectors off from the rest of the vessel, but not before the sudden release of atmosphere acted like a crude thruster making the ship yaw sharply to port.

An eighth and final beam burned across space from the Odyssey, sliced right through the buckling Ori shields, and slammed into the hull. As before armour and hull metal vaporised allowing the beam to cut deep into the vessel, eviscerating section after section across multiple decks before it sliced into then through the doomed ships power core. The result was as spectacular as it was devastating. No longer confined or directed the exotic energy of the core burst outward, smashing solid matter apart, wiping away bulkheads, decks and crew as if they'd never been present at all. The hull deprived of key supporting structures collapsed momentarily in upon itself before it met the blast from the power core coming the other way and was instantly blown away, disintegrating into a plume of dust and torn semi-molten metal fragments ranging in size from a standard playing card to the size of a small truck.

Shocked, awed silence gripped the bridge of the Odyssey as before the amazed eyes of the command crew the Ori mothership, a normally nigh on invincible dreadnought, disintegrating into a ball of fire, plasma and rampaging energy. The explosion was enormous but short lived, within moments it faded leaving nothing behind but a spreading cloud of irradiated dust and torn metallic fragments.

"Well I'll be damned," Hank said amazed by the fact that they'd just done something that had been thought nigh on impossible blown a fully armed and operational Ori mothership to so much dust. In fact, the only time they'd been able to destroy an Ori ship in the past had been when Teal'c had lured it over the Ori's own supergate as it activated so the unstable vortex of the opening wormhole literally tore it in half.

"We got them," Mitchell breathed barely able to believe what they'd just accomplished and how easily they'd been able to do it. The Asgard really did come through this time, he thought, these new weapons are really cool General O'Neill is going to be so jealous that he wasn't here to see us use them for the first time.

"That we did colonel, that we did," Hank agreed feeling no small amount of glee at now having the tools to destroy Ori motherships. No longer would the Ori be able to just roll over their forces with impunity. The destruction of that ship would put the evil group of Ascended Beings – if they were still alive as there was still some question over if they'd been destroyed or not by the detonation of the Sangraal – on notice that the days of their followers crusade having a free run were over.

"Move us out of the radiation cloud," he ordered the helmswoman after a moment. "Then take us into hyperspace on course for Earth."

"Yes sir."

Silently, gracefully Odyssey pulled away from the slowly spreading debris field that was all that remained of the destroyed Ori mothership. The small but now extremely powerful warship glided into clear space, clearing the radiation cloud that had been created by the destruction of Orilla.

As the ship slipped clear of the radiation, cloud her hyperdrive, newly upgraded to the very latest in Asgard hyperspace technology, powered up and directed a powerful subspace field at space directly ahead of the ship. For a few milliseconds the space ahead of the ship resisted the tremendous pressure being exerted upon it but then the quantum folds of the space-time continuum parted and the swirling maelstrom of a hyperspace window burst into existence with a silent roar of power. For a moment the Daedalus-class ship didn't move as it gathered its power before leaping forward with a burst of acceleration and vanishing into the hyperspace window, shooting away from Orilla at speeds many times greater than that of light. The hyperspace window folded closed behind the ship, vanishing as if it had never been present at all returning peace to Orilla's system; a place that was now the graveyard of a noble people who had met a tragic end.

A Short Time Later

Colonel Samantha Carter frowned at the information that was being displayed on the computer tablet she was holding as she made her way through the corridors of the Odyssey on her way to the mess hall for a coffee. The tablet was showing readouts from the engineering systems, specifically readings relating to the hyperdrive as it propelled the Odyssey through subspace on her way back to Earth.

It was obvious from the readings that something very strange seemed to be going on with the engine. Hyperdrive core temperature readings were slightly higher than they should have been, though nothing to be particular concerned about as it was far off the red zone. She knew that could be because of the changes the Asgard had made to the power grid and coolant lines when they'd replaced the old hyperdrive with their latest model. The existing coolant pumps might not be quite up to the task of cooling the new drive down properly; which meant she would have to look at designing some replacements, which would be quite a headache. Alternatively it could be that one of the pumps just needed to be overhauled. She hoped it was as that would be a lot easier as she was far enough behind on her lab work already thank you very much.

No, it wasn't the hyperdrive core temperature spike that was causing her concern. Instead, it was the odd readings that the subspace field coils – one of the most essential pieces of the whole hyperdrive assembly – were giving off. There seemed to be a very strange phase variance in the coils, it had been there ever since they'd entered hyperspace a few hours ago but it was starting to get steadily worse. Maybe the field coils are slightly out of alignment that could explain the odd phase variance and the core temperature spike, she thought punching in a series of commands remotely giving the engineering computer some instructions.

A moment later, the results came back and she scowled. According to the quick diagnostic the subspace field coils were in perfect alignment, there seemed to be no reason for the variance to be there. Hmm field coils are in alignment so what else could be causing the variance, maybe the sensors are faulty, she thought scowling at the tablet as if it would give her some answers, all the while she was wracking her brain trying to figure out what could be going on with the hyperdrive. And if the phase variance – if it really existed and it wasn't a simple sensor malfunction – presented any danger to the Odyssey, her crew and the legacy entrusted to their care by the Asgard.

She was so caught up in trying to understand that she didn't hear approaching footsteps and thus was caught completely by surprise when General Landry's voice came from behind her.

"Colonel Carter just the person I needed to see," he said as she turned to look at her superior officer. "We'll soon re-enter the Milky Way and be back within communications range of Earth. The president and the IOA are going to want to know how quickly we can recreate this new Asgard weaponry for our other ships."

"To be honest sir I haven't had a chance to look at the new weapons in any real detail," Sam replied. She could see where the president and the IOA would be coming from as one ship, no matter how advanced it was, wasn't going to be enough to win the war with the Ori not to mention they still had the Wraith and Lucian Alliance to worry about, though the latter was more an annoyance than a serious threat. "All I've been able to learn so far is the weapons, unlike previous Asgard weapons, use supercharged plasma particles focused and compressed into a laser-like energy beam. Quite how the Asgard did that I'm not sure yet. But to be honest sir I'm more concerned with our hyperdrive."

Hank frowned. "Have we taken some damage," he asked recalling how the repeated blasts from the Ori ship had shaken the Odyssey before they destroyed it. For some reason the engineers had never been able to fine tune the inertial dampeners enough to compensate for the fluctuations in a ships gravitational fields caused by weapons impacts. Hence ships shook when hit, shaking that could easily have caused some damage to the ship as it rattled circuit boards, conduits and control crystals about.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "But the hyperdrive is running a little hotter than it should be and the sensors are spitting back some concerning readings. I think we should drop out of hyperspace and run a few diagnostics just to be on the safe side."

"Alright," Hank agreed not about to disagree with Sam about the issue. "Head back down to engineering and prepare to run diagnostics. I'll give the order to drop out of hyperspace as soon as we cross back into the Milky Way. That way if something does go wrong were not stranded between galaxies."

"Yes sir."

Bridge

A Few Minutes Later

"Sir we've crossed back into the Milky Way."

Hank Landry nodded at the helmswoman's report. "Very well drop us back into normal space," he ordered.

"Yes sir," the young woman acknowledged before flicking a switch on her console, instructing the hyperdrive to power down. The response was immediate. The distant background humming of the ships hyperdrive faded while beyond the view ports the shifting blue-white tunnel of the hyperspace conduit flashed and vanished. For a moment they could see nothing beyond a faint blur of colour which rapidly faded as the gravitic ion sublight engines overcame the effects of hyperspace inertia and brought the ship back down to first a safe sublight speed and then to a complete stop in space.

Satisfied Hank tapped the comm. control on the arm of his chair. "Colonel Carter we're back in normal space, begin your diagnostics," he said calmly.

"Understood sir, I'm taking the hyperdrive off line now," Carter responded from engineering.

"How long will these diagnostics take," Hank asked.

"Not long sir. Only a couple of minutes," Carter responded reassuringly. "Provided everything checks out normally we should be able to get underway again in about twenty minutes."

"Understood, inform me as soon as we're ready to get back underway."

"Yes sir."

Hank signed off and leaned back as much as the command chair would allow him to, before taking a computer tablet from a storage pocket on the side and starting to get to work on writing his report for President Hayes, General O'Neill and unfortunately the bureaucrats of the International Oversight Authority. He hated to think how Jack would react when he was told that the Asgard no longer existed as Hank was well aware that Thor had been a very good personal friend of Jack's. The other man would thus be understandably very upset when told of the Asgard's fate. While at the same time he knew the big kid in Jack would be ecstatic that they'd finally gotten their hands on the 'big honking space guns' he'd been craving for practically ever since first stepping through the Stargate. And not just 'big honking space guns' but ones capable of destroying Ori motherships.

At least they can on this ship. If we can duplicate them it remains to be seen if they'll be as effective on our other ships, he thought knowing that thanks to the ZPM the Odyssey had a much higher available energy reserve than any other Daedalus-class ship in the fleet. Which was the main reason why even before the Asgard's latest upgrades the Odyssey had had stronger shields than any ship in their infant space fleet as well as having the unique ability to cloak herself. In all probability, while they'd still be powerful, the beam cannons would likely not be quite as effective. Indeed it was likely with their more limited energy reserves other Daedalus-class vessels would have fewer beam emitters than they did, especially if they wanted to use the weapons at their full capacity. But that would be something for Carter and the other science and engineering geeks to sort out.

Mentally shaking off those thoughts Hank continued writing his initial summary and making notes for what to put in the main body of the report, what was essential and extraneous information. He was just about to start on the first paragraph of the main body when alarms abruptly went off around the bridge. Immediately he saved his work and looked up.

"Report," he ordered recognising proximity warning alarms.

"Sir, sensors show two ships dropping out of hyperspace twenty thousand kilometres astern of us," Major Marks reported. "Ori motherships, they're raising shields and powering up weapons."

Hank cursed the Ori's timing. "Shields up," he ordered.

No sooner than the order left his lips a deep, rumbling boom echoed through the ship and the Odyssey shuddered violently. Both enemy ships had opened fire, sending coruscating yellow beams of destruction smashing into the ships aft shields making them flare brilliantly with strain.

"Evasive manoeuvres," Hank ordered, "bring the energy weapons on line and return fire."

"Yes sir," the helmswoman and Major Marks both acknowledged.

Like a spooked rabbit the Odyssey burst into motion, her powerful and advanced gravitic ion drives – originally based on Hebridan technology but improved over the years with the addition of some Lantean tech from the Ancient database in Atlantis – accelerating her from a standstill to hundreds of meters a second in moments. Simultaneously she banked downward counting on her superior manoeuvrability to escape getting blasted.

It immediately seemed to pay dividends as the next pair of beams missed her by hundreds of meters. Immediately the aft beam turrets fired back sending a pair of beams into the bow shields of the closest mothership, dropping them by nearly twenty percent and making the ship shudder with the impact. Though startled by the damaging fire, and the fact that their ships were physically shuddering when struck, the Priors kept up their assault both ships firing their main cannons again. One beam missing its target by miles but not the other, instead it slammed into the Odyssey's dorsal shielding pushing the ship and her crew down against the plane of their own artificial gravity field.

Not giving their quarry chance to recover from the brutal hit both Ori ships fired again. Beams spearing into the Odyssey's shields making them flare brilliantly under tremendous strain. Then the smaller ship was out of the firing cone of the main guns, looping down and away. Immediately secondary pulse arrays opened fire on the impertinent Earth ship, even as the two motherships started coming around to bring their main cannons back to bear.

"Shields at sixty percent," Major Marks reported grimly as the rapidly tracking pulse cannons of the Ori ships secondary armaments pummelled the ship relentlessly. Even with the ZPM boosting them the Asgard shields protecting the ship were rapidly weakening under the relentless firepower, firepower that could blow even an Anubis upgraded Ha'tak to pieces in just a handful of shots.

"Colonel Carter what's the status of our hyperdrive," Hank asked into the comm. He was well aware that even with the new Asgard shields and weapons the Odyssey couldn't go up against two Ori motherships on her own for very long. For all their size and odd shape Ori motherships weren't exactly sluggish when it came to manoeuvring… a fact that was proven a second later as another searing yellow beam slammed into the shields as they came around enough for the Odyssey to come back into the firing cone of one of the motherships main cannon. Marks quickly returned the favour slamming a pair of plasma beams into the shields of the offending mothership, setting them aglow and shaking the vessel violently. Still it was another reminder that this was a battle that they wouldn't win.

"I'm bringing it back online now sir," Sam reported from engineering, a moment before the ship shuddered under another beam strike, from the same mothership. As before Marks fired back immediately the second of the two beams partially piercing the shields to scorch and pit a section of the ships forward hull.

"Minor damage to the second mothership," Marks reported a note of satisfaction in his voice that they'd at least given one of their antagonists a bloody nose. The satisfaction faded somewhat as his gaze fell on the flashing shield corrosion warnings. "Shields down to thirty percent, they won't withstand this attack much longer sir."

"Fortunately they won't have to," Hank replied as a barrage of pulsed energy bolts rattled the ship, the rapidly tracking Ori guns tagging them despite their ongoing attempts at evasion. "Get us out of here," he ordered the helmswoman.

"Yes sir stabilising flight vector, opening hyperspace window," the helmswoman acknowledged as she brought the ship back onto a steady course, thus making it much easier to jump to hyperspace, while also engaging the hyperdrive.

Immediately a hyperspace window burst into existence ahead of the Odyssey and the battlecruiser began advancing towards it at high speed, and the safety of hyperspace that it offered. Unfortunately for the crew the Prior's of Ori had other plans that didn't involve letting them escape, especially given the worrying battering their own ships shields had taken from their quarry's retaliatory fire. Both motherships fired… coruscating sun-yellow beams of death streaking towards the Daedalus-class vessel.

In another world, indeed in many other worlds, the beams would have missed the Odyssey by miles as she entered the hyperspace window. But not this time, not in this reality. Instead the beams caught her just as she crossed the event horizon of the hyperspace window, the beams breaking apart as they encountered the immensely powerful subspace field being generated by the hyperdrive merging with both the field and the spatial distortion of the active hyperspace window.

For a moment out of time nothing happened. Both ship and hyperspace window remained static, motionless, unchanging. Then the hyperspace window flashed and rippled with green and white light instead of its normal greenish-blue. The massive amount of unstable, destructive energy imparted by the Ori beams warping and distorting it at the very quantum level, warping it into something else.

Hundreds of tiny singularities, fissures in the very fabric of subspace, formed in the event horizon despite the best efforts of the Asgard computer core on the Odyssey to stabilise the hyperspace field and compensate for the intense energy influx. One such fissure formed inside the hyperdrive core itself, ripping the quantum structure of space-time inside the perimeter of the hyperspace field apart, instantly breaking everything aboard the ship down into its basic subatomic components in the same way a transporter beam or Stargate would for transport and pulling them into itself and out of the universe.

With a brilliant flash the hyperspace window closed, a rippling wave of subspace distortion bursting outward from where it had once been. The wave slammed into both motherships like the fist of an angry god, ripping away their shields and sending both ships tumbling end over end like flotsam in the middle of a hurricane. For several seconds the two ships tumbled, helpless to resist the forces that had gripped them, then the subspace shock wave dissipated and the somewhat space sick Priors were able to bring them back onto even keels.

Once they had their vessels back under control both Prior's scanned for the Odyssey, knowing that even if the infidel's ship had been able to make it into hyperspace they would have still picked up the energy signature of the Asgard computer core. A signature that had allowed them to track the ship all the way here from Orilla where the other three ships of their task group had met their ends. They found nothing.

Odyssey was gone.