Author's note:

Hello everybody! It finally happened. I'm back! And I'm planning on staying at least until the third and final book in Liam's trilogy is completed. Also, I'm not making any promises, but I'll do my best to finish the spin-off story too. I'm still stuck, without the right idea on how to proceed further or how to end it without doing a bad job at it. However, I'm confident that sooner or later something will come to me.

As far as this story goes, some have asked to give a recap of what happened in the previous book. I think it would take an entire chapter to do that, and probably there would be many important facts that I still missed explaining. Therefore, I'm not doing it. Sorry about that. What I can tell you though is that reading the last two chapters of the second book should give you a good foundation on what's important, especially since all the various wars, with the Ori, Wraith, Tikal and so on finished in the second book and won't have much of an impact in the third book. What remains is the final conflict against the Vargas, and for that you only need the last two chapters. If your willing to spend more time, read from chapter 30 of the second book onward. This should give you the complete understanding of what is going on in the story.

Even though this third book delves into the thick of things from the start, characters will from time to time remember things from the past so that readers can more easily get into the story. Some characters will explain events that happened in the two and a half years interim, from the time where the last book left off to when the third book picks up the story again.

Well, I think that's quite enough from me unless am planning on writing a note that's bigger than the story that follows.

As always, thanks to my beta for his help, and I hope you'll enjoy reading this latest chapter :)

There was light trickling from the entrance of the cave. It was faint, which made him think that it was still very early in the morning. Maybe four or four-thirty, not much more than that. He closed his eyes again, thinking that he should probably go back to sleep and get at least another hour of shuteye. The day was going to be a long one - as all recent days had been - and not just because of the 26 hours' planetary day cycle. They were long because of what he needed to do in those hours and how tired he was at the end of each of them.

He let out a slow and long breath as he realized that now that he was awake, sleep would not come back so easily. His brain would not let him; he was certain of it. There were too many things to do today and his brain was already doing them one after the other, even though he was still lying in bed.

Food. Above all, they needed more food.

Water was easy to find. At least there was that. The only thing he needed to do in order to get water was to go outside, grab some snow and boil it. However, food… well, food was a completely different story. In the best of circumstances, he should go and try to catch a rabbit or some other forest dweller, one unfortunate enough to be playing in the snow while he was out hunting. Or maybe he was going to get lucky and one of the traps he had laid had already caught something. He wasn't very optimistic about that though. In the last ten days, his magnificent traps have caught exactly zero prey. Although unknown to him on how that could even be possible, one of those traps had ended up damaged. Maybe something somehow managed to break free and damaged it in the process. It was very disappointing. Even before going to check them, he already knew that the chances were slim and that he would probably have to go hunting. He wasn't very good at that either. Not that there were many preys lurking around to begin with. It was a harsh winter; that was certain. Not the best of conditions to go chasing the few rabbits still scurrying around the woods. In the end, both his traps and his hunting skills would probably result in no dinner tonight except from what they still had stashed.

Which isn't much.

There was a third option in the not so remote possibility that he couldn't catch anything and, as he thought about it more and more, he was slowly becoming more convinced that that should actually be his first, if not only, course of action.

There was always the alternative of traveling to town and getting some groceries.

Better get a move on…

Daniel slowly slipped out of bed, a bed made mostly of some old blankets laid on the ground inside the small cave he'd been lucky enough to find. He slowly rose before moving towards his MK II combat armor laid on the ground a few meters away. He picked it, looking at it for a while. His armor. Well, this became his armor, but it had belonged to somebody else. It had belonged to Reynolds.

The man who gave his life in order to protect his.

He took a deep breath before beginning to put the armor on. He hated it. It wasn't his to put on and every time he did, it reminded him of how he got it.

"Daniel, are you awake already?" He heard Vala's voice coming from deeper inside the cave, from the other side of the bed.

Apparently, he hadn't been silent enough as to not to wake her up. He thought that this time he had been. "You should stay in bed and sleep a little longer. It's still too early and I have the feeling that this will be a very long and demanding day."

Vala stretched while still sitting on the bed. "How can I possibly remain in bed when you're making so much noise?" Vala replied before giving a questioning look directed at the cave's entrance. "Wait! You weren't kidding when you said it was still early. I can barely see any light coming from outside. What got into you today?"

"I told you," He replied meekly.

Vala got up on her feet. "Well, it is too late now to go back to sleep. I'm already fully awake. See!"

She wasn't fooling anyone. A quick glance at her was enough to understand that she was still half-asleep. Her hair alone looked as if it would take half an hour at best to untangle. However, he also knew that she was a very stubborn woman and discussing the matter of if she should or shouldn't remain in bed would inevitably prove to be nothing else than a complete exercise in futility, as it happened most times when they got into an argument. "Fine, then you get a fire going while I get some fresh water. We still have some coffee, I think."

He saw Vala nod in agreement, although not sure if she was awake enough for her to even register what he had said, or if she had simply nodded absentmindedly while leaving the thinking part for a later time. It didn't really matter though. He promptly turned and walked outside of the cave with a small pot. As he stepped onto the snow, he quickly began filling the pot with it until filling half. He gave a glance at the daylight coming from east for a moment, before turning and walking back inside the cave. Vala was already lighting the fire. The fireplace had been prepared in advance last night, so there was not much to do to get the fire going anyway, but it was still a sign that she was now fully awake and in control of her thoughts and actions.

Daniel put the pot on top of the fireplace before going for the coffee can. He opened it, giving a good look inside. There wasn't much coffee left.

"How much is left?" Vala asked.

"Not much," Daniel replied. It was the understatement of the year.

"We will have to go get some more then," Vala asked, while giving him a forced smile. "You know I can't go on without coffee, at the very least with one cup in the morning. I would like at least three, but without at least one I'm not even getting out of bed."

She was talking about coffee, but he knew that coffee wasn't what was really on her mind. They needed other things, more important things, in order to survive. Things that could be found only in town. He sighed. He was doing it a lot lately. "I think we can manage for a couple more days with what we have."

Vala gave him a stern look, "So, we are going to wait 'till the last moment, is that what you're saying?"

"Yep. That's exactly what I'm saying," he said, but there wasn't much conviction in the spoken words.

Vala was now giving him a glare, continuing as if she didn't hear him. "So, today we are going to town. Which one do you think we should visit this time? Velar or Bowna? Or should we be more adventurous and try Anais instead?"

"Anais is more than ten miles from here. It takes at least six hours to get there. More importantly, we don't know what we will find there," Daniel replied. Walking for ten miles, part of it in the snow, wasn't very high on his list of things he'd like to do today. On the other hand, Bowna was a small village with little chance of finding something there, even less than in Velar. Velar also had other reasons why avoiding it was a good idea.

"Well, it beats spending five or six hours searching Bowna for anything edible and coming up empty. Or going to Velar and…"

"Yeah, Velar is out of the question," Daniel replied quickly. "Maybe in a few weeks we can check it again, but it is too early to go there only after three days,"

"Then, it is settled. We are going to Anais."

Daniel looked at Vala for a long moment. She said those words with apparent conviction, but her eyes were telling a completely different story. She didn't want to go; she was afraid of what they would find there. However, she also knew that they needed to find supplies and find them fast or, if not, this cave where they'd found refuge would before long become their final resting place.

He didn't want to go either, but there was no other choice since he was fully aware of his lack of hunting skills. "Well, if you insist so much, we will go to Anais. But then you can't complain anymore that I'm not taking you places."

"Oh, you're so sweet, Daniel. You really know how to make a woman happy. Take her to a nice place where there's a very small chance of finding food or anything else that can be construed as useful, but with a high probability of encountering monsters, and she will be grateful to you forever."

"Don't mention it," Daniel replied, putting a big fake smile. "Coffee is ready."

Daniel poured the steaming coffee in two cups and together they walked out of the cave. It was chilly outside. He was feeling the piercing cold even while wearing the combat armors. The reason why that was the case was because their armors weren't powered anymore. As a result, they weren't providing any internal heating. The armor's power source had depleted a week ago. Hence, many of the advantages the armor usually provided didn't exist anymore. Terran-made weapons, armors and other military gadgets alike were among the best in the galaxy, but they were also very high maintenance and not suited for long-term usage without having a repair shop nearby. As it happens, there wasn't even one such shop in at least ten thousand light years from their current location.

"I'm worried about our ammo," Daniel said. "I have only one half full clip left for my grav-rifle."

"I have even less, but we have plenty of ammo for the other rifles we have here."

"I'm not sure any of these rifles can do us any good. Maybe if you get a clear headshot, but for anything else, the Quirilian rifles are all useless against those things," Daniel replied.

"Well, that just means that we will have to be very good with our aim, so that even those other weapons end up being useful to us. Because, Daniel, I don't think that we can find any more ammo for our weapons anywhere on this planet. Not until someone from Earth decides that we are important enough to come to save us, which, apparently, we aren't."

"Don't say that," Daniel replied, wincing. They had talked about this many times before.

"Why not, Daniel? It's been two months and in all that time I've seen many aliens landing on this planet. Do you know how many Terrans I've seen landing thus far? None. Not even one in two whole months."

"We don't know the situation in orbit. We don't know how many ships the aliens have, and we can only guess to which aliens those ships belong. At least that's the little we can see from down here," Daniel replied. "Maybe there's an entire Vargas armada in orbit preventing any rescue attempt."

"We haven't seen even one Vargas on the planet, Daniel," Vala retorted, clearly frustrated. "Most of the aliens we've seen are those ugly crab-like creatures."

"Of course they are. The Vargas are probably mass producing them," Daniel answered.

The crab-like aliens, or Crabs as the marines quickly began calling them, had been nicknamed that way simply because they had a tough exoskeleton, they were red, had pincers instead of fists and they crawled on six legs, sometimes even sideways. With a maturation period of only three months, these crab-like creatures were perfect for their intended use. The Vargas could start producing them in the last three months of their long voyage towards the Milky Way galaxy, and that way saving on space aboard their massive barges. After the initial bombardment of any military asset and energy infrastructure on the planet, the crab-like aliens were perfect for finishing the job. With their tough exoskeleton and strong pincers, they were the perfect killing machines. They ate what they killed in order to feed and grow in numbers. They also didn't use weapons. Therefore, they didn't need any ammo or manufacturing capabilities to fight. The only thing the Vargas needed to do was to let them loose on a planet and wait while they killed, ate and reproduced. After they finished with their nasty job of exterminating whatever species the Vargas wanted exterminated, the Crabs simply stopped eating, which resulted in dying of starvation. Then, the planet was completely clean for whatever purpose the Vargas wanted to use it. How the Vargas were managing to force the crab-like aliens to eat only a specific species was still a mystery to him. Usually, survival instincts would kick in forcing any living thing to find whatever digestible source of food present in order to survive.

"The point I'm trying to make is that there probably aren't any Vargas ships in orbit," Vala retorted. "Wouldn't you agree, Daniel?"

Frustration. Frustration with a hint of fear. That was what Daniel's tele-empathic abilities were telling him Vala was feeling right now. She needed to believe that rescue was coming. She needed to believe that there was a chance of them soon being rescued and to be able to leave this accursed planet. She needed to believe that there wasn't an armada of Vargas ships in orbit because she knew that if there was, rescue would never come. Daniel had to agree. The most probable reason why nobody was coming to their rescue was because there was a Vargas armada in orbit, and he wasn't about to lie to her.

Still, he needed to keep her hopes up somehow. "Even if the Vargas are above us, you know that they'll eventually leave. Therefore, what we need to do is keep our heads down until that happens and until rescue comes. They haven't forgotten about us Vala, don't worry. You know that Jack and the others won't rest 'till we are back."

"If you say so," Vala replied, taking a sip from her cup of steaming coffee.

He was glad to sense that she was calming down. The sun was almost visible now on the horizon, and since they'd decided to go to Anais in order to get what they needed, they needed to get a move on. There was a chance they wouldn't be able to return tonight either. He was hoping for that not to be the case, but walking for ten miles in a combat armor without power, part of the way knee-deep in snow, and then being able to do the same to get back, all in one day, was a very tall order. "You know, there is a chance of us having to stay the night in Anais."

Vala visibly stiffened. "You don't have to remind me, Daniel. It was my idea to go there and I've thought of that possibility already. Still, if Anais has something more than one or two cans of beans left there, we could finally get enough stuff to last us for a week or maybe even two. I think it's worth the risk."

Daniel couldn't help but agree. If they could find enough to last them for that long, it would be worth it. Since he saw that Vala already got up on her feet and that she was already prepping everything she'd need on the trip, he slowly got up too. He began doing the same as Vala, packing a backpack with a few cans of beans and some kind of fish similar to sardines, plus a flask he still needed to fill with snow once he was outside. He then took a Quirilian rifle and enough spare ammo for it. He would use his grav-rifle if needed, but since he was on his last clip, there was a good chance he would remain without bullets for it very quickly. He put the ammo in the backpack too. The backpack was big, big enough to fill with a lot of what he hoped they were going to find in Anais, and if needed they could use some additional bags to carry everything back. However, what he was hoping for was to find some vehicle there, one to use for the trip back. If they were lucky enough to find one they could probably make it in one day, which would save them from having to spend the night in Anais.

There were things that always came out at night in urban areas.

"I'm ready. You?" Daniel asked as he finished packing.

"Yes! We can get on the road. How much time do you think it will take us to get there?" Vala asked.

"Well, I'd say six hours or maybe seven. The worst part is the first three miles in knee-deep snow. After that we should start moving faster, but we should also start paying more attention to our surroundings."

"Yeah, those crabs don't like the snow this high in the mountains so much." It was the reason why they went so far. "But once we get down, we better stay on our toes."

As far as Daniel knew, the Crabs didn't have ears or a sense of smell, and even their vision wasn't very good. If you paid enough attention to your surroundings, you could easily spot them before they spotted you, especially since their red-colored body was visible from a mile away. Overall, they weren't the worst enemy if your job was to evade a crab when spotted. The problem was that they were everywhere. Where there was one there were many time more of them and very few weapons were able to harm them quickly enough to save yourself. The damn monsters were capable of moving at more than twenty-five miles per hour, even over longer distances. They could keep up at such a speed for hours if necessary, something humans could never do. It meant that, no matter how fast you were, eventually they would catch up with you.

Daniel and Vala went out of their hiding place. A small cave they found two weeks ago located almost a mile above sea level. From this high up, and especially now that the sun has risen enough to show them the entire valley in front of them, Daniel could see for miles in all directions. Even with his binocular, he could not see anything moving down there, which was a comforting sight. It would have been a very bad thing if they could see a horde of Crabs even before their journey began.

Without hesitation, both of them took their first steps down the mountain. There was a lot of road ahead that needed to be crossed and he was hoping they could reach Anais somewhere around noon at the latest.

Three years after the formation of the Terran Federation, and two years and eight months after the battle in the Eden system against the Vargas, High Councilor Jack O'Neill floated aimlessly inside one of the unfinished observation decks aboard the first Terran starbase currently in geosynchronous orbit above Terrania, their headquarter in the Atlantic Ocean. The observation deck, the same as many other decks on the massive starbase, was still unfinished, even after more than two years had passed since the beginning of the station's construction. The station, a massive mushroom born in space, was a marvel built with the most advanced technologies at their disposal. Being massive and highly advanced also meant that it wasn't the easiest of constructs to build. Definitely not something that could be done in a short time. However, that wasn't the main reason why the station wasn't fully operational yet. The real reason was that they needed other things, more important things, to be built first.

After the battle against the Vargas, a battle in which too many ships each with hundreds of Terrans onboard had been destroyed, it wasn't difficult to predict where the Terran focus would end up and continue to be for the conceivable future. Nobody knew when and exactly where the Vargas would show up next time, but all parties involved were in full accord that they inevitably would and that when they did, it wouldn't be pretty. The Terrans, the Asgard, the Edenians, the Jaffa and all other space faring races had dedicated most of their resources to prepare for the inevitable confrontation they all knew was coming. However, there was one question they needed an answer to first, before anything else was done.

How do you defend yourself against an enemy such as the Vargas? An enemy that is everywhere in the universe and with, for all intent and purpose, unlimited resources. The Vargas came with a thousand of their very powerful ships only three weeks after they'd learned about a threat in the Andromeda galaxy. Now, everybody was happy that Liam was able to devise a plan to close the anomaly, and that way making it very difficult for the Vargas to reach them. By having postponed their arrival for years to come, Liam had given them at least a fighting chance. However, what were the Vargas going to bring once those years had finally passed?

No matter what the Vargas brought, they all knew they wouldn't be able to protect their planets, not when an enemy such as the Vargas could jump out of hyperspace in orbit of your planet with thousands of ships and just blast everything in their path. With such a large number of ships they could lay waste to planet after planet with impunity before defenders could even arrive. Inside a year, the Vargas could lay waste to most of the inhabited planets in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

How could anyone protect against something like that?

Well, Liam gave the answer to Jack that same day when he disappeared. Liam simply told him to go to the Nox because they had a way to help. He also told him that he was going to get a big headache because of it. At the time he didn't pay much attention to such unimportant remarks, especially since it was while they were saying their goodbyes.

He should have known better.

What the Nox had to offer was of course something that would help them greatly in defending their homes against the Vargas threat. However, implementing it on a galactic scale was going to be, both, a technological and diplomatic nightmare. The Nox had been isolationists for a very long time. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they had developed technologies that promoted such a lifestyle. What the Nox had come up with during their isolation was a device that disrupted subspace. The first time Jack heard that, he simply asked what to him was the most logical question anyone could ask at that moment.

He asked, 'So what?'

He understood once Sam explained the ramifications.

If such a device were to be activated inside a system, said system would become impossible to reach with any known FTL method of travel. There simply was no hyperspace or warp engine capable of nearing the planet. A ship nearing a region of space where subspace was disrupted would drop back into normal space, usually in such a harsh way that it was questionable if anyone aboard would survive the experience. Even a jump drive the Colonials used would form an exit point somewhere outside of the disrupted region of space in the best of cases.

After Sam's detailed explanation, he quickly understood that they could create such a region around important systems with a radius of light-hours or maybe even light-days, depending on energy requirements. Suddenly, an enemy that would most probably choose to drop in orbit above your planet would be forced to exit hyperspace so far out that it would take them days to crawl at sublight speed towards their desired target. With such technology at their disposal, the Vargas would most definitely be prevented from using any kind of blitzkrieg tactic to knock out planet after planet in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

With such a technology at their disposal, there were also other positive side effects that needed to be considered and that could help the allies in defending their homes against the Vargas. For example, the Vargas, as well as any other enemy, would most certainly evade a large minefield by simply jumping into hyperspace and coming out on the other side. But now, without the ability to jump in hyperspace, minefields suddenly became something capable of protecting planets. The Vargas would also come to the Milky Way galaxy with their ships having subspace sensors and communication systems, as it was the norm to have for all advanced races. Both of those did not work inside a system where subspace was disrupted. Of course, the allies had the same limitations as the aggressor. However, they also had years in advance to prepare in order to come up with different strategies on how to fight effectively under such restrictions and to come up with new technologies better suited for battles where radio communications and sensors limited to the speed of light were the only ones possible. It would also be a fight inside a region of space where you couldn't simply escape in hyperspace whenever and wherever you wanted.

This all had sounded very interesting to Jack. A way of preventing the enemy from simply showing up at your doorstep was something he wanted for the Solar system for a long time, even while he still didn't know of its existence. Now that he knew it was possible, he was as excited as a child entering a massive toy store. However, there were problems with the technology they were planning on using as well.

A stargate works by sending a stream through subspace, but since subspace is disrupted, stargates simply cannot work. To the Terrans, losing the ability to use the stargate would be felt, and nobody was really happy about it, but they would survive such a loss. They had many ships, their colonies were self-sufficient and didn't rely on the stargate for the survival of its people, and most of all, if they really wanted, they could build supergates just outside of the disruption field for their ship to travel to other, similar gates wherever they put them. All that meant that the Terrans had no real reason not to implement such technology in order to protect their homeworld, colonies and outposts. Even more so since by blocking the gates from working, they were also preventing the device from being used as a devastating bomb capable of ending life on a planetary scale.

There was a problem though. The problem was that they were to protect the entire galaxy against the incursion of the Vargas because everybody knew the Vargas would not target only their planets. Once the Vargas came, they would not leave until all human held planets were devoid of life or enslaved through a neural implant, whichever came first.

So, the problem now was, how to sell the idea of employing such a device to all of the other races in the galaxy?

There was also the question of where exactly should they place such a device. They shouldn't place it anywhere where the Vargas, or even the inhabitants of a planet could find it and deactivate it. The answer to that conundrum came one day to Sam. The safest place where to put such a device was, inside a Sun. It wasn't strange that Jack didn't think of it, simply because he didn't know that that was even a possibility. Sam explained that with the current technology at their disposal, mostly in the form of the prior's energy absorbing shields, they could actually construct an automated vessel capable of flying inside the sun and then receive enough energy through the shield to not only protect itself from the massive heat and pressure, but power itself indefinitely. This method would also provide the considerable amount of power needed to create such a large subspace disruptive field, strong enough to encompass the inner portion of a star system. Another point was that in order to be sure that the Vargas wouldn't be able to deactivate it, they also decided that once activated said device would be impossible to turn off. There would be no access codes that could turn it off. They knew the Vargas could capture one of their ships or possibly a person who knew the codes. Hence, the decision was made that the activation of the devices must be permanent, or until it malfunctioned and deactivated on its own.

They only needed to sell it to the countless worlds in the Milky Way galaxy, and everything would be great.

Of course, the job of producing and then activating said devices in tens of thousands of systems was a job that could not be done in mere days or even weeks. It took them more than two years to build the required number of units and only with the help of the other races in the Second Great Alliance. It had been decided that the production, as most of the production was done these days, was to be done inside the Clava Thessara Infinitas. After the final battle in the Eden system, Liam had instructed Aenea to take their people in the pocket universe and there begin the process of reviving the Alterran race by changing all willing Edenians into a proud member of the ancient race. Practically, the same thing the Terrans were doing with the Genesis Project. It was always a goal of Liam's to bring back his race into the mortal plane of existence, and it was sad to see that, in the end, he wouldn't be present when the whole process began.

While the Edenians took the main planet where Liam and Jack had gone the first time they accessed the pocket universe, other planets were given to the other races in the Second Great Alliance. Argos, the custodian, had built a large infrastructure on all of the planets in the pocket universe and some were specifically designed for different species. This way, the pocket universe had a planet prepared for the Asgard and their way of life, the same as another planet was prepared to accommodate the Nox. Since at the time Argos didn't know there would be humans from Earth joining them, one of the planets that was prepared for the Alterrans was given to them.

No Terran objected to that.

Jack didn't know how to classify the newly acquired real estate they came into possession out of nowhere. He could not think of it as another colony in the constantly expanding Terran Federation. Earth, Tollana, Terra Nova, Asura and Haven were systems with planets meant for colonization. There were other planets in their possession that because of some unwanted characteristics were not deemed suitable for colonization. Those were used for mining or as outposts. A planet inside a pocket universe that could be accessed only through a massive space station stationed in-between the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxy, no matter what characteristics it had, it simply didn't fall into the same category as those other planets. The logistics for colonization alone were horrible, the same as for mining. How would people even go live there? And why would they even? Who would want to live inside a pocket universe and be unable to get out until the space station was to transit inside it. Even the Edenians had gone there to stay only until the war with the Vargas was over, at which point they would probably return to their homeworld in the Andromeda galaxy or colonize some other planet elsewhere.

The Council had quickly come to the conclusion that the planet in question would never become a colony and instead it was simply designated as property of the Terran Space Navy.

On that planet, just as on all other habitable planets in the pocket universe the ascended Alterrans had created more than five million years ago, accommodations for even millions of people were not a problem, and the infrastructure Argos had built on the planet's surface as well as in space was so far ahead of even what they had found on Asura that many humans had begun salivating profusely at the pictures Jack had shown them. Not only did the infrastructure dwarf that of Asura, but Argos also had five million years to come up with improvements and pet projects to pass the time. As Argos had explained to them, even as a Virtual Intelligence given the task of finding a way to fight the Ori, even he got bored from time to time. This boredom had resulted in incredible discoveries being done, as well as strange constructs - some useful, while other not so much - found everywhere in the binary system. The picture of rows upon rows of space shipyards in orbit of the gifted planet was enough to make Jack's doppelganger drop back in his chair, speechless for the rest of the day. Jack knew that there was no way to put a price to this new real estate the Terran Space Navy suddenly came into possession. There simply wasn't.

Together, the Edenians, Nox, Asgard and the Terrans had used the infrastructure given to them by Argos to build the needed devices meant to save the Milky Way galaxy from the Vargas, and they did it in record time. The massive space station capable of transiting inside the pocket universe was also big enough so that taking the devices out in the universe wasn't all that difficult. Once back in the real universe, the larger ships took them to the Milky Way galaxy and to the appropriate star systems where they were flown inside the sun. Once activated, these devices created a subspace disruptive field light-hours in radius. Even with the fastest sublight engines at their disposal, crossing light-hours meant days of travel, which meant no sudden attacks could ever occur.

While floating in the observation deck, Jack sensed that somebody had joined him. "Sam. What brings you here?"

"Oh, nothing. Just wanted to see what you were up to for the past three hours," Sam replied.

"Three hours? I've been here for that long?" Jack didn't know when he'd lost the track of time. To him, it felt as maybe an hour had passed.

"Yep. You even skipped our lunch."

He'd skipped lunch. Now he knew that something was wrong with him. "Maybe I should go and see a doctor."

Sam chuckled. "Not sure if a doctor can help you there. You've been spacing out a lot lately."

"I had a lot on my mind lately," Jack responded.

"Still worrying about Daniel?" Sam asked in a more somber tone.

"Among other things, yes."

"What other things?"

"Oh, this entire war with the Vargas and what we are going to do to survive it," Jack replied.

The Vargas had been here for less than six months and the Milky Way galaxy was already in complete chaos. And the worst part was that they could be happy how things were going. It had taken the Vargas more than two years to come here, and they had used some massive fifty kilometers long space barge to do it. No normal person could call that thing a ship. That barge was so large that they could easily hold thousands upon thousands of ships and who knew how many aliens.

Apparently, the primary role of those barges was to transport whatever the Vargas wanted transported over massive distances, anywhere in the universe without the need to use the anomalies. With the anomalies in the Senari galaxy closed, the Vargas needed to cross more than three hundred million light years to come here and not many spaceships could cross such a distance without permanently burning out their engines. Instead, the Vargas built barges that were apparently capable of crossing the three hundred million light years in a little over two years. Jack had to admit it. It was an incredible accomplishment to build something so big and still capable of crossing such a vast distance in a relatively short time and even more impressively, without breaking down during the extensive voyage.

Another accomplishment he reluctantly had to give them credit for was what they were able to do to Earth, even after all the defenses they had put into place to protect it.

It happened almost six months ago, a little after the time when they had spotted their barge for the first time. It appeared that with the Vargas there's no subtlety in their strategies. They knew their biggest obstacle in the Milky Way galaxy were the Terrans. Hence, their strategy was to hit Earth hard and clean the rest of the galaxy afterwards.

That day, and without forewarning, a fleet of almost two thousand Vargas ships exited hyperspace at the outskirts of the Solar system. The hostile forces immediately began their constant push toward the third planet in the system. Thinking about that day, he could not but realize how the system they had installed and that disrupted subspace had saved them in so many different ways. The primary goal of the system was of course to prevent anyone from simply dropping out of hyperspace near your homeworld. However, there were other advantages the system had given the Terrans and they were not about to waste any of them. The first was that, with absolute certainty, they knew the Vargas would be at a disadvantages when it came to communications and sensors. With time, the Vargas would adapt, but this was the time when the Vargas still fully relied both, on subspace sensors and communications and suddenly finding yourself in a completely different environment than the one you were accustomed to and that redefined what you could and couldn't do in such a drastic way must have been incredibly debilitating.

It took the Vargas almost two full days to reach Earth and once they did, they were rewarded with a cloaked minefield the Vargas were unable to detect without their precious subspace sensors. The first layer of the minefield was comprised of powerful antimatter mines. Why not use the substance extensively since they had almost unlimited amounts of the very useful stuff? The antimatter mines had chewed at the Vargas shields of almost every ship while they had passed through, only to enter another kind of cloaked minefield. Zelenka's minefield was made of charged zat-mines that discharged when a ship passed near them. Since there were tens of thousands of them in the Vargas path, and since zat-mines weren't destroyed as regular mines were, the Vargas were in for the greatest surprise of their lives. Jack could still recall clearly, as he watched arcs jumping from mine to ship, from ship to ship, from ship to mine, ten thousand of them. It was as if looking straight at a raging storm. A storm that was forming and seemingly following the Vargas ships as they went. The important part was that the minefield was incredibly effective in overloading the Vargas shields or rather what remained of them after the antimatter minefield did its job. However, this wasn't all. The Vargas were made from an energy dispersive material, and having an energy dispersive material didn't actually mean the energy was going to vanish. The only advantage of the material was its ability to propagate the energy quickly throughout the hull of the ship, hence diluting its effects that would otherwise destroy chunks of the ship wherever the impact occurred.

But, for how long would such a material remain effective?

The zat-discharge was jumping from ten thousand mines, constantly adding more and more as the mines continued to produce more and more energy after each discharge. Quickly, the hull of the Vargas ships was so saturated with the strange energy form that some of it began bleeding through the shield emitters, the engines, the weapon emplacements, sensor dishes or any other active device usually found on the hull of a ship.

Most of the Vargas ships were at that point without shields and with system after system receiving more and more damage as they passed through the strange minefield. However, this wasn't all the Terrans had in store for the invaders. The next step was the use of a powerful radio jamming system they had placed around Earth that - in addition to already being unable to use subspace communications - further crippled their ability to communicate amongst themselves. Without shields, damaged and uncoordinated, the Vargas fleet was about to face the next line of defense the Terrans had prepared for them. Almost two hundred of the next generation antiproton satellites de-cloaked and fired in unison. Since the Terrans knew that not many things could go through Zelenka's massive minefield with their shields remaining intact, they decided to build the standard satellite, the one without the ability to fire a beam at relativistic speed. They knew it wasn't necessary because in this instance the antiproton beams didn't need to pierce through their shields to be effective. It was why the allies had focused on improving the weapons range and rate of fire of the next generation of defense satellites. With a range like no other, the weapons were by far the first to fire. They were also capable of firing again in just under one minute, again before any of the Vargas ship could retaliate.

Two hundred satellites fired and scores of enemy ships were no more. The did it again, and more Vargas ships disappeared. As the satellites fired again, there were eight hundred capital ships aiding them in their task of obliterating the hostile Vargas armada.

At that point, the Vargas were in deep shit while the Terrans had lost exactly zero asset in the entire Solar system. Moreover, even the Vargas must have understood by then that there were other surprises awaiting them further down the road. Like the countless missile platforms that were waiting to fire a myriad of missiles of various types and sizes, the moment they got in optimal weapons range, and since they knew that none of them were getting out of the there alive, there was only one way to proceed.

Which was to perform a suicide run.

As he remembered that exact moment when the Vargas decided to go all in, Jack was certain that they would still fail. He was certain that, with Earth's planetary shield and with the countless defenses at their disposal, the Vargas would not be able to get even one of their ships near their planet.

As predicted, they didn't. However, their singularity missiles did.

It was unclear if the Vargas came prepared for such an eventuality – it was strange that they could have predicted something like that beforehand – yet, strangely, the Vargas armada had an abysmal amount of those accursed missiles at their disposal. From the ten thousand singularity missiles fired, not one had been directed toward a ship or a satellite. They all went straight for the planet.

Their reaction was fast. The same instant the missiles were fired, everything at their disposal was redirected toward destroying those missiles before they could reach the planet. So many drones, missiles and energy weapons of various sizes and colors were fired at the shielded missiles that, in the end, only one missile - as it detonated, while creating a singularity - was able to puncture the planetary shield, and for three more such missiles to pass through it inside Earth's atmosphere. One missile hit the Himalayas, one hit India in full, and one dropped into the Indian Ocean. Once the missiles had activated, singularity formed that began sucking anything around them, for miles in all directions. At this point, most people watching would think that for such a complex weapon, the end destructive result wasn't that much of a big deal. Being able to suck things in a ten miles' radius wasn't something that would categorize it as a doomsday weapon, and whoever thought that, Jack included, would be right. However, the strength of the Vargas singularity weapon wasn't in its ability to suck matter in a ten miles' radius. Its strength was in what happened when the singularity suddenly disappeared. With so much matter having been compressed into a single point, so small that even the bonds between molecules and atoms were beginning to break down, the sudden disappearance of the only force responsible for keeping everything together meant that all that compressed maelstrom of matter had to be expelled.

Of course, said matter would be expelled in a very explosive way.

The result was that Mount Everest wasn't the tallest mountain anymore, that in the middle of India an explosion with massive amounts of kinetic energy had devastated everything in a two hundred miles' radius and that the third missile that had dropped into the Ocean had created a tsunami that caused untold damage to the Indian coast as well as of neighboring countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and even Malaysia and Thailand. The final death toll was more than two hundred million people. Even after six months of incessant work, the Second Great Alliance was still trying to purify the air of Earth from the resulting dust cloud, possibly by returning the dust to from where it came from.

From such an attack, a less advanced race would have risked extinction from the dust cloud alone.

If it weren't for this disaster of incalculable proportions, this would by far have been the biggest victory against the Vargas, with only 17 satellites and 12 ships lost against the two thousand ships of the enemy destroyed. That was also the most probable reason why the Vargas campaign in the Milky Way galaxy had continued at a much, much slower pace than what would have been the case if they'd had two thousand of their strongest warships still at their disposal. It meant that the rest of the galaxy for the most part had to deal only against the Vargas minions and their ships, and those were not even close to what threat the Vargas' ships represented.

Yet, Jack could not help but feel that maybe if they had just placed a few more defenses, this tragedy might have been averted.

The positive side was that, thus far, there had been sightings of only one barge in the entire Milky Way galaxy, with no confirmed new arrivals. Still, Jack was dreading when the next one was going to join the first one. He knew the Vargas were going to send more and that, no matter how many ships they were to lose, more and more would come until the entire Milky Way was cleansed of humans. However, for now they needed to deal with what this first barge had brought, which was other races under the Vargas control. Thus far, they'd seen three other races and countless ships of which only a small portion of them were Vargas, which wasn't strange at all since most of the Vargas ships were now in rubble.

"Anything in specific?" Jack heard Sam's voice say, which forced him again to stop spacing out.

"I was thinking about what the Vargas are doing with their barge. I mean, I'm glad that what came to this galaxy wasn't an endless stream of the strongest Vargas ships. I'm relieved even more that we were able to destroy most of those ships at the very beginning because I have no clue how we would have survived if they brought more than what they did. Still, even what they've brought and that is still intact is giving us a big headache. Especially those damn space machines!"

"You mean the reapers?" Sam asked.

"Oh, so we have decided to call them that?" Jack asked. Seeing that Sam was nodding, he continued. "Yes, I'm thinking about those reapers."

One of the first things that happened when the first barge arrived was to send some strange ships in all directions. Apparently, those ships could be designated as automated motherships with an AI dedicated to do only three things. One, to find resources, two, to build other AI-controlled ships with those resources and three, to use those ships to attack whatever floats without discrimination or otherwise to seek inhabited planets and attack whatever is giving out any kind of energy emissions from the surface. Those reaper ships were cheap crap. They were easy to build and easy to destroy, but they were growing exponentially. The automated motherships would first build a considerable number of smaller ones, followed by the building of a replica of itself. Once done, the replica and the smaller ships would leave for greener pastures. The process was constantly building more and more of the same and once a certain number was reached, an assault en masse would commence.

"We are analyzing a few of the smaller ships we captured. There is a chance we could disrupt their communication with the mothership, especially inside a system where subspace is already disrupted by the Nox device and where only radio communication is available," Sam answered.

Even Jack knew why that was. Inside those systems, the only way for a mothership to communicate with the smaller ships was through radio signals, and those were much easier to jam than subspace communications. Once jammed, the little ships reverted to some predefined behavioral pattern and by doing so losing most of their ability to coordinate their attacks with other ships of their kind. Still…

"It will help, but, it's not a definitive solution, is it?" Jack countered.

"No, far from it. If we place jamming devices in populated systems, we are reducing the reapers effectiveness, but it is still only a purely defensive strategy to give us better odds in a fight, and only until they find a way to beat the jamming system. We still don't have any idea on how to go on the offensive. At least not until we can't pinpoint where those motherships that are constantly building more of them are," Sam explained.

A galaxy is a very big place, and a reaper mothership could choose almost any of the many billions of star systems to collect the needed resources from some uninhabited planet, moon or asteroid. Finding them, when you didn't even know how many there were, was practically impossible. "So, we are getting back to the initial idea that we need to somehow capture one of the big ones and study it."

Only by examining one of the reaper's motherships could they gather some insight into how to find them. Maybe some hidden subspace communication channel they were using to communicate with other motherships or with the Vargas barge, or maybe by studying their hyperdrives they could more easily detect the noise they were making and that way be able to track their movements. After all, they were much less advanced than the Vargas ships were.

"We've tried, but every time we disabled one of them, the damn thing just self-destructed," Sam replied. It was clear she was angry as well.

There was also the problem that even if they knew where those motherships were, they still didn't know what to send. To destroy a mothership, even while protected with a full fleet of the smaller reapers, a single heavy cruiser backed up by a couple of the new third generation Defiants was more than enough to get the job done, quickly and without risks. However, you never knew what you'd find when you got there. Sometimes, a mothership could have one of the still remaining Vargas warships stationed there and suddenly a heavy cruiser was not ideally suited for what was needed in such an engagement. They were also smart. If the mothership's AI realized that the enemy was too strong, the ship simply ran away without engaging. After all, they were not fighting living beings with emotions and egos. The AI didn't care or feel. The AI would simply come up with the best decision possible at any given moment and execute the plan. "What about the other idea?"

"What other idea?" Sam asked, unsure.

"The virus idea."

"You mean Eve?"

"Yes, I mean Eve," Jack replied, while rolling his eyes. Damned be the day they'd started naming viruses.

"Still trying to find a way to go through the mothership's firewalls. The problem is that most of the communication is from the mothership to the smaller reaper ships. What the mothership is receiving from the smaller ships is mostly action logs, which are small and incredibly simple. When we try to transfer a virus as complex as Eve through the same channel, the mothership's AI immediately understands it's not just logs it's receiving, but rather something much nastier. This is enough for the mothership to block the transfer before all of Eve is transferred.

"So, another dead end?" Jack asked, already sure of the answer.

"Probably. There are a few more things we can try, but I'm not very confident that we'll be able to go through the mothership's protections. And even if we do, there's still the question if Eve can beat the ship's AI."

"Thought so," Jack responded. "Any more bad news?"

"Nope," Sam replied.

Jack saw it. He could tell there was something she wasn't telling him. He could see it clearly plastered all over her face. "What are you not telling me?"

Sam waited for a moment, without saying anything. She then took a deep breath. "I didn't want to get your hopes up because, frankly, it could turn out to be nothing, but it appears there's some movement-"

Jack was already swimming towards her. There was no gravity, so it wasn't that easy to move while floating weightless. "Quiril! There's movement in Quiril's orbit?"

"Yes. The Vargas ships have already started moving away from the system. All but one."

"Which one?" Jack asked.

"One of the Hunter's ships."

Jack thought about the ship Sam mentioned, while still swimming. He was slowly picking up speed. "J.J. can take care of that one on his own, right?"

"If that's the only ship that remains, yes, but I just told you not to get your hopes up so early. You know that it will take the Vargas more time to exit the disruption field at sublight, and we can act only after they have entered hyperspace and not a moment sooner."

"Why didn't you start with the good news first and instead spend ten minutes talking about the reapers?" Jack asked. The planet where Daniel was trapped had too many Vargas ships in orbit – it was probably all of the Vargas ships left in the galaxy - to attempt a rescue mission that would risk countless lives in order to save only two, no matter who those two people were. The intel that the situation was changing was something he should have been informed immediately.

"As I said, I wasn't sure if telling you before something more concrete happens is a good idea. The Vargas could still decide to remain in the system, just outside of the disruption field, for who knows how long."

"No need to be so considerate, Sam. I'd rather know that something is happening, even if it turns out to be nothing, than to think that nothing is happening, while something is happening. Like what I was thinking five minutes ago. Got it?" Jack replied.

"I think I do," Sam replied, clearly not sure.

"Good. Then let's go back to the CIC so I can see with my own two eyes what's going on," Jack said, just as he managed to swim where Sam was and finally able to touch solid ground.

Sam nodded and they both took off towards the CIC, with Jack having a big smile on his face.

- to be continued -

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