The Age of the 5th Race

by Hamburger73 and SilverInk

Disclaimer

All rights of the mentioned TV series belong to the TV studios that produce them. I own unfortunately only the idea of the scenario.

Some readers told me in reviews that a few facts do not seem quite logical to them. I can basically say that many of the questions you have on this regard will be answered at least partially in the next chapters. I can also say that I try to give at least some hints on the questions you might have in the text.

It would be nice not to have always the same complaints about the different sizes of the space ships.

I'm sorry, actually the 4th chapter should have been published a bit earlier, but there were some unpredictable problems. I wish all readers lots of fun reading this chapter.

4. A rude awakening

unknown date unknown system

Atlantis 2 hours earlier

They all fell to the ground as soon as the stasis field was automatically shut down. Thankfully nobody was injured because of that, but it was still a painful experience for most people in Atlantis.

"Carter, McKay what happened?" asked O'Neill.

"I'm sorry General, but currently we simply don't know," Carter told O'Neill while McKay could only shake his head "No".

O'Neill wasn't happy to receive that kind of answer. "Great, make sure that we get answers and we need them 5 minutes ago, get back to work again," said a very annoyed General. He now hoped very much that no more problems would arise when he stepped at a window and looked outside. Atlantis looked a little strange, he found. Probably it looked that way because not all the lights were on properly.

A little while later, Helia joined General O'Neill at the window. She said, "Jack, would you come to the briefing room, please? The geniuses seem to have found something."

"That's good. Hopefully they will be able to give us some answers," Jack said. "What is the overall situation like?" the General wanted to know from Helia.

"Well, people have suffered injuries all over Atlantis and the ships. As it now appears, some of them are also seriously injured. The Tok'ra are all busy treating and healing the injured," reported Helia.

"At least we have no deaths to mourn," said a relieved Jack O'Neill.

So he went to the meeting room together with Helia. On their way, they met Dr. Weir who joined them.

And so, about half an hour after everyone on Atlantis had come out of stasis so rudely, the entire technical department around Carter, McKay, Zelenka and Rush came together with O'Neill, Helia and Dr. Weir.

"So you've found any answers for us yet?" the General wanted to know right away.

Carter and McKay first looked at each other, then the others from their department. Finally Colonel Carter began to speak, also because she knew that nobody had a special inclination to talk to the General at the moment.

"Well, as we suspected, somebody put a virus in the pre-departure data download. This virus only became active after we had flown in hyperspace for a while. When we came out of hyperspace, we were probably between 30,000 and 60,000 light years away from Earth. And shortly thereafter the stasis units were activated only with the difference that this time the stasis field surrounded all of Atlantis. Since then, Atlantis has been drifting through space at a speed still unknown to us. The only systems that currently function absolutely correctly are the shield and the life support systems; otherwise we would be dead already. It seems that the sensors picked up something that got us woken up from stasis, but we're not sure about that," Colonel Carter reported.

"And of course it's not clear how long we've been in stasis, is it, Sam?" asked Helia, who was very worried about this report. In fact, the Atlantis protection systems should have prevented such manipulation. Oh how often had she had had to argue with McKay or Dr Rush, because they really intended to combine so many Atlantis systems either with other technologies, be it from the Asgard or the Earth, or just, as Helia saw it, mess around with Atlantis' proven systems. She still knew very well how she and her crew had been surprised by the Asurans just because McKay had to play around. She understood it on a logical level, but that didn't mean that she had already forgotten this episode. After all, that's why she and her crew had almost been killed. But her dear husband, she swore to herself, would definitely hear from her tonight before they went to bed. Well, nobody could have guessed this, but he wanted to have all books, movies, songs and so on as a data backup here on Atlantis.

"No, we don't know that either right now, Helia." confirmed Sam, who also saw that she was pretty upset. Sam could understand that well in the end. If some of her colleagues had never played around with Atlantis' systems, things would have been different in the past. It was as if someone was receiving a gift, and the first thing that someone did was break it.

"So we could be in enemy space and we could be attacked at any time?" clarified Jack.

"Yeah, that's right, Jack," was the unpleasant answer he received from Sam.

"How long will it take you to get all the systems back up and running and online?" an equally shocked Elizabeth Weir asked.

"We're not quite sure, but we suspect we'll need another 4 to 6 hours or so to get everything back on track."

"That's bad. Ok, this is an Alamo scenario. That means nobody stays alone. Nobody is unarmed. And all important areas are to be protected by additional security forces. All SG teams are deployed in the central tower. The crews of the spaceships will defend their respective spaceships."

"Okay, General," McKay replied.

"See to it that the sensors and weapon systems are up and running as quickly as possible."

It had been about 90 minutes since the meeting. Jack O'Neill was in his office when Sam came to him.

"So, Sam, how far along are you with the systems?"

"Jack, we've already achieved a great deal. The sensors are coming back online right now, as is the internal communication, but the external communication will probably take another quarter of an hour. I'm positive the weapon systems will be operational in thirty minutes, unfortunately the propulsion systems are expected to need half an hour more time." Sam was very proud that she could report already so fast these. It had looked a lot worse at first.

"How come it takes so much less time than you said?"

"Now that we had determined that it was effectively a malicious program, we searched the databases. The virus had been present in several video files. But it did not spread any further. We were able to rule that out. At present we are currently restarting the different systems one by one after we had initiated a total shut down. Each system is booted individually and it is checked if it really works as it should," said Colonel Carter.

"But why could this even happen? Shouldn't the Atlantis firewall actually prevent such schemes?" asked a visibly reassured Jack O'Neill.

"Yes, normally that would have happened, but the many different systems we have here on Atlantis have connected like the Asgard core memory and our databases. But all of them are not very compatible with each other, so we had to program an interface to bypass these problems," the Colonel explained to her superior.

"McKay was responsible for this project, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yeah, that's right, Jack, we're gonna have another look at the interface later. It may well be that someone has manipulated there as well."

"Sam stop it, only IOA had the means and the opportunity to do this," O'Neill made it clear.

"Yeah, Jack, you're certainly right, but why the hell would they do that? Why should they betray us? Do you think McKay helped them?"

"Nah, McKay would never betray us willingly. He's far too loyal to all of us to betray us. If the IOA had a traitor among us who is still among us now, we will find the person sooner or later, I am very optimistic. And when we find the person, this traitor will have a very bad day, I can guarantee you that. But Sam, do you really think that's still important why the IOA betrayed us? Think about it, how long did we drift in space? How likely is it that in the meantime many years have passed on earth and that the people who betrayed us have all long since died?"

"You have thought about this mess we are in now for a while, haven't you? Did you also think about our other problem?" she asked him, suddenly out of the blue, with an odd look on her face.

He didn't need to ask her, what the other problem was, it had been their nemesis, and that for many years. But they' would be able to finally solve this problem if Sam didn't get "cold feet" first.

"Sam since our ungentle wake-up service I have thought about our situation here and then Helia came to it and added her 5 cents. Our top priority at the moment is now to get all Atlantis and the ships' systems up and running again, then we'll find a place to start over. After that we can still figure out what to do about the betrayal and the earth in general. By the way Sweetheart, what do you think of the idea of getting married?"

They were both aware that they had just started to mix professional with private topics, two chapters that should stay separate, but somehow that felt insignificant now.

"Jack, you know we can't do this because of regulations unless one of us quits the service. And as long as we've cleared everything up, neither of us can really quit the service," Sam objected weakly.

"I think you're wrong. I have spoken with Helia. She has had very similar problems among her team as you know. That's why she once asked the Joint Chiefs via the SGC. She wanted to know how such situations were handled by the American military. And as it looks, the President could grant an exemption."

"Only with the difference that we don't have a President at the moment, we only have a government council," the woman deadpanned.

Still she moved closer to lean her head against his shoulder for a moment, appreciating the feeling of his arms around her.

"What's the matter, Sam? Don't you want to get married anymore?" he asked gently, suddenly sounding a bit hurt.

"It's not that Jack, far from it, but don't you think we should try to solve the more pressing problems first? Like surviving for example? Because I would very much like to spend the rest of a long life with you instead of dying on a spaceship!"

Her quip made him smile a little as he pressed a kiss to her hair.

"You are probably right. But honestly, I want to marry you as soon as possible, Sam. We've been waiting more than long enough for us to finally be an official couple."

At that moment they heard the surprised voice of Dr. Zelenka calling from the control room next door. "General, we have intruders on board. There are several unidentified ships landed between the pier and the central tower. A hitherto unknown group of people are trying to gain access to the Central Tower."

"How could that be possible? Has the shield been checked Sam?" asked a visibly troubled Jack O'Neill.

"I don't know, Sir, the shield's been checked and it's working perfectly within the set parameters. It shouldn't be possible for anyone to get through," Carter replied.

Both then went to Dr. Zelenka, who looked up as O'Neill approached him with Carter.

"Report!" ordered the General.

"General, there are about 20 individuals down at the fifth door of the Central Tower. How they got through the shield with their total of 5 spaceships is unclear. There were no malfunctions or other impairments." reported Dr. Zelenka.

"All right, notify nearby units, I'm on my way with backup."

15 minutes later O'Neill had taken up his position together with Teal'c and some others. In a moment the unknown would enter the central space on this level. And then they would be in a trap because they would be without cover and could be fired at from different directions at the same time.

The intruders looked a little strange to O'Neill some of them looked as if they were refugees. But that didn't matter for now. What did matter, was that there several huge robots at the flanks of the group. Hopefully they wouldn't last long in a firefight otherwise they would be in a world of hurt.

O'Neill shouted, "Freeze!"

At the same time he and all the other soldiers activated their laser pointers on their rifles. There was no one among the unknown who was not detected by at least one red laser beam.

That moment, before anyone could do anything, it suddenly became very bright in the room and a strange kind of ball appeared. As the ball slowly floated to the ground, it grew bigger and even brighter. Finally the ball had disappeared again, but a man stood in the middle of the room. The whole thing hadn't even lasted a minute and had confused the intruders in particular.

"Please, you're all friends here, you don't need your guns," said the stranger. Since O'Neill suspected that he was dealing with an Ascended, he ordered the weapons to be secured.

"Please trust me Admiral Adama, General O'Neill and the others will help you, so please put your guns down," said the stranger once more.

"And why would we want to help them?" asked O'Neill, who already knew what the answer to his question would be.

"General O'Neill, have a nice day to you too, and you can believe me, once you've heard the full story of Admiral Adama and his people, you'll want to help them. By the way, I'm supposed to greet you from Oma," replied the stranger.

"Okay, so this is another story where we have no other choice?" asked a slightly reluctant General who knew perfectly well that it would be no use anyway to debate with this Ascended.

"General, I would suggest we move the conversation to your large meeting room upstairs and you always have a choice even in this case," replied the Ascended.

Before they could do anything else, a middle-aged woman came up and asked, "Who are you, what are you?"

The unknown turned to her and said, "President Roslin, my name is Janus and I am an Ascended. I know that doesn't mean anything to you at the moment. So let us all go upstairs peacefully then I will inform you all about everything that is going on and why I am here."