After much thought, I've decided to rewrite Rise of the Tau'ri. I started the fic as a Junior in High School and I wasn't too happy with the planned plot. Now that I'm a Sophomore in College, I think that I can do a better job. I also wanted to make this story grittier, grimmer and more realistic as it seemed like the story was too happy and go lucky. I've posted the first Chapter of Rise of the Tau'ri Revised already. I hope you enjoy it.

In addition, I've changed the location of my website. Utah Jak, the author of Chains of the Kindred and I have decided to make a full-fledged Science Fiction Forum. The link to the site is on my Profile. Feel free to register, comment and post your own content.

Thank you very much,

-Cast2007

I will take down this message later on.

For those of you that are interested, this is what I had for Chapter Fourteen before I made my mind to rewrite the story.

Pentagon, Arlington, Federal State of Virginia, Earth, Terran Federal Republic

"All right gentlemen," stated O'Neill addressing the assembled heads of the Armed Services of the Terran Military, "the President wants to know what we plan to do about the new reinforcements coming in from the Ori home galaxy."

"First off," said General Lee, the Chief of Staff of the Army. "We need to keep on sending supplies and replacements through the Stargate as long as the Zero Point Module can keep the connection."

"Noted," affirmed O'Neill.

"In addition, due to the fact that our forces are barely capable of holding the line I suggest that we send an additional division to Chulak."

"Are you sure that it is possible?" asked Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Hastings skeptically. "Its hard enough to get supplies to the planet. Wouldn't additional forces make it even harder? From what I can see, the costs massively outweigh the benefits."

"Well it would be possible if your service would do their job," Lee snapped.

"Excuse me!" said Hastings indignantly.

"You damn well know what I mean. If your service hadn't built those white elephants of yours we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Then what would you have to guard those vaunted transports of yours, a pair of meager destroyers and frigates? I bet those would be perfectly capable of standing up to an Ori Ship of the line."

Generals Timoshenko and Johnson heads of the Space Force and the Marine Corps both sighed and rolled their eyes, this was the second time this week that the Navy and the Army had clashed over the very same issue.

When construction of Earth's Space Navy began, the Army and Navy had different ideas on how the resources that Earth possessed should be devoted to the Navy. While Earth did have many shipyards on the planet, most of them were too small to build anything other than a frigate or a corvette, as space warships were much larger than their aquatic predecessors. So rather than build new yards on land, the Terran government chose to place the majority of their yards in space as it would be much cheaper and faster to build the facilities in space to do so rather than to wait months for dirt side installations to be built and/or modified for construction.

However when choosing to place a space based industry for its shipbuilding needs, there were some major drawbacks. The major bottleneck was that supplies including air, food and other necessities not to mention the tons to trinium that made up the hull of the assembled warships had to be shipped daily to the yards. Thus meaning that out of the hundred plus yards in orbit around Earth, only thirty or so were operational at the moment due to logistical constraints.

While transporters were perfect at transporting personnel from ships to the ground and vice versa, they were too energy intensive for constantly transporting supplies up to the Lagrange Points as an internal report by the Ministry of Energy stated that if this were to happen 60 of Earth's energy grid would be devoted for their use, something that was unacceptable both politically and practically even during time of war.

Spacecraft were also impractical as Earth did not have enough spacecraft to go around at the moment and could not devote ships to haul refined trinium from the planetary surface to the space installations. To design a spacecraft to suit the job would take a year at the very minimum and another six months before it became available for mass use. And even if Earth did, the time it took to load the ore onto the ship, to transport it and to finally off load it was too long for practical use.

The solution to the problem was as an Asgard scientist called it when discovering the plan. "Typical of the Tau'ri, primitive but effective." The Terran Federal Government with the assistance of the local state governments involved would build and develop three space elevators that would incorporate modern technology. The elevators would start from the surface of the Earth to above the atmosphere that at that end would house a large spaceport that would allow the newly arrived materials to be easily transferred over to waiting sublight capable barges that would then transport the materials to the yards. The diameter of each elevator would be 1.5 kilometers at both bases and 800 meters. The elevators would be propelled by an electromagnetic system, allowing hundreds of tons of materials to be swiftly transported from the surface to orbit in less than thirty minutes.

The locations of the three elevators were Equator, Northern Brazil and Kenya. The locations were selected for two reasons. The first was that each of these locations was situated at the equator. This was beneficial since the distance between the surface of the Earth and the edge of the atmosphere was 43 kilometers shorter than any other place on Earth, allowing the trip up from the ground to orbit and back to be shorter. The second was that the locations of these elevators would hopefully help develop the local economies of said states as the establishment of the elevators would bring countless jobs to the area and would hopefully increase the standard of living in the area.

The Navy wanted to start building a conventional Navy with the construction of heavy units such as battleships and carriers put at the highest priority. The Navy reasoned that since battleships and carriers were the only units capable of standing up to enemy ships of the line, priority should be placed to their construction as smaller ships such as frigates, destroyers and cruisers were not up to the task. Their second argument was that since those ships took much longer to build than smaller vessels, thus production should begin as quickly as possible in order to get those particular vessels ready for combat at the earliest possible date.

The Army on the other hand wanted production of troop transports and escort forces to be put at the first priority. Their argument was that the Stargate was not capable of support their logistical needs in combat zones across the galaxy and thus wanted the Navy to be capable of doing so at the first possible time, stating that the Navy needed to play ball with the rest of the military to support the Terran war effort.

The Navy's Admirals retorted saying that if they built those transports, what were they going to fight the Ori battlecruisers with, as the troop transports were not designed to engage enemy warships and would be sitting ducks against Ori ships and without proper support, were flying coffins waiting to be destroyed.

The Army made a rebuttal saying that they were prepared to take that risk as the more planets the Ori took, the more forces they would be able to draw from in order to attack Earth. Thus they needed to deny as many planets to the Ori as possible.

The bickering between the Army and the Navy, fueled by both difference in priorities as well as their historical rivalry went on until at the request of an exasperated Chairman O'Neill and very fed up Defense Minister Hammond, President Hayes stepped in. The result was a compromise. The Navy would have its way until the first of the three space elevators was complete, which at the moment was being opened at a ceremony presided by Admiral Collingsworth, much to his dislike. At that point, the Terran Federal Republic's shipbuilding strategy was to split the needs of the Army and the Navy with a quarter of its yards devoted to building carriers and battleships, half for cruisers, destroyers and frigates and the last quarter set aside for the transports that the Army wanted. While it didn't satisfy everyone, it was reluctantly agreed by both parties that it was the best possible solution.

"Dammit!" yelled O'Neill, his voice silencing the argument between the two officers, "will the two of you please knock it off. You two have been going at it, for the last week. This is a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the fucking Army-Navy game!" O'Neill sighed, this was definitely one of the times that he wished that he was out in the field doing what he did best rather than staying back on Earth commanding a desk job, albeit a glorified desk job. Why couldn't someone else take his place? He asked himself. Because you're the best man for the job his conscience told him. He sighed.

O'Neill interrupted the argument. "Look, we can either spend all day arguing about whose fault it was and have nothing to show for it to the President and the Security Council. Or we can actually use what little time we have to find a solution to get out of this mess."

"Fine," both the men said, grumbling.

"Well," stated General Johnson, the Commandant of the Marines. "I have to echo the concerns of General Lee. The young men and women on Chulak and need reinforcement and they need it quickly. However I have to disagree with General Lee's proposed solution," the Marine said calmly.

"To put it simply if we place another division on Chulak, we will have one more formation to feed, equip and maintain in the field. Given the fact that the Stargate is the only way we can provide logistics support and the fact that we are barely able to reinforce the formations already deployed, I would not advise sending additional units as we have no way to support them in the field."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"As you all know, Project Benevolence has been completed a month ago," stated the Commandant, simply.

"Are you implying that we should use it?" asked Timoshenko cautiously. "Even with the war on, I doubt that the politicians would let us use it, especially on Friendly Territory."

"As much as I hate to say it, but given our current resources now and for the near future, we cannot keep up what we have been doing for the last month. Sooner or later, we will loose the ability to send supplies through the Stargate at a constant rate that is needed by our forces due to other commitments and the possibility of an accident at Keflavik," the other Officers nodded. While there had been no serious accidents at the base, there had been a couple of close calls resulting in injuries and a couple of deaths. All of the Joint Chiefs knew that sooner or later despite how careful they were and all the safety precautions they enacted, statistics was going to take its tool. "This gives us three possible outcomes. We either tell our young men and women to surrender, withdrawal our forces from Chulak or end the campaign in our favor in swift and quick manner."

Lee sighed, "As much as I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the Commandant here. It's the only way we can win."

"How many units do we have completed?" asked General Ravi Singh, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and O'Neill's direct subordinate.

"Three dozen," answered O'Neill.

"Will it be enough to achieve the result that we need?"

"It's a stretch but I believe that yes it could do so," stated Johnson calmly.

"Okay. Assuming that we use the devices and the remaining Ori forces are either dead or have surrendered, what is stopping Adria from sending those reinforcements to wipe out Chulak?" asked Hastings.

"Those reinforcements will be occupied elsewhere," stated the Marine.

"How?" asked Hastings. "Although the Ori do have a fragile hold on their territory, if they wanted to turn Chulak into glass they could do so easily albeit at a high cost as if that were to happen, many would be destroyed by the Ancient Superweapon on Dakara possibly causing the Ori and the Jaffa to go MAD," he said using the term that was familiar to all the men in the room as everyone of them had served in the Cold War.

"We'll have to launch Operation Fortitude early."

"Are you insane?" asked the Admiral. "While I do have the trained crews, I don't have the amount of ships for them to operate."

"You do have those vaunted Asgard cruisers do you not?" asked Geng.

"Yes but that's besides the point. With the majority of the Fleet deployed outside Sol, who's going to stay and guard the Sol System? With no offense to my colleague in green but with the construction of Orbital Weapons Platform network around Earth barely started and many of the Fortresses still in the planning stage, not to mention the plans for in depth system defense, the Navy has taken up the lions share of defending Sol. With most of the Fleet gone, we'll be vulnerable to attack."

"How many ships could be spared for this operation?"

"About thirty or so vessels at the maximum although if it were up to me I'd wouldn't send any. We just don't have the assets to do so."

"Can we crank out more ships?"

"Well sir at the moment, we have 30 of our 200 yards operational. With our space elevators finally operational, the rest will be operational in a couple of weeks after their completion date.

"However at his moment, the only ship plans we have available are the Buenos Aires Destroyer, the Daedalus class battlecruiser, although the name is very deceiving as it is more of a jack of all trades vessel, the Montana class Battleship and the Bolivar class Supercarrier. At the moment our Navy is too many capital warships in comparison to our number of frigates and destroyers that at the moment numbers zero as the only destroyers we have are under construction. Therefore I suggest that we focus our Naval construction efforts to destroyers and frigates when the plans are complete to increase our numbers as well as to supplement the battle line."

"How long will it take?"

"Six to eight months sir."

"That long?" asked O'Neill unfamiliar with Naval construction times.

"Sir," stated the Admiral, "a destroyer in today's Navy is around 200 meters long, and has a mass of over twenty thousand tons, holds a crew around 300 to 400 personnel and costs around a half a billion credits per unit. It used to take two to three years even in wartime conditions to build its ocean going equivalent with pre war technology. The fact that due to advanced construction technology we have been able to cut the build time by more than half is a Godsend in and unto itself."

"So if we devote the rest of our yards, we'll have 170 more ships in our Navy?"

"More like 340 sir," stated the Admiral, shocking O'Neill. He continued to explain, "the standard Terran space yard is 400 meters long sir, long enough to build a cruiser or two smaller ships. In addition, there are about ten specialized yards of much longer length that are designed and dedicated to build our Battleships and Supercarriers although our regular yards are designed to be modular and thus can be attached to one another if need be to allow more capital ships to be built at the cost of having a smaller amount of destroyers, frigates and corvettes being built at the same time."

"When can we get started?"

"Well at the moment, we only have one elevator operational, allowing us to have a total of 90 maybe 100 active yards at the most total, with all three operational by the end of April, we'll have the capability to operate all 200 yards with ease. So we're realistically looking at 120 to 140 Destroyers and Frigates not 340. But if the Minister gives the order, we can start construction in a week."

"Its still better than the 70 or so ships we have at the moment," remarked the Commandant.

"In addition, with the new force structure, we'd have to alter the plans for the Operation."

"In what way?"

"Well the original plan intended for around a hundred or so ships to be permanently devoted to long term deployments in a local area. However given the fact that we have less than fifty percent of the original force, we're going to have to plan the entire operation all over again. We're going to have to focus on quick raids on a few vital targets with a lot more Special Operations support than we originally intended."

"Can SOCOM handle it?" asked O'Neill, who was a former US Air Force Special Tactics Officer before he joined the SGC.

"It will be difficult, but I think we can do so," said a new voice, belonging to General Ian Ross, the General in command of the Terran Federal Republic's Special Operations Command or SOCOM for short.

While the head of SOCOM was not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they would be foolish for him not to be present. Whereas SOCOM was officially a Unified Combatant Command it was also known as the fifth and unofficial branch of the Armed Forces. Although the Special Forces, the Army's Special Assault Service, the Navy's SEAL Teams, the Space Force's Special Tactics Teams and the Marine Corps Force Recon Units among other formations that were not to be mentioned to anyone without the highest level of security clearance and the need to know, were property of their parent branches, this only was a matter of fact on paper. SOCOM was responsible for their day-to-day administration and it not the individual branches set the standards, recruited personnel, and made sure that they were at full capability.

He continued, "I've got over two thousand Special Operations personnel deployed behind enemy lines at the moment and I can assure you that we can get the job done. However a lot of them are going to need extraction as many of our units were originally equipped for long term reconnaissance and observation not an assault behind enemy lines."

"You can count on the Navy to get your men out, General," promised the Admiral.

"Do we agree in general on this course of action?" The position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs meant that O'Neill was the Professional Head of the Armed Forces and was the senior Military Advisor to the President. While O'Neill could present the proposed plan without the consent without the approval of the rest of the Joint Chiefs, as it was well within his rights to do so, it was always good to build consensus amongst his fellow Officers.

"Da," stated the head of the Space Force.

"Yes, but with serious reservations," replied, the CNO.

"Agreed," said the Chief of Staff of the Army.

"I share the same beliefs as the Admiral," stated the Vice Chairman.

"Affirmative."

"I have to agree."

O'Neill sighed. "I'll present the plan to the President and the rest of the National Security Council tomorrow morning then. My God or whoever the hell is out there help us all."

2/9 Infantry Headquarters

"Dammit!" yelled Sanders to no one in particular, his hands crumpling the requisitions receipt into a small ball. Things were not going his way he fumed.

First off, due to a clerical error, instead of getting 7.62mm x 51mm ammunition for his designated marksmen and his sniper's rifles, he had gotten 7.62mm x 39mm that was designed for the AK-47 and was completely incompatible with the M110 and MSG-90 rifles used respectively. This meant that his marksmen and snipers supply of ammunition dangerously low and would render them combat ineffective as they would not be able to use their specially weapons as they were capable of killing the enemy at a much farther range than the weapons used by the rest of his infantrymen. Thus, preventing them from killing more Ori warriors before they could engage his men. Even though supply was going to get the right ammunition as quickly as possible it also presented another problem. Since there were no AKs in his battalion or any weapon for that matter that used the said caliber it meant that he was now the proud owner of 5000 rounds of ammunition that could only be used as paperweights, albeit poor ones.

Second, while the arrival of the Pangarans meant that he had another company of troops in his battalion, it also meant that he had just inherited another massive headache. While the Terrans mainly used military equipment that was primarily of American origin, due to its large availability in numbers and its quality (although this was to be supplanted by new equipment and gear that utilized newly acquired technologies designed and made by Defense Contractors across the planet although the majority was either still on the drawing boards, the prototype phase or just coming off the production lines), the gear that the Pangarans used was obtained via military aid by the Terran Federal Government and was of European and mostly German make.

Even though European and American weapon systems were somewhat interchangeable due to close coordination via NATO during the Cold War, there were still some noticeable differences. For example, the ex-German Marders used by the Pangarans had an autocannon that used 20mm ammunition while the rest of the battalion's Bradley's used 25mm. This meant that Sanders rather than having just one system he had to worry about had two parallel systems that did exactly same job and needed to be maintained, stretching the already strained logistics system on Chulak. And that was just one of many differences in equipment.

And that wasn't the last of it. Even though the Pangarans were responsible for maintaining their own forces it only applied on paper. In reality, the Pangarans were completely reliant on the Terrans. The Pangaran infrastructure even after extensive assistance was similar to that of 1950's Earth although it was a step above the World War I era infrastructure that it started out with. Although in all due fairness, a forty-year leap in technology and infrastructure in just two years was pretty incredible. Due to the constraints on their infrastructure, the Pangarans were not able to maintain their vehicles and the rest of their equipment.

Sanders didn't mind the added the responsibility of taking care of another Company under his command, after all they were his men now, no matter if they were part of a different nation and thus he would take care of them. However what he did mind was the fact that he didn't have the adequate resources to do that task that he was assigned.

At the Battalion level and above, the officer in charge was assigned a staff to help him or her run the day-to-day operations, as there was no way in hell one person could run a unit with a minimum of over five hundred or so personnel effectively. When the 2/9 along with the rest of the 2nd Infantry Division, had been deployed to Chulak, then-Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins had a full staff of almost seventy soldiers directly under his command to assist him in what ever he needed to run the Battalion effectively. However as the 2/9 kept on fighting the Ori, casualties began to mount and slowly but surely the staff began to dwindle as many were transferred to the line companies in order to replace combat losses. By the time Sanders took command, over half of the Staff was either transferred or dead. The attack on battalion Headquarters further reduced the staff down to less than twenty.

The fact that his staff was reduced in number and that he and his staff had to file twice as many requisition forms to keep the battalion operating smoothly caused he and his staff massive amounts of additional grief. Due to the lack of personnel across the board, Sanders had ordered his line company commanders to help out in administrative duties. While this wasn't popular by a long shot, as the line commanders didn't like having even more work to do it was the only way to keep the battalion running in an effective manner.

If one of Captain Reth's men broke their rifle and needed parts to fix it or a replacement, it wasn't the Pangaran Army who would pick up the slack but the Terran Army. While Reth could in fact file a requisition to the Pangaran Army, it would be automatically sent to the Terran Army, as the Pangaran Army didn't have the parts that he needed. To save time, Sanders had told Reth tell him what he needed and he would file the reports directly to the Terran Army as the faster they got the equipment that they needed the better. However while this was beneficial in the long run it was a bitch in the short run, as he had to file twice as many requisition forms.

"I assume that the magazine wells are not arriving?" asked Captain Masters.

"You damn right they aren't," replied Sanders. He pointed to the paper clutched in his hands. "According to this paper here, they won't be arriving until next week at the earliest."

Even though the G36 and the M4A2 were both built and designed by the same Company, Heckler and Koch, they both used different magazines. The M4A2 used the more numerous and older NATO STANAG magazines while the G36 used a newer efficient magazine that was designed in house by Heckler and Koch and was only compatible with the G36.

Heckler and Koch knew that since the G36 used different magazines, making joint operations between states that used the G36 and those who used STANAG magazines difficult. The designers decided to make the magazine wells of the G36 modular allowing the standard magazine well to be removed in the field for a magazine well that would accept STANAG magazines.

However unfortunately for the men and women on Chulak and especially the Pangarans, new magazine wells for a rifle only used by a select few weren't classified as a high priority by supply compared to the 8th Army's demand for ammunition, replacement vehicles and other more essential items.

"We did get the ammunition that we requested right?"

"Except for the 7.62 NATO ammunition for our snipers and marksmen we got the amount that we wanted," Sanders replied. "However even though we got the number of rounds that we requested, the majority of them are not armor piercing rounds that we requested and instead received standard ball rounds instead."

"Damn," replied Masters.

When the 8th Army was first deployed, many soldiers noticed that even though the Ori were falling in larger numbers than they were against the Jaffa, it took at least one or two three round bursts or 20 of their magazines to kill them as their armor, while primitive was sufficient enough to deflect 5.56 NATO ammunition. In response Field Commanders began to request armor piercing ammunition as

White House

"General O'Neill," said President Hayes as soon as O'Neill had taken his seat at the conference table, "What plans have you and the rest of the Joint Chiefs come with?"

"Mr. President, the Joint Chiefs and I have proposed a two front operation."

"Two fronts?" asked Ombutu skeptically.

"Yes Mr. Vice President."

"Why?" asked Suarez.

"Why don't we listen to General O'Neill's proposals before we begin critiquing it," stated the President. "General please start describing your plan when you are ready."

"In order to guarantee that we are victorious against the Ori on Chulak, we not only have to defeat the remaining forces on the ground, which by the way still outnumber our own forces in a significant margin, but in additional we have keep Adria from sending reinforcements to Chulak which if that were to happen would completely negate our gains on the ground," O'Neill explained.