The run back to the Stargate was largely uneventful, something for which Taylor was eternally grateful, not least because stealth had been abandoned in favour of speed. They didn't see a single Fenrir for the entire journey, and for some reason, this concerned Taylor.

They had just passed the town when the ground began to shake rhythmically, the power of the tremor rising steadily. Unlike the tremor of the previous night, this shaking showed no sign of stopping.

"Gate, now!" Taylor bawled. The exhausted explorers found a fresh reserve of energy and sprinted as fast as they could for the site of the Stargate.

Unlike the last time they had experienced the ground moving, the rumbling didn't stop when the hum started. Both increased steadily in pitch and power.

The gate was on its back, only thirty degrees off being truly horizontal. More importantly, it was still largely buried, only the top four chevrons visible. Most of the townspeople were cowering in fear, others desperately expecting an attack. The few who had actually begun excavating the Stargate had paused in terror the moment the ground began shuddering.

The only remotely good news was that the DHD was intact, the blackened, warped remains of the MALP half-buried next to it.

"Major, the gate won't activate with that much sand in the way." Nesbitt yelled breathlessly.

"Look!" Moffatt pointed.

The loose sand covering the gate was dancing violently as the ground shuddered. It was also rapidly revealing the entire gate.

The shuddering was so powerful it hurt just to stand still, and the noise, now a combination of a deep pulsating hum and the high-pitched whine of something building up an immense charge, was becoming incredibly loud. In seconds it would be deafening and speech would become borderline impossible.

Taylor turned quickly to face Nesbitt and Llewellyn.

"DHD, SGC, IDC." He said, pointing wildly at the pedestal to Nesbitt and then looking at Llewellyn and indicating the GDO on his own forearm before pointing at the combat engineer. Both men nodded understanding and ran to their positions, Nesbitt leaning on the DHD and dialling Earth, Llewellyn kneeling next to the gate with his GDO exposed and ready to send SG-27's identification code the moment the kawoosh had receded.

Steadying himself, Nesbitt pressed the last glyph, glanced at the gate and prayed it was exposed enough to activate as he depressed the mottled red activation dome.

The gate couldn't be heard over the din coming from the desert, but the blue-white vortex exploding outwards was all Taylor needed to see.

Screaming against the noise, he signalled Llewellyn to jump through the almost horizontal gate, then the refugees.

As the last of the townsfolk jumped through the flat Stargate, Taylor signalled Moffatt, Jarvis, Halverson and Nesbitt to go through. As Nesbitt's flailing leg disappeared through the event horizon, the rumbling ceased, and Taylor quickly snapped his head to look in the direction of the noise, the whine's pitch having finally exceeded human hearing. But the pulsating hum remained, and Taylor suddenly recognised it for what it was, knowing Llewellyn had been right.

Rising out of the desert, massive waves of sand cascading off its back, was a jagged nightmarish ship several miles in length. The hum, disguised until now by the whine and the rumbling, was the distinctive sound of antigravity wave generators emitted by any large vessel hovering close to land.

As he watched, the black and silver trident shaped ship fluidly pitched upwards, and he caught a glimpse of a large cluster of actinic green engine exhausts as it slowly oriented itself vertically, hovering above the sand.

The engines flared almost to white, the immense vessel standing on solid-looking pillars of painfully bright green-tinged energy as the ship flew upwards with acceleration and speed that belied its immense mass.

"Oh no…" Taylor muttered as he raised his hand to shield himself from the hot, bright glow.

The powerful engines had sent a supersonic, superheated wave of sand boiling across the desert, and in a matter of seconds, it would hit him and wipe him out of existence.

He charged at the Stargate and leapt, falling through the inviting puddle.

The comparatively dark and cool gateroom was a nice sight, even if it looked lower down than usual, but Taylor only had a fraction of a second to appreciate it before he slammed into the ramp more than halfway down, his acceleration through the gate significantly enhanced by 355's gravity and his entry point much higher than usual. As he reoriented upon coming out the other side, he realised he was too high up and moving far too quickly.

"Iris!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, grimacing as he suddenly became aware of an intense pain coming from his right arm. Something was screaming into his brain that arms were not supposed to bend like that.

Behind him the trinium-titanium metal blades flowed quickly into position with the familiar grating sound. A tiny but incredibly fast jet of sand squirted through the centre before the blades crossed and interlocked.

"Major, what the –" Landry began. Taylor cut him off.

"Sir, get a 304 to that planet now! The Fenrir have a warship." He screamed as a medical team pushed their way through the throng of confused and scared refugees. Llewellyn nodded sombrely as Nesbitt and Halverson looked at him in shock.

"Sergeant, raise the Daedalus and alert Colonel Caldwell." Landry said from the control room. Harriman nodded and quickly began speaking into his headset.

"She'll have to be fast." Taylor said through gritted teeth as the medics helped him onto the gurney.

"The Daedalus will be there in two minutes, Major." Landry said calmly.

"Two minutes?" Nesbitt asked incredulously.

"I asked Colonel Caldwell to detour and check up on you. We've tried to dial P2C-355 four times since you missed your check-in."

The Daedalus dropped out of hyperspace close enough to see the trident shaped vessel rising away from the planet. Almost immediately, the tip of the central spike began to glow bright red. Packets of green energy leapt away from turrets lining the ship's hull and surged towards the diminutive human vessel.

The bright red orb suddenly became a long lance of scarlet energy that slammed into Daedalus' shields.

"Shields down to ninety-one percent sir."

The green blobs of energy were slower and weaker, but incredibly numerous. The 304's shields flared sporadically under the impact, but the ship waded through the enemy fire with ease.

"Shields have dropped only one percent – we could take this all night sir." The tactical officer reported.

"Well, we're not going to. Railguns and missiles, now. I want that ship gone." Caldwell barked.

The BC-304 hurtled through space towards the colossal Fenrir ship, its railgun turrets aligning on the massive target and spitting hypervelocity slugs at the Fenrir vessel. A dozen hatches opened on the neck of the ship and missiles erupted from their silos, streaking across the void to slam into the trident ship's shields. Splashes of white energy indicated the hits, fading slowly to transparency again.

"Their shields are holding sir."

"Keep firing. Bring beam weapons online, fire at will."

The Asgard weapons let loose a dense line of intensely energetic plasma. It encountered resistance with the shield for a single second before passing through and hitting a boxlike structure on the central hull. The box exploded violently.

"Looks like we hit a landing bay sir."

"Fire again."

Before the Daedalus could land its second shot, the trident ship unleashed a second burst from its main cannon, the spear of red energy hitting the midsection of the human warship.

"Shields down to eighty percent."

Daedalus' second shot pierced the weak shielding of the Fenrir vessel near its engines and tore through the metal of the ship with ease. Five of the glowing green exhausts flickered and died, but the ship continued forward.

"Come around and fire again." Caldwell ordered, visibly annoyed at the minimal damage they were inflicting on the Fenrir vessel.

"Sir -"

Ahead of the damaged Fenrir ship a cloud of purple and white energy had sprung into existence. The Fenrir vessel surged forwards and disappeared.

"Enemy vessel has jumped to hyperspace."

The SGC's infirmary was not somewhere Taylor had wanted to visit very often, but it seemed like he was here every other mission now. At least it was quiet and uncharacteristically empty. Even Siler was missing.

"Well Major, you got off lightly." Dr Lam said as she walked up to him, hugging the clipboard.

"Yup, feels like it." He said, slowly propping himself up with one arm. His leg felt heavily bruised and was currently choosing not to work, but it didn't feel serious. His arm, however, had been badly wrenched out of its socket by his violent encounter with the ramp in the gateroom. Now it was in a black sling pulled tight to his chest.

"While you were lucky not to need surgery, I'm not talking about the dislocated arm, or your leg."

"Oh, you're not?" he asked with mild annoyance.

"No, I'm talking about how you got off lightly when the Fenrir ship's engines irradiated you."

He stopped trying to struggle upright.

"They…what?" he asked, incredulously.

"Don't worry, it's nothing too bad, not much more than fifty REMs. You have very mild radiation sickness; you'll probably get headaches, an increase in white blood cell count, and most likely a loss of fertility. Temporary, of course. On top of that, you'll get a great tan. Since you'll be on painkillers for your injuries, you probably won't notice the headaches anyway."

"Oh goody." He said sarcastically, giving up and slumping back on to the bed.

"I'll be referring you to an orthopaedic surgeon at the Academy hospital, and you'll need physiotherapy on that shoulder, but other than that, there shouldn't be any lasting damage."

A few minutes later, Llewellyn quietly entered the room and sat down next to Taylor's bed.

"How are you sir?" he whispered.

"Well, apart from my newfound talent for glowing in the dark, I'm…in a surprisingly great deal of pain, actually, but thank you for asking. What are you here for Lieutenant?"

"General Landry wanted to know if you're fit for debriefing."

"And the rest of the team nominated you to find out."

"Yes sir." The engineer said quietly.

Taylor sighed, glancing casually around the medical facility. No major injuries, no urgent cases, all in all a surprisingly quiet day for the elite medical facility – perfect. Llewellyn had been supremely lucky to avoid Dr Lam during his post-mission check-up.

"So young and trusting – hey, doc!" He said, raising his voice. Dr Lam looked around, immediately spotted Llewellyn, and grinned as she pulled a digital camera out of her pocket.

"Oh, no, sir…" Llewellyn started, staring wide eyed at the camera. Taylor simply looked at him and grinned cruelly as the camera flashed.

"What kind of a commanding officer would I be if I didn't ensure a soldier in my unit received a deserved award?" Taylor said, hobbling through the SGC's halls.

"Thank you, sir. Apparently there's an email going around the base saying they've changed the meaning of MALP to Malicious Anti-Llewellyn Probe." Llewellyn said as he walked slowly alongside Taylor. Taylor chuckled.

The briefing room was already occupied. Landry sat in his habitual chair, with the rest of SG-27 at the table. Taylor hobbled up to his seat and eased himself into it.

"I expect you'll be needing more time off then Major? And I thought this wasn't going to be a habit." Landry said. Fortunately, his expression was not serious.

"You'll be happy to hear that the refugees from P2C-355 have been successfully relocated. We sent a team back to 355 in full hazmat. The town you described has been scoured off the map, and the whole area's now a radioactive wasteland. Dr Lee tells me it won't be remotely habitable again for a few decades." Landry said.

"What about the temple…ruins…whatever they were?" Nesbitt asked.

"The team couldn't go that far in because of the radiation, but the Daedalus did a surface scan – looks like the whole structure's buried under a hundred feet of radioactive sand."

Nesbitt sighed.

"The good news is we now understand a few of the mysteries surrounding the Fenrir and how they relate to the Asgard." Halverson said. "The thing that's had us stumped since we first encountered the Fenrir and learnt the Asgard were responsible for imprisoning them is chiefly why they never warned us about them. Now we know why – it wasn't the Asgard."

"I'm sorry, what?" Landry said.

"This should help explain." Halverson said, pressing play on the remote in front of her. Landry swivelled his chair to watch.

On the large screen, the footage from Halverson's digital video camera was playing. The chamber was definitely not something built by Goa'uld transplanted Egyptian slaves – in fact, it seemed doubtful that humans had anything to do with its construction whatsoever.

In the footage, Nesbitt had his head stuck inside what looked like a dormant Asgard core.

"That should do it."

The chamber promptly sank into darkness as the core itself lit up. The camera shook slightly, and Halverson's voice came over the speakers.

"Now try the crystal again!"

Seconds later a white glow had begun to fill a small region of air between the two scientists, and with a familiar warbling sound, a hologram materialised, assuming the naked, four foot high shape of an Asgard. The large black eyes blinked and gazed at Nesbitt, then turned and looked straight at the camera.

"Greetings. I am Tyr, Supreme Commander of the Vanir Fleet." The Asgard-shaped hologram said.

Halverson paused the video, leaving Tyr's holographic form frozen on screen.

"So you were right." Taylor said, smiling.

"Vanir?" Jarvis said, puzzled and surprised.

"The Norse gods were initially divided into two groups. The first were the Aesir, who came from Asgard, and the second were the Vanir, who came from Vanaheim. Initially they were opposed to each other, but later merged." Halverson continued.

"So we're talking about an entirely separate faction of the Asgard race? What, like the Pegasus Asgard?" Llewellyn asked. Halverson nodded.

"We all have a tendency to think of the Asgard as a single unified race, but that wasn't ever true, and perhaps even less so ten thousand years ago. After all, that was when the Pegasus group splintered. We already know there was one faction that didn't fit with the Asgard as we know them. Now, I don't know if this," she indicated the screen, and Tyr's motionless form, "is another group entirely or if the Pegasus Asgard are somehow linked to the Vanir. A remnant or a splinter group, perhaps. What matters is that I think the reason the Asgard never informed us of the existence of the Fenrir and the problem with the Gleipnir system was quite simply because they didn't know either even existed. The Fenrir aren't the dark side of the Asgard legacy, but the Vanir legacy."

She pressed play again, and they watched in stunned silence, still trying to digest this revelation.

It became evident it had taken Halverson and Nesbitt a while to realise that rather than the usual 'dumb' Asgard holograms, the computer rendered ghost of Tyr was a rather more advanced interactive hologram that almost perfectly simulated the speech and thought patterns of a once living being, similar to those contained within the Asgard core on the Odyssey. Only once the novelty and curiosity had worn off had they begun the serious matter of interrogating the hologram, a task made all the harder by Tyr's abrasive and antagonistic personality.

"The Fenrir must never be allowed to escape the Void Prison. They have spent much of their time and resources strip-mining their worlds to create a vast fleet of warships, and dedicated entire planets to breeding billions of warriors. If the Gleipnir barrier falls, they will spread out across the galaxy, destroying everything in their path. The stars will run red with blood, and nothing will stand in their way. We imprisoned them because we could not decide how to deal with them. They could not be allowed to roam free because of the threat they posed, but while practical, genocide was…distasteful. So we created the Void Prison to hold them until we could agree on a better solution."

"Not the most charming member of their species, was he?" Moffatt said quietly to Nesbitt.

Nesbitt chuckled.

"I don't think we caught it on the tape, but after about the fifth time he referred to us as mere apes, Elise kept calling him 'Rimmer' and insisted he should have a big 'H' stamped on his forehead." Nesbitt whispered back to Moffatt.

The tape finished, and the team turned back to the table. Halverson began speaking.

"Incidentally, and it should hardly surprise any of us by now, this all fits with established Norse mythology. At Ragnarok, Skoll and Hati, Fenrir's sons, are fated to consume the sun and the moon. The stars will go out, and Fenrir himself, a wolf so big his lower jaw touches the ground while his upper scrapes the heavens, will destroy everything in his path with flames from his nostrils. In other words, I don't think the Vanir are over-hyping what will happen if that prison fails."

They contemplated this for a moment. Taylor was the first to speak up.

"Okay, so what does Norse myth tell us about this Tyr?"

"When the gods bound Fenrir, one of them had to put his hand in the wolf's mouth, essentially as insurance that it wasn't a trick. That would be Tyr. When Fenrir realised he had indeed been tricked and was now bound by Gleipnir, he bit Tyr's hand off in revenge. Based on what we know and can extrapolate, our current thinking is that this is a largely accurate metaphor, and the reality is that the Vanir fleet had to contain the Fenrir to a small region of space while the Void Prison activated. In the process, part of the fleet was trapped inside the prison, equivalent to the hand being bitten off, which is how Tyr came to be there. As he said in the tape, he then spent much of the rest of his life – and that would be thousands of years for an Asgard, don't forget – stealthily observing the Fenrir and committing everything he learnt and knew to a number of crystals that he discretely planted at Stargates, undetectable by the Fenrir. In the event anybody was ever stupid enough to enter the Void Prison –"

"That would be us." Taylor said.

"- and brought with them a dialling crystal to escape, Tyr's data crystal would beam in at the moment the dialling crystal was inserted into the DHD."

Landry was contemplative. Nesbitt, however, had something to add.

"I don't want to be the guy who makes a bad situation worse, but I thought I'd better mention it…what happened with the Fenrir warship?"

Landry sat up.

"The Daedalus was able to damage it, but it still escaped to hyperspace. However, given how easily our weapons defeated its shields and how weak their weapons were against the Daedalus, a rematch against the combined might of Earth's fleet is pretty much guaranteed to be a win for the home team." He said.

"Sorry, but that's ridiculous." Nesbitt said gloomily.

"Care to explain yourself doctor?"

Nesbitt took a deep breath before beginning.

"The Fenrir warship was buried under the desert of 355, almost certainly just before the Fenrir were imprisoned ten thousand years ago. It's an old vessel, most likely outdated and obsolete a long time ago. For a small assault force it's a useful asset no matter how old and decrepit it is, but modern Fenrir weaponry and shielding is vastly superior. On 434 it took an anti-tank missile launcher to defeat a personal shield and a portable particle beam weapon to take out an APC. Now consider that the weapons on their fighters and shuttles dealt heavy damage to the Apollo's shields in a matter of seconds. I'm sorry, but I find it hard to accept that the Fenrir won't upgrade their one and only warship outside of the prison with the most up to date weapons and shields the first chance they get."

As if they hadn't had enough bad news, the team chewed this over. Moments later Landry stood up from his chair, leaning on the table, and spoke in a gravely serious tone.

"In part, this briefing has confirmed many of our worst suspicions. It also makes some of our worst suspicions seem like pleasant daydreams in comparison. Frankly, I have an urgent need to speak to the President, the Pentagon and the IOA for that matter. Before you go, I do have a couple of things to tell you though. As of this moment, you are no longer under probation. Also as of this moment, you have completed your final mission for this command. SG-27, you are dismissed. Permanently."

A/N: And that's the end of SGR: The First Rule. I hope you liked it. If you did, I'd really appreciate a review, even a single word! Even if you didn't like it a review would be really nice!

I've deliberately left the ending open and vague because I think it will be a while before I write any more Stargate Ragnarok. What do you think? Should I start on a Part 3? Where should I go with this story/series? There's a poll on my profile page to this effect.