Moments before the Nieruie exited hyperspace Bra'tac knew things were bad. What limited sensor readings were possible from hyperspace showed only two ships in Earth orbit, and the former Jaffa Master realigned their exit point to get them as close as possible to them on reversion.

The massive Columnar slid back into realspace between the Phoenix and Earth, just above the atmosphere. The Kerensky shadowed the American ship, but there was no sign of the Sun Tzu…and there was a thin wisp of smoke rising from Antarctica.

"That's not good," Sheppard said quietly.

A transmission from the Phoenix appeared in hologram across the forward wall of the bridge, as well as above each individual chair. Colonel Ronson's distraught face appeared.

"What has transpired?" Bra'tac asked, checking on the position of the enemy fleet. They were sitting right where they had been…minus one of their ships.

"A number of their smaller ships engaged us in battle again, this time as a diversion. As soon as the Antarctic outpost launched their drones another group of enemy ships pulled a hyperspace jump into the upper atmosphere and took it out. The drones in flight dropped dead before they hit their targets. We managed to destroy the diversionary force, but when the second group joined the battle we lost the Sun Tzu.

"What of the ship I left behind?" Bra'tac asked.

Ronson shook his head. "I don't know. We lost track of them."

The Alterra nodded. "The enemy has made no further move?"

"No…I can't understand it. By now they have to know they have more than enough firepower to take us out…at least they did. I hope that's no longer the case, judging by the looks of your ship. Please tell me I'm right?"

Bra'tac nodded. "Pull back and disengage. We will take it from here."

"Not to sound ungrateful," Ronson said, "but this is our world. We will defend it."

"Your deaths will not serve your world. Only your continued life can. If the enemy persists the battle will grow beyond your capabilities. You will be more of a hindrance than an asset. Pull back and see to your repairs."

"I can't do that," Ronson argued. "I have my orders."

"You have new orders now," Bra'tac said stiffly. "Issued by the battlefield commander, which I have now become."

Ronson visibly stiffened. "Not to belabor the point, but where can we go? I doubt I could land the ship in one piece, and if we jumped into hyperspace there's no guarantee the enemy wouldn't follow us."

"You could bring them onboard," Ford offered. "The main bay looks big enough."

"A prudent suggestion," Bra'tac said with approval. "Do your ships still have maneuvering capability?"

"I believe so," Ronson answered.

"Then you will land inside our ship and begin your repairs. Both of your ships."

Ronson's eyes went wide. "Did you say inside your ship?"

"I am opening the primary bay now," Bra'tac said, stopping the Columnar near the Phoenix. "Get your ship close and the bay's tractor beams will guide you the rest of the way."

"I'm not sure I like this," Ronson said, wavering.

"If you cannot land, and cannot flee, you have no other alternative."

"Very well," Ronson said reluctantly. "I'll instruct the Kerensky to follow us…assuming both ships will fit inside."

Bra'tac did a third check of the sizes. "They will."

Ronson nodded. "Thank you. We'll try and expedite repairs as best we can."

The Phoenix turned on maneuvering thrusters and edged around the back of the Columnar where a thin layer of replicator armor was peeling back from the center section of the ship revealing a pair of massive hangar bay doors. Once the armor blocks had reformed elsewhere the bay opened slowly revealing a hangar deeper than it was wide.

The Phoenix closed to within a couple kilometers then the ship was gripped by a translucent blue beam…and she lost all maneuvering control.

"Shut down all engines," Ronson ordered as they were smoothly pulled forward into the bay.

"My god," he whispered as the ceiling whipped across the forward viewport and subdued yellow lighting cast a soothing glow across the bridge. The Phoenix was dragged forward to nearly the end of the bay where it stopped and very slowly descended to the floor.

"Landing protocols," he ordered quickly. "Let's not make a mess on their deck."

The Phoenix's heavy landing gear emerged from the underside of the ship and transferred the weight of the 304 to the deck until the tractor beams finally released them with a gentle thud.

"Aft cameras," Ronson said, standing up.

Behind them the Kerensky was just entering the tractor beams, but it quickly obscured most of the visible stars and loomed ominously larger as the seconds passed by. For a moment the Colonel feared a collision, but just a few dozen meters shy of his ship the Kerensky stopped its forward momentum and, like the Phoenix, began to very slowly drift downwards.

Ronson also noted that behind them the hangar bay doors were resealing. Before the Kerensky had even touched down the visible stars were gone and the only exterior light came from row upon row of the bay's yellow illumination bars, each probably the width of the 302.

"Alright people, let's get to work. The faster we repair this damage the sooner we can get back in this fight!"

"Now that's just cool," Sheppard said, monitoring the boarding ships.

"You can say that again," Ford echoed.

"What are they doing?" Lorne asked, looking at a hologram of the enemy ships as they broke apart.

"They are reconfiguring," Bra'tac said, beginning to understand their tactics. "They estimate it will take a larger configuration to engage this ship…they are preparing to attack."

"Why don't we hit them first?" McKay asked. "If this ship really is as bad ass as you say…"

"If they attack us with a smaller force, it is to our advantage to wipe it out, thus diminishing their available numbers to throw at us once they realize how significant a threat we are."

"Patience is the way of the Jedi," Sheppard explained sarcastically.

"As you well know…" McKay reminded him, "I'm not the most patient of souls. Right now I'm ready to sling some lead!"

"Darth McKay it is," Ford said jokingly.

"Heavens no," Carson chimed in.

"Yeah, well just be glad I no longer have the power to Force choke you to death," McKay snarled at Ford.

Aiden laughed. "When was that?"

"Humans…" Bra'tac growled under his breath as the tactical hologram shifted. The moving blocks had stopped reconfiguring, settling on a flat, angular design. "Stand ready!"

The Atlantis crew immediately stopped their bickering and snapped to attention as Bra'tac powered up the ship's weapons. In each gunner's station all weapon systems were 'visible' to the neural interface, giving them the choice of which weapon/weapons to control.

A moment after Bra'tac gave them the word, 99 plasma cannons shifted from mental black dots to green, active batteries alongside the other blacked out weapons systems. Sheppard reached out and 'grabbed' a dozen along the port side of the ship. That was the most he'd been proficient at controlling in the simulations and now wasn't the time to overestimate his abilities.

Other green dots turned red as his compatriots selected cannons to control. Through his connection, Sheppard felt McKay pick up 50 or more of them.

"Rodney, you get five, no more."

"What! Why?" he demanded.

"You can't control fifty," Sheppard said rudely. "I'm maxed out at twelve, now stop playing around."

"Alright," McKay grumbled, releasing all but five.

"Ship," Bra'tac said, "retain twenty batteries for point defense."

The holographic Alterran nodded and twenty green dots spaced evenly around the hull turned red.

"What about the rest?" Carson asked.

"I will use them as I am able," Bra'tac said as the enemy ships disappeared from sensors. "But my primary focus will be on the lox generators."

Outside the ship seventeen clusters appeared from their microjump. The angular ships, vaguely resembling the form of a Wraith mothership, thrusted around on an intercept course with the Nieruie as Bra'tac commanded the ship to open its weapon pods and deploy the lox pillars.

A half segment of the cylinder-like ship bisected along the upper aft hull and split laterally revealing an empty pesqua launcher beneath as the two pods drifted away from the hull. Halfway through their deployment two more pods split in the lower fore section of the hull, revealing a second empty pesqua launcher and the flat sides of the pods.

From the flat side of all four pods a small circular column rose 'up' from the center and deployed its flaps spreading out like a flower petal. The front pods had their lox generators covering the forward and dorsal arcs, while the back pods with their generators pointing 'down' covered the ventral and aft arcs.

Mental counters appeared over Bra'tac's chair beginning at 32 seconds…the time it would take for the generators to charge and recharge. The plasma cannons had a much faster recharge rate, though they didn't wield as much destructive force.

Bra'tac grabbed twenty seven of the unused plasma cannons and fired as many that were in range at the approaching ships, which in turn fired linked combos of short bursts from all available weapon points on their blocks.

Inside the Columnar the impacts were not felt, but the computer displays made up for the lack of tactile sensation as the ship's computer generated a huge central hologram depicting the ship and all weapon impacts. As expected, the 40-some cluster ships couldn't penetrate the Alterran ship's shields, but it wasn't from lack of trying. Their onslaught of weapon's fire never ceased, but for each amount of shield energy drained, the emitters pulled equal amounts of energy from the ZPM to replace it.

In this way, the shields would never be downed, so long as the ZPM still had energy…unless the enemy could pinpoint stress a particular spot faster than the reserve energy could be distributed to the matrix. However, right now that wasn't the case…which meant that the battle quickly became little more than target practice for the crew.

All across the Columnar the plasma cannons fired gulps of bluish/green energy at two second intervals. Many missed the quickly moving cluster ships, but still many more impacted their combined shields, draining them of energy faster than their small power generators could replenish it.

Bra'tac fired off the most accurate shots as he waited for the lox generators to come online, utilizing the computer's targeting skills while he merely pointed them in the right direction. The others were less effective, trying to manually target the weapons, which resulted mostly in misses, save for the ships that came extremely close on strafing runs.

Those ships also drew the attention of the point defense system under command of the ship's computer. From the 20 batteries it controlled a nearly constant stutter stream of plasma fired into the quickly moving strafers as they passed by.

One such ship suffered massive damage from the point defenses after being tagged by both Bra'tac's and Sheppard's port batteries, lowering its shields enough for the computer to rack up the kill…or nearly so. The undamaged blocks disconnected from the dead ones and flew apart, where they then either began to assault the ship individually or pull off to reform with others into new cluster ships.

Sheppard frowned as he saw the point defense batteries firing quickly…with his twelve suffering through a two second recharge penalty. He wondered why his couldn't fire quicker, then all of a sudden his batteries changed aspects and the recharge lag dropped to one second…with the plasma bolts being weakened in compensation.

"I get it," he whispered to himself, mentally commanding all but two of his batteries to chop the recharge down to one third of a second…with the other two moving up to their maximum of four seconds.

He used his 'pulsers,' as he thought of them, to stitch the quicker ships while he used the 'mega guns' to pound the slower moving foursome lurking in front of the ship.

All of a sudden two of those four detonated in massive fireballs, with flicks of orange electricity arcing to their neighbors and being caught on their shields.

"Whooohoo," Ford yelled out. "Give it to 'em Bra'tac."

The Alterra had to smile at that, though the others couldn't see. The Columnar's firepower was indeed impressive, and the enemy was posing no match for them…yet he was still concerned. The other enemy ships remained still, content to watch the battle while they blasted their ships apart. Something else was afoot…he was sure of it.

"That is an example of why we follow protocol," Neela said unemotionally. "Had we rushed into battle, this new development could have severely crippled our fleet before we had a chance to account for it."

"I concede the point," Jarro said, studying the data they were gathering. "This new ship is far superior to our current technology. I have no doubt it is an ally of Earth, summoned to their defense."

"I concur. We must ascertain their true strength, then report back what we have learned. That is now our primary mission."

Jarro turned to his companion. "Securing this world is no longer an objective?"

"No," Neela said calmly as she watched the holograph of the battle. "Whoever this new race is, they have not made themselves known to those we have encountered. They are an unknown variable. If unchecked, the Aschen Confederation could be at risk. I will not allow that."

"Neither will I," Jarro agreed completely. "Shall we escalate the battle?"

Neela glanced at his console. "Do you have enough data to configure the remaining elementals?"

"Not for victory," he cautioned, "but enough to insure they last long enough to gather sufficient data."

"Send them all, save for five individuals…in case their smaller ship returns to harass us again."

"Reconfiguring now," he said, watching the remaining cubes disintegrate into a maelstrom of tiny pieces. Slowly they began to coalesce into one gigantic ship.

Over the ice of Antarctica a helicopter from McMurdo base skirted over a small ridgeline then dropped to the ground and settled its landing struts into the snow pack. Half a dozen people in hazmat suits climbed off the chopper as two more could be heard coming in the distance. The six over dressed scientists waddled their way across the gap to the downed bio weapon lying on the ice.

They could clearly see the central section had been depleted of its contents, sprayed throughout the atmosphere during its corkscrew descent no doubt, but there should still have been trace amounts of the weapon for them to sample…

One of the scientists slid his gloved hand over the clear, empty container looking for an access panel, yet found none. They continued to look for several minutes before calling it quits and signaling for the cargo carrier.

A frame-like helicopter moved into position over top the car-sized device and lowered straps from its midsection. The scientists secured them in a weave-like pattern around the container, fastening more than two dozen interlocks. When they finished they retreated to their chopper as the entire assembly was lifted off the ice and up into the open underbelly of the cargo chopper. Together, they returned to McMurdo base where a temporary facility was being constructed to analyze the device and get a sample of its weapon for the medical teams to start picking apart and hopefully device some type of antidote.

That said, no one knew yet what the contagion was supposed to…

"That's one big ship," McKay commented as they watched the sensors readings from the edge of the system.

"You can say that again," Lorne echoed.

"We are going to be able to handle that," Sheppard asked, "right?"

"Let us hope so," Bra'tac answered, reviewing the limited data they had gathered on the 'blocks.' He was somewhat familiar with the concept, both from his experience fighting against the replicators and the technology downloads Stevenson had given to him. As impressive as the modular design was, it should have its limitations.

If the technology was functioning as Bra'tac believed, then interior blocks were being utilized as power generators to enhance the abilities of the outer blocks…yet that power had to travel through the conduits of the individual blocks, and there was always a limit to how much power a conduit could transmit.

The Columnar had massive conduits, designed to channel the power from a potentia, but even they had limits. These enemy blocks were much smaller, and as such their conduits, not to mention their weapons and shield emitters, had to have a limit as to how much power they could use at any one time. Given the size of the attack craft being constructed Bra'tac wondered if it wasn't too big…or if he had underestimated their technology.

He didn't have to wait long to find out. As soon as the craft was assembled, the knife-like design jumped into attack position. Bra'tac awaited the first concerted blast, which came from hundreds of individual points across the 'edge' of the blade. All of them intersected on a small patch of shield, trying to penetrate it without taking down the entire matrix.

As the rest of the crew fired their plasma cannons at will, Bra'tac monitored the shield controls closely. That first attack had point stressed the shield down to 20%, then the adjacent shield matrix had flooded energy into the gap within a second after the weapons' fire had ceased, closing the near breach. Had their weapons been slightly more powerful, or their beams longer in duration, they would have succeeded in penetrating the Columnar's shields and impacting the extremely thin layer of armor covering the ship.

Bra'tac hoped they had hit them with their best shot, for if it was, they now owned them. The massive cluster ship fired again with similar results, but it was just shy of being able to penetrate the shield.

Two orange lightning bolts lept out and struck the ship…but they didn't penetrate the shields. Bra'tac's sensors indicated that they had weakened them by 27%, with a recharge rate manifesting itself at about a percent per second.

27% damage, 32 seconds of recharge…they were going to have to do better than that.

As the plasma cannons began to rack up an addition percent or two of depleted shields Bra'tac swung the Columnar around, exposing the aft turrets to the enemy. Two more lox bolts lept out at the cluster ship and impacted its shields, but they still held as more combined attacks tried to poke holes in the Nieruie's defenses.

The ship swung around again, so that when the forward lox generators recharged the enemy ship would be within their sights.

Enemy shield strength was now down 46%, with their recharge rate eating heavily into the damage the Alterran ship was dishing out, but if they maintained their rate of fire they would eventually win the war of attrition and breach their shields.

Another round of lox bolts from both fore and aft turrets nearly depleted the enemy shields, but it took a third shot from the forward turrets to finally do the job. Dozens of blocks disintegrated in a pair of massive explosions, throwing debris and intact blocks in all directions…but the continued plasma cannon fire suddenly found itself impacting against renewed shields.

Bra'tac frowned. These new shields were within the boundaries of the ship's former hull…and he suddenly understood. The cluster ship was so big that some of the central blocks couldn't extend their shields to the outer perimeter. A weakness on their part, but it also meant that once they had managed in destroying part of the ship, those central shield generators now had a chance to manifest themselves…and since they hadn't yet been drained of power, they now deployed at 100% capacity.

"Be patient," Bra'tac told his gunners. "We maintain the advantage, but this enemy is resilient. We have to wear it down. Maintain you rate of fire and it will fall."

"We're on it," Sheppard said, firing the most massive blasts his weapons were capable of. The enemy ship was essentially sitting still and as such, easy to target. Sheppard even dared to pull an addition two cannons under his control and was successful in keeping his group of 14 under linked fire, enough so that he thought about taking a few more on, but those that weren't being used didn't have firing arcs on the one massive ship, so there was little more that he could do besides hold in on the mental trigger and rack up as many block kills as he could.

Then suddenly he saw several small blocks flash by on strafing runs…pieces of the ship, no doubt, that had been flung off during the explosions. For a moment he considered retasking his current batteries to track them, but as one exploded into a ball of debris from the point defense fire coming from the ship's computer he thought better of it and maintained as much fire as he could against the main target.

After a while the Columnar was able to breach the second shield and destroy dozens of more blocks…but a third shield materialized where those had been and the process had to be repeated again and again…but after the fourth time the new shields being deployed started to have less and less power at their disposal, hastening their downfall.

Still, it was going to take at least another half hour before the ship would finally be destroyed.

Outside the control ship lights flashed against the shields as the Alket made a surprise strafing run, dropping out of cloak directly in front of the ship. The five guardian blocks pursued it immediately, as programmed, but the command ship's guns were slow to react and couldn't track the Jaffa ship as it made a quick pass.

"Persistent," Jarro noted as the ship once against disappeared from sensors, "but fruitless."

Neela nodded her agreement as she watched the main battle hologram. "I think we've gathered enough data. It's time to go."

Jarro looked at her. "It will be some time before the elementals are eliminated."

"They are making no headway…and as soon as they are destroyed we will be their next target. Plot a hyperspace jump away from Confederation territory. We will take an indirect route back, lest they follow us."

"Jump plotted," Jarro said, quickly working the controls of his console. He also dispatched the five guardian elementals to join the main battle, hopeless as it was.

"Commence," Nella ordered, turning away and walking off the bridge.

Jarro activated the hyperdrive and the command ship silently slipped into the other dimension. He correlated the data they had gathered into six electronic files, one for each ship plus the ground installation. He routed them into primary computer storage that would automatically be uploaded into the Aschen computer network upon their return home.

After filing a brief report on the encounter and the dispersal sites of the bio weapon, Jarro too left the bridge and returned to his personal quarters. It would be another ten hours before the next leg of their hyperspace journey, and until then neither of them would be needed on the bridge.

All in all, the battle lasted 43 minutes and would have gone on longer if the individual blocks hadn't continued to attack the ship directly and instead spread out across the system or gone down to the planet's surface. Apparently that hadn't been the point of the battle, or so Bra'tac deduced afterwards. The ship at the edge of the system had disappeared from sensors, and from the Alterra's point of view the battle for Avalon had concluded, though there were no guarantees of if or when the enemy might return.

He figured that wasn't likely to happen any time soon. The arrival of the Columnar had probably spooked them, and while they might return some day it would have to be in far greater numbers. With that knowledge in mind, Bra'tac had released the 304s and left Avalon within the day, returning through the ship gates to Atlantis…with a sample of the bio weapon.

"Dear god," Carson said as he got his first preliminary look at the composition of the disease.

"I know," Jennifer said, looking at the same data. "This isn't a virus, nor is it a bacteria or any other form of microscopic organism I know of, yet it has elements of both."

"It can replicate independent of the host body," Carson continued, "yet it can affect it on a genetic level akin to a virus…oh, this can't be right."

"What?" Jennifer asked.

"Here," he said, pointing at one section of the computer analysis.

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. "Eight day termination sequence?"

"Aye, that's what I read it as. This little bugger is going to expand at an exponential rate then deactivate after eight days."

"Why?" Jennifer asked. "It can't possibly spread over the entire planet in eight days."

"You're missing the point, Love. It's not supposed to. It kills anything and everything biological in sight, then deactivates after a preprogrammed period of time, leaving the area uncontaminated for the enemy to then occupy."

Jennifer blanched. "You mean they meant to take over Earth?"

Carson nodded. "Looks that way. And if all the bio weapons had hit their targets, there'd be bloody little left on the planet to trouble them…plant or animal."

"Oh my god," she said, covering her cheeks with her hands. "What are we going to do? We've only got six more days before it stops itself, which means we need a cure now."

"I know. This beast is probably ravaging the infected areas as we speak. We need to work fast."

"I don't even know where to begin," Jennifer complained. "I've never seen anything like this before."

"Neither have I, but I know someone who can help with that," Carson said, walking over to the intercom. "Dr. Weir?"

"I'm here Carson," her voice answered. "Any progress?"

"Not yet. Is Bra'tac still here?"

"He went back to his ship, but it hasn't left orbit. I think he intends to stay here until you find a cure or until Stevenson comes back."

"Well get him down here, we need his help."

"Ok," Weir said cautiously, "but I wasn't aware he was a doctor."

"I don't think he is either, but he has access to Atlantis that we don't have."

"What are you getting at, Carson."

"I need him to authorize a medical knowledge download, like you said Stevenson gave to you."

Weir hesitated. "I'll ask."

"Hurry," Carson insisted. "If we don't have a cure within a few days it's not going to matter."

"Very well," Bra'tac said as Carson explained the situation. "But it will only be a temporary transfer. Your mind is too primitive for a full, permanent download."

"I understand," Carson said bravely.

Bra'tac nodded, then accessed the neural interface himself. A moment later he withdrew. "Look inside."

Carson rubbed his hands together. "Ok, here goes," he said, stepping up to the device. He pressed his forehead against the outer rim and a multitude of lights flooded into his eyes…and mind.

He reflexively closed his eyes, he couldn't help it, but the light didn't diminish. It was inside his head. Carson made sure not to move, and kept his head securely where it was…then it was over as quickly as it began.

"Nothing happened," he said after stepping back from the device. "Oh, boy…" he said, fainting.

"Carson," Jennifer said, half-catching him as he fell.

"That is to be expected," Bra'tac told her. "It will take a few minutes for his mind to process the knowledge."

"Why couldn't you have done this?" she asked, clearly concerned for Beckett.

"I could have," Bra'tac admitted. "But I do not have the aptitude for such things. There is more to wisdom than knowledge alone."

"Still," Jennifer complained as Carson blinked wearily.

"What happened?" he asked, trying to sit up…and quickly falling back down.

"Easy there," she said, putting her hand behind his head so it wouldn't hit the floor. "Take your time."

"On all that's holy…"he muttered to himself, "Why didn't I see it before?"

"See what, Carson?"

"This plague isn't at all hard to beat," he said, trying to sit up again. "We only need to deliver a chronologic recalibrator via a pseudovirus and it'll stop the buggar cold."

"What are you talking about?" Jennifer asked.

"No time…no time," he said, pulling himself to his feet. "Bra'tac…does your ship have an aerosol delivery system?"

Bra'tac nodded slowly. "I believe that was one of the secondary systems Stevenson added to the design."

"Then we might have a chance at this," Carson said, rubbing his forehead. "Get me back to the lab," he told Jennifer.

"Ok," she said, taking him by the arm.

"If you can provide the design, the ship can replicate the rest of the cure en mass," Bra'tac told him.

"Good," Carson said, getting his feet back under him. "Be ready to launch within the hour."

Bra'tac smiled and nodded, but said nothing more as he walked out of the room.

"Let's go," Carson said, almost dragging Jennifer forward.

"Slow down a bit," she argued. "You need to let yourself adjust."

"If I do that more people die, now help me," he said, trying to walk faster.

Later that day the Nieruie returned to Earth, but instead of making orbit it plunged into the atmosphere over South America. Bra'tac contacted the SGC and got an updated map of the infection area…though it was clear from above just where the plague was.

Large sections of the Amazon now lay brown and dead, visible even from orbit. Bra'tac leveled out the ship a couple of miles above the surface and began dispersing the counter agent that would deactivate the disease on contact. He flew a large ring around the infected area, hoping to stem the spread of the ever increasing contagion.

That said, the SGC had already given him a number of other spots around the planet that the plague had been transmitted to. He would pull a flyby of those as soon as he covered the majority of the two major areas.

Antarctica and Greenland would keep, given their lack of vegetation and inhabitation, but it was the infestation in central and South American that required the most immediate attention. He used up nearly 40% of his reserves on South America alone before flying northwest into Mexico. There he dispersed some 36% as the ship continued to produce more cure as they continued, grabbing biomass from the planet for conversion on their way thanks to the Asgard beams that Bra'tac had insisted on including in the design.

A few hours later the ring around the Mexican infection area was complete. Bra'tac then spread as much cure to the interior areas of both circles as he could before traveling to the minor infestations around the planet. He stayed on Earth, spreading the cure until the 8 day cycle on the bio weapon ran out, deactivating all remaining infections that Bra'tac had been unable to find and counteract.

With nothing left to do, the Columnar left orbit after snagging a few pieces of the enemy ships for study, leaving planetary defense in the hands of the remaining two 304s. The Alket had since been ordered back to Dakara and the Atlantis crew had all been safely delivered into Weir's care. He alone piloted the Nieruie, and set course to the nearest ship gate.

The prototype had proved itself well in battle, despite having only two of its four weapons systems operational. Now it was time to complete its construction, where it would gain its real 'teeth.'

Bra'tac returned the ship to Kestardra then returned to Dakara through the stargate, picking up where he had left off. Though they weren't the equal of the Columnar, his H'tel were the next strongest ships in the galaxy…and their completion and testing were his next tasks.

A week later on Earth, the news accounts of the killer plague and the 'miraculous' object seen flying over hundreds of cities and supposedly putting an end to the disease were the subject of world-wide debate. Many rejected the claims, while others were immensely grateful to still be alive. The pictures coming out of central and South America were undeniable…and many people floated their own version of what had 'actually' happened.

The belief in extra-terrestrials increased dramatically, but was eventually downplayed by a link to an ancient prophecy…thanks to some intergovernmental pushing. Had the Aschen attack not occurred at a convenient time, it was theorized among the I.O.A. upper echelon, there may have been no choice but to reveal the existence of the stargate in order to avoid an even larger panic over the undeniable 'alien visitation' that so many people had witnessed.

But that wasn't to be the case. Forever after, there would be unanswered questions and an increased interest in space travel and exploration…but the bulk of the populous would eventually be taken in by the Ancient prophecy that happened to coincide with the current year…

2012