bungakertas | An Exercise In Futility: Chapter Two

“Unscheduled off-world activation.”

Major Samatha Carter looked up from her diagnostic on the dialing computer in time to see that Sergeant Harriman had closed the iris firmly over the incoming wormhole. The gate activated, lighting the gateroom with its watery glow. A squad of SFs filled the gateroom as General Hammond descended from his office.

These little interruptions had grown less unusual over the years, but remember how some of the most dire emergencies had started just this way, Sam had never been entirely able to be happy about them.

Daniel wandered in, clutching a cup of coffee. “Who is it?”

“No IDC yet, Dr. Jackson,” Harriman reported.

“We don’t have any off-world teams due back today, either,” Hammond said.

“Receiving IDC, sir,” Harriman said. “Tok’ra.”

Daniel grimaced unhappily. Sam looked to General Hammond, who seemed a bit less than enthused, but said, “Let them through.”

Harriman laid his hand on the palm-scanner for the iris, which clunked open.

A moment passed and then three tok’ra appeared on the ramp. Jacob Carter and Malek. The third of the set put Daniel to groaning.

“What does she want?”

Anise was descending the ramp, carrying what appeared to be a very heavy box. It was about as wide as she was tall, and incredibly unwieldy.

Hammond threw Daniel a sympathetic look. The three of them strode down into the gateroom, Hammond tossing a “stand down” in the direction of the security airmen.

“Hello, Jacob,” Hammond said with a smile.

“Hello, George,” Jacob Carter answered as the two shook hands. He turned to give his daughter a hug, and nodded to Daniel.

“What can we do for you?” Hammond asked.

Jacob got a rather odd expression for a moment. Then his expression changed. Sam, who occasionally visited the tok’ra just to spend time with her father realized that Selmak was about to speak. And sure enough, her father’s voice spoke in the echoing tones of his symbiote. “We have a request to make of you.”

Hammond nodded, and directed them to the briefing room. Two SFs came up and took Anise’s box from her, and followed them up to level 27. Colonel O’Neill was contacted, and he and Teal’c joined them a few moments later.

Once everyone was seated, and Anise had directed the SFs to set her box on the table, Selmak looked at everyone and said, “We have been told that the tau’ri possess a powerful spaceship, that is an sufficient answer to the goa’uld ha’tak vessels.”

“We do, although the hyperdrive is presently out of commission,” Hammond replied carefully.

“Is this vessel also capable of conducting scientific research?” Selmak asked.

Sam blinked. At first she’d been afraid that the tok’ra wanted to use their ship in a military scenario. This was an unexpected twist. “The sensors on board are at least as good as those on a ha’tak. There’s also a mass spectrometer on board in one of the laboratories. And there’s a wing of gliders with sensors of their own, if you wanted to get close to something. But…well, it is mainly a military ship, not a research one.”

“For our purposes, I believe that will be sufficient. One of our operatives noted that the goa'uld have record of an Ancient satellite in orbit around a distant planet that he believed would be of interest. He was unable to do anything other than note its position and recommend it for further study, so I am afraid we can tell you no more than that we believe it to still be there. This was several months ago, and at the time we did not have anyone free to conduct a proper survey. Now that we do, we would like to request your permission to travel to the location by ship,” Selmak said.

“Unfortunately, aside from the hyperdrive problem,” Hammond said, “the ship’s crew is… Well, to be honest, there is no crew at the moment. After spending a year off-world until we could get a hyperdrive to power it, with the crew constantly shuffling back-and-forth trying to make repairs, and what was left finally reaching home again only recently, nearly all of them have been reassigned. One of the original pilots is still nominally assigned to Prometheus and her new commanding officer has been selected.”

Anise stood and opened the box she had brought. Inside was a piece of technology that looked goa’uld. “We have recently been able to procure the hyperdrive engine from a ha’tak vessel. We are willing to install it in your vessel for the duration of this trip.”

Sam stood and peered into the box. “This…would be really handy.”

“It would be against tok’ra policy to give the engine to you. Not for fear you would misuse it, but because they are hard to come by and we will likely need it,” Anise continued, sounding half-apologetic. “But it is our belief that this engine will be sufficient to power the ship for the time that will be required to complete this study.”

“It probably would,” Sam said, still looking at the technology with a slightly hungry expression.

“That still leaves the problem of a crew,” Hammond said.

“Unfortunately, the three of us are the only ones the tok’ra can spare at the moment,” Malek interjected, speaking for the first time, “but we will be happy to offer whatever services you require.”

“O'Neill and myself are both very capable pilots,” Teal'c said.

“And I designed a great deal of that ship,” Sam said. “I can help make sure it runs smoothly while you run your study.”

“Not if you’re going to study the Ancient device with us,” Jacob said.

Sam turned to look at her father, with a terribly excited look on her face. “Really?”

“As if I’d leave you out of this,” he replied with a grin.

Daniel adopted a very over-the-top sulky expression and sipped his coffee with an excessive fluttering of his eyelashes behind his glasses.

“Of course, Doctor Jackson, with his knowledge of the Ancients, could also prove invaluable on such a mission,” Malek said, obviously trying not to laugh.

“So who would be engineer then?” Daniel asked, instantly perking up.

“Sergeant Siler helped in the design of a number of key systems. He could go with us,” Sam said.

Hammond looked around the table at the eager and hopeful expressions and gave everyone a rueful smile. “All right, I know when I'm beaten. I’ll try and come up with some people to fill in the gaps. In the meantime, Major Carter, I want you to get to work on making sure you can integrate a goa’uld hyperspace engine into Prometheus without causing trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam replied.

Hammond looked around at the five eager faces and sighed. “Well, then. Dismissed.”

“Thanks, George,” Jacob said.

Over the next several days, a new crew for Prometheus was assembled. And since she was busy installing the borrowed hyperspace engine, Sam got to watch them all trickle in by bits and pieces. Colonel Lionel Pendergast had already been assigned, and a Major Cameron Mitchell was the only remaining pilot from the original crew, but both men turned up at Area 51 the day after they’d received the phone calls to activate them, trying not to look too eager and failing miserably. Colonel Steven Caldwell, who Sam had never met before but who was apparently slated for command of the next ship being produced, was assigned as a temporary XO to give him some experience with the vessel before commanding one. Graham Simmons, one of the control room technicians, was eventually assigned to the tactical chair, to the starboard side of the bridge, which handled weapons, sensors, and communications. Despite Walter Harriman dropping strong hints about wanting the navigational chair, to the port side, that station went to Russell Benson, at the last minute—much to the disgust of the control room’s senior NCO.

But finally the hyperdrive was installed, and everyone managed to get on board, with bags, and fresh faces, and an air of excitement. From most quarters anyway. Colonel O’Neill voiced his usual objections to purely scientific missions, and Anise was inclined to sniff at the technology on board Prometheus, despite the fact that it had taken her a full four hours to decipher the schematics for the ship so that she could help with installing the new engine. Malek was excited to be assigned as the last pilot in their half-wing of 302s, however, and Sam and Daniel were both scribbling notes and swapping academic-sounding observations about the Ancients as fast as they possibly could do so, so that by the time the ship took off, morale was high and everything was clicking along so efficiently that you could almost believe the regular crew of one-hundred-plus was there, rather than the forty-eight that were actually manning the ship.

The drawback, Sam realized as they cleared Earth’s atmosphere that afternoon, of such excitement was that everybody wanted to be present to see the first orders given that would send them on their way. She found herself standing awkwardly at the back of the bridge with all three tok’ra, Daniel, Colonel Caldwell, Sergeant Siler, and several odd other crew members, all trying to be as small and unobtrusive as possible, and failing miserably.

To his credit, Colonel Pendergast seemed to understand. He took one look at the rather ludicrous crowd behind him, rolled his eyes, and then turned back to the front. “Sergeant Benson,” he said, “plot our course to destination.”

“Course plotted,” Benson reported after a moment, “Destination is identified by the computer as P8V-295. It’s in our dialing computer, but we never visited because the DHD was determined to be damaged, sir.”

“Interesting,” Pendergast said. “All right, Sergeant. Engage hyperdrive.”

“Engaging hyperspace generator,” Benson replied.

Sam held her breath, but sure enough, the blue cloud-tunnel of hyperspace appeared right where it should, exactly the way that it ought to.

“Entering hyperspace window in three…two…one…entering hyperspace,” Benson calmly reported. There was a jolt, and then, the ship did exactly as it ought, and they were smoothly traveling through hyperspace. Sam exhaled in relief.

Her father laid a hand on her shoulder with a friendly smile. “Breathe, Sam.”

She grinned.

Pendergast turned around. “Okay, fun stuff’s over. If you’re not on a duty shift, clear the bridge.”

There was a chorus of “yes, sirs” and everyone shuffled out.

“How long until we reach the planet, then?” Jack wondered out loud.

“Based on the size of the engine we’re using, and the distance to the planet…,” Caldwell said, trailing off to do some math in his head, “about a week.”

Sam was impressed. Apparently he’d been prepping for his assignment pretty hard.

“Thanks,” Jack replied.

With seven days to their destination, everyone settled in for a nice long flight. Jack and Teal’c had it in mind to “teach” Anise and Malek how to play poker and then take all their money, but they took more time working out how to equate Earth money to the goa’uld equivalent that the tok’ra used on missions than they did actually playing cards. When they finally did settle down to the game, Anise and Malek turned out to be very capable at poker, and nobody came out very far ahead. Sam and Daniel, who’d both seen this coming, nearly broke ribs from holding in laughter.

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. Mitchell spent a lot of time giving Malek, Jacob, and Caldwell tips on the 302s while Sam was stuck teaching Anise how to use a mass spectrometer and the ship’s sensors. And with a skeleton crew, Siler was running all his tech staff into the ground to learn every inch of the ship and how it worked and how to maintain it perfectly. After having been stranded in space for so long last time, none of them were going to risk anyone getting stuck the same way again. Sam wasn’t sure if she was more shocked that the usually quiet sergeant was being so assertive or how fast the tech team was coming along.

By the time they dropped out of hyperspace and took up a position near the Ancient satellite, in orbit around P8V-295, even Jack had been convinced to come to the bridge to at least see the thing.

Since they were studying the satellite, Sam had installed herself in the tactical chair, with Jacob, Anise, and Malek all peering over her shoulders. Benson had managed to defend his chair against Daniel’s insidious attempts to take it over, which had resulted in Daniel taking his notebooks, papers, recording devices, and wounded pride to the fore of the bridge, where he was now camped out on the floor, his notes scattered far and wide, and probably more comfortable than he otherwise would’ve been.

Sam shook her head and went back to the sensors.

The ship dropped out of hyperspace. Sam immediately double-checked their position and said, “Bang on the money, sir. Good job, Sergeant Benson.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Benson replied.

“There it is,” Jacob announced, looking at the screen.

A small object, but growing larger as they approached, the Ancient satellite floated above P8V-295. Sam had to admit it was a pretty thing. A big, shiny blue jewel gleamed in a green casing on the top. And, most wonderfully, unlike the Ancient satellite bits and pieces that the SGC had recovered from planets here or there after their orbits had decayed, this one was not only still in one piece, but was also—if the sensors were right—still functioning.

“Sweet,” Jack mumbled from the back of the room.

“Sensors report that the satellite’s naquadah generator is still functioning. It’s scanning periodically for something,” Sam said.

“Scanning on a very narrow band, though,” Anise said. “It is unlikely to have detected Prometheus.”

“Could that be dangerous?” Pendergast demanded.

“We don’t believe so,” Jacob said hastily, “but the reports we gave to you did mention that we have literally no idea what this thing does.”

Pendergast frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“The blue gem is a focus for…an Ancient transporter of some kind,” Sam reported. “When activated… Sir, I recommend not moving too close to the device with the ship.”

“Why do you say that?” Pendergast asked.

“It appears,” Sam replied, “that this device is capable of transporting objects only above a certain size. I believe it may have been made to transport ships, sir, and I believe we should not risk activating it.”

“It is unlikely this ship would do so,” Malek interjected, “but that is a wise precaution nevertheless.”

“Where does it transport things to, though, is what I want to know,” Jacob mused, less to the room, and more to the four people clustered around Sam’s chair. “The targeting data is…unusual.”

“I’ll say,” Sam agreed.

“Zoom in on the writing, Sam,” Daniel said from on the floor. “I can’t translate it if I can’t see it to start with.”

The view on the screen changed to a close up view of the Ancient writing and Daniel started scribbling frantically while Sam and the three tok’ra took more sensor readings. Things lapsed into quiet for several minutes.

Jack, who was apparently bored, had just started wandering off the bridge—much to Sam’s relief—when Daniel suddenly said, “Wait! Go back! I wasn’t done!”

The view on the screen had changed to show the device as a whole. “I didn’t do anything,” Sam said. “The screen changed automatically in response to the device experiencing a power spike.”

“Benson, make sure we stay outside of the radius of that dish on the front,” Pendergast ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant snapped, moving the ship a little, just to be sure.

The blue gem pulled free of its casing as the arms surrounding it rotated back. A white light burst from the satellite and then, much to everyone’s surprise, two ships appeared where there had previously been none.

“So…that’s what it does, then,” Jack said, sounding much more unimpressed than Sam knew him to be.

One of the ships was an oblongish sort of affair, and looked very cobbled-together. It was gray and green, mostly, and there were no visible markings of any sort. The other was comprised of what looked like one-half of an oval, with a short tail that trailed from the flat edge. From the tail sprung two oblong nacelles, both of which glowed blue. In large, neat, English letters, it read “NCC-74656.” And above that, in smaller script, it said, “U.S.S. VOYAGER.”

“Oh…,” Daniel said, slowly taking in the positions of the two ships in a tone of dismay. Sam had to agree. They were obviously at aggressive stances to one another. Daniel began collecting his notebooks and papers as fast as his hands could move, obviously getting out of the way.

“Captain Simmons, resume your station,” Pendergast ordered.

Sam sprang up from the chair she had appropriated, and she, her father, Malek, and Anise all moved to the back of the bridge. Daniel came scrambling back, clutching a messy, but complete stack of notes.

“Sir,” Simmons said, taking his seat back, “both ships have shields raised, and appear to have powered their weapons.”

Sam frowned. Although it would be convenient to blame the tok’ra for getting them into trouble—again—in this case it would not be fair. They had known that the device had some unknown purpose, and they had shown up to study it anyway. If anything went wrong today it was their own fault.

Pendergast appeared to come to a decision. “Simmons, open communications with those ships.”

Simmons pressed a few buttons and then turned and gave Pendergast a nod.

“Alien vessels, this is Colonel Lionel Pendergast, of the United States Air Force Prometheus. We demand that you stand down from any hostile action and explain your presence here,” he said.

For a moment nothing happened. Neither ship stood down, but neither fired, either. But then a reply came.

“Prometheus, this is Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. That vessel is—”

Whatever Janeway thought that vessel was, she did not manage to complete expressing. A new transmission cut across hers, echoing oddly from the bridge’s speakers, as if the sound of hundreds of voices all speaking in unison was actually—impossibly—traveling through space itself to reach the ears of those on Prometheus’ bridge.

WE ARE THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR VESSEL. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

Sam shivered at that pronouncement. Her father put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, and after hearing such outright malice as that, she wasn’t about to protest.

“I think we can class them as hostile,” Jack mused.

“Shields up. Sound general quarters,” Pendergast ordered. He addressed himself once more to the aliens. “Do not attempt any hostile action or we will open fire.”

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. PREPARE TO BE ASSIMILATED.

“Awfully single-minded sort of folks, aren’t they?” Jack quipped.

Pendergast ignored him. He pressed the PA button on his command chair. “Pilots, report to the glider bay and prep your ships for launch on my command.” He released the button. “Load missile tubes 1-6, and ready the railguns.”

“Sir,” Simmons answered. O'Neill and Malek left the bridge, headed for the glider bay.

“Benson, defensive position,” Pendergast said.

Sergeant Benson oriented the ship into their own aggressive stance.

“Sir, the alien vessel has focused some kind of energy beam on our ship and we are being pulled closer,” Simmons reported.

“Target the origin of the beam and fire all gun batteries,” Pendergast replied.

Prometheus was armed with what the development team had jokingly called “second-generation railguns.” The US military had already tested railguns for use on Earth and, using an electromagnetic field to propel a metal slug, had produced rather spectacularly destructive results—always something that made soldiers happy. The Prometheus’ railguns were powered by a naquadah generator, which meant they were able to propel their metal slugs much faster than any railgun on Earth could possibly hope for, producing even more spectacularly destructive results.

Simply put, these guns were fun.

Twenty-four gun batteries let loose a barrage of projectiles towards the Borg ship. And while that ship obviously had shielding, it was clear the shields were not oriented with the goal of stopping a solid projectile. Every single shot found its target.

“The beam has dissipated,” Simmons answered.

A volley of energy bolts slammed into their own shield. Prometheus shuddered under the impact.

“Return fire,” Pendergast said.

Apparently the Borg vessel was able to compensate for their weapons, as the next volley of shots didn’t do much damage. What no one had expected, though, was to see a bolt of golden energy burst from the other ship—Voyager—towards the Borg vessel. That shot found its mark. The second shot did not, but as Prometheus continued firing, Sam realized more of their shots were getting through.

“They seem to be able to compensate for our weapons, or Voyager’s, sir,” she said, “but apparently not both at once.”

The Borg vessel had apparently reached the same conclusion since they didn’t fire again. Instead, the ship appeared to enter hyperspace through, of all things, a green window.

“So…what now?” Jack asked, into the ensuing silence.

“Colonel, we’re receiving a communication from that ship…Voyager?” Simmons said.

“Let’s have it,” Pendergast said.

The voice they’d heard before, a woman’s steady alto, said to them, “Prometheus, I must say I’m grateful for your assistance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Borg retreat before.”

“Very happy to help,” Pendergast replied, trying to figure out what to say next. “In all the excitement, I’m afraid I have to ask you to repeat your name, if that’s all right?”

“Captain Kathryn Janeway, USS Voyager,” she answered. “May I ask the same of you?”

“Colonel Lionel Pendergast, USAF Prometheus,” Pendergast replied. He paused, apparently at a bit of a loss on what to say next.

Daniel stepped up. “May I speak?” he asked Pendergast. When the colonel nodded, he said, “Um…hello? My name is Doctor Daniel Jackson. I’m on board Prometheus. If…if it’s not too much trouble, where did you come from?”

“The United Federation of Planets is an alliance of many worlds,” Janeway replied, “and I’ll be happy to share the particulars later. At the moment, however, our navigational computer is telling us we’re several thousand light-years from our previous position. Are you at all familiar with the alien device in orbit above this planet?”

*~*~*

Author's Notes: So this one was a bit of an annoying one to get canon compliant (well, except for the bits I wanted as an AU, which is really just my determined insistence that Stargate: SG-1 ended after eight seasons). I ended up watching “Prometheus,” “Grace,” and “Prometheus Unbound” a few bazillion times to get an idea of the layout for the ship. You see, there doesn't seem to be complete or labeled schematics for the layout of Prometheus anywhere. And so I grabbed a partial one for Daedalus that I used a bit (since the Daedalus-class design supposedly evolved from Prometheus, some similarities are only logical), and I labeled a picture of Prometheus to death in GIMP and just… Blah. It was hard, okay? The things I do for my fanfictions.

Obviously, I'm ditching Ronson for this mission, along with most of the original crew less Mitchell. Given that Ronson just spent a whole year limping this ship back home, I figure he's got some leave coming up. Mitchell, on the other hand, is really gung-ho about…pretty much everything, it seems.

Why put Siler on the ship and not Walter you ask? Because, as far as I am able to determine, in the SG-1 canon, Siler never went off-world once. Sergeant Harriman went lots of times. Which is kind of a croc, if you ask me. Siler is just as cool, so why can't he go through the gate? (Alright, he still didn't go through the gate in this story, but I got him on the spaceship, and into a flat-out combat fire-fight, so that's something!)

As it turns out, there isn't precisely (or doesn't seem to be) a “standard Borg hail.” In fact, during my researches, I didn't find a single Borg greeting that was canonically used more than once. However, they do all seem to hit most of the same notes, so I grabbed a couple exemplars—one longer and one shorter—and wrote my own based on them.