Part Two: Descent

[Troy Loveridge]

1008 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

It felt weird being back here in Akrotiri.

The task force had worked through the night, helping the Delian Expedition to continue to bring the Ancient build city-ship back online. In the three weeks since the attack most of the base systems had been repaired to some degree, and with the spare parts and extra manpower Troy and the task force had brought from Earth, things were finally coming together. Alongside the other senior personnel he was overseeing the latest full city reboot, designed to get all the systems talking to each other again.

Sometime after midnight last night he’d retired to his assigned quarters, not the ones he’d used when he was based here - they’d since been given to someone else - but nevertheless it had been an unusual feeling to awaken in the familiar surroundings of the base after being away for so long. Almost everything around him was the same, and he’d walked to the commissary for breakfast on autopilot without realising. But for every nine things that were the same as he remembered them, the tenth was different. Some rooms had been repurposed, doors that had been left open had since been sealed. The base commander had a different way of running the show, and it was doing the General’s head in.

Still, he was back here in the Delian Galaxy, a day he never thought would come to pass.

“Fingers crossed this time is the charm,” he stated as he the base lights flickered on and off for a moment. Before them the rows of monitors went dead, then seconds later, sprang back to life. One by one the city-ship’s systems came online - long range sensors, ventilation, the Stargate, the shield. Everything was looking to be in the green, the first time since the attack by Hades.

“Any problems?” he asked as everyone consoled their screens, worried that he might jinx the process.

In the background, unseen by all, a monitor flickered for a moment and displayed a strange set of alien runes, before returning to normal function.

< Tag Alec Styles , Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard , Cara Coyle , Robert "Jackal" Walker , Travis "Wizard" Oxford , & Will O'Malley >

[Will O'Malley]

1008 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Well, it was damn-well surreal to be back. Will honestly never thought he'd return to this corner of the Universe, if he was honest with himself. Just a vague memory of his 'glory days', before things sort of fumbled blindly downhill for the doctor. It was something that was locked in the past; only coming back in vivid dreams, or if something forced his memories back there. But to be back? It was...odd. At first he was nearly enthused to leave Earth behind. His life there was basically a hot mess, after all. Two failed marriages. A child he legally had no right to see, yet threw a good portion of his paycheck at. Things were just great. The best part of his life, if he was honest, was his job. It's why he threw himself into it as hard as he did. But now, he was away from all that. Away from all the people and problems that kept his overly-active mind, kicking at night.

And he felt uneasy.

Like he was walking around in a dream. Far too lucid. Far too aware.

It was different, however. Nothing was really in the right place. Rooms all changed purposes and assignments. The room he was given was - of course - not his own. Which felt weird. Sort of like staying in a guest room, in the house you grew up in. And yet some part of him loved it. Being away from Earth was...invigorating, as cliche as that sounded. While saving the lives of countless people daily, was typically enough to make him wake up in the morning; while doing it in another galaxy, it added a bit of a kick.

His life had gone from secret government job, to something right out of a comic book...or one of those God-awful late-night original scifi films. Probably closer to the latter. It had been years, upon years since Will had been first introduced to the Stargate program, yet it didn't feel the same when working out of the SGC. The injuries were odd, but it really was like working out of any combat hospital. The only difference was that he was one of the few with an English accent.

Will loomed at the back of the room - black coffee at his lips as he watched the others attempt to repair the damage that Hades had done. Being a doctor, O'Malley wasn't exactly useful in this sort of thing. Throw a bleeding person in front of him and - yeah, sure, he'd help. But repairing computer...things? Nah, he'd just watch and drink coffee that was somehow just as stale as he remembered.

"Well nothing is sparking or on fire, so that's probably a good sign," he mused, before taking another sip of his coffee.

So helpful.

<TAG: Alec Styles + Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard + Cara Coyle + Robert "Jackal" Walker + Travis "Wizard" Oxford + Troy Loveridge >

[Cara Coyle]

1008 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Being in this city was...weird. Cara did not have the same nostalgia some of the others were having as she didn't spend a significant time in the city before she headed back to Earth for good. She was very familiar with working in Atlantis for awhile after it landed on Earth, this was a much smaller version with slight variances in devour and architecture, but the base operations was the same. Good ol' Ancient technology. She had been working late trying to get all the systems in a reasonable working order, in fact she still didn't have any idea where they assigned her to sleep as she pretty much had not left the control room since she got there, with the exceptions of running here and there doing human things.

It was around 0700 when she finally let her mind relax just a bit, she was still sitting at a console with her computer at hand, running various diagnostics....and she must have fell asleep. From behind it may have looked like she was just resting her head in her hand, leaning her arms on the table, still sitting upright. Really she was cat-napping. It had been a long time since she had let herself pull so many all-nighters in the past few weeks and it was starting to catch up to her, or she just need a little more time to get used to it.

A faint smell pierced her senses, pulling her from a deeper sleep to a more lucid sleep, the smell of coffee. Cara didn't drink coffee, but sometimes she could appreciate the smell of it. It wasn't enough to pull her from her sleep entirely, although various keywords she started to hear in her subconscious like 'problems' and 'on fire' were enough to jolt her awake. She straightened up bleary eyed not daring to see who might have caught her waking her up, probably everyone who was there as sudden jolting movements tended to get noticed. Cara rubbed the sleep from her eyes, looked around slightly to make sure there were no 'problems' or anything 'on fire' and stretched in her chair.

Her computer in front of her was displaying an error in front of her, indicating that there had been an interruption in the diagnostics she was running. She cursed at herself for letting herself fall asleep. She angrily and with much irritation pushed a few buttons on the ancient console and then on her computer, starting up the diagnostic program yet again. Cara turned her chair slightly towards those that were standing near the back observing, "Primary systems are operation, I'm just trying to run some diagnostics." she reported before slumping back in her chair, letting up a big sigh.

<Tag Troy Loveridge, Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard, Alec Styles, Robert "Jackal" Walker, Travis "Wizard" Oxford, Will O'Malley>

[Troy Loveridge]

1009 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Troy sat patiently while the techs and engineers, under Cara’s watchful eye, brought the system back online. The specifics of the problems the city-ship’s computer system had suffered went over his head, but something had been put out of order during the attack by Hades. For it to take three weeks to return to normal operations showed the severity of the damaged the enemy had inflicted on the base.

“I’m sure we can arrange something if you’re feeling bored,” he replied to Will. The two men had been so busy with their respective tasks since leaving the SGC that neither had been given the opportunity to face the fact that their relationship had broken down. The relative quietness now was starting to bring that back into focus. Troy made a promise to himself to not return to Earth until he’d clear the air between the two of them.

“Is the infirmary back up and running?” he asked. The base’s medical wing had been overwhelmed during the initial attack, though Troy wasn’t aware of it receiving any damage that shouldn’t be fixed by now.

The banks of Ancient and human screens before them continued to update with new information as the sub-systems of Akrotiri began to talk to each other again for the first time since the attack. From the central chair in the control room - the pilot's seat of the computer system if you will - Doctor Coyle continued to oversee the reboot, directing the work of her scientists and dictating what was happening to everyone else.

“It’ll be interesting to see the full extent of the damage,” Troy mused. Visual inspections of the city could only reveal so much. A full diagnostic would give them a better picture of what the city-ship had gone through during the battle, how long the repairs were going to take, and where to best direct their efforts. Even with the extra help the task force had brought from Earth, it still could be weeks or months before Akrotiri was back up to 100% operational capability.

“Any signs that they tried to access to Ancient database?” he asked everyone gathered. His use of the word ‘tried’ was a form of self denial. If Hades had somehow gotten in stolen all their intel, the situation could very quickly get a lot worst.

< Tag Alec Styles , Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard , Cara Coyle , Robert "Jackal" Walker , Travis "Wizard" Oxford , & Will O'Malley >

[Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard]

1009 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Being in Akrotiri was a bittersweet feeling. If they had come under better circumstances it would have made quite the enjoyable trip, seeing another Ancient City and being able to lend a helping hand, but it was never that simple when it came to the Stargate Program. The three days the expedition had to say goodbye to their loved ones had been hard on Ayden. While her son understood the reason for her departure it was always hard to leave him. Her brother offered the little boy a much more stable environment than Ayden, especially with her career, but she was never far from home. Isaac was her world and leaving him alone for an unprecedented amount of time was gnawing at her insides.

She sat in the back of the Control Room, near Will and Troy, her gaze going over the screens in front of her as she waited to see if Cara could get them working once more. She was no techie, and instead had her own tablet from which she was compiling more reports for the teams on Hades and anything else they might be able to find on what enemies were left in the Delian Galaxy. Obviously Hades wasn't working alone, so it was time to figure out who exactly he had recruited to his cause. When the screens began to flicker, Ayden glanced up and she placed her tablet on the table in front of her. She leaned back in her seat and brushed her hair back from her face. 

"Well, this is a little ray of sunshine we needed on this day."

< Tag: Troy Loveridge , Will O'Malley , Cara Coyle , Travis "Wizard" Oxford , Robert "Jackal" Walker , & Alec Styles  >

[Cara Coyle]

1009 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

"I'll be interested to see the full extent of the damage," the General said.

"The Naquadah Generators have either been repaired or replaced, but it was discovered that the ZPM is gone. We through it might have been depleted as no one dialed to Earth again, or everyone was dead. It's just not here. The City took a lot of damage, it could have easily just been utterly destroyed, but it wasn't. Makes one question why." Cara thought on the ZPM. Apart from her administrations jobs overseeing other scientists and their projects, like the new Battlecrusier currently in orbit, Cara focused her own talents in zero point energy. For the past 4 years she had been studying everything they new about the ZPMs.

"I did bring the Earth based zero-point tech that I've been working on, but it's not been testing on this big of scale." Cara said putting it on the table, "But we should be fine with the usual generators as long as we don't plan on dialing Earth or things of that nature."

“Any signs that they tried to access to Ancient database?” was the next question.

"In all the chaos, it's hard to say. I can try and salvage the logs from the time of the attack, but it's not really on my priority list of getting this city up and running again."

Cara got up from her chair and walked over to the long range scanner console, she pushed a few buttons to get the screen up, the planet with a single ship in orbit, the Thor. "I figured you'd want the long range scanners up and running rather quickly, and yes...these logs were on my priority list. Recording of what was picked up the day of the attack." pushing a few more buttons the screen changed, still the same planet, but a different story was being told.

<Tag Troy Loveridge, Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard, Alec Styles, Robert "Jackal" Walker, Travis "Wizard" Oxford, Will O'Malley>

[Troy Loveridge]

1011 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Despite Ayden’s comment that things might finally be working out, Cara’s revelation raised a lot of alarm bells for the General. The theft was the ZPM, presumably by the forces of Hades, had been the third most worrying fallouts of his attack. The first being how he had gotten into orbit above the city-ship without being detected, and the second that he had attacked the SGC and officially declared war on Earth.

Actually, scratch that. All those three things were equally worrying - it would be impossible to rank them as that assumed that some were more preferred than others.

“Any leads on where he took the ZPM?” Troy asked around the room. He was operating off the assumption that it had been taken on one of Hades ships as the Stargate had eventually been brought back under control after Hades’ masked messenger had travelled to Earth. The only lead they had at the moment was Lethe, a former stronghold of Hades on an icy planet, where the bulk of the task force was now exploring.

“Sensors are only good if we can figure out why they didn't work,” he replied to Cara. One of the greatest mysteries of the attack was how Hades had snuck past Akrotiri’s long-range Ancient-built sensors, and the half a dozen Earth-built satellites that were dotted around the edge of the star system to detect incoming hyperspace travel. Had he developed some sort of cloaking tech, or a new way to move through hyperspace that didn’t leave the usual tell-tale energy readings? Had he hacked their systems and created a blind spot? Was there a traitor in their midst? The possibilities were endless, and each more worrying than the last.

Orbital data from the eve of the attack streamed onto the main control room monitor at Cara's command, showing the readouts from the relevant sensors and probes. One minutes the scopes were clear, and the next an enemy fleet was in orbit, bombarding the base and launching dozens of troop shuttles. They played the footage back a number of times, applying different filters and looking at different readings to try and figure out how Hades had done it, but Troy only turned up blanks.

Lucky he’d brought some of the brightest minds Earth had to offer with him. If anyone could figure out this riddle, it was the people sitting around him.

< Tag Alec Styles , Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard , Cara Coyle , Robert "Jackal" Walker , Travis "Wizard" Oxford , & Will O'Malley >

[Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard]

1012 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Ayden was far from a techie like her coworker, Cara, and she knew that like Will and Troy she would only serve to get in the way if she tried her hand at figuring out what exactly had happened during the attack on the base. While a few members of the expedition had made their way back through the gate it hadn't done much to piece together anything more than what they saw. They had Kieran, a Royal Marine, who had been running security patrols around the base at the time of the attack, so all the information he had been able to provide them was just how they managed to get people through the gate and what some members of the enemy looked like. It wasn't much to go on but it was a little more than what they had had before the attack.

Now as they sat in the Control Room, Ayden stood from her seat and walked over to where the coffee maker was brewing and she grabbed three cups. She prepared them and walked back over before holding a cup out to Will and Troy, waiting for them to take it, before she grabbed her own and settled back down beside her two colleagues. Her icy blue gaze went to Troy when he spoke and she took in a deep breath. This was something she could actually help with. She reached out for her tablet and picked it up before she pulled up what she had been working on.

"I do believe Lethe is our strongest possibility. If there's a place where Hades can hide out and be inconspicuous, it would be there. No one would guess e would go back to that world after the way he abandoned it. I went over the information we have on the planet, and was able to pull up some more from the database here to see if we had any scans and I did come across one." As she spoke she placed her coffee down before she was able to pull up the data she had found on one of the monitors. "There's something deep beneath the surface of that planet, Troy. While the Ancients that lived here were never able to figure out what, I would assume it's a stronghold of some sort and on a planet like that, what's one way to keep it livable?" The ZPM, of course. It was a long shot but a definite possibility.

< Tag Alec Styles , Troy Loveridge , Cara Coyle , Robert "Jackal" Walker , Travis "Wizard" Oxford , & Will O'Malley >

[Travis "Wizard" Oxford]

1012 hours
Breifing Room --> Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Two sets of eyes where in the match off with glares at each other. Neither wanted to back down from it. Grunting Travis tore his gaze away from Wright, who himself was seeing and walked off. Only to have Mark following him, he had only taken two steps down towards the control room when he turned, "I'm a dead man waking, you know that right?" Another two step, "I do this my wife will kill me. Happily I might add." No Claire was not going to be a happy camper.

"You are the only one I know at the moment, to get this done," Mark told him as he followed his former XO, "Travis, please."

"Unless you want to face every single female Oxford, through this agreement," he shook his head, "I'll do it. Till then FORGET IT!!!"

With a sigh Mark followed the man down to the control room, where the few former members were, "Do it for them? Call....."

Rubbing his temple, "For the last time the answer is NO," The army Officer hissed. Taking a deep he looked at the group, listened to their talks, "Magical powers?" he threw it innocently. "On the serious note, ZPM is a possibility, but I don't think he took the ZPM for that. I think he using it as a bait. He knows we need it; we know we need it. Whatever is underground, could have another power source. Something that even we won't find."

"Recent Intel, has also sighted Cerberus around planets. It appears the dog is looking for Hades." Mark added, feeling like the odd one out.

"Isn't he the one with three heads?" Travis asked with a frown.

<<Tag: Troy Loveridge, Will O'Malley, Cara Coyle, Robert "Jackal" Walker, Alec Styles>>


((I have no idea what Travis is babbling on about. ))

[Troy Loveridge]

1011 hours
Control Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

Troy sat by as the scans of the city-ship’s system were carried out, with damaged components beginning to again communicate with each other for the first time since the attack. Under the watchful eye of Cara the home base of the Delian Expedition was returned to its former glory, albeit at a reduced capacity powered by the generator they’d brought from Earth. The base commander wouldn’t be happy until their ZPM was back in place.

“Let’s hope the two Task Groups find turn up some leads on Lethe,” Troy replied. In the three plus weeks since the attack the expedition had been piecing together everything they had on Hades, and after analysis by the teams from Earth, the frozen planet of Lethe had topped their list as the most likely candidate. Travis noted that Hades was likely using the ZPM to lure the teams into a trap.

“That may well be the case, but without the ZPM, we won’t stand a chance when Hades returns.”

1345 hours
Briefing Room
Lost City of Akrotiri

The task force from Earth had taken up residence in the Akrotiri briefing room, converting it to their temporary base of operations. With the computer diagnostic continuing and there being little he could do to help, Troy had made his way back to the room to continue his work. Seated at the oval table of white marble which dominated the middle of the room, the general was busily typing away at his laptop, updating his latest status report for transmission to the SGC later in the afternoon.

The first time his screen flickered he’d thought nothing of it, maybe a software glitch or a power spike. His poor laptop had been dragged halfway across the known universe, so it was allowed to have the occasional meltdown now and again. He made sure to save his progress before continuing.

The second time it happened he stopped what he was doing and lifted his fingers from the keys. Troy stared at the screen trying not to blink, making sure he wouldn’t miss it.

The third time he finally caught sight of it. The screen flickering wasn't on concern, but from what he could see the cause was more worrying than he'd first thought. Each time the screen flicked dark for a left than a second, but if you were paying attention, lines of code could be seen scrolling down the page almost too fast to read. While he couldn’t make out the code, and wasn’t trained to know it’s function, it was what accompanied the code that worried him.

Every time the screen flickered, red demonic symbols and pentagrams appeared, accompanying the unexplained lines of code.

“Command team to the briefing room,” he announced into his radio. This was not a good development.

< Tag Alec Styles , Ayden "Ghost" Sheppard , Cara Coyle , Robert "Jackal" Walker , Travis "Wizard" Oxford & Will O'Malley >