CB2 Archive

==Cooky battle==
==Part 2==
Samantha Carter sat alone in the Daedalus's officer's breifing room. There was still a few minutes left before the mission debrief was to begin and she wanted to double check the sensor readings from the battle one more time. Despite the success of the battle, not all the news was good.
"For someone who is almost singlehandedly responsible for destroying a Wraith Hive Ship, you don't look to happy," Colonel Sheppard said from the door. "You do know you're allowed to celebrate good news, don't you?"
Carter glanced up from her laptop to watch him as he entered the room and sat down across from her. "Oh, I'm glad we won, but not all the news is good," she said, turning the computer around so he could see it. "The Wraith have shown a remarkable ability to adapt their technology to our tactics. When Daedalus engaged that fleet of Hive Ships last year, they were able to come up with a way to jam our beaming technology in a mater of seconds."
"Yeah, that was rather frustrating," he said. "How does that play into your less than chearfull mood?"
Carter pointed to the sensor read outs on the laptop's screen. "Remember those two small explosions from the Penetrator impact points just before the main detonation? We designed the missile with a defense system so the wraith wouldn't be able to tamper with it before it could detonate."
"Good idea."
"That's what I thought at first. The nuclear warhead is surounded by specially designed anti-personell munitions. Claymores, basically."
Sheppard chuckled, "Be interesting to see what those would do to some wraith."
"Unfortunatelly," Carter continued. "the blast was powerfull enough to dislodge Penetrator number two. It was about eight to ten meters outside the hive ship's hull when it detonated. Because of that, I'd guess less than forty percent of the primary blast actually did any damage to the ship."
"What about Prenetrator one?" Sheppard asked, frowning. "Did it dislodge as well?"
Carter leaned back in her seat and looked strait at him. "No, it was still inside the hull when the primary warhead blew. It was remarkably well positioned too. I'm not sure what it was inside the dart bay that blew up and caused the ship to break in two, but if it hadn't, we wouldn't have gotten away so easily."
"Is that why those two other ships are collecting samples from the debre field?" he asked.
"Al'kesh bombers, and yeah. I'm hoping there is something left to identify what was in there. It could've just been the dart fuel storage, but I kind of doubt it."
Sheppard nodded, thinking to himself for a moment. "Were did we get these bombers from? They don't look Earth made."
"They're a Gua'uld design," she said, smiling at the suprised look he gave her. "We captured one from a Gua'uld who tried landing it on Earth about nine months ago. The other was purchased form the Jaffa in exchange for Oddyssey running suplies to the Jaffa rebels fighting the Ori forces on Chulak. The Jaffa haven't been able to get supplies past the Ori ship in orbit for a few months, and the Ori army on the ground controls the gate."
"I thought there were only three Ori ships left in our galaxy. Why would the leave one on Chulak for so long?"
"The Ori are using Chulak as a ralley point for their forces. Bringing in new soldiers and suplies from their home galaxy through the gate. Right now, they don't have the forces available to hold more than a couple of worlds. With out the Ori ship in orbit, the Jaffa could probly retake Chulak, though not without a lot of bloodshed."
"And an Al'kesh bomber was worth that risk to Oddyssey?" Sheppard asked.
"There are enough Jaffa left hiding out on Chulak to cause some serious trouble for the Ori forces there. That alone would be worth the risk to us, but the Jaffa are an honourable people and don't like owing us any more favors than they already do. So we suggested the Al'kesh as a form of payment. It didn't take much convincing to get them to agree. Fortunatelly, the Al'kesh are small enough that they can ride inside Daedalus's hyperspace field. Gua'uld hyperdrive technology is supperior to that of the Wraith, but still way to slow to make the trip to Pegasus."
"I still don't understand why we just didn't borrow some jumpers from Atlantis," Sheppard replied. "It would've saved you the trouble of haulling those Al'kesh all the way out here."
Carter smiled at him. "General Tindale is hoping to use the success of this battle to convince the Pentagon to begin a sort of Gorrilla campaign against the Wraith. He knows its a bad idea to be fighting on two fronts simultaneously with such limited resources. Since the Wraith are a much easier target, he wants to take them on now, so we'll be able to devote more resorces to the Ori war in the future. The Al'kesh are going to be staying here and setting up his base of operations incase the Joint Chiefs aprove the campaign. If not, they'll either be brought back to Earth or given to Atlantis to bolster it's defenses."
"Still, it would've been nice to have the jumper's drones available if things went bad," he said, pointing to the laptop on the table. "And you just told me they almost did."
Carter shook her head at this. "No, General Tindale doesn't want the IOA to get involved. He'll have plenty of politicians looking over his shoulder from D.C., no reason to invole a couple dozen other governments as well."
"So that's why I'm not allowed to discuss this mission with anyone on Atlantis. Tindale doesn't want word of it getting back to Earth."
"Yeah. If the Pentagon does aprove Tindale's plan, then the IOA will be told of the operations existance, but they won't be getting any details. You and Dr. Weir will be the only people on Atlantis with any knowledge of it."