The Birth of Iconia

Chapter 15

A/N We don't own any of the franchises represented herein.
We're just fans.

Chapter 15

In orbit around Australis, the Icon Fleet sat cloaked as they waited for the Wraith to arrive. Two days ago the fleet had arrived from Earth with fifteen O'Neills, seven Astraeus, nine Daedalus, the two Valhallas and the Tria. They were the only ships available to be sent against the Wraith; however, they knew it was not enough. The Wraith were sending 100 Hives and 400 cruisers. No one knew where the Wraith had gotten that many ships, but Rodney theorized that the intelligence they had downloaded from the Wraith hive several years ago, was of a single faction of Wraith, and not the entire armada.

Borealis was still offline and the power systems connecting the ZPM's to the stardrive were still not working properly. Without Borealis being able to retreat they would have to stay and fight. Letting the Wraith have the city was not an option.

Every engineer across the fleet, with the exception of those from the ships in orbit, was on the planet working to get Borealis online so they could leave. The battle began when 4 massive hyperspace windows flared into existence and the Wraith dropped out.

As soon as they arrived, the Icon fleet decloaked and fired before the Wraith had a chance to get a scan. For this mission, the Asgard ships had been modified to deal with the millions of Darts that the Wraith would have.

To deal with them, Thor had taken a page from the Terran playbook: Railguns. Five hundred Asgard designed railguns mounted at every firing angle of the O'Neill class. Thor was determined that the Asgard fleet regain its place in the galaxy. There were many opponents to railguns in the Asgard society, but Thor had pointed out that the railguns had a longer range then the transporter array, and most importantly, they took less power, which would help the shields in this battle.

The O'Neills and Valhallas targeted the Hive ships first, while the Deadalus and Astraeus class targeted the cruisers. The Tria remained in orbit, keeping darts and cruisers from firing at Borealis.

The O'Neill's and Valhallas were constantly moving in and out, between the Wraith ships. For the first few minutes they seemed to be winning. Each of the seventeen ships were doing an effective job, until the Wraith ships began moving closer together to prevent the Icon ships from moving it between their ranks.

This strategy limited the Wraith maneuverability to nil, but it stopped the Icon ships from getting in between them. From this formation, the Wraith activated a new technology: along the dorsal and ventral beams of the ships, ports opened and turrets rose from the ships. These turrets were far weaker than the main cannons of the Hives but they had several advantages. Each had 90 degrees of turn and could fire twice as fast as a static cannon. The turrets quickly gave the Wraith the upper hand as they no longer had to wait for the entire hive to turn to gain a firing solution. Thousands of Nadion energy bolts were flooding space hammering into the Icon ships.

As well as the turrets, around the hives, shields came up, causing a momentary panic in the Icon fleet. The Valhalla class battleship Hachiman was destroyed when the Wraith changed their formation. They boxed the Hachiman in and pounded its shields until they collapsed. The commander ordered the self-destruct before it was ripped to shreds, and the ship exploded taking two hives and nine cruisers with it. Three O'Neills tried to rescue the Hachiman and were destroyed for their trouble.

The Wraith began to move closer to the planet, boxing the Icon fleet in between them and the surface. The only place the Icon fleet was winning the battle was in the fighter dogfights. The Fighter Drones, F-302's, and Starfighters were tearing the Darts to pieces with little difficulty.