Across Many Worlds... Children of the Gods [Jumpchain]

[Imperator Pax]

Tidings
Part 2​

Oskyld looked at the pitiful creature as it thrashed angrily inside the aquarium. The beserk serpent frenzied by Nirti's meddling. He had some of the deposed System lord's notes... not that her records were complete. Detailed record keeping was not a goa'uld strong point, and part of that was probably a matter of the modifications the gate builders had made to the symbiotes in distant eons past. Nirti had little reason to keep notes, but it seemed she had been sharing her findings or a portion of them with among other system lords, Pelops and Olokun, which made sense of course given their own interests. The problem was Nirti had a nasty habit of diverging into a decidedly common habit of the goa'uld in their poetic ritual bragging in such official correspondence.


He extended a tendril of theoric energy touching the creature's mind. There was a fragment of intellect there, but stifled under a near blinding rage. What Nirti had managed to do to the queen that had spawned the goa'uld had... it was as unclear to her as it was to him why this was the result of the brood she had spawned. Even the most sane of the brood were prone to wild fits of anger, and blind fury that simply was undesirable. They certainly wouldn't have made reliable underlords for Nirti, if that had been her goal... though he doubted that given her comparative position amongst the goa'uld. If she had been trying to create a queen that could reliably spawn a scientist caste of symbiotes, then she had certainly failed... but certainly that was an idea... though one that this brood would be of little use for.

The divine magic soothed the fury and made subtle changes to the creature's physical and spiritual form. The creature would likely always be short tempered, and if this solution worked out so to would likely all of its siblings. That wasn't to say there weren't advantages. The ones who had enough sense not to be in a near constant state of frenzy had demonstrated access to planning and access to the goa'uld memory, the problem was the rage made them very short term thinkers. That made them very unwieldy as anything other than blunt instruments, which had been something Nirti hadn't been looking for. She had been deposed as a result of the shenigans of the treaty before she could make any adjustments to her experiments.


There was a tone, and he shuttered the aquarium structure as the feed began to fill the holographic globe. He was distant enough from Earth that even without having to contend with crossing other domains it would have been impractical for standard goa'uld drives to cross the space in a time frame that wouldn't have otherwise attracted attention... never mind that he'd have have to cross Apophis's domain. That didn't, or wasn't stopping him from his current actions.

He was exploiting the treaty though nothing he was doing was illegal, or against the treaty. It was just most of the goa'uld hadn't wanted to run afoul of Ra during the time he'd been alive... and Ra had really not liked it when lesser goa'uld went around interacting with the Asgard directly. The Supreme System Lord had thereby been the stick to keep most of the goa'uld in line.... so to that extent it was ironic that Heru'ur had tried to invade Cimerria. Not that it mattered.

No since he was a system lord and recognized as such by the others he was legally allowed to monitor the planets of the treaty, and he had the resources to do it. That was practical due to improvements in hyperdrive mostly. The best he'd been able to retrofit Moloch's fleet to get up to was thirty two thousand times the speed of light. Those Ha'tak had been of inferior quality to those he had taken from Heru'ur, and then been able to improve upon once he understood the mechanisms. Never mind with Zeus's assistance and the Asgard database, even if it was five hundred years out of date.

Not that the goa'uld production base, never mind the one he had access to at the moment, was capable of replicating that level of engine technology for mass production. The shipyards he was expanding and updating would be able to produce faster, and more heavily armed standard Ha'tak, and his improved contiguous hull would be more dangerous still but he needed time.

The Treaty between the System Lords and the Asgard affirmed a number of points. He was allowed to monitor, and report breaches of compliance. Ra might have done it, or another Goa'uld, in hopes in what was effectively narcing on a rival would result in an Asgard Mothership smashing up their rival's empire. Of course, unsurprisingly being known as a snitch wouldn't necessarily be a popular moniker to have in Goa'uld circles.

The goa'uld technological base was derived from copying Alteran technology. The technology of the gate builders. It was why among other things the goa'uld had wrist mounted dial home devices, and a variety of other useful basically knickknacks as well. Most of the Goa'uld had no scientific acumen to speak of though, not really. So when those ancient examples of Ancient Hyperdrive had been lost goa'uld hyperdrive became well much slower cheaper, and reliable, models. During Ra's reign on Earth even though Goa'uld fleets had been much smaller ships had been faster than they had afterwards. By about a thousand the Goa'uld were using the much slower drives outside of specific vanity projects even though Ptah had developed faster drives for use by Ra and his dynasty. Most likely it had been those secrets that Apophis had stolen and applied to improve the speed of his Ha'tak... Cronus certainly had done just that.

So no, the much faster drives of even his weakest pyramid ships didn't help all that much. Those wouldn't be the ships which would head for Earth anyway. It would have taken too long if he ever needed to get there quickly. No, for Oskyld sending someone in person would help in other ways. So having a faster hyperdrive spin up and break orbit of earth had been a little worrying. The signature though had been too small to be a mother ship, or a dedicated warship. He'd seen signatures from contemporary Tel'tak, presumed from intercepted transmissions to be Tok'ra. The latest ship was fast though.

An underlord's personal chariot, skiff, or yacht most likely. That meant of course Ra's underlords from before the loss of Earth to the Goa'uld. None of the others would have wasted such a luxury on their minions. The alternate possibility was that a system lord had lost such a ship of his own when earth had fallen, but that was less likely.

He was waiting for the SGC to respond. He didn't think they'd take too long. A few days maybe, but weeks were unlikely. Oskyld adjusted the cloaked monitoring platform... in truth he wasn't just monitoring the earth for potential breaches in the Protected Planet's Treaty. He had other reasons.

The goa'uld were too busy at the moment to really attack earth. Cronus, Heru'ur, and Apophis were all too deeply embroiled in war, and the other system lords were looking to exploit that for that most part. Earth would have to do something tremendously stupid to provoke any of the weakened system lords to risk a squadron of motherships if the Asgard did show up. Apophis was the most likely to try something, and Cronus and Heru'ur were pushing too hard for him to reasonably try something.

"And?" He said in response to the flash of light. Asgard teleportation technology was actually significantly more advanced, and useful than its Ancient equivalent. Of course, the goa'uld could readily replicate Ring Platforms, and there was something to be said for already having the tech base and infrastructure for that given that all goa'uld ships larger than the standard death glider carried them.

"Asgard monitoring platforms have been confirmed by our own platforms around the other protected planets." Not surprising that, "I have also confirmed a number of anomalous platforms, and signatures. I believe that the Asgard must suspect the Goa'uld Olokun of having access to dangerous ancient technology. A number of his worlds show signs of Asgard surveillance. As do several of Nirti's worlds."

"That's interesting." He agreed. Nirti was supposed to be imprisoned on Tartarus, though her realm had been picked at by some of the other goa'uld few were willing to go out of their way to try at present given its location, and her neighbors were more worried about each other. "I had expected Kali to make a move against some of those worlds by now."

"Given the nature of Nirti's experimentation on humans we should consider intervening. Some of the damage may be irreversible,"

The description of Island of doctor moreau in space came to mind. "If they're alive I can probably undo, or mollify at least anything she's done." He might not have had much technology in the way of capital ships, but there were plenty of medical technologies, mutagenic compounds, and real time genetic manipulation that could stabilize or repair damaged systems. "Is that what you want to do?"

Zeus nodded, "I have the requisite forces already prepared, and outfitted with biowarfare equipment."

That he was already prepared for that wasn't a surprise "What about those Asgard platforms you mentioned this morning?"

"Nirti's deposement may have reduced their concern for such, we should still exercise caution," He declared "More interestingly they remain monitoring Olokun but do not seem to be doing anything. I suspect that the council must be distracted by matters distant."

That wasn't likely anything good, "We should hope not. The Asgard has largely hewed to the Peace of Tonsberg,"

"That is indeed true."

That had been in about the mid tenth century, even if according to records it had taken time to get everything else in place, and even longer to achieve treaty compliance. "Indeed, I'll handle briefing my emissary, and we'll see what's all this mess on earth." He declared with somewhat forced joviality. "Nirti was in contact with Olokun, and Pelops as well, is there any indication of scrutiny of the latter?"

"None that I have discerned, but his is more distant than Olokun's realm." Pelops was on the complete opposite side of Cronus, and Apophis's domains relative to his own... which was odd since Ares's domain was on the near to side. Olokun's domain was too far to reasonably project even their fast moving Ha'tak vessels across intervening space. Whatever the Asgard thought he might have would likely a mystery. "Unlike Nirti and Pelops Olokun, lacked Alteran involvement directly, if he unearthed something he likely has expended significant effort conceal. Nirti's own artifice suggest gate builder machines."

"Her attempts to modify symbiotes as well as host suggested as much." He agreed. "No sign of the device?"

"Not as of yet." A pity of course. Magic worked fine, but any alteran system was likely to have significant specialist material in genetic engineering. "As I said, I have those standing by to invest the worlds most near to our own, and to clean them of the phages her recklessness has left behind." Which of course left him to deal with the matter of the Reetou, a conflict, a foe the Jaffa were scarcely suited to face, but he supposed that threat did give cover to his raptors. The broader movements into what had been hindi territory by the Reetou drew the attention of the system lords in that region of space, and that had its advantages.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tidings
Part 3​

Jack had known having Hammond recall them back to Stargate Command that something had to have gone wrong, at the very least obviously something had happened. He knew really there was a lot that could be going on. Stargate Command was on paper masked as a part of Space Command, but in actuality functioned in many respects like a direct reporting unit. It gave them plenty of discretion. That still wasn't a perfect solution since, especially with the Russian acquisition of a gate, their operations had steadily widened.

They were in something of a bind as a result of mission creep, no surprise there. The X 301 program, and before that the Naquadah enhanced Nuclear Warhead program were being carried out at other Air Force facilities. It was no secret that Hammond had been trying to keep other parts of the apparatus from borrowing members of his staff for ostensibly temporary duty assignments that would in all likelihood 'need' to be extended.

In truth Jack was a little surprised that Langley hadn't asked more questions about what had happened in Egypt, or that they hadn't needed to borrow him... but then he supposed part of that was he was getting older. It had been six years since his last secondment to the CIA's ground detachment, and then... after that had been the mission to Abydos... or rather Charlie's death and then the mission to Abydos.

Hammond put the phone down, "The state department doesn't like it," He said referring to the treaty, "And I'm sure we will hear more of that later." Jack nodded, and acknowledged his understanding. He understood at least having to run it up the chain about the Treaty. The first time around had been one thing. "So far they've accepted that the Treaty is between the System Lords and the Asgard, we're just parties to it." That there hadn't been anything for Congress to ratify regarding Earth's 'agreement', and Jack frankly doubted the people of Cimmeria had even been asked about being added to the treaty. "They'll have questions though Colonel, you can bet on that." The Texan drawled scowling at the phone between them.

At the time they hadn't really had time to contend with any consequences of Thor putting him on the spot when it came to representing earth. It had worked out in the end. Nirtii breaking the rules certainly had been in their favor. The idea that he was Earth's permanent representative wasn't something he'd counted on, and apparently no one else had. Danny hadn't mentioned it being explicitly spelled out... "What about the NID?" This should have been the sort of thing the NID paid attention to, at least according to their on paper mandate. Colonels Simmons had exploded that his organization had managed to miss that, apparently no one at the NID had even bothered to properly document the Asgard-System Lords Treaty documents that Thor had provided. They'd apparently been sitting in an inbox somewhere for the better part of a year.

That meant that right now the colonel, and a number of other air force officers, as well as civilian personnel from the NID were crowding one of the briefing rooms on twenty seven. "I expect that Colonel Simmons and his staff will remain through the negotiations, or whatever this is."

"We went to Cimmeria, and gave Thor a ring. He says all of this is all above board on their end." Jack replied. He hoped that would make sure that that would be enough to keep the NID spooks from trying anything funny with all of this. "Makepeace should be back in an hour." He observed looking at the clock.

--


On schedule the stargate activated, they received the IDC code, and the dispatched Marine Stargate team returned from the Minoan planet, and as he expected one large large lizard person was in tow. Hammond had seen the pictures from other teams reports, and there had been the hologram projected through the stargate... but there was still a difference. Even unarmed the creature looked formidable. Part of it might well have just been the fact that Jaffa were still pretty human, barring the snake in their gut. The galaxy at large was confined to bronze age cultures for the most part... at least so far as the SGC most often observed. The Jaffa besides their plasma weapons usually had armor that would have been more iron age, and more reflective of the late Roman empire or early middle ages, but regardless primitive by earth standards. They had gone back to examine the armor Teal'c had been wearing when he'd defected, and it was comprised of a low purity naquadah alloy that did offer it superior protection against modern small arms, and some protection against staff weapons as well, but it was still shaped like medieval armor.

Even unarmed, if you could discount the claws and teeth, the 'functionary' in his robes looked more dangerous than most Jaffa. Admittedly Bra'tac looked inoffensive most of the time, and was generally regarded as the most dangerous Jaffa alive. "I am Prelate Anker, General Hammond." The Raptor bowed slightly forward, offering a gold leaf embossed scroll that were presumably it... his... diplomatic credentials.

They navigated through the secure doors and down the hallway to the lift. Daniel Jackson confirmed that the scroll, which was in Goa'uld Hieratic, Asgard Runes, what to Hammond looked like Greek, and finally a copy in English.


Colonel Simmons who hadn't been invited, but had shown up anyway spoke up, "Anything interesting doctor?"

"Its like the Rosetta stone." Daniel remarked not looking up, "I had suspected that Linear A was Goa'uld to begin with, or heavily influenced by Goa'uld at least," The Archaeologist responded. "That does seem to be the case here. We knew that Goa'uld dialects had had a similar influence on Phoenician, and Egyptian as well." There were also some oddities where the Goa'uld had apparently borrowed from Latin, or it looked like they had borrowed Latin. "We've had little contact with Yu, or the Japanese System Lords but we'd find similar language influences like we see between the Asgard and northern Germanic language groups, particularly like we saw in Cimmeria."

Not, exactly what the NID man had meant by interesting, but Hammond understood why all of that would be interesting to the archaeologist. They really did more linguists, and language specialists in ancient languages. That had been true, and somewhat obvious before the Osiris mess had happened, but the amulet theft, spate of murders and the stasis jars culminating in the buried ship had underlined that issue thoroughly.

The lizard cleared his thought in something that at least sounded like a cough, or an attempt to clear his throat, "If so might we begin."

"Of course Prelate," Hammond replied throwing SImmons a pipe down look as they filed out of the gate room.


They made it up to the conference room without any incident. However came the trickier matter of dealing with what had happened. "Earlier in the summer," Anker began moving to speak from the head of the table, "Our deep space monitoring platforms recorded an anomalous hyperspace signature. " He said, beginning something of repetition of what he'd said during his initial contact through the stargate using the hologram. "It was categorized, flagged for further review." He paused recognizing he probably needed to explain, "Ordinarily any incoming hyperspace signature would have warranted a more expedient follow up. As the vessel was departing it was deemed of a lower category of priority. That review identified its drive signature characteristics and its identification code."

A holographic image appeared of Osiris's ship. It chanced a moment later to show a flight path in space, and then backtracked to the ship breaking orbit, backed up further to where the ship had initially lifted off of Earth. It was something of an alarming prospect even without Simmons knotting up in his chair.

The SGC, and NID personnel looked around at one another. Hammond turned to face Daniel Jackson, "Doctor Jackson, why don't you recount what happened on our end of things."

"My Academic Advisor, senior teacher," Daniel Jackson paused, to organize his thoughts, as he no doubt attempted to contemplate how to explain Earth's college education system to someone from off world, "lead the recovery of certain artifacts that had been lost at sea. As it happened some of these were what we believed were canopic burial jars, but turned out to be Goa'uld stasis jars. These weren't the only goa'uld items present. It turned out that the Isis Jar had failed at some point in some way, and the symbiote inside it was dead. The Osiris Jar we had thought been destroyed during a lab explosion had been intact and Osiris had escaped to take a host. Osiris ended up going to Egypt and recovering his ship before fleeing the planet."

Anker nodded. "Then this is relatively simple." The lizard remarked splaying his hand.

"Osiris is still legally a criminal by goa'uld standards isn't he."

"Yes. The System Lords still attaint him as such." Anker remarked, "He did not technically violate the protected planet's treaty. He, and his ship were obviously on earth before treaty ratification. We will remain vigilant for him, but it seems unlikely he will return here. I assume he is unwelcome, and will note that so we, or the Asgard can act in response to any treaty breaches."

Hammond wondered how savvy the goa'uld were to the notion the Asgard were bluffing them. Then again there was also the thinking that something had had to happen at Cimmeria before Thor had arrived so maybe the Goa'uld were worried about just the Asgard retaliating. It was doubtful the Goa'uld knew anything of the Asgard's troubles with the replicators

Not that it was exceptionally useful, but Anker before leaving provided information on Osiris. The 'Raptor', as he specified was the preferred translation of his race, admitted that the System Lord data was probably well out of date. They'd probably have been able to get all of this or at least verify it with the Tok'ra. Still he was right in that it was doubtful Osiris would come back to earth, though it wasn't as if Osiris had been told Earth was a member of the protected planet's treaty.... which probably hadn't been created at the time Osiris had been imprisoned in the stasis jar.

--
"Something in particular about all that of interest Major?"

Major Carter had been busy pouring over the telemetry report collected from Osiris's ship, and it had caught one of the visiting officer's attention.

"You gonna share with the rest of the class?" Colonel O'neill prodded.

"This, I don't want to say its wrong, but I'd say it looks wrong."

"How so major?" General Vidrine questioned. The Major General had caught some flak after the failure of the 301, where it had been subverted by compromised salvaged parts. "Its a hyperspace trajectory, we see them all the time."

"For Tok'ra Tel'taks," She agreed, "And if this is right Osiris's ship is faster than the Tel'Taks used by the Tokra, which makes no sense. This is actually faster than Apophis's Ha'tak that were used to attack earth. If these numbers are right. The field is configured differently."

There was a flash of light. "You would be correct, Major Carter." Thor had appeared standing beside them. "We have reviewed the data provided. The hyperdrive signature you are looking at is a copy of an Alteran, a gate builder hyperspace drive. It is significantly more advanced than contemporary goa'uld drives, but much more expensive. Goa'uld infighting over Ancient ships, as well as conflicts with the Asgard, and other races resulted in the loss of the examples, and knowledge to make such ships. It is unfortunate that the Goa'uld, particularly over the last three hundred years have made marked improvement in the speeds of their hyperspace drives, as well as reducing the expense."

"Is that what they're here for?"

Thor's bulbous head bobbed, "It is possible. We will admit that while our knowledge of the Goa'uld personalities is limited, Osiris was never the most dangerous Goa'uld. It is true the System Lords would be unlikely to forget any grudges, but this would not ordinarily be a priority."

"Not that I'm not glad to see you buddy, but they made a big deal about me needing to be here. What's all that about?"

"You are responsible for the death of Ra, O'neill. It is entirely probable that you are the single most respected human among the Goa'uld. You accomplished what the other system lords have not been able to do in over ten thousand years."

"Daniel was there too." He pointed out.

"Daniel Jackson is a scientist, and while the Asgard recognize his contribution, we also recognize the Goa'uld ascribe a lesser involvement, a subordinate involvement in the actions of your team. It is those actions which makes you the best candidate to represent this planet, as well as perhaps in the future other worlds of the Treaty." Thor paused, "Admittedly this change in system lord behavior has us concerned,"

"Us?"

"I in particular O'neill. We have observed a marked increased in Goa'uld militancy over the last few years, Apophis's conflict with Heru'ur and Cronus is escalating that to be sure... and to levels that place us in a precarious balancing act. There are those among the council who feel we may have to make revisions to a treaty that has held for almost a thousand years with surprisingly few breaches."

"What about the raptors, most Jaffa assume that they're Unas."

"It is an interesting development to be sure. The council are unsure of what precisely to make of the emergence of another race. The confusion with the goa'uld's sibling species though makes some degree of sense given that they have been rare since before Pelops created the Jaffa."

--
Commentary: So its still relatively buggy at times but I've been playing Rogue State Revolution and its pretty addicting, but then I'm not surprised I really enjoyed the original tropico back in the day.

This is largely just a minor revision of the original portion. Its mostly SG1 centric, slash Earth Politic. Some foreshadowing for the Asgard later, but basically Earth recognizes that the Raptors aren't Unas, because well Unas largely stopped being common. (In part due to Unas hosts being rare anyway by the time Ra found Earth, and finding humans allowed the number of Goa'uld and more importantly their armies to expand rapidly even before Jaffa were developed).

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tidings
Conclusion​

The escalation of conflict between Apophis, and his nephew the last few weeks had coincided with the start of the Egyptian new year... that probably was intentional on Heru'ur's part. Whether it was economic, or simply symbolic was harder to say, but Heru'ur had clearly planned his offensive before hand, and his fleet had struck a series of worlds in rapid succession. Rapid enough that most of the ritual fighting by other goa'uld had slackened to almost none. Heru'ur had the attention of the other system lords, and Apophis's neighbors were waiting for the Serpent's response.


To that end it had been something of a surprise to receive the report. In hindsight of course he shouldn't have been, word would have reached K'tano about the state of the war and thus the rebel probably had some idea about the goa'uld fleets currently waiting for Heru'ur to over commit or for Apophis to begin an offensive somewhere else... or for Cronus to take advantage of this three sided mess. What more annoyed him was that K'tano's attack on Hak'tyl was that it was apart of his Forest Province and not so much the rebel Jaffa personally. He could guess why, "And that is a second time he has been repulsed."


There was some rumbling from the Jaffa at the pronouncement. Not that they really needed reminding of that fact... or that it had been Ishtar's priestesses who had done it. If he had to speculate on the matter K'tano had launched this attack to try and wipe the stain from his honor at having failed to succeed the first go round, but that was speculation. If it was indeed that then it was doubly true that something needed to be done.


"The rebel forces are threadbare my lord. Many fight with the weapons of humans," Ishtar meant bows and arrows, and spears not the weapons of the Tauri. She didn't mean guns. Not that Jaffa weren't quick to dismiss Tauri firearms, or gunpowder weapons in general, as primitive. That was problematic of course from a tactical level of thinking.


Primitive or not most Goa'uld didn't like the idea of gunpowder societies being allowed to develop... though there were a few exceptions. Most of those were in the domain of Yu Huang Shang-Ti though that largely took the place of entertainment, fireworks, as well as in his mining industries. Most of the other goa'uld were happy enough to import firecrackers from Yu's domain for entertainment rather than have their own societies develop early and dangerous blackpowder that might add additional fire hazards.

So no these were Jaffa who were in a position to still be using more simple weapons. BY all reports few even had armor.... for what use iron armor would have been against staff weapon. Of course Imhotep had been a poor goa'uld to begin with his realm, and whatever jaffa who had fled into the hinterlands probably wouldn't have had an abundance of staff weapons to begin with. The neighboring domains, never mind the stargate, were mix of a variety of goa'uld seeded cultures in the intervening area of space. A large swathe were settled by the usual Mediterranean basin, and near east, cultures, but there were hindu transplants both from apparently India, and the pre Islamized 'Indies'.

The Dragon stood up, and walked to the observation port that peered out over the shipyards. The concept of drill originated in antiquity. It might have been the spanish of the fourteen hundreds and the fantasists of the Renaissance who set the stage for what would become regiments, but the basic prospect of drill was known to the goa'uld. Some goa'uld took it a little more seriously than others, Ptah's Ushabti, Pelop's spartans, and of course Yu's Jaffa armies, and even his human ones. There were a few others, but most goa'uld emphasized a warrior elite where distinction was earned by the individual. The prospect of drilling jaffa in such volumes and to such an extent was just anathema to the way most goa'uld behaved.

On the other hand it wasn't a completely alien concept. The idea of organizing Jaffa in groups of one thousand, but having it broken down into smaller units, as well as that one thousand being part of still larger formations wasn't unusual. Plenty of goa'uld, even those who didn't rely as heavily on drill still needed ways to organize troops.

"Given their threadbare appearance they must have been searching for weapons, and food." He said turning his attention back to the rebels. "Its not as if Imhotep's domain was particularly wealthy to begin with." Unlike Ares, and Svarog who were both System Lords in their own right Imhotep was basically no one. He'd been a minor goa'uld functionary on earth.... not even properly a sub lord to a system lord. The records suggested he'd been a functionary of one of Ra's sub lords, and had probably received his free holding status for reporting some transgression or another. Not that being a freestanding lord had done Imhotep a huge boon. At least as an underlord to one of Ra's sub lords he had been relatively well insulated against Goa'uld aggression. If he'd been one of Ra's underlords directly he'd have been fairly safe... instead he'd basically ended up neighboring Moloch, or near enough that Moloch alternated between bullying him, and claiming to be 'friends' with him.

They'd have to confirm Imhotep had indeed been overthrown though. He wasn't a system lord so it was possible that it might have escaped notice. Still that only explained some of the attacks there were others that had been reported which didn't seem to be rebels either. Better equipped Jaffa who weren't attacking in accordance to usual custom.


It was something of a pity Hak'tyl wasn't developed enough to support capital ship yards. Alkesh, or an equivalent, would be the largest thing they'd be able to sustain with the planet's meager naquadah access. It wasn't as if those reserves had ever properly mined anyway. The real priority though was economic development elsewhere. It was part of the reason he hadn't been investing in some massive overhaul of Jaffa armaments, which might have been necessary for more expansionist warfare.

He dismissed the Jaffa. A naval reply at this juncture, realpolitik demanded discretion if it looked like his fleet was moving towards 'Egyptian space' there might have been an assumption he had taken sides. The conflict would almost certainly bankrupt Apophis, and Cronus. As for Heru'ur's finances, at least in the way the system lords measured such things, weren't likely doing well either. This was precisely the sort of destructive warfare that Ra's overlordship had prevented, and was why the other system lords had accepted that overlordship for the most part. There was no one with the resources to force them to stop so they likely weren't going to, and every time one of them managed to take a planet, or secure some other victory it only redoubled the tensions.

This was probably Apophis's fault though. Every time the Serpent lord cracked down on potential rebels... well trying to hold sand and what not. That and of course Apophis had had rebel problems before his imprisonment, and savaging several of his own worlds after he'd escaped looking for traitors had done him no favors.

No sending a flight of Ha'tak to go searching for the rebels wouldn't have an appropriate response. There were cloak capable Alkesh coming on line in the next few weeks, and that would give him a better idea of what was going on in Imhotep's domain. He waved a hand, and activated the communications suite. "Zeus."

"Older brother," The Asgard returned formally, signifying that he must have had company, "The expedition progresses, and by spring should see Nirti's pestilence cleansed from her former domain."

--
Lieutenant General Vidrine represented the first real step to move beyond a fairly tightly woven number of largely research, and asymmetrical operations elements. Vidrine's command was in theory to be the first operational US space fighter wing. That had been the plan, and why he had been brought in on the X 301 project. That had, Hammond felt now, been premature. The 301 had obviously not been ready for that move, but that had been a choice made higher up in the air force. Vidrine however had been briefed and he outranked both himself, as well as well as Bauer.

"This goes to your Byzantine hypothesis, Doctor Jackson." Vidrine commented.

"Prelate is a term that is normally associated with a bishop. By itself its hardly definitive, but we also know that the Raptors also use the title, or rank of Exarch. Its true that their architecture is meso american, but we've seen that before actually. There are several cultures that range from Aztec to populations from further south in the meso american region."

Major Carter shifted, "The Tollan, they're a mix of people homogenized between Romans, and the Toltecs, or Mayans."

"Yes that's what we think." Daniel replied with a slight bob of his head, which raised the question of when exactly the Tollan had been pulled off of Earth. "But it isn't just them. There are also other populations in the galaxy that show these trends." The archaeologist had complained about the difficulty of piecing together Earth history of antiquity never mind the galaxy at large, which was of course another one of the problems they needed to address. Doctor Rayner remained a major security vulnerability. The damage of the Kara-kesh largely looked like a concussion and he had claimed that he only knew that the amulet supported the more conservative admission that Doctor Jackson's hypothesis of a much older Egyptian civilization was valid. That was good, but it also meant that he might pursue ideas, pull at pieces of yarn and unravel more of the truth. "I think this shows with the, evolution of armor we see particularly with Zeus's Jaffa."

"And Human soldiers, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c added, "It is not unheard of for system lords to have human axillaries to supplement Jaffa, but it is uncommon for a goa'uld to chose to equip and train humans to jaffa standards. Ra was known to do it, but that was more of a statement of his power as supreme system lord."

"And Yu does it as well." Daniel remarked, "and that may be all that it is. The equipment though, even though its not my area of expertise is of better quality. By all indications, Zeus's chosen are using armors we don't normally see outside of more elite troops."

"I'm sorry Doctor Jackson." Vidrine started, "I don't know what that means."

"When, we first encountered Apophis, his most elite cadre of serpent guards had armor that was constructed using a naquadah invested alloy. This allowed them to withstand fire arms much more effectively including from the M16. Sokar's necropolis guard, both in use by Sokar himself, and then Apophis," After the destruction of Netu, which General Bauer had been very interested in, "also demonstrated this, though it seems that Apophis can't produce these armors on his own, and as they're lost they're gone for good."

The prevalent thinking was Anker's 'Dragon beyond shadow', Zeus's acknowledged older brother was in fact Sokar. "I'm not going to complain," O'neill remarked. "So these 'Chosen' have that kind of armor."

"Colonel Makepeace actually believes it is better, O'neill." Teal'c replied tilting his head slightly.

Colonel Makepeace was actually off world still, and couldn't be recalled for this meeting, but his report had been relatively clear on what he had seen. "Svarog's Jaffa were still able to get through it, but it required them to be at what Makepeace described as spitting distance. "It looks like Zeus is organizing his Chosen into hundred, or a hundred twenty men groups, that form company like formations with command staff totaling about five hundred men." Jackson paused looking around, "Sorry Company is the wrong word in contemporary military group, I think the description Makepeace used was battalion."

"That's right for Marine and Army units," Simmons agreed, "But most of the Jaffa are fielding the same equipment, with limited modifications correct?"

"So far that we've seen."

Vidrine nodded, "Colonel," He turned to O'Neill, "Better armor, I can understand that you described the staff weapon as like a shotgun in report."

"Uh yeah, yes sir. The staff weapon," And Jack pointedly refused to say Ma'tok whenever he absolutely didn't have to, "is in many respects comparable to a shotgun. While accurate fire is possible, and Daniel had compared to napoleonic massed fired doctrine in ranks, its a bit like shooting skeet in my opinion. You can sweep the staff fire, and go on from there. It has a lot of the same downsides though, in my opinion sir." ... and that Teal'c wasn't a slouch on the skeet course probably helped that comparison for Jack.

Daniel Jackson nodded, "As I mentioned to Colonel O'neill though we're seeing reports of significant civil engineering projects on a scale that we haven't encountered among the goa'uld anywhere else. Its not just engineering though, we're seeing a uniform institution of Greco-Roman esque laws and administration, including the structure of multi planet provinces that are administered from a provincial capital and provinces coordinated at a... I'm loath to say national just yet, but a level above that of provincial."

By this point Hammond was well acquainted with the simple fact that Goa'uld didn't micromanage their imperial holdings. They might try and micromanage personnel projects, but most goa'uld had neither the temperament nor the talent to remain on task for the average work of running a government day to day.

Major General Bauer grimaced, "Not to diminish the importance of such changes, and what they might mean Doctor Jackson," and he did seem to an extent genuine about the regret, "But I'm a little more concerned about Sokar's ability to actually effect naval force projection than well, these other projects."

"I was getting to that," Daniel replied, "Because sir, quite frankly those other projects are allowing him to significantly step up naquadah, and what we have confirmed is trinium mining."

It was Vidrine's turn to look concerned. "That's news to me, this was confirmed recently then?" It was, Hammond suspected that the report on mining operations and other geological operations had probably been marked lower priority in the face of Osiris's flight from earth, and everything that had happened after. "These newer Ha'tak?"

"That's what we think its going to, sir." Major Carter replied. "They're a standardized design. The Goa'uld translation loosely can be thought to mean 'Improved', and they've replaced the volume of many smaller ship to ship guns in favor of a fewer number of larger more powerful ones."

There was some ruffling of papers, "Major," Colonel Kennedy was running fingers down a print out looking through something, "Isn't Cronus doing the same thing. What you're describing seems to be Dreadnoughts in the naval sense of ship evolution."

"No sir, well in a sense, yes sir. Cronus, presumably as a war time expediency has reintroduced a modernized Chel'tak. A Goa'uld ship that preceded the Ha'tak, and is a, for lack of a better term, Siege Ship, or gun platform. His 'new' Chel'tak aren't as well protected as Ha'tak, but they do mount heavier than standard guns on them. The only reason Apophis hasn't started fielding a new battleship design is most likely because we succeeded in sabotaging his prototype using the Atanik devices supplied by the Tok'ra." Jack scowled.

"Is it possible that that ship was something that Apophis stole from Sokar? We know that, we have observed Sokar constructed Ha'tak in Apophis's fleet have cloaking devices, or at least some of them do, and all observed have superior hyperdrive and weapons technology."

"Its possible," Carter replied, "But I was also going to say is that Apophis also seems to be, according to Tok'ra reports a new super dreadnought to serve as his flagship. It may even be operational already. Certainly they believe that this new flagship is nearing completion. There are reported similarities though its possible that's parallel development, and Apophis's flagship is project to be much larger. If both are originally Sokar designs, it would make sense according to what Teal'c has said."

"The System Lord Ptah has never particularly, ah, 'gotten on well'," Teal'c rumbled appropriating a 'Tauri idiom' he had picked up somewhere, "with his brother Apophis, and Apophis has never particularly had the patience for the process of research even though he has been willing to pursue such things from time to time. Given his imprisonment by Sokar, I doubt Apophis would have been able to pursue or finance such a project as those Major Carter has outlined. As we are not seeing such vessels in use by Heru'ur I do not believe they originated from Ptah's research, laboratories either." He declared. "I would think it quite likely Apophis has simply made off with them when he appropriated forces from Sokar after the destruction of Netu."

"And Heru'ur has been pursuing carrier doctrine," Kennedy added, "I've read about that. Its really quite interesting that he has an FtL capable shipyard. I really wish we knew more about that as well, or the fact that he was willing to build and supply warships to other goa'uld commercially." Of course that wasn't unheard of in Earth history either, and while Heru'ur was the main one, other goa'uld also were known to do it. It seemed as if Heru'ur filled the role of British shipyards supplying ships to greeks, and turks, and so on in the late 19th​, and early 20th​ centuries.

"So these improved Ha'tak are also bigger,"

"Somewhat sir," She replied, "However we're talking about a larger ship, by mass. There aren't any of the hollow superstructure spaces as with older Ha'tak. Looking at the readings the Tok'ra have taken, they seem to have sacrificed any priority to troop carrying. This is a dedicated space supremacy platform. The Tok'ra do say that the one they've observed carried more Alkesh, perhaps double, the number of a standard goa'uld mothership." Which could be big, or could mean little. "That isn't normal."

--
Commentary: Okay so it is c. late 2000 (It should be mid to late October) when this occurs. This may undergo further revisions, being as its largely the rest of the original tidings chapter with some extraneous material and other changes cut. The next chapter will carry us through Samhain and into November and expand on both the Apophis front, and the Jaffa rebellion brewing in the no man's land along Apophis's border with his neighbors.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Eventide
Part 1​

Stennos though lacked an abundant source of Naquadah, the mines had been played out long ago, and thus there would have been no easy way to make the jump to hyperspace faring civilization without offworld resources.
Societies developed certain ways for a reason. They were usually in response to a specific need, and as a result innovations tended to occur either in fits and starts. If not for the last years of fighting on the European continent, the Earth wouldn't have been nearly close to the position it was in... and that was probably as a result of the export of philosophical ideas from even earlier. The crumbling of the Roman empire on Earth had opened the way for an improvement in European agriculture, reforms of which Zeus had overseen on Stennos, and that were now being introduced throughout the provinces. That would mean, much as it had in western Europe more productive farms, and better diets, that would eventually mean healthier people, and the ability to better support specialist populations living in urban areas as well as the armies.


It was when you got down to it a matter of economics. A matter of supplying basic necessities to a degree that greater time could be spent making other goods. Such systems had already existed in less productive societies, but the galaxy at large was administered in a hands off inefficient, and non standardized manner, but one that could trade with planets across the galaxy so long as you could get the goods through a stargate. The goa'uld appreciated art, music, and other crafts even if they had no martial role it was something they encouraged, but pursuing labor saving had never really been a priority. Stennos was heavily populated by most goa'uld standards in no small part because Zeus had spent the five centuries since his crash landing working to build up a population to what on earth might have called a renaissance level tech base...


... the problem there, Oskyld recognized looking at the world from the bridge view display of the flagship... was that Stennos was not 15th​ century or 16th​ century Europe. There were lesser nations of humans on Stennos on previously un touched distant contintents but they weren't really equals... and given another fifty or sixty years Zeus probably would have been introducing corned gunpowder or even rifling and iron cannons simply for the novelty of advancement rather than in response to an actual threat that needed to be innovated against. That was why unlike on Earth there wasn't a similar issue.


For the goa'uld warfare was under Ra somewhat rigidly defined in terms of conduct and behavior, it kept casualties down and maintained the status quo. Staff weapons weren't really something a bronze age populace understood or could innovate against. Even if they could have that would have been discouraged by not simply the goa'uld, but Jaffa, or even human potentates. Transphase eradication rods weren't intended to to be staff weapon counters though, they were intended to fight a hostile outside force... and so the goa'uld didn't care as much. Zatnikatel were similarly a specialist weapon for a specialist task, and they were unnecessarily ornate and expensive. Zats unlike TERs were an unnecessary extravagance in a galaxy at war given they were rarely issued to any but the most senior Jaffa or very very rare specialists.


Oskyld half turned. "more suicide attacks?" His lips curled pulling back to bare long sharp canines in irritation.


"An ineffective strike my lord. The explosive used was of poor quality." Was the offered response.


That was irrelevant to the point. The first attack could have easily been dismissed as an idiot overcooking the grenade... theoretically that was possible with goa'uld grenades, in a similar manner as humans. Start the timer and then be a little slow after releasing, the problem had been attacks that hadn't involved goa'uld explosives... or rather proper goa'uld grenades.


Corned gunpowder returned to the forefront of his thinking. Ktano's rebels knew enough about chemistry to make an explosive, but not enough to make it safely or reliably or pure enough that... well it was still dangerous. Like Stennos, Hak'tyl had little in the way of reliable naquadah reserves, and Hak'tyl's population was as sparse as most under, undeveloped even goa'uld worlds... but that wasn't true for all of Forest Province. Making an attempt to steal naquadah made sense for Jaffa rebels, no doubt hoping to use the talents, the bars of naquadah to procure weapons and other supplies, as it did for anyone else hoping to raid planets known to mine the ore, or handle refining.


There were any number of potential solutions to this, but none of them really ideal. He needed the naquadah to feed to his shipyards, thus any kind of delay was undesirable, especially as most of the work was being structured, and resources allocated to make each provincial fleet domestically built... which had meant building new shipyards. Then those shipyards needed to produce Ha'tak, which of course needed naquadah.


It also just ran into the issue, of while K'tano's domain, and the retched stretch of space that formed the unclaimed or nominally independent planets situated between the space Oskyld had laid claim to and the Greek and Egyptian pantheons had the stargate to use for travel as well simply being close by relatively speaking. This was a nuisance he didn't need given that it wasn't just Cronus, and Apophis nearby. Heru'ur was relatively close, not as close as the other but enough that his frontage with Apophis was within striking distance of emerging standards for hyperdrive. Then of course there was also Cimmeria being in between his and Heru'ur's domain. Either reason was sufficient to deter him from moving ships off that front.
--
There were simply too many other things he would have preferred to have been spending his time on. He understood all the reason why someone wouldn't want to micromanage a multi planetary empire. This wasn't any thing like managing Arthas, where even at the end he'd managed a small continental expanse... a population of rough equivalent to the Roman Empire... and of course there was the reality that it hadn't been just humans. So administration wasn't completely alien. He'd been a sorcerous god king under the dark sun...


The thought prompted a ripple of magic to twist through the area. Plant growth followed, just as it had in channeling Isis blessing through a world scoured of green vegetation. It wasn't the only reason for the reaction though. The Egyptian new year tended to fall close to halloween. Though he hadn't enacted by his time on Athas, the souls he had expended to enact the great necromantic rite had already been accumulating, and that rite had fallen on Samhain. That Halloween night had been nearly a century ago now, but supplemented sorcerous god king mantle of power Athas had built... and of course the Jaffa had noticed.


Goa'uld meant children of the gods.


The investment of energy into the land, the tapping of faith had tangible effects on those who lived here, and years having passed since he had killed the golden calf and assumed his place as System Lord were readily obvious. The more skeptical might have questioned if it was really magic, but that didn't matter, the change was too hard to miss now.


Not when it was occurring right in the middle of the biggest festival Ishtar's priestesses organized in a year... and would last through the longest night of the year when the Raptors continued their celebrations that dated to Athas.
The goa'uld played at divinity, scrambling for the trinkets of the ancient race of ridiculously powerful precursors that had uplifted them for the sake of prestige, and thinking that they were supposed to rule the galaxy. Not that Oskyld had any interest in ruling the galaxy, he knew he wouldn't be here for that long, but chances were good that sooner or later the other system lords would start taking note of his burgeoning domain whether that happened while he was here or after Zeus assumed control of the whole domain dind't matter it was inevitable... and precautions needed to be taken.


He waved a hand and watched as the protective enclosures receded and projected the image of a world that had clearly suffered a much worse version of the space battle that had happened to Stennos. The Ancient repository even still digesting it told him all too well what the Eye of Balor was... of course it had only been through reviews of historical record of his cartouche of gate addresses that had yieled that find. Six control systems to regulate an Alteran vessel the size of a city, one capable of terraforming a world, or effectively rendering it to slag in short order. One of six eyes, and it wasn't hard to find the identities of the other six at the time either... Ra, Apophis, Osiris, Tiamat, Baal, and Balor. It was interesting... not the three for the Egyptian pantheon but the other half.


--
Commentary: This is the chapter that would take place between Tidings, and the events of the Episode the Tomb, during which the conflict between Heru'ur and Apophis escalates (more on that next) and of course the fact that a lot of the goa'uld don't do science even if they understand how to make the gate work, and even fix it to an extent when it does break down.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Eventide Part 2​

She had to remind herself that regardless of the clarity of the images she watched that this was neither the past, nor that the battle was close. The edge in individual power of the great ships lay with the uncle. Apophis's fleet across the border, many stars distant, engaged the much more numerous ships of his nephew. The general consensus though was that Heru'ur could better sustain the losses he was suffering.


Losses that would have been an unfathomable measure of wealth a few short years ago, but beyond that was the devastation rained down on the helpless world below. It was no secret that both System Lords had bombarded several planets of the other from orbit by this point, but this wasn't even that. Scoured by star fire ships from both sides listed painfully from the battle line, and even more fraught vessels had begun to slip descending into the planet's gravity well, the sensors forcing them to watch in slow motion as they plunged towards the planet's surface where they would come to a sudden inevitable stop.


There was nothing to be done. Ishtar again reminded herself that they were safely on this side of the border light years away from Apophis, and Heru'ur's fleets did battle. Though she had not used the oratory to inquire, she had heard from other that the situation was much the same on Apophis's front against his ancient rival the titan Cronus. The scale of this war had long eclipsed all that she had known.


Only a desperate fool would have hoped for hospitality in Moloch's domain so long as the golden calf had still existed, but desperation, the privation of the war between gods made many refugees. This was not the sort of war Moloch would have been suited to fighting, but then this was no longer his domain. Even now she sat on the dais of the oratory of one of the great warships that had emerged from the Dragon's shipyards. The same class of improved Ha'tak as served as the vessel of command the lord of thunderbolts lead his campaign from. An honor not lost on her fellow Jaffa, who clamored for the inevitable war that was sure to be in planning stages now.


There could be no other explanation of course, even now the lord of the Underworld's younger brother clearly longed to begin what would surely be a greater campaign still than pacifying the borderlands. The lord of thunderbolt's chosen however had made clear that there was still much work to be done, especially as those marcher worlds were brought into the fold. The humans of Stennos were craftsmen par excellence, knowing their trades and work far better than any humans who had ever breathed Moloch's air, and even now toiled to lay roads which would carry the supplies of many cohorts of Jaffa, as well as of course human auxiliaries. That was of course only natural.


Some of her sisters suspected that the only reason they were not marching to the war Zeus desired was the Dragon's focus on the demonic swarm of insects across the hindi border lands. The Reetou still occasionally preyed upon Jaffa, but were just as often prey to the Unas legions who guarded worlds at the Dragon's command. That was however a conflict against the most unclean of creatures, and not the war between gods that she was watching play out. A conflict that was in fact worsening and showed no signs of waning. Just as the Falcon lord built up his fleet to match his uncle's numbers, so too did the Dragon's shipyards continue to build the great bones of new ships as well.


She turned back to the clarity of the image before her, and watched Heru'ur's superior numbers, and the masses of alkesh they had carried into battle secured the Falcon's victory over his uncle, if at a steep price.


--
Oskyld flexed his hands, revealing the thicker bones and musculature that reinforced a manakete's scything talons extending them. The Reetou shrieked before one of its nyphm like wings was ripped clear. Lightning bubbled from his outstretched hand catching another of the alien bugs. The Reetou were not a product of natural evolution, any more than Jaffa were, or for that matter the modern Goa'uld subspecies that dominated the galaxy. The product of artificial cultivation, and intervention by something more.


He done enough autopsies to confirm that suspicion, and was sure of it.


It took several minutes to finish slaughtering the mass of would be insect assassins, leaving the room caked in charred chitnious debris from the latest bit of best control. The indication that there were no more was confirmed as the Jaffa recovered. The vibrations of the reetou no longer occurring, as that oscillation required them to still be breathing. The Dragon allowed his immaterial energy form to solidy back into the rest of his physical body.


Phillip Alexander bowed the human general having been unaffected by the reetou but able to do little productive in the fight. The communication flashed opening the subspace channel to Zeus's flagship. "Hail," He greeted settling into the throne, its back illuminating as gate builder pattern sensors came to full power. It was a pity of course that the Asgard database had no indication of the Reetou as a species, the Alteran database was not quite as useless... but its nearest match to the Reetou was a dead world, and one that had been destroyed well before the Goa'uld had risen to galactic prominence... so that had been no help.


Zeus gave a gallic shrug, "were that I bore glad tidings, all the hives of these insects to which I have smote have been far too young and small to be their origin home." There was presumably a central hive, or at the very least some series of large hives, but it was also true that Zeus's mission was to secure the frontier. It was not a core objective to find the Reetou in particular.


This was one more problem he really would have preferred not to have, especially with the way the system lords on his borders were throwing down. It had gone well beyond just accidents or intentional orbital bombardment. Nuclear booby traps, and reports of chemical weapons had begun to circulate... that had probably begun with Apophis, but likely now included reprisals by Cronus, and likely if not Heru'ur himself his sub lord Montu. That along with this latest Reetou incursion was of course on top of his planned overtures to his other neighbors to open up trade with the Celtic pantheon.


The connection remained open though. "What is it?"


"Nirrti's laboratory, and her notes speak at some length of her mother."


Oh, "That is a problem then." and one technically the charter which organized the system lords should have 'merited' bringing to the council... not that anyone did.

 

[Imperator Pax]

--
Eventide Part 3​

Staff blasts sizzled through the air as Jaffa fired in ranks, at least this was between Jaffa, Ishtar considered. This was honorable combat against a peer. Some pride could be taken in this struggle... it was not the battle against the Reetou.


... and it was not a battle determined by the great ships. It was not rebels seeking plunder, but rather a battle between the Jaffa of separate system lords.


Isthar told herself these things even as the ranks of Cronus's jaffa, and those of his long time rival, attacked on another. Apophis's ranks included the determined number of jaffa who wore the mark of Sokar on their brow, and armor that seemed a poor imitation though similar in girth to those worn by the raptors...


The jaffa of Cronus, and his Grandson Ares did not have any who copied the styles of Zeus's elite. No pigeon breasted plates of naquadah alloy were worn by those men leading in the front.


The orrery flickered as men advanced volleys across the field, but it was impossible to tell who was winning in the fray. Cronus, and Apophis seemed evenly matched. In other battles, and perhaps overall the Titan, especially with his kin joining the battle, had the weight of numbers and perhaps that was how meant to secure victory. To wear Apophis's ranks away with time. The war already encompassed an unfathomably great number of Jaffa already.


The armies were tens of thousands of Jaffa strong on each side. All Jaffa, that wasn't counting the multitudes of human auxiliaries, and never mind the supporters who were not warriors themselves. The uniform numbers of Jaffa in chainmail and coif, and only a small few with the great helms of the serpent guard fell among the reed fields. There was no cover provided, and the ground they had closed in on each was spongy slowing their advance even beyong the usual march.


Many would die.


Her attention tore away from the magical view of a distant world's battlefield, and the arrival of one of her fellow soritas. The Hak'tyl priestess look tired, and irritated, Neith shook her head and complained, but then regarded the battle, "The men adopt well to some of the changes, and poorly to the others."


Not that they didn't attempt to conceal the latter from the eldest lord of indeterminable darkness. The Chosen of Zeus were much more outspoken when they misliked it, and oddly fond of long drawn out debates and rhetoric. The extreme was odd, but unique to Zeus's most favored subjects. The majority of the changes though brought by the death god, and his younger brother were changes Ishtar welcomed, even if she didn't understand all of them, or the many of hte rituals of the Dragon's Raptors. Zeus's chosen were human at least, odd as it might have been they were close enough to be understood.


"Is Nirrti responsible for the Reetou scourge?"


Anker stirred from his torporous sitting, the sin eater turning its crocodilian head towards the two priestesses, "The Dragon holds the evidence she has merely exasperated the situation. Not that her antics are the origin." The Prelate had been in tune with the orrery as well and so deeply unified with the divine machinery that she had forgotten the Unas had been present at all.


--
In a temper tantrum more likely to have been associated with Baal, or even Ra for that matter Apophis had nuked a series of worlds in order to deny them to his rivals. It wasn't really news any more that kind of escalation had become something of the norm for the conflict... which made the other system lords concerned. What they didn't care about was the stream of people fleeing the war, and the mass of Jaffa being recruited for criminal or even rebellious groups in the desperation.


Moving into the territory ran into the real politik issue of encroaching on the border, or worse a competing system lord, or one of their commanders assuming he was taking size. It was prevailing reason not to move against K'tano's domain, but as the months had dragged on, and it became increasingly hard to ignore the reports he wondered why the goa'uld hadn't made a move. The paralysis was presumably born out of one part realpolitik, and realistically the fact K'tano had only unseated a minor goa'uld. He was a much less grave threat, a nuisance really, compared to risking involvement in what was proving to be an increasingly bloody conflict.


That and there was the exterior threat of the Reetou were implacable. K'tano was somewhere in Imhotep's former dominion, located in a no man's land, but in theory the system lords as a body could have all agreed to hunt him down... fat chance of that right now.


... and of course they had other problems, "Well that isn't concern in the slightest either," He muttered.


"Sarcasm is a base form of humor," Zeus complained, "But I concur, it explains the success of Nirrti's bio weapon programs, or for that matter especially her greater success in human modifications compared to Olokun or Pelops."


He growled reflexively. Nirrti had a border with Cronus, any kind of alteran artifact would have potentially drawn him, or her other former neighbors crawling into that region of space far far faster than a response to 'some upstart rebel' like K'tano. "That will have to be found and secured." It was useful, or potentially so for a number of things, but especially keeping it out of the hands of anyone else. "It explains also her... symbiote breeding project."


"Indeed, and its failure." Nirrti had plenty of experience, going back thousands and thousands of years on human modifications, and working on simpler organisms. "She's running head long into Alteran fail safes with no real knowledge how to interact with those markers... hence the runaway aggression triggered by hormone imbalance. A relatively minor problem compared to other potential side effects."


"Well it confirms at least that she isn't in active contact with a gatebuilder," That was something of a small relief at least. Still this presented more of a headache since they would have to move forces back into Nirrti's domain and potentially draw the attention of her neighbors the system lords Kali, and Bastet. They in turn had a border with Heru'ur's domain through what had at one point been the domain of the System Lord Sobek, now deceased.


... of course on the other side of that strip of space belonging to Heru'ur was a strip of space claimed by his uncle, and Apophis while not necessarily exploding any stargates was hitting planets with weapons only relatively smaller than what was necessary to destroy a gate. So effectively anything coming to light might very well bring in all three belligerents in short order.


"What shall we do?"


This would have been much simpler if their largest concern had been the ships of Nirrti's fleet which were still at large, but that was the question what to do? He waved a hand activating the holographic display... he had been hoping that Zeus's return would let them pivot to deal with the Reetou problem... but there had been no material leads to the investigation of their homeworld either. Idly he would have been focusing on the next flight of standard Ha'tak being constructed, and... "Standard Ha'tak should attract less attention from our neighbors than the improved versions, and it isn't as if we're expected to hold territory." A standard Ha'tak carried Alkesh, and Tel'tak which were both hyperspace capable. "It will take time though, the latest Ha'tak," Had been intended to fill out the provincial fleets on the other side from the Forest and Wind Provinces. "I'll see to the work, but if she's concealed it this long..." he willed the master cartouche into existence, and then to cross reference it with the Asgard cartouche looking for worlds with known gate builder planets within Nirrti's former domain. The long strings of gate addresses resolved itself, and he paused... and there was no assurance she hadn't not publicly claimed a world, and kept it hidden during Ra's reign from the other system lords. He adjusted the list criteria bringing up a map of that part of the Milk Way.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Relics Part 1

​

Assuming his grasp of the calendar line up with earth was accurate, December was fast approaching. Zeus had departed across the border with what had been Nirrti's realm with ships intended for Thunder Province's provincial fleet, but hopefully they would be able to act quickly. In theory the improved hyperdrive would permit ships to move around, and return to reinforce as necessary but they would see. Oskyld ran his fingers over the crystal, and frowned. Even by itself a technically Goa'uld could very well have used it to potentially dangerous results improving a ship... but the only system lord with the technical acumen to do that was probably Ptah... and Ptah by all indication would have spent the time instead studying the crystal for novelty of it, and trying to learn everything he could about the computer's programing and the heuristics used in power management.


As far as gate builder technology went though it was positively ancient... dating to a time when the Alteran had still be sending out seed ships to terraform the galaxy and 'correct', reorder the galaxy to be more habitable for the life forms the Alterans wanted to study... it was unfortunate that their records about the unmodified state of the galaxy before the mass terraforming were sparse, barely footnotes in the archive at best.


He suspected that Balor had been able to use a fraction of Eye's power and that explained the graveyard of ships over his former capital, and the ones that had fallen down into the gravity well of the planet with the thousand changes of the seasons since then. It had been a potential explanation for Zeus's Asgard 'chariot' having been destroyed, but it was a lead that didn't seemed to have panned out... there wasn't enough information to conclusively say it wasn't, but it seemed unlikely. Admittedly, Oskyld recognized that someone might have used another of the six eyes, or none of them at all... they might never have a satisfactory answer and the passage of time may well have erased that enemy. The last great potentate of the Celtic System Lords though had been on the far edge of range for what Oskyld had considered a reasonable hyperspace cruise for the ambush... and he was fairly certain that Dagda and Manaan's revolt predated the attack on Zeus. It had been worth investigating Magitireth as well, even if the official reason for the vist was to restore some degree of habitability to the world ...even if the planet was itself slowly recovering on its own.
Ordinarily another few hundred years of the natural ecosystem stitching itself back together would have been nothing to a system lord but that was before the war, and before Ra's downfall at the Tauri before that.


The treaty with the humans probably would have been a greater priority if Apophis was not tied down fighting both Cronus, and Heru'ur. There was limited concern Apophis would spin off the necessary ships to attack Earth, but it didn't hurt to keep an eye in that direction. There had been no further sign of the ship that had belonged to Osiris either, which was unfortunate. The System Lords as a collective body had acknowledged the information, but had not acted on it. It was unlikely Osiris was in a position to do much though, not with much of Ra's domain having been picked over by the system lords in the intervening space of years.
Years. Decades even were the sort of mentality that the goa'uld operated under. That had b een fostered by the efforts of the system lords to maintain the status quo. He was going to have to rely on a technical solution to Magiteth's problem showing up and using a planetary scale alchemy array to fix the problem, even ones deployed via starship would raise far far more questions than he wanted to answer from an associate, and certainly not from any of the other goa'uld in the celtic pantheon never mind any of their neighbors.


"The carrier design will be able to carry and then resupply with its standard load out in short order." More specifically because Alkesh were already hyperspace capable the Alkesh could remain on their side of the border, and be able to return if something came up.


The Raptor Exarch clasped its fist to its chest in solemn acknowledgement. Sibir would be commanding the wing aboard the carrier, even if he was sending Ishtar as nominal command of the vessel at large.


The shape of the ship was broadly similar to the in-service I-class, and he had tried to maintain as much cross compatibility as possible but the central pyramid had been replaced by a more saucer like top and bottom section. Like the I's in theory it could still land on a body of water on a planet's surface, but the round base was not suited for putting it on the ground. That wasn't the only trade off of course, the change in base alignment had also meant reducing the number of new 'dreadnought' large 'caliber' plasma cannons as well... but in theory it would be this line of ship development that might result in developing a cloak device for capital ship size vessels that could then be applied to the new standard flights, and the standard base Ha'tak. That was not to say it suffered from the same problem of being under gunned as the older Cheops.


He glanced to the white painted superstructures of the hull, with their gold trim. "This mission is both to shore up," to complete the agreed upon, "Trade arrangements and also one part demonstration of power." He wasn't expressly allying with the phantom queen, not militarily in any sense, but she was her mother's regent and that made her a valuable source for new symbiotes... though he was having to keep those separate from symbiotes sourced elsewhere. The larval goa'uld were too prone to frenzying even without Nirrti's modifications, never mind his own additions. The trade had other values besides, but in particular gave him the public answer to a problem Moloch had never been able to satisfactorily answer for his jaffa.


That was simply part and parcel of being a system lord. The public perception of power was important both from below, and from his peers. He would not be making the trip in person, nor did he expect the appearance of any of Morrigan's court. This would be strictly handled, bluntly that Ishtar would take the cluster of ships escorting her, say some pretty words and the ship would handle the automated dispersal of Alteran terraforming systems to begin the process of among other things fixing the planet's atmosphere, clearing and then reseeding the barren ash strewn surface to engender a return to green arable future farmland.


It was theater in another sort of way as well. Barring the very odd goa'uld who did actually believe technology were the same thing, this demonstration would further cement the appearance to the system lords of great technology, and thus make them less likely to believe in magic, while of course 'great magic' would only reinforce the beliefs of human, and jaffa solidifying his mystique. It was important political theater to cover other actions.


2001 was going to be an interesting year.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Relics Part 2​

For as long as she had known there had only for a 'proper' System Lord been a single vessel to form the core of a fleet. The Ha'tak had risen to prominence centuries before her birth, and never had she expected to see them replaced in general service. It was true that Ra commanded from a cheops, as much a show of the Sun Gods status, and other goa'uld had built great flagships to demonstrate their wealth, but the ha'tak was the ship class that had for centuries been the standard warship of a system lord fleet.


It was the vessel of choice, and a show of wealth and power. This was the second new class of vessel larger than the standard Ha'tak she had found herself aboard. Unlike most of the Dragon's new greater Ha'tak the new ship had been painted white with gold trim, excepting the black superstructure, in contrast to what had become standard of dark red enamel like color. It wasn't just the exterior of the ship, the entire interior of the great barque was substantially brighter in color with white walls prevailing.


It had occurred to one of her sisters that the change in appearance was likely a gesture of diplomacy, an idea that Ishtar had considered something of an absurd notion on its face. The Dragon's main battle fleet were in the dark red, and black color scheme, while the reserves of older pattern Ha'tak, remained gold and black, but it was also true that the lord of thunderbolts preferred a white base scheme for his own fleet. The white was less of a stark and unyielding color scheme, and might very well have been chosen as a gesture of geniality.


Of course at the same time, while it carried fewer guns and supposedly less armor, the still armored carrier still mounted enough of the newer larger guns to reduce a typical ha'tak to free floating slag in short order... if anything were to go wrong. Not that she suspected Arawn's most fleet ships would be able to catch the Dragon's detachment. The Skull Lord might not try, or might only do so if prompted by his own liege, but Arawn was widely regarded as the greatest master of the arcane of the pantheon once headed by Dagda, and with a viciously curious nature.


Moloch had once attempted to breach the nominal underlord's domain and had returned shaken and ghastly at the horrific creatures in service to the skull lord. The hounds of arawn were said to have been crafted by the magiks of the ancient goddess who had raised Arawan, and taught him his magics and were thought near to unkillable, but they were preciously few and Arawn like Ptah, and Thoth in the Pantheon of Ra had little expressed interest in martial combat and conquest of his neighbors... which was why Arawn was underlord to Manaan mac Liir.


Ishtar had always considered that strange... but then Dadga, the Celtic Pantheon was had always been strange by the standards of the Goa'uld dominions. They recognized, or had recognized, peaceably Ra's right as Supreme System Lord, and had confined themselves to their insular realm of stars. Moloch had been the oddity she supposed. It would explain the loathing his fellow gods had so self evidently displayed to the worlds.


She stared out at the ocean of passing stars curtained by the corridor of hyperspace, tinted ocean green by the fact the ship's shields remained at combat readiness despite travelling beyond the boundary of light's speed.


--
"I'm telling you Danny," Jack huffed and cut himself off. Daniel didn't understand... he half doubted even Carter didn't understand. Not really. The truth was he'd have preferred the Russians had just outed the Stargate program... oh there would have been a congressional hearing sure, but then it would have been out there. Even if there was another Church commission it would be over and done with. They, the Russians, would have had no leverage.


The threat though of the black mail, and having to actually to come to deal with the black swan of what all the outing of that information would mean. It was absolutely a political question, but Jack was willing to admit that he wasn't used to it. The CIA liked being able to keep secrets just for the sake of keep secrets. It had been that way Vietnam, and throughout his stint with agency operations through the eighties.


"The agreement with the Russians says we will share intelligence and scientific discoveries based off of the use of the stargate."


"Yeah didn't we tell the Brits the same thing about the A-Bomb?" Jack replied snarkily, "I don't think anyone was thrilled when we held stuff back, but not telling the Russians some of this stuff makes sense."


"Why Jack? The cold war is over... and whether you like it or not I hate to say it but they have not access to the German Stargate program notes, and who knows what's in there, but Britsky's publications up until they stopped definitely suggests that at least some of their academia were making progress towards the same sort of discoveries that lead Kathryn to recruit me into the Stargate program." Daniel shook his head, "Its not just the water gate event we want to avoid, we want to make sure there isn't another Seth, and chances are there are a lot more goa'uld artifacts left on earth than we know. Cooperation makes sense here, especially I remind you, you're the one who said Maybourne's story didn't make sense."


He didn't appreciate that speculation being thrown back at him, but it was true Maybourne's alleged defection didn't add up. He figured it was much more likely the NID had been attempting to get a dependable mole inside Russian intelligence presumably out of the same reasons Daniel had just outlined, that there were alien artifacts on earth left over from the original goa'uld time on the planet. Maybe he was just being suspicious but Maybourne had too many ... odd conveniences, and too much support after he'd disappeared. The timing was particularly a red flag, Maybourn just happens to defect to the soviets... the Russians, "It doesn't," He grunted. "But I don't like this whole exchange idea, and regardless of whether or not they're being cleared for the base or not," And it wasn't like he hadn't been given the Utah Nuclear speech already, but, "I don't like it." He was half tempted to utter beware greeks baring gifts, "Just its bad timing, they're just now all of sudden wanting to share information and access, what's the game?"


"Most likely its they have there own cartouche," He replied. "Probably not a large one, but the implication I take from some of Britski's translations from digs done in the Levant, and Mesopotamia in the eighties suggest he might have been finding what were actually goa'uld sites. Ra's cartouche was much more complete than what we normally see on goa'uld worlds," Abydos had been important to Ra, and they hadn't gotten a chance to find Apophis's equivalent but Teal'c and Bratac, and Selmak and some of the other Tokra, Jack would grudgingly admit, had helped them start to identify the affiliations of various worlds. "There is also the chance that the Nazis managed to get the gate working, either they had a list or managed to connect via random dialing and could have an address that way. Regardless we're also looking at worlds right now that are all on the border or contested territory."
--
Commentary: While I won't be covering Chaka or Tyler on screen Ktau's events will make an appearance from Zeus's perspective, and Orlin will talk to Sam shortly. Then we will move on to Nirtii and the Tomb. Season 5 of SG 1, which speaking of 5 and for that matter 6 its interesting on the rewatch of how real life didn't seem to rewrite the plot any. I mean yes the War in Afghanistan is clearly occurring but unlike other US mil centric shows of the period we don't get any real commentary on the towers or the invasion of Afghanistan which would have occurred presumably late in 5.

Additional notes, Fed Ex alleges my BattleTech Wave 2 KS stuff will finally be arriving this afternoon.... we're not going to even mention how many boxes that is... that will not effect October's schedule. I've got a schedule for the month most outlined (except the last couple of days in October not allocated) I'll be sticking to that, but I will probably be make revisions to my 'standard update' pattern in November, on top of it looking likely that my Pathfinder Kingmaker story will be getting its own thread. Details will be forthcoming.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Relics Part 3​

"The alien came back," Kennedy didn't seem thrilled by it. The whole Velona debacle, and the loss of what had been an example of a surface to orbit weapon system capable of destroying a goa'uld invasion fleet would have been a big win for the SGC, and the Air Force. "Major you have to stop bringing home strays." He muttered in a tone that would have been completely out of line at the pentagon but seemed more acceptable deep under NORAD away from the censors of DC. The colonel leaned back and shook his head.


Hammond didn't censure him, but cleared his throat, "What did Orlin have to say Major Carter?"


There was a rippling of light that clashed with the overhead tube lighting of the briefing room thirty storeys beneath the mountain... and that Colonel O'neil might be the only officer in the room to be armed, in itself a violation of base safety regulations... and that the nearest armed air men were outside a sealed door intended to prevent eavesdropping or surveillance of other sorts. "Merely that something is very wrong with the galaxy general." Orlin was far from an imposing figure he looked like a beach bum if Hammond were going to be entirely honest. He didn't look like a threat, certainly not a physical threat, but he had just appeared as if by magic in a sealed and supposedly secured briefing room.


Kennedy asked the question he would have if the younger man hadn't beaten him to it, "Well what does that mean?"


"Its ... complicated?" Orlin glanced up to the ceiling, "I can't easily explain it, your understanding of the universe is so primitive." O'neill gave him a flat look from across the table, and Hammond had noticed that Jack's hands were under the table, "Its..." Orlin hadn't noticed or if he had he didn't show it instead lost in his thoughts, "A tangible presence in the galaxy. Our kind, the others like me, we lived on this world... a long time ago. The thing, out there is like us, different, maybe another like us but from a different group."


"Another group of Ancients?"


"Yes, that's," Orlin brightened immeasurably, "That's an excellent way to simplify this... Its like another group of us has returned. Someone is out there acting, acting in a way that the others don't approve of." He shook his head, "I mean you can feel it in the way the galaxy moves now, well you can't feel it literally but imagine if you could someone was changing the gravitational constant, and not in a standard deviation, it was just changing intermittently and to different values."


Hammond assumed that was supposed to be a metaphor, but all the same didn't like how Major Carter's eyes were bugging out, "So what are you saying Orlin? Who or what is doing this?"


"We don't know. There are accusations being thrown around right now, even as we speak between the others." Orlin frowned, "Even among us higher beings, there is mistrust right now, suspicion about how this is playing out."


"Could it be one of the ascended?" Daniel Jackson asked.


"If one of the collective was acting we'd know about it. Even if we couldn't directly stop it from occurring we would know about a direct usage. I suppose that's the biggest issue of concern if there are other groups acting now."


The discussion had now monopolized the briefing room, taking over from what should have been relatively normal business involved in the operations of Stargate Command.
--
Zeus watched the ship move away. K'tau had been a world taken from Ra by Odin thousands of years ago, and incorporated into the protected planets treaty by the Peace of Tonsberg over a thousand years earlier. It had allowed what had at one point been a rather typical world of humans transplanted from the Nile delta, and then later infused with norwegians, swedes and danes to go from a basic bronze age civilization to one a few centuries ahead of where Stennos had stood prior to the Empire's establishment.


Ktau was still largely agrarian with only the most basic measure of steam power, and ability to harness natural running water for industrial use, but compared to how most of the galaxy was... well Zeus had been impressed. As he watched the ship make the jump to light speed he wondered what had caused the malfunction of the Gate network in the first place that had led to the stellar instability. The Alteran network, the stargate network, was famously reliable with many redundant safety systems that it shouldn't have permitted a connection to cause a problem like that... and the truth was that the Asgard ship should not have legally intervened without contacting the system lords.


... unless perhaps there was evidence of goa'uld responsibility, which seemed unlikely Few Goa'uld would have done something as complex as destabilizing a star even those with the technical acumen... indeed even the ones with the technical acumen understood best that if they did try and do that it was very likely result in a concerted effort by their neighbors to disabuse them of such at the point of a sword. The danger to Ktau had been averted and no one seemed any wiser, and that was probably for the best, and as the ship's signature moved further away Zeus returned his attention else where... to matters closer to home... or rather the matters of the Front.


In Goa'uld terms eighty thousand fully armed Jaffa was quite an army, and that was not counting human auxiliaries or laborers to support the army. That was a vulnerability he recognized as deep in Nirrti's domain as they were. He had to be constantly on his guard for any signs of plague or other diseases showing itself in his support personnel even as the troops scoured for signs of what they were looking for... at least evidence of such.


Too many of Nirrti's worlds had shown to host abominations and disease from her failed experiments, and Zeus cursed the witch and her ancient mother for their ventures regardless of whatever grand design they pursued in their work's course. Nirrti was still out there of course, not that he was concerned the Saurians even now kept vigil against cloaked foes... not just Nirrti of course but the Reetou, they had also been a problem... and the fleet was prepared to deal with any incursion of Ha'tak... whether Nirrti returning or one of her neighbors coming to investigate what it was they were doing.


One system lord investigating would very likely lead to others taking notice, even if they hadn't noticed the initial investigation. The longer this dragged on the less likely it was that they would be able to find any ancient artifacts that had been in Nirrti's possession without getting into a fight over their ownership... and of course any battle would surely culminate in a naval engagement all too likely to reveal the capability of the fleet to other system lords. That was attention that they did not need for their cause.


He adjusted the Alteran developed sensors of the great capital ship and watched Asgard ship. It dropped out of light speed in the Adara system, and Heimdall's ship returned to what must have presumably been an asgard facility in the milky way. He would have liked to reach out to the scientist, to the federation as a whole, to promise a solution to the problems of the race... but not yet. They weren't there yet.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Relics Part 4​

Orlin shook his head, "Sorry I wasn't a biologist." He replied, even as Fraiser checked Cassie's forehead again. "I recognize some of it, but in this form I just don't have the full resources that would potentially address it." It in this case was whatever mengelian retrovirii that Nirrti used to experiment on Cassie's people. Fraiser's adopted daughter insisted on needing to return to her world but that wasn't an option at the moment.


Jack banged through the doorway with Teal'c, "We found a goa'uld lab. Teal'c says that Nirrti's research was chase a mythic type of human, a Hok'tar. Trying to make some kind of super host it sounds like."


Orlin quirked an eyebrow, "Hok'tar?" he shook his head.


"That mean something to you?"


"Its a butchering of a concept. Your species Samantha is a parallel development, not really a natural one that in many respects mimics our own form. A second evolution of our form of being, and some members of my race wanted to expedite the process of evolution. To make you more like us." He glanced at O'neill, "Obviously it was never entirely successful, but the goal must have been passed down to the goa'uld by the faction that left this Nirrti to her own devices."


"Look there was a lot of stuff there that I wasn't comfortable messing with, given Nirrti nerve gassed the planet, for I remind you for no good reason, but there might be something there. Hammond wants to send SG 7 back there to start cataloging the whole site, see if we can't find something but lets say he's right," He jerked his head in Orlin's direction, "Nirrti trying to speed along evolution via human experimentation makes sense, but Cronus threw her in Jail."


"She is believed to have escaped when Apophis's forces broke the cordon around Tartarus last year."


Jack shrugged, "Ok, sure Tee, but that doesn't help us. Its a big galaxy out there, and none of us are really suited to doing it ourselves, and we don't have time to hunt her down." After all if the Goa'uld were still looking for Osiris Nirrti was certainly going to still be someone they'd be looking for after she managed to slip Cronus's super prison.


"What are you suggesting O'neill?"


"We call Thor," He shrugged, "I think I can call in a favor at least, and its not like the goa'uld can complain about this sort of thing right?" The other members of SG 1 nodded, and Hammond when broached on the subject had no objections. The only real issue was the fact that they had to end up going to yet another world to ring the Asgard home galaxy.


"O'neill, greetings," Thor said, and a second gray form Asgard raised a hand in salute, "This is Heimdall he is one of the finest of our people's genetic researchers."


"Humans of SG 1 I hope I will be of assistance, you spoke of a laboratory from whence the goa'uld Nirrti was conducting research on the humans of Hanka?"
--
Oskyld frowned, "Interesting." He remarked. Not that it was surprising per se. The Asgard bases for lack of a better description in the Milky way were kept separate of the protected planets treaty, but Thor's vessel had gone to Adara first and then there. That may have really meant nothing at all, but presumably there was some permanent Asgard presence at whatever facility was there that had warranted stopping there rather than going directly to Earth.


It wasn't actually a violation of the protected planets treaty... or he had no reason to suspect it to be. He could still have justified investigating, but wasn't going to. That would have tipped his hand regarding hyperspace speeds his ship was capable of... and of course dialing in and asking what was going on, would have revealed potentially something about his monitoring of the galaxy at large, or at the very least of Earth. Especially given the stop into Nirrti's domain and then the return to Earth.


Zeus was correct in wanting to wait... or rather not so much wanting to weight as that they dind't have a choice, they just weren't yet in a position to where they could act. They needed time, and having an ancient genetic resequencer would certainly help the attempts to reconstruct and reform a serious damaged genome. The other option, and one he was surprised that the Asgard hadn't done was to construct a time dilation field and simply reconstruct the whole genomic sequence down the basic protein or something.... given their technology and no other options Oskyld was relatively sure that that would have been how he would have done it. The only thing they could do for the moment was to bide their time and focus on the more pressing matter of coalescing the empire into a coherent entity while their neighbors bled each other white.


On that front things were getting desperate, really more desperate. Apophis's desperation, his willingness to resort to scorched earth tactics with increasing frequency over the last two years had likely killed millions. He didn't have the industrial base to match Heru'ur and it was showing as well, even without recognition that he was in a war with Cronus at the same time. With Ra gone there was no one with sufficient political acumen to arbitrate, and well frankly the Hindu pantheon had to contend with the problem of the Reetou as well, as did their neighbors. That was a conflict most of the other system lords were willing to put off simply because Kali and Bastet seemed to have things well in hand. The Reetou were losing and lacked the power to meaningfully threaten the systems lords as a whole causing most focus to remain on the multipolar conflict of apophis heru'ur and Cronus.


What was largely slipping beneath the notice of the politics of empires run by unscrupulous god kings in the paranoid regarding of their rivals was the crisis of the refugee. The displacement, the hemorrhaging of displaced persons into the hinterlands between empires... and that those people made excellent recruiting by rebels and traitors. Osiris's escape from earth had initially led to no signs, but then like Hathor had apparently done she had begun to recruit Jaffa into her service. That was something of a known development but as Osiris had no known fleet they had no way of tracking the exile's movements, merely that she had begun the process of building up a power base. It seemed unlikely she was the only one with the System Lords distracted it seemed there were a number of other little breakaway sects, and minor goa'uld who felt now was their time to carve out their own little fiefdoms.


He was more than willing to let them divide up the no man's land between the great realms that still remained from the Pax Re. They created buffer states while he industrialized... as much as that term could actually be used, as he invested in developing the eight provinces and built the shipyards necessary to prepare the necessary ships to defend them. The Reetou threat's continued existence had been opportune as an excuse to relocate all stargates into the ... much as he loathed the description maya ball court structures under the vigil of Raptors to insure no cloaked enemies came through the stargate.


That was where things stood. Zeus nodded, and gestured towards the holographic display, "Most of the evidence I've found are of copies from Nirrti's lab." Attempts to recreate Alteran medical technology were not unknown, the goa'uld had been doing it for thousands of years, and ranged from the common hand healing device, to the much more impressive sarcophagus. It was simply part and parcel of a greater trend in copying Ancient technology wherever possible, "The master copy remains elusive." He continued unnecessarily, "But it is obvious that someone has been here before us. Nirrti's labs showed recent use at least as residence, if perhaps not as scientific outposts."


"Any further bio weapon attacks?"


"Nothing that can be identified as an active attack. Nirrti seems to have recklessly permitted experimental escapades to flourish in the wild in hopes of seeing what results might occur. Interviews with many different populations also speak of a disease among human children called the mind fire, which seems too coincidental to not be related to her experiments."


"Is there something else?"


"The conflict across our borders cannot last much longer," Zeus remarked, "I expect that we will not have much longer until peace must be made," Or another round of escalation began, "Sooner or later though we will realistically have to contend with a challenge from a nominal peer."


Because once Apophis was defeated, and that did seem the most likely outcome the System Lords would likely feel the ened to suss out a new hiarchy and it was doubtful that they would simply leave him in peace to build his empire, "I," He frowned, unlike the goa'uld Oskyld was capable of turning faith into magic, providing divine magic and spells to his clerics, and so forth... and the spheres of magic around each world that that faith generated gave him an idea of events there that as it developed in turn enveloped solar systems and eventually merged with the other neighboring systems into increasingly larger bubbles... that gave him a much much better idea of social events than the average goa'uld who still needed to actually talk to his priests or jaffa... or have a complex spy apparatus in place ... if you were Kali.


--
Commentary: So Monday I will be updating my Pathfinder Kingmaker story, which will probably get several updates through the remainder of the year. I also have an annoying bugbear of a cyberpunk itch which may get scratched eventually depending on how thoroughly I go through my various source books and what not... as to this... well that's complicated.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Relics
Part 5​

Kennedy might have been an asshole desk jockey but Jack had to admit he wasn't wrong. This was probably best demonstrated by the fact Kennedy had less issue with the Asgard being here than he did Sam's creepy million year old stalker and Nirrti not being in a cage. On the other hand even Heimdall agreed that given the time constraints of treating Cassie's deteriorating condition... taking Nirrti's help was the best option available... which was some teeth grinding aside enough to get pencil pusher to tentatively agree to it.


"You think she's lying?"


"Of course she's lying." The real question was what, not if. Nirrti telling the truth was ridiculous. She had to have some idea why Zeus was plundering her domain, cause it sure wasn't just typical Goa'uld shit. He was looking for something... and they'd even gotten to get Nirrti to concede that it certainly seemed like that. "We've got an agreement though, if she can fix Cassie," Jack trailed off, he didn't like it, but they'd cut the goa'uld lose He didn't like the idea of letting the snake bitch go, but they had the fucking agreement in writing... which had been Kennedy's dumb idea. "If she can fix Cassie she dial wherever she wants and if she knows what's good for her ass she'll stay out of our way."


"What about Zeus?"


Jack shook his head, "She won't tell us what he's after, and I can't say I like it," He stopped talking as Kennedy came back in the room. He paused to hold the door open for Generals Hammond, and Vidrine. The Lieutenant general sat down at the head of the table.


"Our visitor thinks we should see a return to normal in the next six hours." Hammond remarked sitting beside Vidrine. "We'll keep Cassandra sedated and under observation until tomorrow morning and Heimdall should have a full panel done by then. After which she can dial out to whatever planet she intends to go," Hammond remarked echoing Jack's own statement from a moment earlier.


"The Pentagon has concerns about the deteriorating condition of the galaxy." Vidrine remarked, "Doctor Jackson."


"General?"


"The Russians have come forward with a series of publications from a Doctor Britsky finally, specifically our Russian Liaison has reported that one of the addresses we were scheduled to visit had been found in the course of one of his digs in Iraq under Soviet auspices. They have hinted that other Soviet archaeological excavations, and other digs conducted by the current Russian Federation may have excavated sites that may have stargate relevance." Jack almost spoke up but he got pointed looks from not just Kennedy but Hammond, and didn't speak up. "The Russians under previous examples of cooperation want to bring in their own team to see what's there." Jack nearly exploded, "The Pentagon has agreed. We don't know whats there, but you will have the documents in shortly. The conflict between the system lords is worsening. Colonel O'neill, Supreme Commander Thor wants you present for a briefing on ongoing fleet engagements involving Apophis along his border. This is considered a priority by the Pentagon."
--
Oskyld retracted his consciousness from the aether around him. He had been using it as a secondary source of information in a way that hadn't been a thing in previous worlds. The galaxy was more densely populated by humans here, and it was easier to project power, the mechanics of divinity in the growing weave of magic reshaped parts of the galaxy not in immediately obvious physical ways but in subtler directions. Terraforming was easier this way than with machines and infrastructure as he could subtly adjust and redirect rain fall, and weather currents to nurture crops or plants, and of course that meant occasionally adjusting the wind to blow rain formations out of the way so that they wouldn't over inundate the local grain crop as it ripened.


The system was much more complex than the one ... its predecessor on Athas had been. That had only been for a single world, and only really at the end designed to insure the system worked when he was gone. That was still the point of course.


"Power weapons." He ordered.


The Raptor nodded reaching for the controls even as hypersapce telemetry tracked the flight paths of the incoming pairs of ships. "Directing the fleet to battle stations." The Raptor intoned. The first ships to arrive were those Apophis were chasing, the Ha'tak and Cheops bore the marks of Heru'ur, and his underlord Montu. The second ships all bore Apophis's symbols.


"Go system wide."


The Jaffa stood to attention from the flanks of the bridge as the raptor at the center of the command deck informed both flotilla of ships that they were trespassing. "You will power down your weapons and depart for your own domains as soon as possible." In one of those surprising instances of Goa'uld free travel customs and law technically tried to cover all the bases System Lords who were not at war were supposed to permit free passage to an extent... admittedly the short distance given the fleet's current FtL speeds meant that they weren't talking very far at all. Damaged vessels would be permitted to make repairs, but they couldn't make planet fall without a remittance paid to the reigning system lord.


Montu decided as his holographic image appeared probably to try for the old stand by of entreating them to assist him in destroying Apophis's force, or at least that was what Apophis's general decided he must have been trying to do. "Apophis's vessels are powering weapons, and firing."


That was a major breach of system lord etiquette.... which was fine. "Destroy them." He ordered not bothering to rise from the high back throne. Massive twin barreled turrets tracked and fired blue white near coherent beams of energy into the midsection of one Ha'tak barely after he had spoken the command. It speared through one side of the vessel and then as a less coherent mass perforated the superstructure of the other side.


All the other ships initiated their own pattern of firing Ha'tak, and Improved Standards, Ha'tak, and Cheops under Montu as well poured fire into Apophis's now outnumbered Flotilla of black and gold pyramid ships. Technically speaking, at least in a simplified capacity his flagship was in many respects a hand built, or near enough, prototype or technology demonstrator much as its two sister ships of the first flight were. The other Improved Standards weren't quite as powerful, but had produced at a greater economic cost. The prototype guns could fire faster, and were more powerful, but traded this for greater energy consumption and of course the cost for what was reall marginal improvement.


Apophis's fleet hadn't been expecting a first shot hit, never mind one that gutted the lead ship of their formation, much less for the following shots from batteries to complete the vessel from the fight entirely. Even so the ships had already been prepared to rapidly launch their gliders, probably as soon as the ships had dropped from light speed, which was already in progress within the first round of naval gunnery being exchanged between capital ships.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Tomb
Part 1​

Oskyld did not appreciate being brought into the conflict. He had been trying to honor the expectations of the rules regarding free travel between border territory but the war had grown increasingly dangerous, and it seemed finally the time for neutrality had passed. This didn't technically bring him into the war as a whole. He wasn't really allying with Heru'ur so much as entering as a co belligerent specifically against Apophis.


That didn't mean Cronus was going to just ignore it. Apophis provoking a fresh fleet to enter the battle stripped ships that the Serpent lord had needed else where. That was giving Cronus beleaguered fleet of aging vessels breathing room to regroup. Oskyld recognized that might be a problem in the future, but unlikely to be one while Apophis still drew breath. There was no telling what would happen after.


In this case that would be some time in the future. Oskyld sat back into the throne and dismissed the hologram. He wasn't sure how Heru'ur would ultimately react to his war aims regarding the conflict with Apophis. The jewel of the operation was to take Saqaara, and most of the lesser worlds around it in space. All of those had been apart of Ra's domain before the death of the Supreme System Lord.


There was a flash of light as they made the transition back to sub light speed on the exit of hyperspace and the fifteen capital ships fanned out. At the flanks of the formation were two groups of four groups of standard Ha'tak. Interior to them were a pair of three ship squadrons leads by newly finished Improved Ha'tak. The twelve hundred meter production versions of his own flagship, they each commanded a pair of standard 'kilometer' length Ha'tak. It was a more reinforced formation than the squadrons hitting Apophis's border. Squadrons from the fleets of Forest and Lake province had crossed the border with single I-class Ha'tak serving as squadron flagships commanding flights of four three ship squadrons of standard Ha'tak.


Part of the reason for that was that here was intended to serve as the main offensive thrust. Once they achieved local space dominance they would guard the system until a second flight of ships ferrying an invasion force to take the planet.


--
Jacob was pacing in the briefing room in the Pentagon. The Tokra hadn't been thrilled that they had let Nirrti go, the Asgard had however agreed it was the right thing to do... the legal thing to do, and that having it in writing while unlikely to help much wouldn't hurt any future legal involvement of Earth, in regards to disputes the Asgard were party to. Jack wasn't entirely convinced of that since Nirtti was technically an outlaw, but Thor was usually right about these kind of things.


"Our spy in Heru'ur's ranks managed to pass word of Apophis chasing Montu over the border." and the results.


"Yeah Thor mentioned snake face, or one of his lackeys went and got his teeth kicked in." Jack remarked, "Can't say I'm feeling too sorry for Apophis."


Selmak nodded at this, though responded with the more Earth laden vernacular he had gained from melding with General Carter, "He's certainly bitten off more than he can chew now, we weren't even sure that Sokar had that many ships. Do the Asgard have any idea how many shipyards he actually has?"


Jack shook his head, not that the Asgard might not know know, just that they hadn't actually said one way or another. "Thor hasn't said. Probably violates some statute or agreement they've got with the big shot snakes. The Tok'ra have any idea?"


"No." Jacob Carter replied, "Each of the provincial capitals have shipyards, the Imperial capital has shipyards. It seems likely from what we have heard that there are other shipyards on other planets but we haven't had any luck getting into the complexes themselves. They operate on a completely different sort of security set up than most goa'uld facilities, far as we can tell the Reetou must have tried something at some point because they're all crawling with the lizards, and a significant number of them with TERs. Cloaking technology wouldn't help."


Not seeing an issue Jack shrugged, "Sounds about right?"


"About right? Jack thats enough shipyards that would have prompted Ra to try and intervene a century or two ago. Most of Heru'ur and Apophis's shipyards are from before Ra's death, we're talking an investment of naquadah that, well the council is right in describing it as without a historical comparison for time frame. Coupled with what looks to be a much larger economy than we expected, and better internal security on top of the expected more advanced fleet, the council is nervous. We're not talking about Delmak where its one major industrial world where blowing up an already geologically unstable moon will remove it without much effort Jack."


"All of his eggs aren't in one basket." Jack summarized, "So what do you think is going to happen?"


"I don't think he was planning for the conflict this soon. We've heard as much via Bratac, and Rebel Jaffa. He had ongoing diplomatic missions to the Celtic Pantheon, and there is whatever he was doing in Nirrti's domain, which might have partly been hunting the Reetou as he's since claimed. On the other hand if this is what he can deploy when not prepared... we run the risk of looking at another sixty or seventy Ha'tak over 2001, and potentially more if the war continues into the following year."


Thor had made a point that ordinarily the goa'uld didn't trust one another enough to operate joint system lord fleets. Ra, and Heru'ur, Kali and Bastet were pairs that usually worked together, but they were exceptions. Ptah was willing to work with any of the system lords under a council mandate... but only as a matter of unanimous consensus among the system lords... which was rare. The result was that in theory if that consensus came the System Lords could all chip in enough ships to field two hundred ha'tak, but drawn in such away that none of their fleets, as they had been in 1999 before the naval build up, would be particularly weakened.

Which brought the two back to the original summation that Apophis had bitten off more than he could chew by opening a third hostile front between the ones with Heru'ur, and Cronus. That was the only advantage Jack could see is that there wasn't a coordination between the snakes, and that technically Heru'ur and Cronus were shooting at each other as well.


Jack glanced up the clock, "Its not good news, but," And it hadn't been the reason for this, "But the Air Force has been planning to try and answer the spaceship gap question since we found out about them."


"Earth isn't ready to answer that question Jack. You got lucky with Apophis's pair of ships, and loosing two ha'tak to a primitive world like Earth made him a laughingstock among the system lords." Selmak paused, "Admittedly the higher ups here probably recognize that and why the Russians are being told some if not all of the reports from the Tokra, and,"


"Yeah yeah, I know Thor thinks we should honor our agreements with the Russians. He made sure Chekov is coming to the briefing so he can see how much of a mess the snakes are making of the neighborhood." Thankfully Jacob spared him the 'the cold war is over' and 'cooperation with the Russians wouldn't be so bad'... but that distasteful idea aside if they did ever manage to get an anti orbital system designed coverage was going to require launchers in Russia both because well covering that half of the planet, and apparently treaty agreements regarding nuclear sharing and arms interoperation... but mostly because they needed to cover the other half of the planet. "Think NorthCom is done with lunch yet?"

"I think its sort of a waste to involve them at this stage the Air Force doesn't have enough 302s to start testing them or briefing capital defense area. If the goa'uld show up where we need to field fighters then..."

"Thor has had his bluff called, yeah I know." and it was actually worse than that, "and so far as Northern Command is concerned they're going to bring the armed services committee into it."

"Kinsey?"

"No its the House this time."

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Tomb
Part 2​

He had a bad feeling about this. The House Armed Services Committee... he didn't think the NID was involved. Not directly... not at least that way... it was possible Kinsey had decided that in the name of oversight both chambers of Congress needed to be read in... but it didn't seem like it was that. For one thing for better or worse they were doing this in the Pentagon's briefing rooms. They hadn't been demanded to appear on capitol hill for an explanation... on the other.. there was Thor to consider. Not just Thor, they were doing the whole combined briefing to include the Russians for this.


"Are you ready for this?"


He scowled at Jacob's question. It wasn't the question that a general usually asked. Jacob was in uniform which just underscored it. He would have felt better if Teal'c and Carter were both here as well. Daniel was here, which was something of a plus... except that if Jack were being honest 'Jenny' was more likely to recognize Daniel than Jack... not that he was banking on not being recognized... having the two of them together ... their gooses were cooked.


In the absolute best case she'd wait to get them along before the congresswoman decided to bring up their trip to the past. If not there would be an international incident in front of the Russians, Thor, and a bunch of air force personnel in the peanut gallery besides. "O'neill." Thor greeted even before the light completely faded.


The briefing room was now crowded with Asgard gizmos and projectors, and the weird kind of polymer feeling paper the Asgard used as hard copies of documents, "Heya buddy." Jack replied. "Lets get this show on the road."


The Pentagon as a facility was even older than the Cheyenne mountain complex... and it showed in a lot of ways at least in Jack's opinion. It was probably the strangest building in the US military for what it represented, and the tramping into the room that would have been considered spacious only by the standards of the 1950s and earlier was a procession of generals and full bird colonels with all manner of fruit salad on display all in air force blues. This was an Air Force show, and it made the assembly of the service's officers just another demonstration of what made the pentagon strange. Jack imagined scuttlebutt had recognized something was going on but it was the air force so it could have been anything, maybe hypersonic stealth bombers.


The exception were the congress critters and their arrival. The 107th​ Congress of the US had marked a slightly shift in favor to the winners but the military procurement sub comittee was a mix of both parties. Clark was after all only a couple of years older than Jack was, but the overall makeup of the House didn't make her age standout. The Chair of the committee was old, but there were members who were twenty years younger than Jack was. Kinsey was no where to be seen, which strongly supported the notion that he had had no part in this gathering. Small mercies.


Thor at least waited until the doors were shut, and everyone was sitting down, and the Fighter Don had welcomed everyone in to start his light show. That caused no small amount of murmuring from a bunch of two and three star generals.


There was a drawl from one of the Texans of "So aliens then." Jack wished that Hammond had been here instead of having Jacob, and Vidrine.
--
Oskyld opened his eyes, mind still directing the ship's sensors as they probed the solar system around them. This would become Marsh province's capital, but they had to seize the system first... and he permitted the archaic greek recitation proclaiming their arrival and intent to claim... even if Alexander's poetry made it sound as if he was Hades come to preside over the judgment of the unworthy. There had apparently been an actual poetry contest at some point between the warriors and various clergy for the honor to compose the declarations of conquest recited before battle was joined... despite the fact that the fighting ongoing between Heru'ur, Apophis, and Cronus had largely caused those traditional rites to fall by the way side in the increasing violence between the forces of those system lords and their allies.


The superior shields had outright ignored the aging second line ha'tak that had scrambled to defend the planet. Their presence suggested of course that while Saqarra was a prestigious possession Apophis was unaware of its more Alteran facilities, and didn't have the resources to spare at holding a world that wouldn't have been within immediate striking range of Cronus or Heru'ur's main fronts.


"Enemy gliders in flight." The equivalent of a CAG announced though he was actually address his fellow Jaffa, and particularly through the ship's mind machine interface their own death glider complement as they prepared to sortie. It would be at that level that this was going to be the closest to fair.


Oskyld knew that eventually he'd be able to overhaul the air frame enough to mount either shields or cloaking devices along with better weapons, but the Alkesh had taken priority. The fight between glider pilots would be a largely fair conflict compared to the engagement of Alkesh on one side that were under gunned and less protect, might even lack shields entirely... and never mind the capital ship engagement.


In the time of Ra this world would have been deep within the territory claimed by the Supreme System Lord. It was a temperate world with much of its holdings being like the Mediterranean basin writ large, the populated expanses of the world not dominated by the rivers and marshes were expansive grassy plains coming down from the mountains. Ra had settled humans from Earth taken from Egypt at some point about four thousand years earlier to make up for the dwindling population of Unas. Not that there had ever been particularly many Unas on the world either, far fewer than the four million bronze age natives who lived in the main basin and cradle of civilization.


Indeed in many respects Saqarra could have itself been considered the cradle of goa'uld civilization. The Serekh, a giant pyramid the height of the chrysler building had been erected to house Apep's library, as well as ostensibly to house the remains of the Alteran precursor who had mentored the ancient Goa'uld warlord. It was such an edifice of historical distinction and grandiosity that the goa'uld accorded it neutral ground status... that and the Serekh was probably invulnerable to most goa'uld weapons due its shields in the event someone did try and destroy it. Of course part of the reason this was permitted was because a specific bloodline of goa'uld off shoot maintained a strict policy of neutrality and stayed on the planet to maintain everything.


System lords of good standing were supposed to be free to travel to Saqarra, with a limitted retinue, and it had been that way since before Ra had been Supreme System Lord. Ra's down fall and Apophis's seizure of the world had thrown the status in question. Not the least of which had been Sokar's harrowing imprisonment of the serpent lord, and then Apophis's subsequent escape.


By itself the Serekh more than justified being the center piece of a new province, of being a provincial capital, but that wasn't why he was here. Oskyld's throne projected a series of eldritch green motes. No, he was here for what the Serkh had been built atop of. What provided the great pyramid its protection from weapons.


He would have to build shipyards of course, but unlike Stennos, Saqarra had naquadah and trinium reserves that could be exploited. "Take us into orbit." He ordered as the motes solidified into targeting solutions for the flagship's primary batteries and long lances of silver white beams started their siege cycles. Once they were in orbit they would simply begin beaming down entire battalions of Raptors to secure the world's critical cities until Alkesh could be freed to carry Jaffa from orbit to the surface. That was really the downside to the larger ship size. It was not intended to land on a planet's surface.


Once the pyramid platforms were secure though, the standard Ha'tak would be able to land allowing them off load tens of thousands of Jaffa over the course of the next week or so far faster than they could be brought through via the stargate.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Tomb Part 3​

The briefing itself was something of a dog and pony show, to use Jack's description ... Daniel would have preferred prestige presentation, but the concept was the same. Having Jack, and Thor here were the main event, he was just here to provide academic ... buttressing and prestige as a member of SG 1. They didn't even need translators, Thor spoke English... which was its own sort of headache. Thor spoke English because the Asgard native tongue was.... a version of either Proto Norse or potentially, likely even Daniel considered, proto Germanic, by all indications in the records the Asgard had been active on earth since at least the Early Northern Bronze Age.


... and of course if that weren't head ache enough they weren't the only race of the great four to speak what was still linguistically obviously what on earth were generally referred to as a 'indo european' language... the Ancients appeared to have spoken an immediate precursor to Latin possibly Etruscan that had gone extinct on Earth thousands of years ago. If Nox and Furling had used a similar language it might have been one thing, but the Furlings seemed to speak a distant relation to the Afro Asiatic language group possibly related to Akkadian... at least according to one of the tongue whetting papers the Russians had pronounced. They similarly believed that the Nox might have been an ancestor to the uralic languages. Whether that was true or not it was difficult to say, especially given that the Nox used or were used to speaking both Ancient and Asgardian to the point that their English was nearly as good as Thor's...


Indeed it really was that the Asgard, and Gatebuilders spoke languages within the same broad language family on earth, and even used similarly related scripts that presented the larger academic hurdle. "So more reasonably these Ancients probably introduced the language family that they shared already with the Asgard." Jennifer Clark questioned.


"Its not that simple." It couldn't be that simple, "They're both what we think of as Indo European languages but," Without even touching on the goa'uld, and particularly Britsky's work in the near east, "Ancient, or Alteran dies out on earth relatively early while Asgardian apparently is taken by humans and evolves into ... probably modern English." He finished, "I mean most likely the Asgard Heimdall introduced or contributed to barley cultivation either while Ra had the planet or sometime afterwards, but probably concurrent. All of the Asgard settled worlds speak some branch of it including one world that speaks that as far as we can tell a dialect of Gothic." At the look, "It went extinct on earth centuries ago, "


Chekov nodded perfunctorily, "As based off of Doctor Ballard's research work has since determined," And Daniel really would have preferred him not to have brought up Nick's research, "The ancient alliance also obviously included, ah junior members. In the Omeyocan case spoke Mayan, and it is from such that concerns within the Russian Academic community that there would be extraordinary risks to archaeological sites if such information was put out there. The tyrants, Napoleon and Hitler looted many important places historically, and others were destroyed by other short sighted individuals to gamble with a spate of such actions potentially unearthing or making available on the black market of antiquities alien artifacts that might then be misused.


She nodded, "Yes, I can understand why that would be a concern, but I'm not certain that it would entirely appropriate to have Stargate command be responsible for handling such." The congresswoman glanced to where Jack was surrounded by a group of generals, "Even this matter with spaceships and contact certainly seems to have outgrown the initial exploratory forays that were the purpose of the original Stargate program."


"It is hardly my place to speak for the preferred stance of my government, but it might not be the best idea to begin construction of a public space force immediately. Certainly the defense of the homeworld will require that at some point that is self evident, but given the threat of the goa'uld likely being something that the other allies the traditional united nations in the sense of the great patriotic war they would not understand. The goa'uld are, will continue to seem very far awaay, until they are not. Short of a public display in orbit how could we effectively demonstrate to public satisfaction the very real danger that exists from the many conflicting alien overlords."
--
"Yeah Russian NID that sounds great," Jack grunted, "Ok so that's why they haven't, why they've been so cagey about sitting you down with Britsky." and going through all of his notes with a fine toothed comb, "He's missing." And probably dead.


Major Davis fidgeted, "With respect Colonel, this is still progress. At least the Russians have decided to volunteer the information even if it is a bit late."


"Only because we were going to the planet anyway," And really he was surprised that they hadn't just let them stumble out into whatever was on the other side of the gate and try and keep mum about it, "What have they told us?"


"They want a joint team. Britsky's orders were unknown but his team were experienced personnel, and Britsky's research into the ancient near east had been ongoing. He had to return to dig sites in the near east for additional research, but the Russian government were against allowing him visit Iraq again. His exact reasoning were either not made clear to the government, or they were concerned that Saddam's government might realize something up."


Jack grimaced and ground his teeth at the dictator's name, "So what do we know about the planet?"


"It belonged at one point to Tiamat, but was subsequently seized by Marduk during his coup d'etat, and well Marduk was later deposed, and while the system lords did annex some of his border worlds, Ra created a buffer zone from the remains of Marduk's territory."


"So its currently sandwiched between a bunch of angry snakes." Jack didn't wait for confirmation, "Which ones?"


"Apophis." Teal'c rumbled, "Many of Marduk's kinsmen fled to Apophis's court when Ra elected not to name one of them Marduk's successor and help them to secure the post."


"P2X-338, are we expecting anything?"


"Its been almost a year since the Russians closed down their stargate program, since Britsky didn't dial back we're not expecting survivors, though of course its possible," Davis added hastily, "Colonel O'neill was of course stranded on Edora for several months." Jack winced, and gave the major an irritated glower.


Hammond simply nodded, "Colonel Chekov and the Russian stargate team will be here soon, I expect SG 1 to be prepared for all possibilities, and recommendations in the event we need to deploy additional teams."


"Is Makepeace available?"


"Still on safety stand down," Davis replied, "Doctor Fraiser believes they're over it but we're still keeping them under observation, to make sure." The pentagon man responded hastily. Makepeace being unavailable just reminded Jack of Kawalsky's death, but SG 2 was expected to be off world for at least another week. "SG 4? Shouldn't they be back soon general?"


"That's correct," The Texan replied, "Doctor Jackson?"


"I'd rather have SG 11 ready, General." He glanced to Jack, "Most likely we're going to need a larger team, people who have experience with archaeological exploration if we have to conduct any kind of excavation they'll be prepared for what we need to do. SG 4 doesn't have any experience in that field." Because Daniel had deployed with SG 11 on those sorts of missions while SG 4 hadn't.


"Colonel O'neill."


"Danny's right if we're going to have to dig SG 11 would be better." He paused, "Anything else?"


"Representative Clark wants a briefing on SGC affairs and plans for going forward," Davis remarked, "The pentagon feels that SG 1 should take point on that, she seemed very comfortable with Colonel O'neill and Doctor Jackson and that it might be wise to have them handle that, but she won't expect a tour in the immediate near future, the mission to P2X 338 takes priority, and the Pentagon believes locating the missing Russian team should be viewed as critical."
--
Commentary: This is largely an expansion of exposition material. Again to be clear timeline this is pre 9-11 the towers attack, and pentagon, haven't happened yet, part 4 of this chapter will actually take place on P2X 338 inside Marduk's palace ziggurat.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Tomb
P2X 338
Part 4​

Not for the first time he cursed the surroundings. He hated Iraq. A distaste that had begun in the eighties of course during the over the borders while Saddam and the Ayatollah had been murdering each others peoples for shits and giggles... Jack had never understood the politics behind the debacle but Langley had forever been interested in the mess. His brief experience as a POW in the Gulf War had only compounded his distaste for the country's environs... and this planet was very much a dead ringer for the banks of the Tigris.


"We might still find Doctor Britsky."


"I thought you people were allergic to optimism?" Jack questioned. The Russian Colonel shrugged, and Jack mimiced the gesture, "IF we find him is he AWOL?"


"Britsky, nyet. Maybe argue about the rest of the team. It would depend on how they were separated, the high command will have questions of course, but if he is alive, the questions will be more important than anything. Doctor Jackson wants to ask questions as well."


Danny did that. That was certainly true. Danny was currently scouring the wall scribbles. "How long Doctor Jackson?" The russian called.


"Sorry?" Danny replied looking up from his notepad and letting his pen hand loosely.


"How long, why are there no people around. This place has been abandoned for some time."


"Oh," He glanced at Teal'c, "I'd guess probably since Marduk disappeared. The UAV flight," That had proceeded them through the gate, "Saw signs of a settlement further down river, "But this fell into disrepair probably a hundred or two hundred years ago."


"You cannot be more specific?"


He pointed up to the timbers, "This is really good treated wood. It weathered very well. Really good laquering treatment of, it had to be shipped from up river. I'd say that even without care it must have lasted centuries. This is a pretty generous climate for preserving this kind of prepared material."


"You think he'll want us to haul that back to the stargate?"


Jack shook his head, "Not, us, SG 11 though." He declared eliciting a laugh. The two full birds looked up at the ziggurat. "Come on Danny, its been here for centuries it will still be here when we come back." Daniel grumbled some at it, and the Russian colonel went back to trying to be afable.


"Maybe this is what happened with Doctor Britsky? They went to live with the locals."


"Before or after your stargate program went to hell?" He grunted.


"Sir,"


The front door was locked, Jack grunted again and looked around, "Pack a cigarettes. They're russian." He remarked. "Daniel get this door open." Jack ordered turning to face the writing on the wall. It was typical snake fare. Snake puzzle lock designed to stop people who were illiterate from opening doors, but Daniel wasn't illiterate. Jack glanced at the surroundings, the view the ziggurat was a commanding one. It gave them a view of the dilapidated agricultural scrub and irrigation works. He disliked the reminder of Iraq, "Come one day Danny speak the words of power."


"Stop rushing me Jack. Its a dialect I'm not familiar with."


"Oh come on what could it possibly say besides, I am Marduk I big important snake. Much important." He sneered. "Is his bragging about putting one over on one of the other goa'ulds?"


"Jack these are older pictographic characters not sound representing characters." Daniel begged for a couple more minutes to read. Jack adjusted his hat, and glowered at the surroundings.

"reminds me of Iraq." Zhukov muttered.

He couldn't stop the reflexive question, it was a soldiers' nature... he did it talking to other bastards who had gone to vietnam too, and Zhukov accent might have been russian but it was habit. "You too?"


"Da, oh yes you fought as part of Operation Desert Saber. Hunted sites ahead of the main force of advance."


That was was his file said officially. "Somebody had to do it. Certainly is hot enough to be Iraq."


"Its the middle of summer here, sir." Carter remarked, as Talinov joked about the old men.


"So what do we know about Marduk?" He said prodding Daniel with his booted toe. "Is there much fellating of his ego or what? Carter is up for some demo practice you know. Teal'c certainly could use some to, hell maybe Zhukov here wants a go with the ole C 4."


Daniel scowled. "Its the Babylonian Creation Myth, so yes, much self aggrandizing." He pushed some sections, "But its out of order for the poem." The door opened. "You need to press them in the correct order."


"See was that so hard?" He looked past Daniel at the dusty interior, and a piece of masonry shifted loose inside and fell... "Don't usually see that with snake architecture."


Teal'c moved inside and shined his streamlight up, "This doorway has been damaged. At some point in the past there was a fight here. Fights." He swept the light from what were obviously old staff weapon damage to much more recent bullets.


"Twenty Two it looks like," He fished his knife out and pulled a splintered bullet. "Not five five six." He muttered holding it under the flashlight.


"Yes, its Russian 5.45. Probably from AK74. Standard Russian Army Ammunition." Zhukov and his team were carrying joint security cooperation equipment in NATO calibers. That made more sense for Peace Keeping in the Balkans or ... wherever drawing from Nato ammunition but the Air Force had authorized P90s into inventory for the SGC's airmen and officers on the basis that the PDW would better reflect their usual missions. The Marines with their Everybody is a Rifleman schtick wasn't hearing it, and Hammond wasn't pushing them to. "What are the energy weapons from? When rather."


"Probably the rebellion that overthrew Marduk." Teal'c grunted. "They're very old."


"And this temple is over four thousand years old."


Everyone nodded. "The temple is very large yes?"


"Bigger than any of the ones we know of on earth," Daniel replied.


"We should split up then, cover more ground."


Jack shrugged, "Lets radio SG 11, and you can take Teal'c with you."


"To read Goa'uld?"


"Sure." Lets go with that, "He'll know what to look out for."


Zhukov nodded, "You should take Lieutenant Marchenko so youre not a man down then."


"Fine, Markie stick with Carter alright." He ordered as he and Zhukov walked back to the entrance to radio the larger SG Team.


"Bet it gets cold here at night." Zhukov muttered.


"Probably," Jack agreed as SG 11 told them they'd dial the SGC and update general Hammond. "Well we got plenty of daylight still better get cracking." Zhukov grunted in agreement and they walked back inside. "You think Kirensky's team made it in here?"


"I am told Dr Britsky is an expert in ancient babylon. I think he could get the door open."


"Yeah, Daniel says Britsky was brilliant."


"He might still be alive."


"There is you being optimistic again." He shrugged, "Lets hope you're right, Daniel does have a lot of questions he wants to bounce off your missing doctor." They moved to split up


They'd just found the remains of one of Kirensky's men when things start going wrong, and how? The man's flesh was flensed off his bones, eaten by some alien critter on this damn planet. Tiny teeth marks on the bones. At about that same time he'd tried radioing Zhukov SG 11 had tried to radio in. Zhukov had triggered some kind ancient security lock.


They were treated to more masonry falling. "Did anyone get what SG 11 was trying to tell us?" He demanded as they tried to set Marchenko's broken leg. The Russian Lieutenant had some bruised ribs and a nasty cut to his skull, but he was damned lucky he hadn't been crushed by the doors trying to slam closed.


"No, it was garbled. I couldn't understand anything they said." Zhukov declared. "Could you understand anything at all?"


"Nothing useful." Jack snorted. Carter tried to radio SG 11 again. "Nothing?"


"No sir, I can't get through."
--
They didn't much poking around. There were a lot of staff blast scarring in the room they had settled in. It must have been one hell of a fight back in the day, but part of their caution had been trying to make sure that Marchenko was going to make it.


So when the rings activated they were caught completely flatfooted. Jack kicked himself for now scouring the room for goa'uld tech. He could guess now what SG 11 had been trying to warn them about though.


The rings activating abruptly had caught them off guard, much as he wanted to curse it. They hadn't even expected rings, but in hindsight Jack figured it made sense. They should have checked for goa'uld tech in the chamber, it wasn't as if sarcophagus were common items for the goa'uld. Marduk had been a big shot snake so of course he would have had rings up here. He felt goddamn stupid, and doubly so because the Russians were along on this damn errand.

"Lower your weapons." The lizard rumbled.

"Say what now?"

"We would prefer to avoid a ricochet." The lead lizard cocked its armored head, "Our combat armor is equipped with personal shields that might cause your projectiles to ricochet."

"Right." Jack muttered. On the plus side the lizard wasn't pointing a weapon at them... yet. "So why are you folks here?" He asked slowly lowering his P90. Daniel followed suit, and then Carter and Teal'c... the Russians didn't... not immediately.

If the lizards noticed they didn't mention it. "Marduk was imprisoned for a reason. As this planet is relatively close to the front," With Apophis so they were lucky these weren't Serpent Guard, "we have a device monitoring the stargate's activity. "Our orders have been updated."

"Oh," That sounded good... not.

"To what?" His Russian counterpart asked. Zhukov had adopted a more moderate stance cradling his 5.56 yugo built AK pattern rifle on his hip.

"Terminate Marduk, recover the eye of Tiamat for relocation to a more secure facility."

"Wait we found Marduk he was in the sarcophagus." Daniel protested.

"No, our sensors indicate he is still somewhere in the ziggurat." That was news.... the goa'uld life signs detection technology was useful, but not enough to generally identify a specific individual, and usually those were apart of a ship's sensor suite like on a tel'tac.

"The Russian stargate team that was here before is all dead."

"Indeed, he is probably not inside of a human host."

"Wait, so whatever ate the other team, is this goa'uld, is Marduk?" Valarin questioned and not sounding thrilled by it.

"Yeah, great you have fun with your bug hunt." O'neill retorted turning to the Lizard officer, "Can we use the rings to get out of here?"

"Of course." The Lizard replied. "It will deposit you a short walk from the stargate."

"And we can just leave from there?" Zhukov seemed skeptical.

Jack wasn't going to deny it was a fair question to ask, but he wanted to find out what was SG 11's situation as well, "Well, we found your missing team, lets go."

"You cannot be serious." He jerked his head at the lizards, "We just take their word for it?"

At least he hadn't shouldered his assault rifle, but Jack found it a little difficult not being acerbic in his reply. "We found our way out," He retorted to Zhukov. "As far as I'm concerned our mission is accomplished if they want to kill some goa'uld I'm all for it, but Markie there needs a trip to Fraiser, if that drops us by the gate all the better."

"They said they are here to recover the eye of Tiamat, at the very least we should find out as much as we can about it... given that it warrants this much at least." The Russian marine colonel replied, "You came by ship yes?" He asked the lizard.

The lizards had cleared the ring platform, "We did. The eye of tiamat is one of six dual purpose core crystal structures, that is an imprecise translation into English. They take their name from the guardian over each respective eye as apportioned by the system lords in ancient times. They are in fact of gate builder artifice."

Jack glanced back and raised an eyebrow at Daniel. "They're ancient in origin?"

"Yes. Marduk took his when he usurped Tiamat, and at that time none of the goa'uld thought it wise to attempt to take the eye. Balor's eye was recovered only recently as well, having been left with the wreckage of his fleet."

Jack grimaced, but decided since they were asking questions he might as well play the game. It wasn't like they were in that big of a hurry. The pyramid wasn't just going to collapse on them after all. "You said there are six of these things?"

"Apophis, Ra, Balor, Tiamat, Baal, and Osiris."

Daniel about jumped out of his skin at the last name, which was not a reaction that Jack liked. "Osiris had one?"

"Indeed. After his imprisonment it is unknown if Ra recovered it or not. It is doubtful that Ra did recover it, regardless its location is unknown at present.."

"Teal'c?" Jack glanced to the Jaffa.

"I have seen a jewel about palm sized ringed with a filigreed metal disk that was called the Eye of Apophis by his priests, but I do not know if Apophis was able to employ as anything more than a symbol of his prestige as a system lord."

"Do you know if he still has it?" Daniel couldn't help himself.

"To the best of our knowledge, yes." The lizard replied even if it had been intended as for Teal'c. It waited a moment longer before the team of lizards began to move off.

"We are just going to let them go?"

"They have shields and we don't." Jack found himself retorting, "Live and let live, besides if they want to go snake hunting I'm not going to complain."

"They have just stated," Zhukov protested, "That the Eye of Tiamat is an artifact of the gate builders."

"Yes, I heard the eight foot murder lizard explain that the alleged magical rock is a gate builder magic rock." He retorted. "I also heard that there are six of these things, and Apophis has one." He paused, "And Osiris."

"Well if it was on Earth than she probably took it with her when she fled." Carter pointed out, "It would make sense that if it wasn't in her temple, it would have been on the ship."

"Right," He agreed, "But it won't hurt to look. We found your missing team, we have no good reason to stick around."

Zhukov grumbled even as Teal'c moved to the panel, "This should indeed deposit us near to the stargate. We should at the very least report back to the SGC as to our findings. General Hammond can then decide our next course of action. "However I would be remiss to point out that most of Marduk's old domain fell under the control of Apophis. If there is a mother ship in orbit his fleet will have taken notice of it."
--

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Tomb
Conclusion​

Jack had expected a ship in orbit, maybe even some death gliders flying overhead. Hard to miss a klick wide golden pyramid anyway, "I count three stars up there, anybody else?"


"Three ships, sir." Carter frowned, "Those don't look like standard Ha'tak either."


Jack shrugged, and ribbed Teal'c, "Think Apophis will take the bait?"


"It seems unlikely he would allow such a provocation to go unanswered." The Jaffa replied as they moved up the scrub covered hill towards where SG 11 was spread out around the plaza containing the stargate.


He glanced back to Danny's ziggurat, "Zhukov?"


"We will need to report this," He grunted tracking towards the pyramid, "Nothing we can do with their presence here now. I am uncomfortable simply leaving such an artifact in the hands of the goa'uld or their lackeys." Zhukov grumbled as Carter radio SG 11 that they were coming in.


"I doubt Apophis knew any of the devices secrets, and it seems unlikely Marduk did either, it certainly did not prevent Tiamat's usurpation."


"That does not mean none of them know. There are six stones," So much for looking on the bright side, but as they'd just reiterated they knew Apophis had had one. "The comment regarding the eye of balor suggests that they are being reassembled, and I cannot see how that is not the sign of someone who understands their function."


"We can't bank that it is simply a prestige play," Carter agreed, but there was nothing they could do, and so they dialed earth and prepared to go home.


Within a few hours they were in an expedited debriefing in one of hte conference rooms.


"It is unfortunate regarding the outcome of the mission," Chekov remarked, "Dr. Britsky's death, and the loss of Kirensky and his team are regrettable." He paused to sip at his coffee, "As for P2X 338, we have to consider the situation, but further investigation of the planet may be in order. At the very least we should repatriate the remains of those lost there." Then sparing a glance towards Major Davis, and Colonel Kennedy, "These joint operations can be considered broadly a success."


General Hammond spoke up preventing either visitor from the Pentagon from responding, "We are waiting for Jacob to get back to us to corroborate your intelligence report regarding the eyes, but it may take some time for the Tok'ra to get back with something." The general glanced around to the assembled teams, "In the mean time a joint Russian, and American archaeological expedition is being organized to examine the Osiris temple. Doctor Jackson you'll be needed for that. I'll be pulling SG 1 from the active exploration mission roster for the duration."


If the Russians hadn't been here, or that weasel Kennedy Jack might have protested that decision... but not with them here. Not when he got the feeling that there was more going on. A joint archeological team in Egypt would almost certainly have state's fingerprints on it... and that meant Jack could almost be certain that he'd be getting follow up calls asking about his recent trip to the scenic countryside from Christians in Action. He'd been expecting a lunch invitation anyway from the CIA since they had gotten back, and without SG 1 being in rotation he was sure that would be sooner rather than later.


A nod, "We should be prepared to address this issue at the regular conference." He meant the quarterly meetings set up between the USAF and the Nominally VKS detachment command to which Chekov had been effectively permanently assigned to. "I have however been apprised that we have gathered all of Doctor Britsky's effects from out of storage, including what might be ancillary material regarding other digs in Iraq. Most of this material was not actually deemed to be classified."


Only after they had confirmed his team was dead. He expected the Russians had been keep it all in reserve just so they'd have a bargaining chip if Britsky didn't manage a miracle and turn out to be alive


"But you still boxed it all up when he disappeared through the stargate."


"Da, out of an abundance of caution, you understand." Chekov remarked, "Of course as part of cooperation between our countries there are a number of experts in Egyptology coming from Moscow to assist Doctor Jackson in the field. There is an existing research center in Cairo, though I must express my concern regarding Doctor Rayner."


Hammond frowned. "We do not intend to involve Doctor Rayner in this."


"He's been helpful with collaborating Sarah, and Doctor Jordan's notes, and cataloging their research material," Daniel commented, in a somewhat pained admission, "but we're very lucky that no one prior to us didn't try to full excavate the temple. What if the Eye of Osiris is still in the temple?"

"Well," Chekov began ponderously, "It is not as if we actually know what it does. Not properly. Britsky's translations regarding the Eye of Tiamat were vague. As you have said the Goa'uld Osiris may have taken it with her when she departed aboard her spaceship. Indeed some of my technical colleagues believe that the ability of the temple to conceal the ship might be useful to more practical means of planetary defense."
--


Selmak shook his head, "Teal'c wasn't wrong," Jacob took over and jerked his head at the map of space surrounding P2X 338 from the political perspective. "Apophis attempted to swing a fleet down, but he doesn't have the resources. Most of his fleet is tied up fighting Heru'ur and what wasn't tied up there was fighting Cronus. "As for the eye, Like I told you when Osiris got loose we don't know what the Eye of Osiris does."


"Zhukov naturally suspicious sort that he is thinks that that might not be true for Sokar."


"If Sokar's Ancient patron has returned that may be true." Selmak agreed, "It would make the most sense from the behaviors we're seeing from within his empire.


"Yeah," Jack grunted, "The lizards copped that it was of gate builder artifice. .. and that they had the eye of Balor."


"We heard that as well. There have been diplomatic in roads to Morrigan's domain that we didn't expect from either Zeus or Sokar... if I had to guess-"


"Daddy is telling junior to play nice with the other kids?"


"Something like that." Selmak's eyes glowed, "The Ancients are the only existence in the universe that a goa'uld would willingly defer to in such a fashion. Most goa'uld princes eventually buck against their parents, but the ancients... if one has returned... indeed the title System Lord is one we inherited from the Alteran, even though from Egeria's memories we believe it meant something quite different to how the goa'uld today reign."


"Danny says that Ancient, and Asgard language have a common ancestor, and that that's where we get latin and old norse from." and who knew whatever else from.


Selmak nodded, "Interesting. Admittedly linguistics is not my field but the Alteran are often referred to as the ancients for a reason," He looked at the glossy photos taken by SG 11 during their time on P2X 338, "I know that there are several goa'uld warlords, not proper system lords who utilize latin as their preferred language, Egeria as well imparted the Tokra with knowledge of it, as it existed on earth during the period Jacob refers to as the Roman Republic." He tapped the picture of the ziggurat taken from about a mile out, "If you do go back there Jack probably be a good idea to bring us along. Marduk was nasty by Goa'uld standards, and Tiamat wasn't any nicer." Jacob declared, "Not saying we will find anything but if you're bringing the Russians along bringing me and Anise might be a good idea. Just an idea."


"Might be a while Jacob," Jack replied, "Sg 1 is benched for the moment. Don't know when we'll be able to go. Any particular reason why they would want to kill Marduk?"


"Marduk was a mean snake, Jack. Maybe not as bad as Moloch was but it takes a lot for a priest hood to overthrown their god... and Ra more or less let it happen without recrimination officially... that should give you an idea of about how well liked Marduk was." He shook his head, "I doubt the priests would have done much more than seal marduk in there with that thing. And since the Russian team were the first one in there in years we might be able to salvage some valuable materials?"


"Treasure hunting jacob?"


"Talents of Naquadah, Significant volumes of refined naquadah could be in the central vault." Selmak remarked, "Even if we have missed the eye of tiamat it wouldn't hurt to look." He glanced back at the map, and ran a finger through the air in a circle distorting the holographic motes of stars, "We could use any bit of naquadah we can get, and just because Marduk might not have known doesn't mean he might not have stored away Tiamat's other treasures."


Commentary: Tomb concludes with the SGC's political and resource problems, and of course by proxy the lack of resources of their allies, and we're right at the part where not only is the Jaffa rebellion getting more recruits, but various minor goa'uld are vying for system lord status, and of course Anubis is clawing for resources and trying to make his return.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 1​

Two. Two of six. He wasn't confident in his ability to secure the eye of Apophis. It was probably possible... but Heru'ur and Cronus had been in conflict with him for much longer, and truthfully the eye was a secondary objective if that.

That left besides Apophis, the missing eye of Ra, and Osiris. He wasn't sure whether or not he could assume the rogue goa'uld had the eye. Baal, the last of the six, was still in his possession. He didn't actually need the eyes, but he would have liked to be able to get them out of the hands of where they might cause trouble... and Apophis frankly didn't have the technical acumen to use the eye in his possession... which was probably the reason Ra had entrusted one to his quarrelsome brother in the first place.

Whether or not that was true or not didn't matter. Ra was dead. The war between his heir, Apophis and Cronus had spiraled well out of control by the standards of typical system lord conflicts, but that was not surprisingly the reason the system lords wished to convene. Some of the more conservative members did presumably recognize that it would be better to mediate the dispute, but from a purely pragmatic standpoint there were benefits to letting Apophis bleed himself white, and weakening Cronus and Heru'ur would deter an ey expansionist ideas they might have had for a time.

That wasn't the reason though.

There unknown parties attacking the frontiers and outposts though occasionally much more important worlds of various system lords and it was concerning the system lords not involved in the fighting. Technically speaking the invitation was aimed at the system lords who were still in compliance with the laws on limitted war. Heru'ur, Apophis, Cronus had specifically been mentioned as not being invited. Oskyld had declined the invitation, even though his war was being conducted within treaty standards. Ares had declined his as while his participation was treaty legal not attending showed solidarity with Cronus. Indeed out of the twenty some recognized System Lords only about half would be in attendance. Among others Ishkur had declined. Not unusual Pelops and Ptah would be absent since they rarely ever attended council meetings and Mannanan while invited was technically at war with one of his neighbors and thus had good reason not to leave his domain at present even though it was a treaty legal conflict... and probably the only one being fought strictly within the rules. A few others had declined for their own inscrutable reasons....

According to the High Council non attending lords could still vote by proxy, or if they cared to, by casting at final session by FtL. Non attendance generally meant that a system lord was not going to vote on the matters. It simply was beneath the concern of a system lord who deigned not to attend to take the time to go through the trouble of FtL communication with Hasara for the final process.

... and Hasara was itself an interesting proposal as well.

"Someone is attacking the other system lords."

The ancient derived sensors suggested much of the attacks from space were occurring from the rimward direction. Not from as one might have expected if this were some upstart using resources from Ra's former domain, the coreward systems. There were allegedly attacks conducted from the stargate but those were far harder to ascertain if they were the same party... and frankly some of them probably weren't.

He had watched the sensors just this morning as Baal had lost a prototype flagship during an attack on one of his major shipyards, which was interesting... and ordinarily might well have been one of Baal's rivals. There had been incursions from the same direction against Yu's frontier with Baal among others.

"We have been exempt thus far."

"I suspect that is because of this," He waved at the ancient sensors, Heru'ur had also largely been exempt as well likely due to the stellar positioning of much of his empire. Zeus had a point, Heru'ur's position could be easily explained the lack of attacks against the empire though would raise questions. Admittedly they could claim that there had been hostile incursions, blame Apophis's attempts, or more reasonably say that because their fleet was on a heightened state of alert his forces were deterring such incursions. That might give insult to other system lords who had suffered such attacks. He waved a hand, and an illuminated station appeared over the Mountain province capital. "These should suffice to deter some incursions."

Hasara's expense was in part a facet of when it had been built. The degree of luxury that had been incorporated and need to incorporate a much larger number of system lords and supporting attendants as well also factored in. The station design though incorporated painstaking ancient derived energy weapons and near perfect replicas of ancient shields making the station an edifice to goa'uld labors of homage... and it would be sufficent to make an Asgard fleet at the time pause before attacking... and of course it was basically immobile. The Ancient vessel Apep had used to construct Hasara and to deploy it was long since lost.

The orbital defense platform was constructed to a similar scale and general shape mile tall and several kilometers across. The general pattern held though. Powerful shields, scores of capital batteries, and so on. It was better than simply emplacing obviously Alteran designed stations at the system's lagrangian points, at least at this venture. He had didn't have the resources to produce the alteran's preferred power source at this point anyway.

Besides the truth was they had other concerns. Ktano had in what was probably sheer arrogance launched an expanding number of attacks. Well, attacks was something of an aggrandizing compliment for what were really vandalism and larceny. The rebel had the advantage of attacking far and wide and thus largely being ignored simply because to most of the great realms he was a nuisance... and a nuisance that could be ignored so long as larger problems existed.

... but it didn't take much naquadah to make a good size bomb and if K'tano launched an impressive enough suicide attack he'd go from nuisance to public enemy quite quickly. K'tano was not a problem whose solution lay in the creation of increasingly more sophisticated orbital defenses. Defensive breastworks on the ground might deter conventional attacks against major planets, but they complicated stargate travel, and the flow of goods and people across worlds in the empire, and of course while the local constabularies could handle smaller incursions the marshals weren't set up to deal with a sudden case of suicide bombers.

K'tano was most likely simply moving around through Imhotep's domain, and given the constant tide of people displaced from various domains on the other side of the border that made actually finding the rebel Jaffa difficult. Resources were limited by the war that had opened against Apophis, and the entire reason to begin manufacture of the orbital platforms was to free up provincial fleets to better deter enemy incursions along the front.

In short it was all the sort of problem that could be addressed in the course of time, but for the moment there were other problems that took precedence.

--
Commentary: Again I did not plan to cover 9-11 in Stargate, obviously that happened the US invaded Afghanistan in October of '01 which in stargate terms would several months before Anubis submitted his petition (demand) to be reinstated as a member of the system lords

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 2​

It took a significant amount of time and effort for a gathering of the system lords to be organized. There was a great deal of pomp and circumstance, and also security arrangements. Secrecy only tangentially entered into it. The Tok'ra there for had a plethora of forward warning.

"Jacob you just said the damned meeting isn't even going to have all of them there," Jack bit down a further curse, and looked around the room... this was a stupid fucking conversation to be having right now with the Russians in for the usual meeting, "Hell," He grunted, "Its not even the snakes causing the most trouble."

"Its unlikely we will get a shot at Apophis, or Heru'ur, or Cronus while the war is still going. This is however the best shot to if not eliminate a number of system lords to gain valuable insight into the situation."

"The situation being how they're responding to that war you just mentioned." Tch, Jack snorted and then pointed out that this sounded an awful lot like causing the kind of chaos that hte Tokra were always chiding the SGC for making of the galaxy.

Selmak grunted slightly and nodded in acknowledgement, "It was a contentious argument among the council I admit. A gamble, truthfully we have little confidence that the Jaffa rebellion will make headway... there are concerns that given our dwindling numbers that if we fail to act at this juncture we will be failing in the mission given to us by Egeria at our birth. The prospect of his... weighs heavily, more so on some Tok'ra than others." That prospect actually seemed to bother the snake wrapped around jacob's spine... but Selmak was alright as far snakes went.

"Yeah." He muttered.

Selmak shifted, and Jacob resumed speaking, "He means it Jack... Teal'c and Bratac's status as first prime of Apophis wins them a lot of standing among jaffa but Apophis has also lost a lot of standing... and the Egyptian pantheon as a whole is declining fast and hard in standing to the others."

"You just told me Heru'ur didn't get invited to this dance,"

"He's not, but the thinking is we won't get another shot."

"So its a peace conference?"

"It might be, thats one thinking. The goa'uld might be hoping to force the three to stop, if they've been weakened enough."

"And what then?" He had, had a real hard time fathoming Apophis just stopping... or Cronus or Heru'ur for that matter. "You think Apophis will just back down?" The Tok'ra were playing stupid games, "Its not going to work Jacob, don't get me wrong I'd take the risk, but Danny? The SGC will never approve it. He's still a civilian, and" And Danny ... Daniel knew things. "Osiris had a ship on the planet."

"Which I'm sure the pentagon and the Russians are both salivating that if there is one, there might be two." Jacob commented dryly, "but we really might never get a shot like this again."
--

They filed into one of the many subfloor briefing rooms. It wasn't the same one as had held the visiting system lords during Earth's admission to the Protected Planet's treaty, but it was functionally identical. Same cookie cutter open plan fifties era shape that had dominated much of his career. Doctor Jackson had briefly returned from the dig site in Egypt for this meeting. Major Carter had returned from Groom. Teal'c and Colonel O'neill were both off world at the Alpha site, which Hammond had made the decision for as much off world political reasons as international ones.

One of the Russian officers huffed in exasperation, "I do not understand." Then looking around he slowed and enunciated his English. "This should be a simple matter." Maybe he was trying to convince himself of that.

At least they weren't back to arguing about the X 301 program again. That had been a mess. The Russians had salvaged the gate that had been beamed aboard Thor's ship the Belisknr, which had resulted in their own short lived stargate program. That had quickly resulted in a mess that had required the Russian Government to reach out for in order to correct, and the Russian Stargate Program officials were correct. Their problem had been precisely the sort of thing that SG1 or for that matter another SG team might have become entangled with, especially in the first year of the program.

The X 301 had been developed from cobbled together pieces from the Death Gliders that had been flown back from one of the Ha'tak Apophis had used to attack Earth in the program's first year. The components and airframe that had went into the X 301 had been a hybridization of Earth and Goa'uld technology, and that had turned out to be a mistake. Apophis had installed contingencies into at least some of the glider's sensitive components as a fail safe against rebel Jaffa after Teal'c had defected to SG 1. With only a limited understanding of Goa'uld programing, and computer technology as a whole at the time it had laid undetected until it had activated.

Strictly speaking though the X 301 had not been acquired directly from the gate. SG 1 had stolen the death gliders from the hangar bay of a Ha'tak after all. IT had also of course had been a Ha'tak in orbit, and that X 301 program had had no real measure of countering even those Ha'tak.

The simple matter in debate was still the underlying argument over what constituted gate sourced (or derived) technological gains. Russian involvement in the Stargate Program involved now the presence of liaison officers that were on paper a part of NATO cooperation with former Warsaw Pact countries, various arms reduction and nuclear control treaties and others to provide a means of plausible deniability to their presence. That arrangement of course allowed the Russian Liaisons, as well as other scientific personnel to be present at the SGC for day to day running, but also facilitated these regular conferences. The plan was to do them quarterly to handle general overview of events at the SGC and discuss the technological potential, particularly for both market impact and security concerns.

"You have already said that even the Goa'uld have made issue of the remains of artifacts, and for that matter actually symbiotes which may have still been on earth." Chekov picked up, "We are currently in a situation that is quite different than we were months ago." Before the presidential election, before the attacks in New York, "We must contend with the fact that the stargate program has unilaterally become involved, has involved the earth in treaties with extraterrestrial powers." Russia had agreed to keep the gate a secret. "My government has extreme reservations about this, especially with regards to how it will be received by the international community whenever disclosure does come about. This is not simply sending signals into space." Like SETI, "and we are not at detection. We have moved into active and at least semi regular contact."

Colonel Kennedy nodded, "Our government feels the same way. The Protected Planets Treaty was not something that was planned, and involvement in it could not have been foreseen." It wasn't as if they couldn't have claimed not to know about it, as they had stumbled upon other Asgard protected worlds. "Both of our governments have begun discussion of involving the other members of the permanent security council, if that's what you are getting at." The pentagon man remarked, emphasizing that the Russian Foreign Ministry had started to prod the others in cooperation with the US State Department.

"I have Doctor Jackson's revised chronology," The Russian colonel retorted, "He estimates that the Giza stargate may have been buried as late as two thousand years ago."

Daniel frowned, "Excuse me Colonel, that isn't necessarily what I meant." He glanced around, but none of the officers, from either side looked like they were going to chastise him for interrupting. "We don't know for certain when the gate was buried based on a variety of evidence. In point of act its possible the Giza gate was unburied and lost several times in a cycle."

"Duly noted doctor," Chekov replied. "I will amend my position. What I was getting at is that based off of the revised Chronology is that the goa'uld remained active on Earth for much longer than we had originally been lead to believe. The recent Osiris incident, among others suggests that there are goa'uld artifacts, as well as those of other aliens. The Crystal Skull Aliens, perhaps given the chronology potentially even Asgard technology was left on Earth as well."

"That is highly speculative, Colonel Chekov." Kennedy replied, but without any heat. "I've also read Doctor Jackon's most recent revision of the Chronology. The gate network itself is millions of years old. Dinosaur old."

Chekov bobbed his head and shook his finger through the air in an agreeing gesture, "Indeed. That means that while it likely is buried much deeper than anyone has thought to look. Earth maybe has original Gate builder structures elsewhere on the planet. Doctor Jackson?"

"Yes, yeah I'm working off of, a hypothesis that assumes that the Antarctic gate is one of the older gates in the system and what that might entail. I've asked the Asgard, Freyr if there was any information he could supply for the historical record, but he hasn't gotten back to me on that yet."

"While Doctor Jackson's work in the distant is fascinating," The first Russian speaker said brusquely, "Perhaps we should address more recent developments." He stated, "IN 1906," During the hey day of early archaeological exploration, "The Dial Home Device was recovered at a site on the Giza plateau. Now for whatever reason this discovery was not followed effectively up upon, and the stargate at the Giza site was not recovered until the 1928 Langford expedition. The Nazis reunited it with the stargate in 1933 after they came to power, and used them as evidence of ancient aryan civilization full of occult nonsense." The Russian sneered, "Allied spies within the German military intelligence split up the gate and DHD convoy allowing the gate to be acquired by the OSS where it was transported at Roosevelt's insistence and shortly in 1945 the gate was activated and Ernest Littlefield was marooned off world. Also in 1945 the Red Army seized the gate and brought it to Russia."

There were some nods at this. "Yes." Doctor Jackson replied nodding. "Which is of course what creates the problem of having a number of medieval cultures off world that makes it difficult to ascertain when Earth's gates were buried. I'm regretful to say that while research into pre Columbian cultures are increasing in interest, they and many sub saharan african cultures don't receive the academic interest they warrant. That makes it very difficult to ascertain the earliest point that some populations could have been moved off of earth."

"Yes, you have mentioned the Goa'uld System Lord Olokun could have been active on Earth as late as the fourteenth century. You are however confident that the Egyptian Stargate was buried by this point?"

"Yes. I suspect that the Asgard, or perhaps the Crystal Skull Aliens, or perhaps another race possibly the fourth race of the Ancient Alliance, the Furlings, or someone else had begun exercise pressure on the goa'uld in this region of space by that point in time."

"Da," One of the others agreed, "There are many outliers, and in particular there are the, Android planet, which pose many questions. However on a slightly less academic level we must confront the issue that in the here and now we have little way to counter a goa'uld mothership." The combined US Russian Nuclear arsenal was enormous. The third largest national nuclear arsenal were the French and as their arsenal was only about three percent the size of the US arsenal it wouldn't have done much good. Nuclear weapons designed for use in doctrine of the cold war simply were not designed to combat shielded capital ships. "We agree in principal to the US mission statement and while our participation as observers is not to dictate policy we do feel that countering the threat of Goa'uld capital ships should be regarded with utmost priority. While we do accept that the X 301 project was a step in that direction obviously you do stumble a bit before you learn to walk. We are not casting blame. I want the record to reflect we are not ascribing blame. The X 301 I am sure produced valuable insight into the Goa'uld technology, but we need more."

General Bauer cleared his throat, pulling attention towards him, "We know that the goa'uld use strategic level nuclear weapons that involve naquadah," He stated, "The problem as we discovered when Earth was attacked by Apophis," In the attack that had yielded the gliders that would eventually go into X 301, "Was not only yield of weapons but also in this case make sure they detonated properly rather than simply crumpling into Goa'uld shields. I have spoken with Teal'c as well as with his mentor Bra'tac, while the goa'uld do use nuclear weapons most of them are for saturation purposes."

"You are suggesting that against warships that this may not yield results?" The confusion was palpable.

"Not at all, I think we could build a big enough yield missile and if we could build enough of them they could defeat a Goa'uld mothership. However the goa'uld Alkesh doesn't attack using these high yield weapons. Its plasma bombs are designed to overload the matrix of the energy shield, Major Carter suggests," Bauer unnecessarily gestured to Carter seated further down the table, "this is not dissimilar to the ion cannons of the Tollans. Though, not as effective, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the ion disruption bombs weren't something that the goa'uld developed after encountering the Tollan weapons, or something similar to that."

"So you believe that defeating a goa'uld capital ship may not necessarily be the biggest bomb we can build, but one which is designed to overload their shields. You have an idea as to how to do this?"

"Yes, during the SDI there was an idea for using a bomb to pump out a directed energy weapon, a laser. It was called the Kasaba Howitzer."

"I am familiar with the concept. However, actual execution, well the space lift and material science presented major hurdles to implementation to my understanding." Various technologies from offworld had changed that, certainly space lift capacity was now much less of an issue, and material science had improved.

"Well we use naquadah now, and the resulting energy burst from that to maximize the strength of the bomb pumped laser. If my calculations are correct we are talking about not simply a massively powerful bomb by itself, but also one that should not crash into the ship's shields, and should either collapse them or significantly weaken them."

"and of course the logistical bottleneck would be that we would need to design and produce this new munition and we would need Naquadah from offworld."

Bauer shrugged.

That was the reality. The X 301 was modelled on the Goa'uld Death Glider's profile and technology. As a result while it was a better interceptor, particularly in the armament department with its beyond visual range capacity missiles, it was not equipped to fight capital ships. That also created a problem because the new Administration was going to have to find a way to fund nuclear weapons research. That was something that going to be unpopular in congress.

After a half hour about more or less lack of better options, to Bauer's smugness, they moved the topic for conversation back to the exchange of information in the galaxy at large. "It has been over a year now since the Osiris incident." Chekov remarked, "The goa'uld have not made any further comment on that?"

"No, colonel." Hammond replied. "That has not changed since the contact was concluded. We have no viable leads on Osiris since her disappearance, and quite frankly she hasn't been a priority." Daniel winced.

"You do not fear that like Hathor she may not be even now recruiting Jaffa into her ranks in order to secure herself a place of power?" Chekov sounded skeptical. It was possible. Certainly it was one of the list of things that the SGC had considered. "Alright, what about the other goa'uld. The situation continues to deteriorate across the galaxy."

"Yes, Cronus's position among the system lords has begun to degrade. According to the reports his fleet simply hasn't been able to compete against Apophis, and Heru'ur for numbers of modern hulls."

Carter cleared her throat, "Actually, we have some details, again through the Tok'ra regarding those differences. Cronus is falling behind, and resorting to the Chel'tak, but the Ha'tak Apophis took from Sokar are beginning to dwindle."

"Explain your meaning, Major." Colonel Chekov queried.

"The Tok'ra haven't been able to see any of these fights, but they suspect that the Ha'tak Apophis took after the destruction of Netu were stop gaps. They were effectively upgraded ha'tak built on standard hulls, and some of them carried cloaking devices. We've confirmed that. I think that 'Improved Ha'tak' are being used to ambush them and pick them off. Without those ships Apophis is roughly equal in strength to Cronus, or Heru'ur in technology."

"One more reason I dislike having to rely on this, paternalist dismissal from the Goa'uld."

In principle Hammond couldn't disagree. About half of the system lords were content to leave SG teams alone, whether that was legitimately because they believed their own hype, or if Thor or another Asgard had suggested they should wasn't clear. It wasn't enough clearance to act to do anything more risky than look around, and Master Bra'tac, and Teal'c had both warned against taking it for granted, but Ishkur, and Yu were far enough away that they didn't care what happened in Earth's neck of the galaxy. Others seemed content to allow SG teams to travel out of... what Doctor Jackson had described as a sort of silk road mentality on travel. Some just were happy to leave them alone because Apophis was so unpopular with the goa'uld it seemed. "What about your debrief of Colonel Zhukov and his team."

The VKS officer glanced to Chekov, who glanced to another of the officers, who met the colonel's expression. "Truthfully given things we think that it would be good to have a Russian Stargate team. I know that there are persons who would like to have Russian membership aboard the flagship team. Some even feel that four members is too few for what an Stargate team is supposed to do, that a full squad would be more appropriate."

Hammond frowned. He wasn't being blindsided with the idea. The Marine SG teams all were proper 'squad' sized elements which was why there were currently only two Marine SG teams on base going through the gate at anyone time. They were each thirteen man 'Rifle Squads'. "There has been discussion on that colonel."

"Yes, I am sure." Chekov agreed. "Obviously a compromise for such an arrangement would be to have a team partner with an Air Force team. Our use of the Zastava for our teams engaged in joint cooperation with NATO is now common enough."

"We don't just do military things Colonel Chekov." Daniel interjected this time getting a little more in the way of raised eyebrows. Hammond thought he was about to stop entirely, but merely changed tracks. "Take Major Kirensky's team for example now I know that Doctor Britsky was not a regular member of the team, but his expertise was invaluable according to log book." That seemed to mollify the Russians at least.


--
Commentary This is the first oblique reference in universe to 9-11 I did not mention the invasion of Afghanistan, but we're at that point in the timeline where that's a thing.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit part 3​

They weren't being punished per se, but Jack had gotten the impression that Hammond had sent him and Teal'c to see Bratac specifically because the Russians were coming to visit. It wasn't punishment but Hammond probably had enough of a headache dealing with Ivan and the pentagon people.


It kept SG 1 divided, which he didn't necessarily like, but on to of that it was just as likely Hammond didn't want to be roped into whatever scheme the Tok'ra were planning to spring on the goa'uld. What the general probably hadn't intended to do was for them to follow Bra'tac to a world in the border between two rampaging system lords not invited to tea with those system lords doing that thing...

Bratac's brow furrowed accentuating the deep lines of age... or probably campaigning hard given he'd been born right around with the Civil War was ending. "A gathering of the system lords at Hasara is an understandable cause of concern." Unlike... say the UN General Assembly the system lords didn't meet annually there wasn't a point and there was no bureaucracy to support that kind of mutual discussion between the different snakes. "Indeed not," Bra'tac agreed, "the elder most, highest ranked system lords comprise the high council that would in more ordinary times convene more regularly... but with Cronus and Apophis engaged in battle they cannot sit on the council. Heru'ur hoped to take Ra's position at the head, but was unable to do so."

... and Heru'ur was fighting both Apophis and Cronus, "But this wasn't actually apart of Ra's domain." It wans't really a question.

"No, it belonged to a minor Goa'uld. Imhotep who served Ra on Earth. His first prime Ktano overthrew him after Apophis's first fall from power." Daniel would have politely described all of the worlds in this neck of the woods as largely bronze age adaptations to Eygpt as it had been in the third dynasty with pastoralists, nomads and agriculturalists all blending together. Really it wasn't all that different from how most of the Egyptian pantheon was, how their human slaves and jaffa lived, though in some of those that Jack had been to they integrated typical facets of Greek architecture. That wasn't here though... this was a mess of temporarily hastily established shelters thrown up to expand a more permanent town that existed before Ra had gotten the nuke to his face.

"It uh looks cramped." It was better than saying it looked like a shit hole, which was what it looked like.

"We lack the resources of the Goa'uld." Bra'tac remarked.

Which was true. About forty something light years coreward, or a left turn at Albuquerque or whatever was one of the worlds Makepeace had visited that had belonged to the minor Goa'uld Thale. By modern hyperdrive speeds that was spitting distance, but that wasn't the point on that planet were growing cities springing up around brick and roman concrete structures including with the garrison defending the gate and administering the area based out of a red domed building some thirteen storeys tall. It had been built by humans because most Jaffa didn't do manual labor at least none that weren't immediately related to fighting.

The old man guessed what he was thinking, " You are not wrong. None of Ptah's Jaffa will break their oaths the stone guard are some of the only Jaffa in the entire pantheon of Ra who would actually take pride in building something." He shook his head, "even so we also lack the security of those worlds. Apophis's depredations, and his atrocities against communities strain the resources we have. Building a permanent settlement beyond this would not just use resources we don't have, but potentially draw attention from enemies we cannot face."

"K'tano is serious about raiding those farms he's going to see retribution."

Valid strategic concerns or not regarding not being able to protect any permanent settlements Jack suspected the reason K'tano had the support he did was because he agreed that mining and agriculture were human jobs, which was how it was in Apophis's space... not that it wasn't true elsewhere... but that meant very few people were farming here and certainly not enough to feed the swollen population. Hence food shipments of MREs from earth and the like. Zeus publicly hanged thieves which was how he treated those he caught trying to steal from the farms of forest province to him it didn't matter that they were Jaffa or even rebels they had been caught trying to loot grain and steal cows so they had been hanged... which was supremely humiliating to the Jaffa rebellion.

That wasn't the real danger though. Real retribution would be Zeus showing up with a fleet of Ha'tak and pasting everyone from orbit. It would be a fleet.... well a 'Flight' by the technical terms the Tok'ra had confirmed that the smallest confirmed unit was no longer singular goa'uld motherships but groups of standard Ha'tak in units of three. The bigger bastards were usually in pairs unless they were leading squadrons of the regular Ha'tak.

That would have been unheard of... "Selmak says that if the Dragon is Sokar then he has to have Alteran shipbuilding machinery to have rebuilt his fleet that fast." Given that they had blown the hell moon of Delmak to pieces and the resulting fragments had rained down on Sokar's capital and the massive continent spanning shipyards.

"Even if we are mistaken, and he is not the scourge lord returned then he very likely has the same... my greater concern O'neill is not so much the possibility that the child has his father's weapons, but if one of the gate builders has actually returned."

Jack glanced down the hill. Goa'uld meant children of the gods. "Maybe that's what the snakes are meeting at Hasara for."

Teal'c nodded, but Bra'tac shook his head. "No. I do not think so," He replied, "I do not think their pride would allow them to accept one of their fellows having such an advantage over them."

Maybe they'd mount an attack then, that sure would be a swell outcome.

--
He would have liked to have watched the proceedings at Hasara more closely, but his attention was needed elsewhere. Lesser ranked system lords or not, Pelops and Ares were both actual System Lords with all the ranks and privileges that entailed. That was an advantage that he enjoyed over both Heru'ur and Apophis both of whom were relegated to relying only on their underlords. The wider Egyptian pantheon was staying out of it... and Oskyld doubted the envoys from Selket, or Bastet were anything more than economic in their interests.

Not that he intended to make overtures to get them to join him, he didn't trust them to join the conflict since they hadn't come to Heru'ur's aid... besides even if they could be trusted that would strain things with Heru'ur who had actually asked for their aid only to be refused.

Not that it really would have mattered Selket was closer than Bastet was, but even she was hardly positioned to congregate her fleet to assist his.

"The rogue?"

The other Egyptian goa'uld occupying his thoughts besides Apophis. "Osiris's presence at Hasara is concerning, but less so than her claiming to be envoy to another." He replied to Zeus's question. "She gives her master credit for the attacks." He shook his head, "What about Apophis?"

He wasn't truly cornered, but it was clear the serpent lord was beginning to feel the pressure. He was showing his desperation. Oskyld was glad that he had seized Saqarra first, but in the face of Cronus's advance along that frontier, from where Apophis had had to move ships around to face the new challenge Apophis had turned to tainting the biospheres of entire worlds rather than allow them to benefit Cronus.

A dozen worlds were dead or dying just in the last week. It wasn't like Apophis was pulling more of his punches against Heru'ur. "No further counter attacks appear imminent." Zeus replied. "We should consolidate with addtional squadrons."

They had Saqqara after all, and enough worlds around it to establish a province, and thus a defensive buffer around it. There was little reason to try and conquer more worlds when they had what they had wanted to take in the first place. "More ships? That will take time." There had been no shipyards on Saqqara. Ra had left the planet as an edifice to better days and Apophis had never seen fit to do much with it... but then he hadn't really had time either, not in the frame the goa'uld tended to move, and of course Apophis had had other priorities. "I was planning to take time to visit Saqqara and see to those yards in person."

The holographic image inclined in somewhere between a nod and and a curtsey of respect for the decsion. Those shipyards would be useful. Saqqara could do what Stennos couldn't in a number of ways.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 4​

Oskyld rested a hand on the molecular furnace's exterior frame housing. With a force of will his consciousness extending to inspect the city block sized technological wonder. It wasn't identical to the one they had built before. In technical parameters it should have been capable of turning out a hundred million tons of the complex fullerene layered naquadah trinium alloy... but that kind of output would take years to reach. Trinium was a rare material. It was one of the few materials that the Goa'uld economy recognized as worth more than Naquadah, though largely due to its scarcity, the applications of trinium as a result of that scarcity meant most goa'uld had refrained from employing it... and of course part of that scarcity was exacerbated by the use of utterly insufficient scrabble mines.

The mines would take time to be built into something capable of producing the ore he'd need to even approach the on paper capacity. The furnace could still be used to produce naquadah alloys, and those would still go to the shipyards that were fitting out. Since he was here in person they would be able to bring those online significantly sooner, and that would mean feeding them with naquadah and more base materials but that would mean ships for the provincial fleet. Zeus was correct that it needed to be reinforced.

The assembled committee of system lords were in their third day of arguing at the impressive station they had sequestered themselves in... but they had a name now. Anubis.

With Marsh Province, and its capital of Saqqara, effectively projecting as a salient into the territory Apophis claimed as his own he could hardly pivot forces of ships to Thunder Province. The reality of the threat was that Anubis seemed to have fewer ships than Apophis, and Apophis was closer even if that meant increasingly less in the face of more and more powerful hyperdrives.

In the short term at least the molecular furnace he was surveying would be less useful. The mines would need to be improved, and the shipyards built, machinery installed, and that would take time... possibly enough time that there would be other designs entering service.

He stepped away, consciousness receding as the universe around him dimmed to its normal dull throbbing of energy networks. The system lords gathering still had not come to a conclusion. It raised other questions, did Anubis have the eye of Osiris... or had Anubis been in need of an underlord he could send. The technical sophistication, his sensors implied, from the attacks that had been mounted on the other system lords implied Anubis had the knowledge to potentially use the eye... and the attack on Baal... had he used that attack as cover to take the eye?

It wasn't as if the Sumerian goa'uld would have admitted to its theft? He had assumed it would have been safe, and that Apophis would keep control of his own. That raised questions about the eye of Ra as well.

He paused as the holographic receiver ignited into a spray of golden motes that then formed into the majestic conference chamber as the system lords reconvened. The high council couldn't convene because too many of its number, Apophis and Cronus in particular, were at war, or were not attending, that was to say Ptah's absence.... and Ra being dead. That meant this summit was being convened under the general membership to goa'uld not prohibited from participating, that was to say specifically Heru'ur, Cronus, and Apophis. None of the prior had trusted allies present.

Osiris had the floor, and started an irritating long winded speech about the state of the galaxy. The matter of Earth, which turned into an argument over the protected planets treaty. Oskyld flexed irritably against his mantle, the hologram should have been what he used to answer that, but he didn't. The mantle of energy twisted creating a semi solid projection, an avatar, across the distance of space.

The projection mirrored his physical body and he could hear and see through it as if he were there. He reflexively gestured with his hands curling fingers, and tilted his head. "You would suggest we break our given word. That we abrogate an agreement with our Asgardian peers." He hissed golden leonine eyes pillars of glowing luminescent heat. The avatar's form rippled.

"The treaty binds the system lords." She remarked with all the grace and experience of a beltway lawyer smoothly sidestepping the issue.

"It binds us to enforce it against all." Yu hissed his voice bi tonal and echoing as his eyes flashed. "This is the way."

"Anubis is not among the system lords ranks now, but if he destroys the Tauri would that not be sufficient to warrant his readmission. After all he is an exile, now, but he need not always be, please consider my master's appeal."

The curtsey was galling, and Oskyld flexed a tendril of divine might nearly reaving space and time to step through to the station, but he eyed the other system lords. Some were obviously considering it, others were not... too many were on the fence... and someone had poisoned Yu Huang Shang Ti already. Without a show of concern he swept around turning his back to the floor making a twisting gesture with his wrist and a divine spell against the poison staining the eldest system lords mind, before vanishing in a rippling haze of light that would likely be interpreted as just a fancy holographic bit of drama.

He had considered asking Baal publicly if the loss of his flagship may have also coincided with attempt to steal the eye, or even to question if it had been stolen during that havoc... since he doubted Osiris would have admitted an answer to the status of the eye of Osiris if he had asked.
--
Daniel Jackson sipped the hot tea, he needed to finish it. Cathy had given him the loose leaf at Christmas and sealed tin or not it wouldn't last forever. Just like they were running out of time on other things. Truthfully Daniel had little insight into the world of spies and espionage and the 'Great Game' Jack didn't like talking about it, but really how long could they keep what was going on from the other permanent UNSC members or NATO.

The Russians had known about the stargate... well the threat of the Goa'uld for ... two years now maybe... there was a question about how much they had known, whether they had managed any kind of orbital telemetry of Apophis's pair of Ha'tak being destroyed... and of course whether or not any of the other powers had seen what had transpired in orbit.

They, the SGC, had had to endure a lengthy briefing that basically had boiled down to how lucky the Goa'uld signals security was what it was. If Apophis had broadcasted anything SETI would have likely picked it up... which was doubly good because the prospect of SETI just reminded him that Michael Clark would likely have been on a short list of experts called to speak.

"Let me see," Chekov insisted taking over the steeping of the tea. "If its too strong try adding honey, sugar is too much you'll spoil it."

Jack's idea of tea was ... well both he and Hammond drank a decidedly southern sweet tea, Hammond because he was a native texan and Jack because he'd adopted it probably some time in basic a life time ago.

It was better he had to admit.

Vidrine glanced to the muted television, and shook his head from his spot at the top of the table, and went back to his hushed back and forth with Hammond. "Your friend in the legislature," And Daniel wasn't sure if Chekov was being facetious and referring to Kinsey or he meant Jenny, "He's supposed to be flying in. Its why we're running late."

The documents in their manila folders embossed with seals and taped shut were all still piled on a cart. Bauer shot them a look, and then went back to animatedly talking to Carter about nukes and whether or not they had a feasible way to harness the energy reflection to make a practical plasma howitzer from one going off.

The plan was to test it off world. They'd made arrangements to have a joint Russian American team of nuclear physicists and other experts on hand to watch the experiment. The rest of that team were apparently in Utah, or so Daniel had been told.

Vidrine glanced up at the clock this time, and touched the edge of mustache in irritation straightened as he stood up and summoned an airman over, and while Daniel couldn't hear what was said he could guess. A part of the documents in the briefing were summaries of the digs in Iraq under Britsky that had been shared, but also summaries of his own work in Egypt, and really what could only be called guess work on what might exist in the eastern Mediterranean basin sites There was a question whether or not there were any other significant finds in the near east, significant in this case meaning was there potentially another ship buried in the sands somewhere.

The other possibility were that there were probably secret passages or locked doors using the same sort of combination lock like the ziggurat on P2X 338.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Summit Part 5​

Kinsey's arrival, or rather his delay to arriving, boiled down to back channel talks, not concretely related to the stargate program, with the British. It was not, or so they'd been told, about the stargate, "But the special relationship. A relationship that I shouldn't have to tell you," Kinsey declared, ignoring the Russians, "That should require us in good faith to tell them about this intergalactic war you've managed to get the United States in."

Daniel was glad Jack was off world. He might not have minded Zhukov, but Kinsey was an ass. "I believe that is a matter for the senate," Jenny remarked from next to him, "Its a matter for the executive branch and the legislature and is not the sort of politics we leave to soldiers." Representative Clark had neatly political jujitsu-ed Kinsey out of the way.


"Yes, well, you're right, but the Stargate program needs to be prepared for when we inevitably have to tell our allies." He harrumphed, "Now about this, Goa'uld CSPAN business." The senator looked around, "That is what Colonel Kennedy described it as in his memo."

Colonel Kennedy looked a little embarrassed at having had this point out. "Its not quite CSPAN." He muttered from two chairs down from General Vidrine. "General Carter, it would be best if you handled this." Kennedy asked the Boston accent flaring as he passed the buck, and metaphorically ducked for cover.

Selmak tilted his head and pushed the holographic projector, in the shape of a small golden pyramid forward. "Before we begin," He said voice resonating, "Colonel Kennedy is correct its not quite CSPAN." Jacob took over, "The System Lords don't publicly broadcast this, and its a bit odd that a system lord would have it running in the background if he wasn't actually attending. During Ra's tenure he occasionally demonstrated the ability to make FtL Video Conferencing calls to system lords who weren't in attendance. Usually Ptah, who almost never attends."

Kinsey scoffed and leaned forward on elbow from his place at the conference table, "Alright then so what?"

The holographic display of the council chambers was about the same size as the chamber of the house of lords in the UK, but with so few in attendance and each attending system lord separated by space, and each seated on a throne it looked empty. Sarah's, Osiris, occupying the chamber floor petition the system lords was another matter. He doubted it would have looked less cavernous even with all the system lords present. The goa'uld probably only limited the opulence of the chamber because they couldn't agree on decorations.

There were no subtitles, or closed captioning for the hearing impaired, and it was a wonder the goa'uld didn't have more disputes given Yu Huang Shang Ti erupted into a snarl of Ancient Chinese that as a language had only survived on earth in the form of literary Chinese That was where Jacob had ended the playback.

"What language was that?" Kinsey asked.

"Chinese?"

"No you idiot." The senator snapped at Kennedy, "Yes, I know the last one to speak was Chinese, I meant the one before. It sounded like Latin."

It had actually, well Daniel could understand the confusion with something probably more properly closer in the linguistic family tree was Etruscan, "Sokar adopted latin yes?" Chekov asked.

"Some of his underlords as well." Jacob agreed. The whole issue of transplanting medieval western Europeans was a mess. Yu, and Amaterasu had also transplanted humans during that same time frame from Asia... as had Olokun and possibly others. "Its not unheard of."

"Its not unheard, well what did he say god damn it?" Kinsey growled.

"Is he always like this?"

"I would blame the coffee, but yes." Daniel replied to Clark's low volume inquest about the senator's attitude, "Loosely speaking he questioned the breaking of the protected planet's treaty, whether it was respectable, within the dignity of the system lords to break an agreement with the Asgard." It wasn't a bad appeal to the ego.

"I don't know if it worked," Jacob replied, before Selmak took over, "The system lords have returned to deliberate. It will have to be a majority decision."

"Hasn't this Anubis person been attacking all of them, why would they let him back in?"

"Pride," Daniel managed before he could stop himself, "Anubis is appealing to their ego. He's saying that he can do what they can't and if he does, he deserves to be readmitted. Do we have any idea how they're going to vote."

Selmak's face twisted, "On letting Anubis try? If its a simple majority of those present, Yu is probably the only definitive no vote... the only one we can count on."

Made sense, Yu clearly had some kind of grudge with Anubis, given Sarah Osiris rather had claimed Yu had tried to murder Anubis. Yu also had supported the inclusion of Earth into the protected planets treaty with the asgard, and probably would have agreed to maintain the treaty just on the letter of the law having been written.

"Great," Was the sarcastic remark, "so we can expect another attack on earth."

"Probably sooner than later. Anubis likely already had something planned if he was going to go ahead and take it to the System Lords."

"Great." Kinsey reiterated acidly.
--
The System Lords were continuing to deliberate, and while they might take a few days more he suspected there was already a conclusion. It had taken entirely too long to think that they would return a no. There simply weren't enough System Lords present or probably system lords in general who were willing to take that stand.

There was little reason too. The holographic image of Bastet and Kali flickered as the allied system lords sat next to one another. "If Anubis fails or even if he succeeds the Asgard may simply destroy him." Bastet had lost two Ha'tak, which was a relatively expensive loss to her fleet and so may have been engaging in wishful thinking that the Asgard might swoop in and pound Anubis's fleet flat if he overstepped.

"So you will vote yes."

"We will abstain." Bastet replied. "This is highly irregular, admission of a new system lord, or even readmittance of a previous member should not be conducted in haste."

... in short she and her ally had no interest in picking sides. Strictly speaking she could have demanded Anubis resubmit his proposal to the assembly of the entirety of the system lords... but she wasn't going to do that. That would far too likely cause her to be a target to an enemy she hadn't been prepared to fight, and had already lost valuable assets to.

"Osiris claims that her master," Kali continued, "is worthy of recognition, restoration of his previous standing."

He made a show of blinking gold leonine eyes at them, and waved a hand projecting a live, real time, view of all the ships... or at least those of capital ship mass... in the solar system. "His rimward presence is annoying." He rumbled. Heru'ur was likely largely insulated from such incursions, and Yu Huang Shang Ti had already ordered his armies at home to begin mobilization, which would be interesting to watch given the alacrity of those orders going out. Apophis however, "I suspect that these warships are destined to mount an attack on Apophis, with the intention of stealing the eye he was entrusted by Ra. I speculate that Anubis likely needs them to reactive an Alteran capital platform." A hologram appeared of a wide snowflake shaped ship several kilometers across, "I would be interested to know if Baal has already lost the eye entrusted to him." Just as he would be asking Heru'ur to make all efforts to secure the Eye of Ra if it was at all possible... since they were technically collaborating cobelligerents against Apophis.

A tone sounded. "There is a quorum then." Bastet remarked.

"Of course." He banished the image of the galaxy, which they had stared at the blank space for a moment longer, perhaps trying to burn as much of the image into their memories as possible. The motherships Anubis was fielding were built on standard size ha'tak frames The greatest difference was in their naquadah reactors. Those were much, much closer reproductions to those found on the ship that had inspired the cheop's class. While not capable of truly intergalactic hyperspace distances they were talking estimated speeds in the ballpark of a hundred thousand light years an hour. That was still slow by Asgard standards, or even proper Alteran vessels... but fast enough. The real limitation was not the reactor's ability to power weapons, and shields but rather the ability for its weapons and shields to adequately handle that energy. Goa'uld vessels were intended to last centuries but realistically he doubted without better weapons these would survive a decade of service.

The two other system lords departed, and his view lingered into Hasara station a moment longer, before he withdrew his consciousness from the distant station. Conservatively Anubis would need perhaps four vessels to face the Asgard vessels of the class most commonly dispatched the milky way.

They weren't quite to where he had a sufficient body of data to provide a fix to the Asgard's degradation. There was going to have to be some compromise with the Asgard about the way they cloned new bodies, but the interim solution as it existed, even without a living sample from a previous state of Asgard evolution would buy the Federation a few centuries more at minimum. Longer if they could cultivate the kind of epigentic development factors that had strengthened Zeus's body from centuries of living on Stennos. They could even expand on that through cybernetics... so at the very least he had a base line.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides
Part 1
​

When Ra had begun the colonization of the worlds that now comprised Marsh province, in rather typical goa'uld fashion he had been for the most part rather hands off on it. Perhaps, even more so as Supreme System Lord. The Egyptian Pantheon... with the exception of Ptah, Sokar, and Selket, or at least noticeably to the public largely confined themselves to Ra's example of some degree of pharoanic Egypt's organization and a priestly civil service that organized monthly labor often involved in settling river valleys and the seasonal inundations.

There was, existed some overlap with the greeks roughly equating to some degree of Ptolemaic egyptian organization, often along the band of territorial space where greek and Indian pantheons somewhat overlapped but with Ra's long tenure as supreme system lord had largely prevented significant changes from the bronze age across the Egyptian pantheon's domain.

For Ra, and for most of his pantheon the seasonal inundations were a natural part of things, and the day to day administration of levees, and dykes were left to underlings, which was often passed down the chain of authority. It was a far cry from the massive volume of constant work on dams, canals, lockwork that occurred within the domain of Yu Huang Shang Ti who would conscript the hundreds of thousands of workers for annual corvee labor needed to tame a river.

Human settlement across the galaxy favored the ease at which was best accomplished by settling at least most in or near river valleys, or deltas where agriculture could be easily established. This was pretty much the standard norm. Once a colony was established and had some degree of agricultural base that cultivation could typically be used to grow the colony. There were exceptions to this, not all goa'uld prioritized agrarian civilizations but those who didn't often nevr made it to the ranks of the systems lords, though there were plenty of pastoralists as supplementary populations to more powerful system lords.

This ultimately all boiled down to part of an explanation for the dozen Ha'tak bearing Zeus's thunderbolts crest, and the some eighty thousand workers, and experts who had arrived. The latter encompassed a body of specialists ranging from carpenters, and stone masons, to brick layers, metal workers and glass blowers, to other professions like doctors and weavers. The goal of course was two fold in terms of civic engineering projects.

The first was of course more long term. Agricultural reform, and development. Padded horse collars were a much more simple introduction in climates where the horse was an easily introduced and maintained draft collar. It was much simpler to introduce the animals than it was to organize the labor of bronze age planets with much lower population densities to construct various flood control measures.

Agricultural reform in Marsh Province was taking priority over development of mineral resources. The second of the two major civic engineering efforts were the construction efforts of a decidedly martial nature. This was because in astrographical terms the province buttressed into a salient against Apophis, Cronsus, Ares, and Heru'ur. Even if at the moment the latter was a cobelligerent against the first, and the other two were for the moment neutrals as a result of their conflicts with Apophis and Heru'ur. The raising of fortified posts ordinarily would have been unusual, particular for it to occur in such a direct and clearly organized fashion, but no objections were likely forthcoming.

It had been a slim majority of the attending system lords who had agreed to convey to Osiris that Anubis could give it a go... and to say Oskyld was unhappy with that, was an understatement. The result was going to be that from roughly October through the first of the year was going to be a surge of activity not just experts from Stennos, or labor drawn from one of the other eight provinces, but also the arrival of lizardfolk of all four races with the intention of reinforcing significantly the Marsh Province's defensive posture.

The two together were designed to create the influx of economic, city based activity to transform a largely agrarian bronze age level along hte lines of the old dynastic period in Egypt to more in line with the significant changes to agriculture after the tenth and eleventh century common era, and part of that would reflect in the architecture of the fortified posts.

Then of course there was the other project, once those fortified posts were constructed they were going to skip wooden posts and begin laying steel gauge tracks all the way into the forest zones in the north of the planet to harvest timber for other needs. Stennosian steam engines were understood, and while not particularly advanced by the standards of earth railways thirty miles an hour for something that locals would be able to maintain wasn't a bad idea.

"And this is not over much a distraction?"

"It is not," Zeus replied from his hologram, "Much as I might wish to be the one to visit the Tauri this better serves our needs. The grand front can be secured much more quickly with me here."

So long as Cronus didn't decided to open a second front. That would have been strategically and tactically foolish, especially as Heru'ur was hoping that they would join the conflict against Cronus as it was... but they were going to have to wait and see. "I recognize that, I admit that there is a certain sort of cleverness to his scheme... but in that cleverness there was the matter of incriminating himself further."

"There is no assurance our brethren will involve themselves, or that they have the resources to involve themselves."

That was a concern. The Asgard conflict with a collection of wayward toys was... deeply unpleasant and unsettling news.

--
With few other options the SGC had been hoping that projections of war time expenditures would mean that Cronus, and Apophis would bankrupt themselves trying to fight the conflict they were engaged. Even with the news now circulating that Anubis was alive, and sought readmission to the system lord was not enough to convince them to put aside their war.

That meant they were still slugging it out... and it seemed unlikely that the system lords would censure all or any of them for it. The holographic projection of the battle ended as Alkesh, and gliders had moved to descend to the surface of the planet to begin their attack runs. "The only productive development we can observe is that Apophis has begun to walk back his indiscriminate orbital bombardment of defending worlds. Zipacna has been rotated to the front with Heru'ur and the latter has breathing room. Most of the fighting the last couple of weeks have been concentrated on this band of rimward space. Its old frequently tread border space. Neither Cronus nor Apophis have resorted to orbital bombardment so far, and appear to be conforming mostly to ritualized fighting between the two forces. Else where along the front, with Klorel fighting Ares things remain too fluid and violent to accurately grasp, but Pelops appears to be prepared to join Ares in an offensive in the next few weeks." Jacob shrugged, and glanced to one air force officer among a host of the Groom Lake officers.

Before the officer of the still structuring US Space Command could step forward Zhukov raised his pen to signal he had a question, "What about the Jaffa, the rebellion, I was under the impression we might be seeing some development on that front as a result of Apophis's actions?"

The topic of trying to address orbital supremacy, or defending from an attack from orbit, shelved by the question Selmak nodded, "The Tok'ra are less convinced of the present situation. As has been observed the Jaffa lack much in the way of supplies and while freedom of travel through the stargate has allowed them some degree of mobility there is little in the way of centralized leadership."

"Colonel O'neill's report was not very flattering, and raised concerning points." Zhukov grunted .

Kennedy two seats down set his coffee mug aside, and nodded, "Colonel O'neill's report is very worrying, if we have to run that up the chain, given present commitments we could reasonably expect substantial objections to K'tano's methods." He looked prepared to continue, which Hammond sitting in the far back of the darkened briefing room would have been happy to hear more of... though Kennedy was probably only being so forthright because Jack wasn't present having been flown back east for something Hammond hadn't been briefed on, when a young captain pushed the entry door in and rushed over to salute General Vidrine.

The general stood up cleared his throat, "Gentlemen we're going to have to table this. There has been an emergency." The mustachio-ed general gestured rapidly, "Kennedy Zhukov, General Carter," Using the rank of the other major General, "George this involves you as well." They filed out leaving Bauer with orders to put the base on alert and take stock of available assets, which was unusual since ordinarily that could have been left to Bauer's second in command.

They filed off into an adjoining office where a recording of a phone call had been prepared for them.

"No. Listen to me, now. If you can't confirm my observations then you must have the coordinates wrong because there is definitely something up there." The cofounder of the Northern Susquenita County Amateur Astronomy Society was growing increasingly agitated, "For the tenth time, it is in Cassiopeia. Declination sixty-one degrees, six minutes; right ascension two hours, forty-eight minutes. I've been following it for three nights already, its-"

The officer of the watch stopped the recording, "We picked him up a few minutes later, but Nasa has already put together a preliminary calculation, and its," the asteroid "massive. Significantly larger than the impactor that created the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan." Zhukov threw a glance his way, because they had been due to have a conversation about the Crystal Skull aliens as well, but his attention snapped back to the watch officer, "It gets worse, apparently he's been talking about the asteroid, to a friend who works for SETI, who in turn has been in contact with the husband of Representative Clark, who has in turn been informed. She's flying in from DC."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides Part 2​

"Michael has told me its quite large." Jennifer Clark remarked with no preamble, but they knew she meant the rock threatening to crash into the Barents sea. "What are the limitations preventing us from simply blowing it up?"

The Air Force officers glanced around, "When the goa'uld mothership capacity was first identified we worked on modifying ICBMs to act as a surface to orbital engagement missile."

"It didn't work I take it?" The representative asked as General Bauer's face flushed a bit.

"We misjudged the aliens shields," Bauer replied, "Effectively the goa'uld turned their ships shields on and rather than detonating the missiles crashed into them crumpling and igniting their fuel," He trailed off, "They didn't work, so the pentagon, exercised the decision to shelve the launch system program. The MK12A warhead was subsequently replaced with a newer design, but we don't have a launch system to employ that system." He trailed off, "I could have the files brought in, but I don't see how we could possibly ready the modifications to approximate the 'goa'uld buster' project with the materials we have on hand. Modifications to a rocket simply would take too long, even assuming we had the avionics already ready to be installed."

"How big is it?"

"In practical terms, we're looking at a dinosaur killer. Larger even than the K-T event bolide. It was, well dumb luck we really noticed it in the first place. Even accounting for the fact that the barents sea is comparatively shallow the tsunamis will be devastating... and the ash cloud will be devastating to the global eco system."

Kennedy cleared his throat, "What about the proposed request to our allies who have terraforming technology. Surely there can't be any military application to what would be glorified air filters, the Tollan would give us those? Or what about the Skull Aliens, we can send Jackson to ask them... or where is O'neill?"

Chekov put his mug of tea down, "While preparing clean up contingencies is not the worst idea, we should be focusing our primary attention on stopping the rock."

"I completely agree Colonel, I just think we should consider fall back plans. No offense to Doctor Jackson but he's an archaeologist not physicist. Sending him to talk to someone who might be able to help doesn't diminish our planning capacity in anyway."

"While foreign affairs is normally the prerogative of the executive branch, with the consent to establish treaties reserved to the senate, it may behoove us to bring in the rest of the permanent membership of the UN Security Council." Representative Clark remarked. Kennedy looked like he'd swallowed a lemon. "If we are facing a significant planetary threat, one that is imminent, they have the right to know and may be able to contribute."

"With all due respect Congresswoman," Kennedy began, "The United States and Russia represent the most advanced space capable programs on Earth, there is nothing France or England would be able to add to our existing capabilities." He shook his head.

Chekov glanced to the pentagon man, but Vidrine cleared his throat, "Kennedy's commitment to operational security is commendable, but we don't actually have to tell them about the stargate. There is a giant rock hurtling towards the planet. We have days to come up with a solution."

"Exactly, general. We have days to come up with a solution. I recommend we inform the P5."

"There will be panic in the streets congresswoman. If we solve it, no one will even need to know until the details are declassified decades from now." Kennedy protested. "And if we tell them and it gets out, there is no way we'd be able to organize any kind of effective evacuation. We only even have, really the barest of predictive models of what the flooding from the waves will cause. We shouldn't unduly cause panic, especially if we-"

"Thank you Colonel Kennedy," Hammond muttered a bit quieter than his usual voice, "You've made your point, we clearly need to establish the facts and consult the experts if all we have are preliminary models."

--
"And Senator Kinsey has been told?"

"Yes General Hammond." Major Davis replied. "Colonel Chekov has been briefed by the Russian Foreign Service and they have reached a tentative agreement with state that it might be for the best to go ahead with bringing the other permanent security council members in, in at least a limited capacity."

They were supposed to avoid disclosure of the gate. The official reason was to avoid creating any false hope that assistance from any of earth's off world allies might be able to arrive soon enough to deflect, or even destroy the asteroid. In somewhat more realistic terms maintaining the secrecy of the stargate had been deemed important, simply because the program didn't seem to off an immediate viable solution to preventing the disaster... assuming that they managed to pull off preventing the impact of the asteroid it was entirely possible that business at the SGC would continue as normal.

Even assuming a development related to the stargate program did prove critical to the destruction, or deflection of the asteroid Hammond doubted that any extraterrestrial source for such a system would be disclosed. If it seemed that Bauer, and his staff at Groom Lake could get a surface to orbit launch system operational it was one of the few things that they had been authorized to consider disclosing, but only if the launch system could be readied. Bauer was still pessimistic that they had the components and the ability to modify any of their rockets to orient to attacking something approaching earth while also carrying a payload..

If France, England, or China did bring it up, they were to admit that they were exploring the possibility but to acknowledge that the technical capacity to make such modifications would involve too much time. Nothing else available at Groom Lake seemed likely to produce a result, the X 301's successor wasn't ready, and there was no assurance it could have carried a meaningful enough payload to move the asteroid far enough. It would probably be their last possible attempt at deflection... assuming that they could get the avionics package updated, and the airframe modified enough to deploy a nuclear device.

The models of the asteroid and a potential impact were still coming in, and that was limiting their planning options.

"How long do we have?"

"A little over a week sir. I can get an exact time."

"No, major, until the delegates arrive."

"They're being contacted, a meeting here," at the pentagon. "Is scheduled for after lunch assuming the ambassadors all agree to reschedule their other commitments."
--
Oskyld focused on the two point two kilometer hull's disc like shape. The Harvest had been the last of a series of prototype hulls laid down before Apophis had brought the war over their borders, and its completion was relatively recent. Harvest's sister ship Guardian had been cancelled before her hull could begin to take shape in favor of constructing smaller, relatively speaking, fleet support vessels of the class that he had dispatched with Ishtar during the diplomatic overtures last year.

Harvest had both been available, and because it had been built with a sufficiently complex sensor package that he could sweep much of the rim ward expanse from Earth, to see if anything else might be out there. Well, that and the Harvest was capable of deploying unmanned, cloaked sensor platforms that would insure they had more of a warning next time.

He had no direct view of the hyperspace corridor that that ship was travelling through, and unlike a smaller ship the Harvet was large enough that even at this speed he couldn't feel the vibrations of faster than light travel. Anubis had particularly tweaked everyone's nose at this.

The asteroid had been deposited out of hyperspace and then accelerated on an impact course, either of which would have been immediately detectable by anyone watching the outer solar system. The other, the more damning factor, was the asteroid's material composition. It would be large enough, massive enough, that the small moon sized rock would start causing gravitational disturbances if something wasn't done and quickly.

The naquadah composition was why he had elected to bring Harvest as opposed to an I-Class and simply blast the rock into manageable chunks. No, given its composition, at the very least he was going to need to decelerate the rock with tractor beams, and put it under tow. He didn't trust simply slingshotting the rock back out of the solar system in case Anubis decided to just throw it back into Sol...

--
Commentary: We are approaching the end of February, I would just like to reiterate that this story takes place in the later half of '02, and notably by this point the US was already (in conjunction with the UK) decided to begin final preparations to invade Iraq, this decision was probably made in 01 as Bush entered on the recommendations of the foreign policy staff citing the perceived failures of the outgoing clinton administration to this would eventually be delayed due to the events of 9-11, but we do know from latter stargate canon (specifically Atlantis) that the US did invade Iraq in 03, but like much of 9-11 this makes very little appearance in SG1.

We are moving to disclosure, in incremental steps over a time frame of the next several months... in universe time. This has been written out, and was present in the outline put down way back in 2017. But yes, anyway, Fail Safe has problems with its writing, notably one has to rationalize why the 'goa'uld busters' don't show up, and the easiest explanation for why there aren't any more missiles that can be launched from earth to attack star ships is that Area 51 scrapped the program after the failure in the season 1 finale.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides Part 3​

If Hammond were being honest, Chekov's presence was painfully conspicuous in place of the Russian Ambassador, or at least the absence of. "Gentlemen, we've asked you here to contend with an unparalleled threat," Hammond resisted the urge to grimace at Colonel Kennedy's choice of words, "To the planet."

They were gathered in one of the Pentagon's briefing rooms deep within the inner ring. This was extremely unusual especially after the attacks of September the eleventh, but even before the planes, it had been unusual to invite foreign ambassadors into the heart of the department of defense... but then these were extraordinary times.

Kennedy continued to dance around the meet and greet, before finally, "Recently we were made aware of a particular danger, what has been termed a dino killer,"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't understand."

Hammond reached over to nudge Chekov. "Da." The colonel obediently stood up, "Its is very large asteroid, a rogue from out of the solar system at an oblique angle, we have confirmed its trajectory with deep space telemetry." He stated, "The United States, and Russia have special space program, you could say that this goes back to great patriotic war," Kennedy shot the Russian colonel a dirty look, "What we are gathered here to discuss is if there might be collective efforts that might be rendered, if there might be some pooling that we have overlooked."

A series of packets were handed out by Kennedy's increasingly sheepish looking assistant. They couldn't even be properly considered briefing packets. Ordinarily the information to be supplied ... would have been more. These were little better than a brief timeline of when the asteroid had been spotted, estimations on where it would land, and with how much force... and a picture of the rock hurtling towards the planet.

"We can bring up a feed from orbital telemetry," Kennedy added. It didn't help. Most of the subsequent questions... once they were assured that this wasn't some elaborate joke being made at their expense... were aimed at having to explain that survival was far from assured. It was hard to explain, and be understood that they were looking at an extinction level threat.

Dino Killer hadn't been blunt enough, even though when Kennedy had stated it Hammond had thought it originally a mistake... now it was apparent that it hadn't been blunt enough. "While the United States has sufficiently advanced, enhanced fusion atomic weaponry," Chekov declared waving his hand, "That is sufficient yield to deflect the asteroid in simulation, we have no method dedicated to delivering it."

Kennedy cleared his throat, "There are proposals, and efforts to retrofit an ICBM to destroy a space born target, but while those are underway, we may not have time."

They had already been here the better part of an hour, "I see." The British Ambassador remarked. "So the plan is to apprise us that the United States is going to launch an ICBM, and that there will be a nuclear detonation in space. That its not a test, that's why you've informed Russia."

Chekov prepared to interject.

"I'm sorry Ambassador, its not that simple." Hammond said standing, "My name is General George Hammond, I command an annex to NORAD out of Cheyenne Mountain." He twanged, "To which Colonel Chekov has been permanently attached to. In an ideal situation the launch of such a modified launch system equipped with a nuclear warhead... what we are addressing is not that such a program is in place, is that we may not have sufficient time to make those modifications. We are, we are reaching out to examine alternatives..." He gave a heavy sigh, "We are fishing for ideas and proposals, gentlemen."

Perhaps the only positive thing was that with only three ambassadors the pandemonium was not so bad as if they'd had ambassadors from all the Nato member states... even if George Hammond wasn't entirely sure that they processed exactly how damaging the asteroid would be.


Two hours later, "They have informed their governments, and now the dithering has begun." Chekov stated. "We are wasting time."

He was probably right. The president had already ordered him to begin transferring personnel offworld. Major Carter's hail mary of idea of trying to boost a tollan phase shift generator not only had energy issues, it like the plan to use a nuke lacked a delivery mechanism. "I know that colonel..." And then there was Senator Kinsey's absence from the meeting to contend with as well.

--
The hologram flickered. "Your explanation is satisfactory." The gray bobble head declared. The asgard on the other end lacked the much more clearly defined musculature of Zeus's true form, wasn't quite as tall either, "Your hyperspace logs clearly show that the asteroid is not originally from the solar system nor was its path accidental."

An Asgard ship would have been faster than Harvest, but he had reason to expect that none were available.... and it hadn't been assured that his protest of Anubis's action necessarily would have been acted upon in any haste. He exhaled noisily, "I am acting in accordance to the terms of the Treaty. This action was undertaken by a rogue party, and directly imperiled the planet deliberately. Anubis's actions while clever show remarkable contempt for the systems and agreements, an Asgard response would be, desirable."

"While that may be your personal opinion, breaches and evaluations of the treaty require a commission of an equal number of system lords and archons. Representation from both signatories, and testimony will take time."

Oskyld regarded his long range sensors. Nothing. There had been no movement from Adara, which suggested that there might not currently be an asgard presence there. "You have my official accounting, I will be in touch." He terminated the line's connection. He'd be in contact... but not through official channels... there were other Asgard who might be able to shape policy and there was of course the matter of the Asgard's deterioration that would need to be addressed. The Asgard envoy to the System Lords, and treaty representative had been guarded which made sense but the lack of response only underscored the resources they had invested, tied up in facing other threats closer to home... which was a whole other headache.

The cellular degeneration and failings of the cloning process would ultimately require a complete rebuilding of the genome and a better cloning protocol and ... most likely some of the degradation was as he suspected a combination of epigenetic factors. Thor's five hundred year old body showed too many ecological imprints for lack of a better description to be sure which ones had contributed most to his healthier physical form. There were obviously short term patches that could be applied but in the long term it was a project of significant investment... and one the Asgard were unlikely to trust a reigning system lord without good reason.

They might verify the data though supported by other channels.

A problem for another day though. Harvest didn't lurch as it made the transition from hyperspace. Its engines and internal integrity fields, gravitic systems much too advanced for that. The capital ship might have lacked the gun density of an I-class but it hadn't been designed as a general fleet combatant. The Improved Ha'tak were intended to be demonstrably Ha'tak, with an emphasis on securing space, and commanding ha'tak. Harvest was intended as command and control, and to on load offload supplies, as well as to refit and repair capital ships in potentially hostile space. More specialized than any goa'uld vessel... and someone would have noticed that sooner or later.

Harvest's hull a white and ochre accent stood out against the backdrop of space as it exited above the gas giant Jupiter, which loomed large in the holographic projection of the ship's short range sensors as they refreshed to scan without having to fight through the background radiation of hyperspace, or the 'noise' generated by the ship's own Faster than Light drives. With no discernable threats located the short range systems began an indepth dissection of the surrounding solar system, and then out to a few light years. No threats appeared within that bubble, and while not discernable by tangible feeling the ship moved to get under way by sublight systems.

The asteroid was comparatively 'warm' against the backdrop as it tumbled through the void towards the little blue marble that was earth. It would take less than an hour to reach the earth, and then the vessel could slow, and redirect the rock in a controlled manner... though he planned to make sure it had no fail safes in it first to cause it to detonate. He doubted it though... and even if it did... well there was a contingency for that... or the humans nuking it like was an action movie. He wondered if Anubis had somehow managed to see Armageddon and it had given him the idea. It was a tad absurd, but the naquadah composition was too obvious.
--
Notes: This is not set in stone, but the current plan is that SG1 will continue its regular update schedule through March. In April I may slot something in for that Friday slot.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides Part 4​

The feed had largely been ignored. Just sitting there recycling in the background, "Oh dear its stuck." The British ambassador remarked.

"No," Chekov remarked, indicating the counter in the screen, the Russian Colonel turned a glance to Hammond, and mouthed 'Asgard' clearly as a question.

"Someone get NASA on the horn, please." Colonel Kennedy demanded only adding please as an almost afterthought, probably at the realization that he wasn't the ranking officer in the room. "If the satellite feed is malfunctioning, it doesn't effect anything, we can get another feed from a different satellite, but we have a calculation about time till impact." He informed the ambassadors.

Minutes passed. "What's going on up there?"

"Retasking another satellite, ambassador. This will take a few minutes."

Chekov had slowly, so as to not draw attention returned to the Texan's side, "O'neill, you think?"

Hammond doubted it. Jack wouldn't necessarily have had time... even assume the Asgard had picked up on the first ring. Doctor Jackson might have been able to get someone, he'd been able to leave from Groom Lake while Jack had still been in Langley... and if they got through this they'd have questions to answer.... but they had to get through this first. Hammond settled for shaking his head and didn't say anything as Kennedy through him a side eyed look that would have been ordinarily completely unacceptable in etiquette.

"We're adjusting the telescope."

Something was wrong. They had planned for this in order... well after Apophis's ha'tak had been destroyed based off of theoretical plans on what to do if such an attack was mounted. The satellites for monitoring for spacecraft should have already been on alert to replace the first in the event of any kind of technical malfunction. With the previous feed data, and the size of the object, massive in comparison to even a goa'uld mothership, it should have been no trouble at all to order a retasking, and pipe the new feed in.
--
If Goa'uld could have actually arsed themselves with the bother of setting up more complex mining systems ... not even fully automated ones, but any sort of asteroid mining this would have been a prime target for such exploitation. By and large though the goa'uld didn't. Part of that was that, while territorial increases by the goa'uld had increased markedly, significantly so since the settlement of humans over the last roughly ten thousand years by Ra he had also intentional suppressed technological development. The most advanced mining and industrial systems in the galaxy were relics of Alteran origin that were largely automated. Effectively safe black boxed systems that Ra didn't have to worry about someone copying to make more of...

Thus everyone could play their games of civilization on a galactic scale, and that had been the galaxy up until about a decade ago... when Ra had caught a terminal case of pocket sunshine to the face. Oskyld's decision to not rely on mining drones was that he didn't have the technical support base for any established institution to maintain those systems. That wasn't to say he wouldn't use them, or that he didn't plan for them, but he wasn't going to make the hard shift towards those to avoid being put in the position of having to contend with the bulk of his neighbors deciding to object with their fleets.

The modified symbiotes would help... and better than that once fully mature it was unlikely any outsiders would, including the normal goa'uld, realize the situation. The gate keepers would be able to organize, catalog and pursue long term projects long after Oskyld departed this universe. The goa'uld were basically biological computers, if not necessarily in raw processing power than in terms of indexing and cataloging data. The biological enhancements they could supply to either jaffa, or as mature symbiotes, to their hosts was another factor. The goa'uld were, basically ideal as a client race to manage long term projects, and oversee things... it was just apparently without ... well the normal meglomania was a problem.

All, matters for the future. The stps to uplift civilization would require managers and needed to be done incrementally. There were certain points where development plateaued if certain conditions weren't met. Usually it was material, the malthusian trap had to be circumvented by technological developments. Field rotation, cover crops, horse collars, fertilizers, and eventually mechanization. It was really the last one that was the issue for introduction. Mechanization required industrialization and would draw the wrong sort of attention. It would simply be significantly more obvious than... well steam engines turning pumps inside mines for example... and those could have been largely run by humans of a medieval or early modern technical understanding so long as they could be taught until they got the hang of it.

In the long term humans in the minds would probably begin experimentation under Zeus's watchful eye, and develop the other necessities to industrial civilization... perhaps even in some cases jumping to hydroelectric power. Zeus was unlikely to allow significant fossil fuel development, barring the necessity to using coke for steel manufacture... which would still likely result in locationally centralized industry until naquadah based electric 'motors' could be used, and that would in theory lead to the development of other technologies... but that would be long in the future.

Long after he departed... and for now there was more pressing matters. The humans would not be along after all. "Momentum of object dispelled." The Prelate announced. The asteroid had been accelerated on a trajectory so that it would hit the earth. If they let it go now it would probably still fall into the earth's gravity well, but the longer they held it the less likely... but it still might due its own mass and the sun's either fall towards the sun or become captive in an orbit of its own depending on other factors.

Simply put they could have left it at this... save for the fact that his sensors had already confirmed the humans... the earth... the USAF apparently considered nuking the asteroid the best thing and were trying to make an ICBM convertible to hitting something coming in from out system. He'd known that already which was why they weren't stopping here, but it was nice to watch their progress... but it did complicate things. It would have been so much easier if they had gotten here soon enough that they could have disappeared the rock before the earth had noticed it.

One of the countless little knick knack satellites was already turning towards where the rock was, and while it was unlikely to have a picture of Harvest... it wouldn't take all that long to realize that the rock wasn't behaving in accordance with previous observations and basic physics. They had stopped the bolide and were now holding it in place.

--
"Its just frozen, are we sure the camera isn't broken."

"No you can see the background changes." The British Ambassador remarked. The lights flickered across the Pentagon, but noticeable particularly in the meeting room, "What if its on our end, whats the word, buffering, the tubes might be clogged or something."

The light flickering shifted becoming noticeable as it attenuated in the center of the room into what Hammond recognized as the beginning of a holographic projection. Too tall to be an Asgard. Dark red, and black solidified into eight foot of solidified light.

"Greetings Hammond of Texas." The Raptor Prelate spread taloned hands as the image completed, "I come to bear the word of the Eldest Lord of Interminable Darkness, it is in fealty to the Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow a vessel of the fleet has arrived and has, pursuant to the protected planets treaty intercepted a large extra solar object that would have impacted one of your northern seas."
That did confirm why the large rock was now visibly stopped on not one, but two feeds from orbit.

Described by Major Carter reading from Nasa's estimated report the asteroid was a hundred plus kilometers long, something like eighty five miles, and the twin feeds as they adjusted showed the bolide's massive difference compared to the broad white and red shape of the curvature of the mothership's hull as it began to peak from the shadow of the massive rock.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides Part 5
Conclusion.​

Jack was off world. Daniel Jackson was off world. It made sense. That ... well he could understand why without Colonel O'neill it moved to him... especially if they had a ship in orbit... or near enough. There would have been... well not no consequences, but few serious ones to a holographic information at Cheyenne mountain, or even at Groom Lake. Oh base security wouldn't be happy either at the SGC or Area 51, but there wasn't really anything that could have been done... here at the pentagon... well the issue wasn't really the pentagon per se so much as the meeting in progress. "Thank you prelate." He replied weakly. They had the attention of the room including the ambassadors of the three other major nuclear states who comprised the UN Permanent Security Council membership

... and there was the probability that if their satellites had a vantage point to watch the mothership others might well have noticed... even no other satellites had been retasked every moment the asteroid was up there was a chance that someone groundside would see it with a telescope not unlike the one Colonel O'neill had on his roof.

They hadn't seriously considered this scenario. There were no plans or frameworks for this scenario. The Asgard had demonstrated little to no interest in Earth political nuance. The likelihood of a goa'uld vessel showing up in orbit had always been assumed as to be a prelude to invasion.

The raptor exhaled and nodded with great solemnity, "The asteroid will be transported away from your solar system, and official reckonings presented to all appropriate authorities in accordance with the Treaty."

Treaty was the magical word that brought the attention of the ambassador from Great Britain. The French Ambassador, and the Chinese Ambassador also understood, but the englishman was moving on the matter, "A treaty?"

"A certain number of worlds have for various reasons been set aside and placed under the protected planets treaty. The Asgard's planetary representative is absent, but the Dragon has already spoken with the member for treaty arbitration at large."

It was a legalese response.... and Colonel Kennedy was likely already weighing the likelihood that they might be able to get through this with just aliens are real, and that they'd known about it. That aliens were a known factor, would also explain a Russian Liaison at NORAD. They had been directed that disclosure of the stargate should only be done if it was deemed necessary, that exact discretionary disclosure had been left ambiguous as how and who should make the call of what was necessary.

It was probably an intentional pitfall to foist blame if something went wrong, cynical as that consideration was. The NID was opposed to a number of proposals that might be perceived as compromising the US national security position... whatever they were quantifying that as at any given time.

"The Asgard," Chekov straightened, 'They have been contacted, will we see some form of response or will just let the matter be?"

"The Asgard envoy has referred matters to higher counsel, I suspect that the final decision will be to convene an investigative body in several months of an equal number of representatives aimed at establishing some process to prevent such a problem in the future."

"I see." Chekov replied, "Yes, that makes sense."

The alien had the attention of the room, almost, but not quite to the exclusion, of the spaceship in the feed from orbit. The Ambassadors had already apprised their governments several hours earlier about the asteroid... and in turn presumably the the dispersion of that information had begun to trickle down to the strategic services, to space and missile forces, and civilian scientific apparatus in order to look for an answer.

"Excuse me," The Chinese ambassador was eyeing Chekov, "I do not wish to misunderstand, but the implication which I take from this is that, bluntly that the United States, and the Russian Federation have been aware of Alien Intelligences for I assume some time now."

Kennedy cleared his throat, "That's-"

"We were informed, yes. In 1999 the Treaty was amended to allow earth to be added. As the name implies it protects the planet." Chekov shrugged trying to play it cool.

The prelate nodded, "Indeed."

"And this inquiry, to prevent this from happening again?" Hammond pressed glancing to the ambassador, all too aware that sooner or later this was going to trip, and spill over into the nature of the galaxy at large... he was surprised that the mention of the Asgard hadn't lit any light bulbs.

"The object in question, extra solar in origin was cast by Anubis, in violation of the treaty. Its mineral composition, and content are evidence enough of foul play, though that by itself would not be enough to ascertain guilt. However, the Dragon maintains sufficient vigil over the treaty worlds to detect hyperspace travel in their proximity." There was another ripple of light, and the hologram of the raptor was joined with a projection of the milky way, Pinpricks of light from uncountable numbers of stars dimmed as the planets of the protected planets treaty were highlighted against the backdrop of territories ruled by individual system lords.

The ambassadors had no frame of reference for the size... the distances involved. One of the first programs the stargate had stood up for permanent off world installations had been looking for worlds in proximity to earth to detect ships approaching the planet by hyperspace. Those plans of course had been scrapped at the realization of the complexity involved, but this underscored the significant FtL velocity of a modern capital ship.
--
Oskyld smiled and rested his chin on his knuckles, and then with his other hand waved the report away. He wasn't surprised that the Air Force had not disclosed the existence of aliens, even just denying Roswell, and the Asgard crash there had become so institutional... and of course they could hardly admit the reason for the disappearance for the majority of the scout ship crash had been that they didn't know what had happened to it. The Asgard had collected much of the debris, it wasn't unlikely that they had missed some, but a transporter sweep tended to be very effective, but the humans of the time likely had no frame of reference... and he doubted the modern Air Force had given it real further consideration even after dialogue with the asgard.

The Russian knowledge of the Stargate, and of the goa'uld was interesting. The goa'uld wouldn't care about the nuance of a multi polar planetary nation state affair. The protected planets treaty didn't care who, how or what administered the ground side matter. Earth's lack of single planetary government was irrelevant... unless someone attempted to bypass the treaty by playing one against the other.



"Direct the humans I will station a handful of defensive platforms here as an interim solution," Which would be a trivial expense compared to the naquadah he'd be able to recoup from the bolide... and those same stations would give him a much more clear picture of Earth's political developments as it played out.

"And Hammond's petition?"

"that will have to await a board of inquiry." He replied. Nirti a fugitive, Cronus involved in a war... Yu Huang Shang Ti was the only system lord of the previous comittee to available. Olokun and Ishkur were both possibilities to sit on any committee. No, the bigger concern would be seeing who among the Asgard would join Thor, assuming that Heimdall and Freyr didn't simply cede their votes as they had done last time. Oskyld paused and gold eyes glittered, "Tell the assembled humans that I will insure that the matter will be addressed on the solstice," The longest night of the year, he was tempted not to send a magic bauble to hold that, but decided his word would be sufficient.

"And the rogue's attack?"

"There is nothing the Tauri can do to meaningfully impede Anubis, we will deal with him in time. They embarrass him most by living well."

The prelate bowed, "It shall be done," and returned to the orrery to relay the word.

The ambassadors of the three other nations hadn't yet been able to inform their host countries, but tracking suggested the French space agency had turned one of their telescopes to look towards objects closer than it was normally looking at. He hadn't identified any obvious British signs, but by this point the chance of ground observation of Harvest was over and estimated fifty percent, and presumably some ground observatory had observed the asteroid, if not the spaceship.

Oskyld rose, "If you're quite finished eavesdropping..."

The beach bum stepped out of the recesses of the archway, "Do you intend to stop Anubis?"

"I am not his mother," he replied turning luminescent eyes towards the sandy blond brown haired man, "And I have no intention allowing his medaling in my own projects."

"The goa'uld have failed to demonstrate an ability to replicate the technology with them, at least not effectively. You're changing that."

"Information is not knowledge. Just because you know something doesn't make you intelligent. I appreciate Ptah actually works to understand what he knows, and can only hope enough of the maturing ones will follow that course."

"They're directing hundreds millions of worshippers your way certainly doesn't hurt."

"It doesn't hurt, but I don't require it either." Oskyld replied, "Why are you here?"

"There are people on this planet that are important to me." ... ah the Asgard might not have been in a position to do anything, but apparently not everyone had been keen to let it just lie. "I wanted to say, thank you."

"It is nothing. I have made an agreement. The Asgard's inability to act does not change that the bargain was made. Will you visit your human friends and tell them?" The other man was gone, as the archon's hologram appeared, "Ulfrikr have you had time to review my proposal?"

The asgard nodded. "The council is unlikely to support cybernetic modification without extensive study before hand." a pity, "But the biological studies, and gene sequencing does I admit seem promising."

--
Notes: And in the next chapter we get the revelation from Sam going confirming Oskyld is not Sokar, with this confirmation that the shipbuilding machinery is gate builder in tech base, very recently built gate builder machinery.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Saqqara​

They were gambling a lot by coming here. Only a sense of desperation from high command made this sort of expedition even remotely plausible... or the NID were trying to get them killed, or captured on a fool's errand. Saqqara was a temperate world at least in comparison to Abydos. Daniel had made the comparison of being more like the Mediterranean basin climes of Egypt on earth compared to Red Egypt's desert climate when asked about the wide grassy plains.

It was exactly like Egypt... if the ancient city of Alexandria had had a pyramid the size of the chrysler building dominating its skyline. As a planet the goa'uld had left it off the normal stargate cartouches because of its unique nature. The Serekh had been centerpiece of Apep's throne world, a place for him to mediate the disputes of the system lords long before Hasara station had existed. Its great pyramid was considered neutral, even sacred ground to at the very least the children of Ra, and the wider Egptian pantheon.

Jack lowered his field glasses, "Something wrong Major?" He asked.

"I'm afraid it looks like Selmak was right." She replied. "These readings suggest that those," She waved the hand held machine in the direction he'd been looking, and where naquadah and trinium were being funneled. "Are Gate Builder machinery... and it gets worse."

"Worse, I don't like worse Carter." He muttered.

"I'd bet a month's pay sir that those are newly built machines."

Jack lifted the glasses again to look at the long sloped shaped of one of the 'factories?' "You're sure?" He asked.

"As sure as I can be given where we're standing," She paused, "I mean it makes sense, you saw the fleet in orbit last night." Even in the middle of the day there were vibrant pinpricks of light from dozens of ships high above the Serekh pyramid. Those that were visible in the daylight were only a fraction of what you could see with a telescope at night.

A far cry from how Apophis had treated the world during his brief overlordship of the planet, and even during Ra's time though for very different reasons. Saqqara was the, was very clearly living up to its designation as a provincial capital. "Teal'c."

"Master Bra'tac once visited this world centuries ago as first prime to Apophis, when Ra still ruled. He said the Library of Apep disables all weapons within its boundaries."

"Are you thinking-"

"The Tollan seem to use an Alteran tech base... their particle weapons are definitely similar to the goa'uld but diverged significantly compared to what we're used to seeing." Most goa'uld regarded gun powder weapons as crude and primitive, lacking in elegance even but if the weapon cancellers worked like the Tollan ones... well the machines probably would still generate a field to stop them from working. The goa'uld opinion be damned.... at the same time though. "And the Raptors are still carrying weapons. If they don't work..." that assumed they didn't work... but unlike Jaffa the raptors reaction to Reetou was less crippling pain and more bloodthirsty lizard crunches on cricket.

They could go back now. Confirming Selmak's concern that the shipbuilding equipment was ancient ... and worse appeared to be of recent manufacture would be enough. "We need to at least look around the library."

"You're assuming that it is actually open to visitors." Jack pointed out to Daniel, but it was a pointless protest. They'd seen enough Jaffa come and go, and humans, the latter largely in Greco-byzantine fashions in and out that getting shouldn't have been an issue.

--
The Great Pyramid was at the heart of itself a massive Egyptian style temple complex that was clear the deep inside one went, as they moved further away from the domes of much newer Byzantine esque temples added to the outer ring of the landscape. The library eventually gave way to the a massive tomb complex, but even the library was much closer to Alteran level technology, an exorbitant expense in naquadah and other rare minerals.

The Serekh's differences though were noticeable as clearly intermediary between the usual goa'uld versions, which tended to double down with the gold inlay hieroglyphs or other ostentatious displays to impress on humans and jaffa versus the most recent machines... or for that matter the newer constructions in general.

"Shit," Jack muttered coming to a halt. Carter blinked putting one of the goa'uld tablets down. The physical resemblance was... there, in a sense. The memories of Jolinar of Malkshur remembered Sokar as a painfully fastidious tyrant, who had kept himself shaved, and wearing heavy kohl eyeliner, and an expansive set of crimson robes. All in all a goa'uld perfectly happy to spend his time, the time he wasn't directly administering his subjects, or terrifying his enemies, reading... and the resemblance in skin tone was uncanny.

... but the Dragon, and the two flanking lizards had long dark hair, and a trimmed beard that wouldn't have been inappropriate to find on a greek king.

"You're not Sokar."

"Good," He replied, "I am pleased someone can recognize that." Oskyld replied. "Do you understand the creation of the Jaffa?" He asked conversationally, as the two Slaan priests moved away towards the flanks of the reading table, "Surely it must have occurred to you to ask, about Dakara. Pelops created the jaffa as a statement of ego, as much as it turned into a valuable contribution. He couldn't create an entirely new race but he could modify humans to create Jaffa... and that heightened physical symbiosis with goa'uld larva was intended to to provide him an army. An army, the incubation process of larval symbiotes, was a happy coincidence." He raised an eyebrow, "and you came here and not the imperial center that I appropriate from Moloch," Though Saqqara would have probably been a better fit for the empire if not for fact the other provinces spread out from Moloch's former capital.

"You ordered the lizards to stop the rock." Jack remarked, a tinge of irritation and bitterness.

"Of course, there is an agreement with the Asgard. It wasn't as if Anubis was anywhere approaching subtle either, throwing a naquadah cored asteroid of that size. I suspect Desala must have taken him to see that silly Armageddon movie." He glanced towards Carter as the latter bumped into Daniel Jackson, "Oma Desala is, as far as such things go Anubis's mentor, though he is something of a disappointment. They've had a falling out over philosophy, and you've met both of them."

"I think I'd remember that," Jack commented.

Gold eyes shifted back to him, "Anubis has to play according to the others rules, the same rules his mother has to abide by. Its part of their system. There exists a certain amount of leeway for they, and your acquaintance Orlin-"

"You're the Other."

His physical form turned luminescent and expanded, not quite loosing its human shape, but the arms lengthened in a way that was no longer human norm far closer to his draconic form than to the prior. "Indeed." He replied, "The goa'uld may not normally be able to draw power from their worshippers, but Anubis is not like them. There aren't enough of them to meaningfully supplement his powers at an interstellar level, but it does make him more dangerous to you... especially since he can chose to appear how he likes on Earth." Not that he could do much on Earth, Oskyld knew that the Alteran were mindful of who did what there, and would likely intervene if the rogue goa'uld attempted to utilize any of the ancient ruins on earth through his elevated form of existence.
--
Commentary: Ok firstly note that this is in the Extras tab for a reason. I consider this to be nominally canon to the Jump, but are some minor issues with the year 2002 timeline, among other things which involve Oma, Daniel Jackson, Anubis, and for that matter Daniel dying from radiation poisoning... and then of course the launch of the Prometheus later in the year.

Prometheus supposedly had its maiden flight c. October. Also there is the whole Aiyana issue

 

[Imperator Pax]

Consequences.​

On the plus side a giant rock wasn't going to crash into the planet, and they weren't going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Hurray. On the other hand, with an eight foot killer lizard in the pentagon in front of a bunch of high muckity mucks from four other nuclear powers... the other four state's on the permanent security council... Jack had a really hard time taking comfort in their not impending doom.

Chekov grimaced putting the pentagon's attempt at tea aside, there was a reason Jack had taken coffee at least that they could manage to make drinkable. "This is not good."

"Ya think?" He grunted back to the paunchier Russian colonel. The Frog, and the Chinese Ambassador were both looking especially surly. It was harder to read mr stiff upper lip, the right honorable lord needham or whatever the man's title was. It didn't help the spook attache over from Langley was hovering in his six, and had told him not to underestimate the Brit just because they were allies... ugh the company's paranoia probably wasn't wrong... but for the wrong reasons. "We just had a freaking murder lizard tell everyone they were going to be installing big honking space guns in our solar system."

"Da." Chekov agreed, "I do not like it."

The prospect of the orbital defense cannons were probably supposed to be reassuring, except Jack was ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine... percent sure that if they could shoot at space ships they could probably shoot at ground targets... and if they could shoot goa'uld motherships down they were going to make russian nukes look like pop guns. Of course Chekov didn't like it. Chekov at least had a frame of reference for what capital ships fired at one another as standard ordinance.

Chekov commented that it was going to likely get worse.

"Of course its going to get worse, can you imagine what kind of shitshow this is going to turn into when Yu gets here." The Chinese system lord probably hadn't even been who Chekov had been thinking about, but he nodded anyway. Since he wasn't nominally engaged in hostilities at the moment he was the most likely chair of the system lords investigative delegation.... but they had time... hopefully a lot of time... as far as Jack was concerned the longer it took the snakes to decide they wanted to the better of they'd be, because it'd be time Cart would have to figure some techno babble solution to Earth's problems. Whether that was reasonable, or even feasible ... well that was a different story, "No, its going to be a mess..."

"Yes, I am sure having some ancient Chinese emperor show up to tell us we are bunch of ill-mannered children will be especially enjoyable." Chekov continued to be agreeable... "But I am also concerned ... about certain other matters. Has doctor Jackson had time to review Brtisky's ... ah more controversial positions."

Jack thought about it, "He said about chariots and some archaeological finds in the step," There had been a lot of blathering on about poetry from India and Iran... he'd only really paid attention because Danny had said India and he'd been mulling over how much he wanted to throttle that bitch Nirti but nothing really leapt to mind. "No he said something about the winter solstice," Which the lizard had said something about that was probably when they'd hear back.

Chekov mulled over his response, "It is not what I meant, but the reason we have allowed Britsky's work to be more widely published is there is some controversy over some of his conclusions, it was best to hold back on some of the findings of even more mundane things, because .... well they might be offensive."

"Daniel get over here." Jack whispered waving him over discretely as he could in this mess.

"Oh, i was just going to talk to the ambassador," The british ambassador looked to be a little busy with Jenny so he could wait, "What is it?"

"What's this stuff about Britsky?"

"I'm not through all of his stuff, he was a pretty prolific writer, and he was in the process of cataloging a large volume of archaeological digsites in Russia, and the wider pontic caspian steppe for the museum in moscow." Daniel chattered down for a while...

... apparently Aryan was the ancient Finnish world for southerner ... or some shit... probably didn't mean southerner but had entered ancient finn folk speak because they'd been neighbors, and then the aryans had migrated south east where they'd invented the chariots, that Daniel had mentioned earlier which was controversial because originally people had though the chariot had been invented further south or whatever... Jack didn't care especially since he didn't ' seem to involve snakes so not national security issue...

"Right models of carts, but not chariots, ok can we move it along."

Daniel grumbled a little bit, "The ancients and the Asgard both speak what we would recognize as a Indo European language... and Britsky is probably right that Nox, seem to speak some kind of relative to Finno Ugric... well we think... it has a lot of Ancient and Asgard loan words... so we're not sure... but the ... Britsky thinks that the Furlings... and their client races spoke an Afro Asiatic language, i told you about the Akkadian thing and the Oanes you remember Nem?"

The blue freaky fish guy who had kidnapped Daniel and mind whammied the rest of SG 1 to think he was dead... yeah...

Daniel hastily moved on, and glanced at Chekov... "So the thinking is that we think that sometime in pre antiquity there must have been some contact between humans and the ancients, and probably the Asgard, Furling, and Nox... Britsky seems to have taken the position that there were certain... that ancients maybe interbred with humans to create a more advanced race of humans."

"Occult nonsense." Chekov grumbled. "He was supposed to be see if any of the archaeological finds contained anything dangerous."

... or that Russia could use to try and keep pace with America, Jack suspected, but he didn't say that, "Well yes, we're sure there was some degree of cross pollenization, and we do have questions about some of the Goa'uld... and where they fit into this... the language families seem to share traits but there was no ancient aryan society on earth like what the Nazis thought," or had wanted to be the case, "more likely ancient humans were observing and imitating things they saw with the tools they had available, and this created a technological diffusion across horizon effects. The chariots, diffusing into the south, and across the steppe, metal working of tools, swords for some reasons, because they're more a prestige object than a practical weapon compared to the utility of spears in massed ranks." Danny frowned, "Still suffice to say from what we know, and what Doctor Brtisky hypothesized if this reached general publication it would alarming to the archaeological community and would probably be assumed, or taken to validate even more outlandish ideas like crazy people like Daniken."

"Danny the archaeological community thinks you and nick are both crazy people." He pointed out. "And you also have that expression you make when..."

Jackson crossed his arms, and then huffed, "This is going to be controversial, but I suspect that the Aryans might have taken their names from that ancients... and that Atlantis was a spaceship, that at some point moved off earth."

"Oh boy here we go, alright shoot."

"Ten thousand years ago we think the Ancients came back to earth, we now know that from other sites, including Altair, but also from data on earth, Britsky's research suggests that the may have been, there may have been contact periodically. What he didn't have access to was our copies of Goa'uld ancient history, where the ancients disappeared," as they periodically seemed to do, "A civil war started among the goa'uld, culminating in Ra finding earth. Its why the goa'uld have no problem understanding earth languages any linguistic drift they can easily accommodate for, given their grasp on languages in general... you just tell them what a new word means,"

"And it goes in the old genetic memory, yeah, I know how snake memory works." He grunted glancing at the projection of the orbital feeds where the atypically shaped Goa'uld capital ship was still standing still in the middle of their solar system.
--
Notes: Stargate chronologically takes place during an important period in anthropology and archaeology. With the downfall of the soviet union it was much more feasible to conduct archaeology on pontic caspian sites in the steppes after 91 (yay no longer having to deal with soviet 'socialist history' theories) but among other things, and also because dating techniques and computers continued to improve we can pretty conclusively establish that Common Indo Arayan speakers or their ancestors before the year 2000 BC invented chariots, not people in the near east as was typically held to be the case prior to this, and this was made possible because archaeologists were able to dig up buried chariots. (Lot of cultural inertia in the academic community was skeptical of these claims on frankly a lot of stupid positions). This is also supported by linguistics, and more broadly looking at the dispersion of chariots it makes more sense in terms of the spread of chariots, both into the near east, as well as their introduction to ancient China.

Concidentally the dispersion of chariots into the middle east also matches up with the early written parts (the gothas, and the family books) and compsoitions of the Avesta and Rig Veda which probably originated from Common Indo Aryan before Proto Iranian and Proto Indic split from one another.

And I'm going to continue this PIE broadly speaking split off an Anatolian branch, a Tokharian branch, Germanic... probably then Slavic, and then Hellenic's precursor, and Italic, and Celtic probably came off and split from the same branch and then diverged (celtic is fucking weird) as well. In Stargate Terms, I get to just blame the ancients and asgards for this whole headache yay!

Obviously though among other things this foreshadows Atlantis, and Anubis stuff. JumpChain, more generally, Classical Era for PJO jump will probably be updated then giving way to mostly like the first Naruto chain snippets in the general anthology thread, I will point out that I baled on Naruto while Shipuden was still ongoing, and quite frankly the 'canonical' Naruto jump (of very early jumpchain vintage) basically incorporates basically nothing of Naruto Shippuden... and I while I intend to do the Ootsuki jump thing whatever at some point it won't be covered in that jump or in the Generic Naruto Fanfiction Jump story content.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Consequences Part 2​

Oskyld remained in orbit for as long as he dared, which was plenty long enough to insure that scans could be run of the Earth, and the solar system... of ancient apparatus. If one wished to be honest he didn't particularly like the spread of the Ancients outposts across the earth... but he wasn't surprised either.

He had a map now.

There were a variety of sites that he doubted the humans could feasible reach... or if they hadn't already been working on the Antarctic site he'd have been skeptical they would have gone after it first... but of course they had other reasons for moving on that site first. The difficulty in accessing sites that were well beyond thousands, well into millions of years old, might still be ones the humans might ... but it wasn't really the Earth's governments that he was worried about.

Cost of excavation wasn't the sort of thing that would stop a goa'uld, in most cases, if it meant recovering Ancient trinkets never mind actual gate builder facilities. The system lords even the ones who had no interest in biological sciences would have rushed to try and lay claim to any of the equipment left behind by Nirti's patron Lilith if only they had some idea of where that machinery was. For pride and ego alone, for some one like Nirti, Olokun, Pelops, or Arawn then it was so much more than that... that machinery Thoth's possession ... such equipment was unthinkable to allow to fall into hostile position.

Which of course was the usual system lord position to their rivals possessing gate builder artifacts, if I can't have it you can't have it either was a frightfully common position for a system lord to adopt if his rivals found a shiny bauble. There was a reason Oskyld reinforced his worlds with garrison fleets and orbital defense platforms, sooner or later more grasping goa'uld would likely attempt to try his wealthier worlds just for their production of talents of Naquadah. Saqarra might be exempt by ancient tradition, but Oskyld suspected that might not hold given Apophis's increasing erratic behavior, or Anubis's blatantly outlawry.

He supposed he was going to have to say something to his nominal peers once he returned.

--
To tell the truth he had been expecting this or a more formal version of it for a while now. It was a little shocking, and not in a good way, that they had waited this long... which meant Langley was pretty sure about whatever they were going to ask. He had been called away too suddenly last time for them to really get the chance to play the usual mind games... and then everything else had happened. It was hard to know what they might have learned.

Jack looked at the CIA man across his kitchen counter. "I get it, its classified Jack." The man remarked shrugging, all reasonableness in his bearing, "I know we've got our own little fiefdoms, but you did ask me to look at that explosion, that gas leak... you know the history of the Agency," the heavily leaned into mythologized emphasis of identity that the Agency liked to throw around for times like this, "if Truman had been better prepared, and if our forbearers hadn't been caught up in so much beef with State things would have been different."

O'neill frowned but took a swig from his beer, and then nodded, "You're saying there is something about the OSS involved?"

The spook smirked, "You were always a quick one. Yeah, well I couldn't be sure, but then the Navy happened to ask some questions. Its amazing what the Agency keeps in the back rooms." Not literally in the back rooms the truth was the CIA was worse than the Smithsonian's storage system according to Daniel, or any police backlog of evidence to process. There were knick knacks micro fiche and rolls and rolls of other film and papers., "I'm not asking you to tell me everything, but you went to Egypt Jack, and while we have our share of not too bright people behind a desk we can read Radar and call up satellites from our sibling agencies pretty well." He took a pull from the long neck in his hand. "Imagine my personal surprise to find that Russian Nato cooperation extends to a NORAD annex with enough black ops veterans involved to raise some eyebrows at the point." The point was the North Carolina staging ground for the Agency's own black ops ground forces. It didn't hurt that it wasn't that far of a drive to the Army's Fort Bragg.

"Rayner ran off at the mouth."

He didn't laugh, but there was mirth in his expression, "He was easy. We showed up one day, man knew enough to know that we were on the same side, and I steered the conversation to pretend that I only cared about keeping the Russians from a bigger bomb."

"Is that what came out of the OSS?"

"A Naquadah bomb, yeah we recovered it from Argentina in the early sixties. We didn't even know what we had, but the pieces have come together."

"You -"

"A goa'uld bomb yes," He held up a hand, "Its secure, but based off what we know it would pack a hell of a punch. It belonged to a Goa'uld named Baal apparently he had planned to use it against Sokar, which from your reaction those names mean something is going on- you want to fill me, or do you want a bigger taste?"

"This is big Tony, big." Jack replied, "I'm getting another beer you want one?"

"Absolutely."

"So you found a bomb,"

"And we know about the starship that was buried in Egypt," The spook replied, "I didn't bring photos of it, but I've seen it... and saw the one that came to deal with that asteroid... I take it there was some reason you couldn't just have nuked that rock?"

"It was naquadah."

The bottle clinked on the counter, "Hell, really, I read the shrinks report of how that stuff reacts ... so not accidental then."

He wasn't sure if the spook was asking a question that he already knew an answer for but Jack was already in the fridge and moved his hand back to press the Asgard beacon he kept in the back just as a precaution... maybe Thor was still in the neighborhood... maybe he wasn't but it would get back to the SGC somehow or another. He snagged the fresh case of beer and put it on the counter, "Not accidental alien asshole decided to try and be clever. We think his mama took him to go see a movie and he thought it'd be funny."

The spook raised an eyebrow and took a fresh bottle of beer, "For real?"

"With Anubis? We're considering it a strong possibility. He's been on Earth seemingly frequently, and from what we understand he's been visiting before we were going back out there." It was a major security concern for the SGC, and the NID, and the Russians were probably panicking as well about... and yeah that might be the right response... they weren't sure how that worked, "But I'm getting ahead of myself, what do you know about things?"

"The Goa'uld rule the galaxy, think they're gods... but from what the OSS put together they misbehaved and their parents kicked them off earth."

"What," Jack nearly spilled his beer, "NO we kicked their asses off earth, there was a rebellion in Egypt and it pushed Ra off the planet."

The CIA man shook his head, "Not the way we read it, the Alteran banished the goa'uld from Earth for breaking their rules. That's why we didn't get reinvaded, and why there was a gate in Antarctica, and why China developed the way it did..."

Jack paused... leaving aside Yu issue and yeah okay, "And why Sokar could use it." He shook his head, "You know what Goa'uld means then?"

"Children of the Gods."
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Notes: Hello, and welcome back, its a new year and figured I would update this finally. Hopefully i will manage to update jumpchain more frequently this year.