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

[Imperator Pax]

The Festive Season​

The klaxons wailing finally stopped by about the time they got Makepeace into the hallway. Jack didn't stop moving backwards even after he heard the Iris seal shut. Once it was secure, and Siler announced that the gate was off he relaxed a fraction. Makepeace was a solid guy, still kind of naïve in Jack's opinion for a jarhead who'd seen the mess Yugoslavia had turned into, but he was a good guy. "You alright?" He asked.

"Yeah." The other colonel croaked from the gurney as the airmen navigated him into Doc Fraiser's waiting room. A few of the junior docs moved to check him but he waved him off. "I'm fine, just my leg." He protested. It probably wasn't just his leg, but Makepeace's marine team had apparently run into stiff resistance.

"The UAV footage looked bad?" He asked searching for information, "There was what looked like a forest fire."

"OH, fuck," He groaned trying to sit up putting weight on his hip, "it probably did. If not for those Jaffa pulling us out we wouldn't have made it around it." Jack knew Hammond was going to have questions about that. "That big plume of smoke on the UAV footage you saw was probably where that Alkesh got shot down." Jack got the marine a cup of water with one of the bendy straws. "Thanks. I don't," He coughed some of the water going down the wrong pipe, "what happened. Things were okay, and then there was an explosion. The locals had been pretty friendly. No sign of hostilities."

"SO someone attacking the planet?"

Makepeace tried to nod his head, "Yeah, I think so. Nirti I think. I think that's the mark I saw."

"What about the Jaffa who pulled you out?"

"Ishkur's dragon guard. One of them had been showing us around. Young kid, one of his officers came and lead around the fire, got us back to the gate. They were taking fire as pulled out. It looked like there was shit going on in the skies, orbit."

"Colonel I need you to move." Apparently the captain had run to get Fraiser, as she was now shooing him away, and out of her domain. That left Jack with fuck all to do. The base would be in restricted security for a while now. They'd have to MRI all of the marines. Blood work, and a bunch of other stuff. Hammond would want a report on what all, what little, he had gotten out of Makepeace before he went into surgery. Makepeace had been the last man through the gate as well having come through with a squad automatic with less than a third left on the belt.

--

"I'm still looking Jack. " Daniel preempted him, before he could ask. "I mean, Ishkur on earth terms isn't someone we have a lot of information on. We do think that he and some of the others used different names for different city states, Dr Briski is an expert in Mesopotomia and I've requested some of his publications from the University of Colorado's library but he's a sumerian storm god, basically."

"And?" Jack nudged.

"The goa'uld Ishkur has been a system lord of the middle rank for a long time. Five thousand plus years. He's mercurial, Teal'c doesn't think its a good idea to trust his jaffa. His jaffa are quite fanatical according to both Bratac and the Tokra." Daniel tapped some keys on his computer to cycle through some pictures, "He may or may not be related to some of the other Sumerian and Mesopotomian Goa'uld. Baal is currently a system lord. Marduk was at one point. I mean if Makepeace hadn't seen Nirti's jaffa, I'd have thought Apophis might have attacked given where they were."

Jack had considered that to. Someone attacking an SG team on a peaceful fact finding mission... well Apophis had not been happy to find Earth added to the protected planets treaty. He had to abide the treaty, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Still he was tied up fighting both Heru'ur, and Cronus so how much in the way of resources Apophis could spare was up for debate. "If Nirti is involve they're going to keep us locked down for additional screening." Which was admittedly good because the NID had wanted to come in and sent down and 'talk the talk' "Kennedy was already coming in from the Pentagon when SG 3 was dialing in."

"What is that about?"

"I don't know. They mentioned Set, so I guess either the ATF, or FBI have been poking around." It seemed likely that having exhausted most conventional channels they had decided to make a nuisance of themselves. During his time with the CIA Jack had seen the DEA, and FBI both do it enough, and it was just as likely that ATF was no different. "I think the NID is just using it as an excuse though. They said congress though, which probably means someone in the FBI ran to a friend on the hill... that could be a problem." He supposed he could have seen if anyone at Langley would take his calls during the downtime... trying and figure out what was going on.

"Uh, yeah about that. You remember when the Stargate malfunctioned and caused us, caused the wormhole to slingshot us back in time."

"Yeah, I've got the pictures." Of the gang in front of the VW bus, "Why?"

Daniel ground his teeth, "So I was watching CSPAN, and we might have a problem." The archaeologist clack clacked away at his keyboard. "I caught it entirely by accident." Jack glanced at him. "This is the house armed services committee,"

"Okay and?"

"The representative from California doesn't look familiar?" Daniel asked, "That's Jennifer Clark, the ... hippie Sam gave the pep talk to. Apparently after we left, her and her boyfriend went back home, and he joined the air force. Early pioneer of computers in the eighties, and in particular has spent most of the last two decades as a part of the SETI institute. He's only been full time there since 94." The thing that looked for alien signals in space. Jack decided to sit down, and cleared off some books from a chair. "I've asked Sam about the work he does, and its supposed to be pretty impressive."


"Crap. Have you told Carter how Jenny grew up?" Danny shook his head, this was great, "Where was he in 'Nam?" He asked deciding to change subjects.

"I don't think he went. Testing scores that I've come across say he was sent off to technical school as opposed to sending him to Vietnam." Michael Clark was probably happier that way, Jack figured. "He worked for NASA during the eighties, and then Berkeley," Jack wrinkled his nose, "but its not like he's unconnected. And Jenny... well I haven't told Sam but she probably has the security clearance to get our files."

"Really?"

"I'm not sure," Daniel hedged, "But I did some digging," A few more key strokes, "And this is her..."

"That's General West, when was this?"

Daniel looked a little startled, but Jack eased back in his seat. "84. Some kind of Scientific initiative, looks like it was overshadowed by Star Wars, but West was convinced it would provide an edge over the soviets, and eventually Catherine brought me in, and well Abydos. We've got to tell Sam."

... that sort of went without saying. He was tempted to respond with 'what's this we shit', but Daniel was right, "Yeah. I don't even want to fathom what the NID reaction might be. You told her about the SETI thing?"

"Yes." Daniel repeated.

"NASA requires pretty serious background check what did he do for them?"

"Jet propulsion lab,"

In the eighties? Jack shook his head. "Alright so both of them probably have current security clearances." Jenny certainly would, "If Hammond wasn't currently dealing with SG 3, I'd say we need to take this to him." This would be a call the president before Congress started convening a commission.
--
Makepeace would, or was supposed to, be taking it easy for the holidays at least. Even with the use of a healing device most of SG 3 were on light duty. No one was dead though, and there wouldn't be any issue with them eventually returning to duty. Carter's summation of 'Whoops' to their politician problem was something he had wished he'd thought of it was a great summary of problems. They needed to tell Hammond of course... who would probably need to brief the President, but they had held off. So far nothing was in writing. The 1969 trip was not something that had been documented by the SGC in the official record.

It was just a 'gate malfunction' file. Minimal details, and relying on the gate's ancient origins as being unknowable. As long as it stayed with SG 1 it could stay off the books, but Kennedy had rescheduled their meeting until well into the New Year, apparently he had to also needed time to see about Area 51, which was probably true. If they were lucky they probably wouldn't have to deal with him until early March maybe later than that, certainly after SG 3 was back in the rotation for regular duty. There were only so many SG teams and the marines being out of rotation really degraded the overall operational capability of the SGC.

"Holiday plans, Colonel?"

"Me, I'm going with Teal'c help him and Drey'auc move. Bratac says there is a lot of goa'uld activity in that sector. He thinks it would be be best to get the moved now, before a Ha'tak shows up in orbit again. What about you major?"

"I'm going to San Diego visit my brother, and David and Lisa." Mark's two kids. "What about you Daniel?"

"Christmas with Kathy," So the same as every year since Daniel had been back on earth following Abydos, "Its a tradition I'm trying to keep."
-
Commentary: Notations, particularly on revisions. In canon, and in the original version, it is Kur who has the Dragon Guards I changed it to Ishkur or rather combined them into a single Goa'uld system lord because its easier for me to combine their plots. That's just an FYI. We are moving into the year 2000 with these interludes, but I'm not going to cover the Russian introductions to the SGC. I will probably cover the events of the episodes the Curse, and the Tomb down the road when we get there, but those are for later.

 

[Imperator Pax]

That Y2K Bug​

It was funny how many otherwise intelligent air force personnel had expected the sky to come crashing down and all the computers to stop working on New Years, but the world still kept turning and SG 1 just sat back and had a chuckle at their coworker's expense. They'd live it down in a couple more months probably. Jack figured he'd let it go by then, but until he'd yuck it up for a bit longer. It was a small reprieve from some of the SGC other issues, like why he was currently leaning one of the cheap office chairs as far back as he could get it on one of the conference rooms on level 27 without it tipping over.

The galaxy was a big place, and if they were lucky that was all Kennedy was going to want to talk about today. Jack knew that they might luck out there, but the fact the career bureaucrat was angling for stars at some point and was coming from Washington. That Kennedy was continuously purporting to be on their side just made Jack even more uncomfortable... it was like talking to used car salesman honestly.

Even Daniel was noticing it.

"I do not understand the purpose of this map Daniel Jackson." Teal'c rumbled.

"Oh its a map of what we call the Mediterranean basin, and surrounding countries. Middle East, North Africa, and the southern half of Europe, basically," He waved his hand, "This is the majority of the source of all the humans and civilizations we frequently have encountered. We do know that the goa'uld did involve themselves elsewhere, but this the geographical boundaries of where see most of the diaspora."

"I see." Teal'c responded inflecting slightly to imply he still didn't quite get what Daniel was getting at.... because frankly Jack wasn't seeing it either. Yeah, the Goa'uld had snatched a bunch of people from Ancient Greece, and Egypt, but they knew that. "And you believe that this map may be useful to today's discussions?"

Daniel shuffled, "Uh well maybe, I think that it would be helpful to to, provide a visual representation of how this relates to Earth. The goa'uld seem to have colonized blocks of space, or at least the system lords in groups according to their geography in a lot of ways. Ra was the largest contiguous region of space but it kind of lines up with who bordered who on ancient earth."

"There is a great ocean between Mexico and North Africa Daniel Jackson. I admit Zipacna is only an underlord and we have encountered Zipacna on more than one occasion but some of his kin have held the rank of system lords."

"Yes, thats right, but overall the majority of the civilizations we encounter are Egyptian, or Greek, or from Mesopotamia or related to those. They originated from the near east. I mean we know the Omeycyoan and the Asgard also both moved humans off world, but they're an exception."

"This is related to SG 7's report from P3X 797?" Kennedy asked.

"Its related. 797 was originally colonized by Minoan Greeks. They still retain the use of what we generally refer to as Linear A, which is interesting." Not to Kennedy, his eyes looked like they were starting to glaze over, "We think that they were moved circa the middle Minoan period, around 1700 BC. They're an iron age society, and that is part of why its related to SG 7's report, but also regarding other developments. Sokar, for example, was closely associated with Ptah, and that seems true in System Lord politics as well. The goa'uld describe Ptah and Sokar as being brothers, and on earth they were the general primary gods of Memphis during the Old Kingdom. "

Jack knew if Daniel kept up Kennedy might very well doze off in the middle of the brief, "Sokar.... his death guard," Inviting Danny to correct him, which he predictably did. General Hammond shot him a knowing look.

"Necropolis Guards Jack. They have have heavier armor."

"Yeah the peach, ruddy red coloring. Chain mail doesn't stop bullets real well." Jack remarked, and Kennedy was back with them, which was good. "Most of the coloring though, thats a maker's mark according to Bra'tac. We see some of Apophis's jaffa still using it, but its the armor design itself, and its naquadah investment is really what makes it expensive."

... and what made it stop bullets... "So 797's blacksmiths."

"They've transitioned to iron working, Jack."

"Ok. I'll bite why is that important Daniel." They hadn't rehearsed this, not really, but they had talked about this... or stuff like this. Some of the details Daniel was probably going to drone on about would be newly gathered stuff from other SG teams, or things he had dug up in musty old books, but Jack was mainly playing dumb for Kennedy's sake.

"Because there isn't, wasn't, any reason to make the change. 797 had more easily accessible tin than anywhere on earth did during the bronze age. Their main population centers are all located near readily accessible reserves and they don't need to ship it across vast distances. There isn't any chance of a shortage, or it being disrupted by conflicts."

The colonel from the Pentagon finally stirred, "So you're arguing it was a political decision not an economic one?" Kennedy asked. He seemed skeptical, but Jack could understand why, or guess why. Daniel had touched on these sorts of things... misconceptions about bronze age tools versus iron age ones.

"There are limitations to what you can do with bronze as a metal," Daniel commented, "But for your average goa'uld controlled world, bronze tools are suitable for agriculture, mining, as well as artwork. There would be reasons to move iron technology, but on 797 the people there have so much tin that transitioning is an outside factor."

"The goa'uld."

"Specifically Zeus." Daniel agreed. "We're seeing it on other worlds where we know he's active. SG 7's report though provides other details about the goa'uld, about changes that we know about. Its not just 797, SG 3's routine follow on to 593" P3X 593 called Simarka by its natives, "is another where we are seeing similar, changes."

"593 was already iron age, High Medieval I believe you classified it as."

"Yes. Its the standardization though. ON 593, Colonel Makepeace's team noticed that the 'Chosen of Zeus', who are all human they're not Jaffa, use the term doctor in the medieval latin context. They're introducing the same mining techniques though as on 797. What we're seeing on 797 is the introduction, the melding of what looks like a combination with the early greek culture, with Zeus's much later Greeks, and Egyptian culture." Kennedy gave him the dead eye fish look, and Daniel gave Jack a warning look forcing a raised eyebrow in surprise, "So when we've been exploring Goa'uld involvement with Earth, Setesh, and also when Cronus's involvement with the protected planets treaty there were certain topics that came up."

"I am passingly," Kennedy conceded chewing on lower lip, "familiar with those reports, Doctor Jackson." He hedged.

"Well when he visited, we speculated that he might be tied to Sokar. Which he was but that was based off of associating Sokar with Hades, like how we think Seth masqueraded as Typhon while on Earth for a while. Now Teal'c had said that Cronus was responsible for originally banishing Sokar so there is an association there."

"Ok so recently the Goa'uld Zeus has reappeared. IN Greek myth Zeus overthrew his father and imprisoned him in a place called Tartarus, and that seems to have some basis in truth among the goa'uld. It seems however that sometime after losing contact on Earth Cronus breaks out of Tartarus and in turn unseated Zeus and imprisoned him, presumably in Tartartus."

Jack couldn't help himself, "Turnabout is fair play, Danny." He grunted, and Kennedy glanced over and shrugged in seeming agreement to the quip. Hammond didn't say anything, which really only further reminded Jack that the General was here to basically keep Kennedy in line more than anything else.

"That is probably true. However that is only part of what we're observing. Zeus's reference in his recorded holographic messages speaks of his 'older brother', and we know Sokar was actively move human populations from Earth as late as the thirteen hundreds, possibly later still. That would go a long way to explaining well certain things we're observing."

"Such as?"

"Swords." Jack quipped. Kennedy gave him a queer look. "Like medieval swords Kennedy."

Daniel reached beside him to his satchel and pulled out a dog eared thirty year old book, "Here colonel," he pushed the worn book over the table. "This is kind of sword we're seeing show up with Zeus's chosen. A very similar kind of sword that we see with Gairwyn's people on Cimmeria. Now admittedly yes this is a descendant of the Roman spatha which we're relatively sure archaeologically was celtic originally."

"And there are celtic goa'uld?" Kennedy asked.

"Right. Its possible there are other explanations. The Spatha takes its name from greek origin, but as a development its possible this is convergent development, but given linguistics I think we're talking about a medieval transplant population." Daniel was cut off with the wail of the klaxon.

"Colonel," Hammond rumbled standing to, "With me."

Jack was already up as soon as the gate alert had started. The nearest scheduled activation was a few hours away, and was just the Alpha Site's scheduled check in. Siler's voice came in over the intercom, "General Hammond, Gate Room, we're receiving Bra'tac's IDC."
--
Commentary: Just as an aside, we are in Season 4 now roughly its march of 2000. That is roughly because s3 and s4 dates run into a number of problems, particularly because we know Jack spends a hundred days stranded on Edora in Season 3, which as I've said that presents a problem. Now what will probably happen is that while Wednesday will be a normal update for the main jumpchain thread, (and a standard update will go up Friday here), the main jump thread will sometime this week probably get an MCU jump snippet update. Probably.

 

[NakedFury]

So far all they are seeing is the technological leap but they still have zero information on who it actually is?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Crossroads
In the east where morning begins
[Timestamp Spring 2000]​

The briefing room was small and cramped... really reflective of the fact that this facility had been constructed during the early cold war originally with secrecy and security in mind. They thirty storey underground give or take after all... and he was referring to a dog eared book printed probably a little after Cheyenne mountain had started construction.

Swords weren't the real problem though. Daniel Jackson picked up the clicker and navigated the slides forward, and the roughly half of the SG team leaders quieted down. If this had been a few years ago Jack would have probably had had to come up here. "Zeus by all indications seems to have a collection of experts. We're talking educated, literate humans handling most of his civil engineering programs. They are involved in military activities, but more as auxiliaries. Police roles, but the more important development is we're seeing them issued with armor that has been invested with low purity naquadah alloy plating."

There were some groans. "What about the lizards?"

Sam glanced at him. Daniel knew that Hammond wanted everything to get covered, and he wasn't supposed to get side tracked. "Uh, yes, I will get to them in a moment. This armor is roughly comparable in purity to what Teal'c and the serpent guards were issued at the time of Apophis's incursion into the SGC. Its not quite as naquadah heavy as Bra'tac's armor but it arguably better designed." He gestured to the kind pigeon breasting effect of the plate protecting the pictured greek man's torso... it wasn't Maximilian plate by any means, but it was better than links of mail joined together. "As you may remember Apophis's personal Serpent Guard had armor that would protect them from our guns, better than lesser," From the front row Jack raised an eyebrow, "Lower ranked Jaffa, well Major Carter says that's because that was some kind of low purity naquadah alloy. It might even been a product, scraps of some other industrial process they reuse to make armor. We're not seeing this with the, what most people are calling Unas armor. That's purpose built, intentional. The human armor here is naquadah invested, and presumably expensive as a result, but is in a different design than we're used to seeing. We are seeing it proliferate though."

Not quickly by any means. Most of the Jaffa who bore Moloch's mark of sun and crescents still wore the more common armor that was nearly universal to all Jaffa of means.

"Come on Danny get to the good stuff." Ferreti urged. "I heard the lizards had TERs, what's that about?" SG 2's CO asked.

He flipped slides if a little reluctantly to one of the six foot lizards. They weren't Unas, Daniel knew that because... well they'd met one of Sokar's Unas as well as Chaka's tribe to consider. For most of the galaxy who had never seen the first hosts to the goa'uld though it was understandable to make the assumption. "We have observed them equipped with TERs," As well as something that more ergonomic, more vaguely recognizable as in line with modern firearms ergonomics, "So its not inconceivable that they're intended to fight the Reetou. As I was saying given the protection their armor offers against staff weapons fire its not unreasonable to believe it would offer good protection against Reetou weapons."

If Daniel was honest the more pressing thing he would have preferred to cover were not the technical speculation about such things. That was Sam's bailiwick to be honest, he wanted to zero in on the fact that they weren't in service to Zeus but rather to the goa'uld's 'older brother'. There was also the fact... the differences in their architecture. He flipped some slides to show still frame video footage, as well as conventional camera snapshots. Some of it was distinctly Mayan, others were more broadly pre Columbian. It didn't mesh. It was out of place with the Greek and Egyptian architecture.

It was also just another piece of evidence of goa'uld involvement long after the Egyptian rebellion was supposed to have buried the stargate of the giza plateau. More than that though, never mind that Sokar had been relocating medieval Christians off world from England and probably northern France, but the pictures of clearly mayan structures were occupying space with bloomeries and water wheels. It was process of lifting up bronze age Canaan thousands of years to be like the Byzantine empire in many respects.

Sam stood up, and came forward. "Alright the general pattern of engagement we see is that the," She paused, "Lizards are equipped with plasma weapons, or the observed TERs. They're not generally observed engaging Jaffa, though it has happened. Their armor, we're relatively sure integrates a greater volume of communications equipment than what we've observed from Jaffa Guards Armor. The ability to communicate with starships in orbit, direct gliders, and alkesh onto ground targets or to signal the reinforcements via ring platform. All of this is probably a step forward from the Guard helmet, but is largely form fitting rather than the mostly ceremonial retracting mask normally used.

--
Oskyld had little interest in being seen on a day to day basis, which thankfully was not something unusual for system lords. His bigger problem had been in the whole sale purge of Moloch's underlords who would have handled much of the day to day Goa'uld affairs. Zeus was much, much more keen on being a public presence for the humans to look to, and that freed him to see to that matters of industry, and ultimately the fleet.

Of course it wasn't as if Zeus was directly overseeing the uplifting the worlds. He just had had several centuries to implement a standard system of weights and measures for things that most goa'uld simply left to local human, or jaffa rulers. Having a universal system applicable throughout the entire empire was something that was great, especially since as a system it was entirely within the technological capacity of Stennos. No real 'high technology' was involved, and thus it wasn't likely to get more than a second look even if anyone noticed.

No really if there were going to be issues it might be literacy, and literature, and room for academic debate and experimentation. Those were rare. Yu Huang Shang-ti had used a consistent system since the spring and autumn period on Earth with only minor changes. If anything those changes with their greater inclination towards educated bureaucracy would have been the bigger concern to the goa'uld. Yu ruled over a stable prosperous realm that wasn't inclined to come over its borders lightly so Ra had let the matter lie.

Ra was gone now so there was no one to try and push limits on literacy, and that meant Stennos's population could be used to facilitate public works programs to while also using their world as a template in many respects. It was also something that could be delegated to Zeus's chosen, and then leave it to them. That left him time to digest, and process through the source of the technology of the goa'uld... and in the last six months he had been busy.

Simarka's human population had been relocated there, at least so far as he could pin down circa the thirteenth century. That had probably been when the last goa'uld visit had deposited a final batch of settlers in an event, but at the earliest colonization of the planet had begun perhaps in the eleventh century, and he was skeptical on that. Even so that was nine hundred years of settlement, but more interestingly was that it was after the peace of Tonsberg, and the goa'uld who had done it had not seeded the planet in the vicinity of his native pantheon, or with humans from that pantheon's usual population.

Simarka was located relative to the Hindu orientation of space, but not quite within 'touching' distance of Nirrti's domain. It was however relatively close, especially with more modern hyperdrives, and that was really why he was here. In terms of borders it was too close.

The golden orb twittered rapidly. Nirti, prior to her bonehead maneuver, would have been the nearest system lord to this side of his border. With her having been removed from power it had left her domain in something of a mess, which was a problem since her domain bordered Cronus, and Apophis both.

It was Apophis who was the problem. It was likely his Ha'tak they were expecting to meet, and expected the hyperspace eddies... the gravitational disturbances did turn out to be a flight of Ha'tak. The only one they really cared about was the anamoly of the three ships. From the reactor signature it would have been faster than the two Standards in its flight, which was interesting. On visual inspection it was clearly different as well. Its consorts had clearly been constructed by Apophis's shipyards probably before Ra's death, and had undergone a series of refits to improve speed at FtL They had been seeing those for months of course, over a year really.

Such vessels were superior to the quality of build Moloch had adhered to, but inferior to those of the Ha'tak of Heru'ur seized over Cimmeria. That was interesting, though seemed largely a result that Heru'ur most likely had a shipyard which if not actually Gate builder in origin, was built much closer to spec. It seemed unlikely that Heru'ur was expending much more in terms of naval budget than his uncle, particularly during the Pax Re.

No the anomaly was the center ship, and its markings confirmed it. "Delmak." He remarked. The initial round of refits to Moloch's Ha'tak would have made this a mostly fair fight, but that wasn't the point. He was commanding the flotilla from one of the three Ha'tak he'd taken from Heru'ur, the higher quality of build insured that its reactor had been able to be improved to accommodate the much larger main batteries. They weren't properly speaking prototypes. While they had been improved with knowledge from the ancient's repository they had been in testing and slated for installation before Zeus had shown him the repository. "Open fire." He ordered

His flagship's duel batteries opened up from across the superstructure catching their opposite number with streaks of white gold beams. Their respective consorts opened up shortly thereafter firing the more diffused golden streaks that looked more like comets as they got closer to their targets.

The Ha'tak whose markings attested that it had been built at Delmak returned fire with a salvo that was more effective than those of its consorts, but not strictly speaking comparable to the newer guns that was good. It was however predictable. For the general improvement in quality, it was an iterative improvement... the guns were the 'same caliber' so to speak. He was interested, because there was nothing to suggest that whoever had built this had done so by improving quality rather than simply making a better copy of the original gun design.

He left the Jaffa to handle the launch of Alkesh, and Death Gliders to handle naval aviation. If the Alkesh were able to make it through they would in theory be able to attack the opposite's escorts, and knock one or even both out sooner. That result would allow the other ships in the squadron to turn towards remaining hostile elements. This was the first time designs he'd drafted personally had been used in anger in a capital ship exchange. There were already plans for larger ships to better accommodate the new weapons than simply retrofitting suitable ha'tak.
--
Commentary: This directly leading into the opening for June of 2000, concluding the largely SG1/C centric interludes of late 99 early 2000. This is relevant to their side of the equation because well changes in ships is something Earth witnesses, with Apophis in canon trying to build a new model Ha'tak based off of Sokar's research, but we'll get to that.

 

[SIDoragon]

I'm looking forward to SG teams making contact with Zeus and finding out he is just an underling.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Procession
June 2000​

Moloch had been downright abysmmal at record keeping, and unattentative at best to the matters of managing his domain so there a significant amount of work, and mismanagement to correct besides the expansions to the shipyards, even though that was the majority of what occupied his personal attention. To the best as that he could determine the goa'uld development that thad eventually resulted in the ha'tak had been... weird. It seemed as if the Goa'uld had started with the pyramid base and then over a span of a few centuries had just repeatedly surrounding superstructure with extra equipment, in this case an ever increasing number of cannons.

What was perhaps more interesting were the intermediary designs between the Cheops and Ha'tak, the so called 'Chel'tak' class or family of ships, had actually mounted larger guns than their modern counterparts. They had however been more expensive and finicky compared to the smaller 'caliber' modern cannons aboard ha'tak. SO the goa'uld had largely abandoned the Chel'tak layout, though some of those vessel's main battery designs had eventually gone on to be refined into the guns on the vanity projects that were system lord flagships.

It was still appropriate to call it stagnant. The modern Ha'tak had been designed by Ptah, and proliferated to the other system lords as a complete technical package. Other system lords could have made modifications for greater specialization, but they hadn't. No it was mainly the quality of manufacture and the degree of expense a system lord was willing to expend to construct his fleet that played the role.

The hologram occupying his attention was the after effects of the engagement. They hadn't been able to take Apophis's ships whole. That was in its own way unfortunate. The Delmak ship had been more sturdily constructed, evident on review in that it broke from Ptah's layout of the ship, which increased structural integrity. There had been nothing revolutionary in the design though whoever had overhauled the design had painstakingly poured both effort into it in terms of improving performance as well as simplifying production. It made more sense why Apophis was winning naval battles against other system lords. There was no getting around though the conclusion that the overhaul of the delmak design was largely a conservative one. It was a better ship, but nothing revolutionary.

At least that had been his initial conclusion on review.

"A cloaking device."

"Certainly what it appears to be." He agreed, which was according to traditional goa'uld wisdom supposedly impossible. A ha'tak was too massive to cloak. At a kilometer across and several hundred meters tall a Ha'tak was very large. The goa'uld had never been able to make Alteran cloaks work to conceal such a ship. The few experiments Ptah had publicly disclosed had all be failures that had destroyed valuable ancient relics, and the goa'uld were loathe to lose any to begin with.

They'd been concerned about this sort of thing for the better part of a year now. "Then the question becomes how did he actually manage it." They had known Apophis had them, but had no explanation as to how. The fact that his other two ha'tak hadn't had them... was telling. Had all of the cloak capable ha'tak been built at Delmak. The cloaking device was the only revolutionary feature in terms of design, and did explain some of the redesign, but it wasn't actually losing any other capacity... thus Delmak's shipwrights had been able to keep the price the same despite new capabilities... or at least that was his guess.

Still that wasn't really why Zeus was here. The Asgard's insight into practical ship matters were welcome of course, but there was another concern. Oskyld ran his hands over the machine, and series of droning tones began coinciding with the flashing lights.

The mind machine interface of the ancient technology was very similar to the goa'uld copies. It was crisper of course. The connection flowed more smoothly, and the Alteran system was better suited to the mass of information being transferred, but the difference wasn't as pronounced as in some other systems that the goa'uld had copied.


There was another round of flashing lights.

Oskyld frowned at the results. He had some experience with the remnants of Asgard technology in the crash on Stennos but those were glorified trinkets, this was different.

"What is it?"

He drummed his fingers on the console. It wasn't identical of, but it certainly did remind him of Luther's problem with trying cloning out... or the occasional patch work degeneration seen in attempts to clone mutants or other, "Just a moment," He ordered the 25th​ century drone to do another scan just to confirm it with the medical records it had from those decades. When Zeus had crash landed on Stennos five centuries earlier his body had been critically damaged or had been injured the battle and those injuried had made worse by the barely controlled reentry. There were a series of chirps, "The good news is your not in any physical danger." Not in the short term anyway. The one time amnesiac Asgardian was in surprisingly robust health, and he hadn't changed bodies in five centuries. He speculated that if anything that had helped. The salvaged Asgard database though suggested that for some time leading up to the battle the Asgard had been changing bodies significantly more frequently than they probably should have been, and the flash cloning new bodies probably didn't help. "The errors can be patched over in a number of ways." Which brought him to another question, "The Goa'uld sarcophagi is based off of Alteran technology," and there were next to no indication the Asgard had made any attempt to integrate those into corrections. The Asgard had lost the ability to reproduce conventionally a thousand years ago, "Regardless the most likely explanation is multi factor rather than singular. I think an over use of flash cloned bodies was only one factor. Your current body is well adapted to your environment, and there is little doubt given its physical robustness that you should be fine. The headaches as far as I can tell are a natural consequence of the data upload from the computer." Cataloging epigentic factors in Stennos's environment would be time consuming to say the least.

Zeus nodded, and blinked. "We will have to repair the damage."

"Indeed." He responded in a clipped tone looking back to the string of glyphs, "A preceding ancestor, ideally before cloning, or at the very least before the errors became widespread would be a good starting place." It wasn't the only one. Attempts to clone aliens with minimal understanding of their physiology and life cycle had been tried on more than one occasion by various super villains or government entities when those weren't the same thing. He looked at the corpse, which was preserved in an asgard stasis tube. Dead, but not decaying. Maintaining a dead body didn't require a lot of energy after all. "I'll start directing search parties to various alliance worlds," Not Jaffa obviously.... most likely his raptors. Thankfully the Asgard stargate database had been intact, and that yielded a much more massive number of worlds than the standard Goa'uld cartouche, or Heru'ur's cartouche, or Moloch's.

"You can fix this?"

"Yes." He paused, "You have a stronger immune system than most clone bodies would. You've been alive for centuries exposed to a wealth of epigenetic factors and the result in your immune system is in significantly better standing for it. I can tailor a mutagenic agent, and retrovirii package specifically to this body, but I'll need time." Zeus's existing musculature would help though, "I've already ordered a number of separate cloning methods to work on regrowing your, well that body."

Zeus nodded, "You do not believe it would be wise to attempt to restore it to life?"

... no. "No. I'd like to keep that as a last resort, I'd sooner recommend we try short term cybernetics than go that route, at least until we better understand how that physiology might interact." If they had more Alteran technology that would be different, but that was also why they knew what to look for.

There was a soft thump as Zeus moved off the bench he had been occupying, and reactivated his holographic shroud resuming human -ish appearance. "What about military matters, cybernetics would prove significantly beneficial to troops in the field."

"I agree. With Nirrti imprisoned by the system lords though," There had been a number of raids on her worlds, and while there was no denying she was a genius... he doubted all of her work had been solely unique. "Nirrti seems to have found either Alteran records, a living Alteran to learn from, or someone who learned from a living Alteran," This was the explanation he considered most likely, "And then found a series of Alteran devices related to genetic manipulation." Which of course legally speaking she should have announced to the other system lords... not that anyone was likely to be terribly shocked she hadn't. Her dicking around against Cronus was just as likely to have been what had really gotten her in trouble as her not sharing technology. Even so, well, there was a reason he was working to compartmentalize as much of his efforts as possible. The truth was as important in the long term uplifting human society in the galaxy was, in the short term he needed a military edge against the bulk of the system lords.

"That makes an alarming amount of sense," Zeus agreed. "Given her propensity for using diseases in warfare, we should exercise caution." With the exception of malnutrition most human diets across the galaxy were relatively healthy. The goa'uld had proliferated livestock across the galaxy alongside humans, and so had the Asgard as well. Of course for most of the galaxy draft animals were still dominated by slower oxen rather than horses. That might have sounded like an utterly minor change, but in term of practical yields... it was basically night and day. Never mind when they got around to introducing widespread fertilizer usage, and a variety of new world crops for a mixed four field system. "Thale reports that humans of the first world were investigating the forges again."

"I'm surprised, but also not."

"Yes, they seem to be focusing on the manufacture of arms and armor, rather than the lathes," Zeus responded, "That will not last forever."

He nodded. Getting everyone to a uniform medieval level of technology sounded easy on paper... and few of the goa'uld were going to complain about that. The difference of on paper versus reality though was that most humans in the galaxy were illiterate. That made implementing standards and weights pretty difficult. "Well the lathes themselves aren't new," Ra had been perfectly happy to allow lathes to proliferate in his domain since they had existed in Egypt. Yu Huang Shang-ti's realm used them to make metal tools, and weapons and no Goa'uld had complained. Cronus, and the rest of the broader Titanic-Olympian pantheon used them. They had existed on Stennos without Asgard-Zeus introducing them. The Tauri though were the most likely to recognize what a leap forward they represented for construction, and the economy. "Besides." The door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. "I'm more worried about Ishkur and Svarog."

"I can deal with Ares." Zeus growled, doing a pretty good approximation of the usual goa'uld harmonic booming.

"I appreciate that, but what you're doing is vastly more useful to the whole galaxy than dealing with one pain in the ass." Ares was making a nuisance of himself it was true, but there were non military solutions to that. Svarog and Ishkur belong to separate pantheons, dynastic bloodlines among the goa'uld... diplomacy was going to be trickier with them. Ishkur... Ishkur was weird... and his Jaffa were more fanatical than most. "You don't remember which Goa'uld lead the flotilla that destroyed your ship by chance?"

"I don't. Though I am certain that he perished after the engagement. I thoroughly analyzed the debris field in Stennos several months ago."

It was kind of hard to argue with that. Asgard-Zeus's ship had fought ten goa'uld Ha'tak to mutually assured destruction, and his vessel had been considered small by Asgard standards. "I know, I am a little concerned someone back during the height of Ra's power feeling cocky enough to throw ten pyramid ships away like that."

"I must admit that the others may not know either." That was probably the case no one had come to rescue Asgard-Zeus. He'd been amnesiac for five hundred years, and given all that time was in no hurry to get back to his galaxy, or to reestablish contact. "Once we have something definitive though we will be able to reestablish contact and provide a great service to our people. We will also be able to act and bring order to the galaxy without needing to be constrained by specific treaty concerns with the system lords."

On Moloch's former throne world his shipyards were being expanded and rebuilt to new tolerances specifically to construct a heavier Ha'tak. Improved Battleship would have been the literal translation though 'Il' was being used as a diminutive. That was fine. In many respects Oskyld considered it to be going from say the Dreadnought class battleship to say American Standard type Battleships, but that was also a gross oversimplification. They were however designed for designed for dedicated space supremacy while being mostly improvements to goa'uld systems.

They were a stop gap. Enough of the debris from Stennos was intact enough to understand the power of Asgard weapons. Enough of the database survived to provide a lead even if not necessarily an easy path to replicating it. Now that Asgard-Zeus had his memories back though... they had leads on other things, including the black armor's origins. They were goa'uld copies of Alteran technology... better copies than one usually saw of the goa'uld. Someone had gone through a lot of effort to do set up that kind of manufacturing.

--
Commentary: We move to first of eight forges next, and that may end up divided into two sections depending on how heavy it is on revisions. Right now there isn't much that I feel needs to be changed.

 

[SIDoragon]

So is Zeus largely hanging out because he finds the new guy interesting? I mean, the Asgard have basically been forced into a MAD situation with the System Lords for centuries now, so having a new solution pop up is both interesting and valuable to them.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First of Eight Forges
The River Capital
(June 2000)​

The world he was visiting today, or at least this part of it was a semi arid expanse of terrain that reminded him vaguely of the Sudan. The world in question would have been what passed for 'developed' by Goa'uld standards. It had a population roughly comparable globally to Stennos, or to medieval Europe. It was unfortunately a largely illiterate population that toiled in bronze age agriculture and mining ventures in order to support themselves, which actually made the fact they had been able to sustain that large of population impressive. With the introduction of more 'modern' agriculture from Stennos the population would likely boom in short order. Not that he would likely be around to see the results of that, that was why there needed to be a more coherent state of affairs. That was why any theological quibbles could be potentially dangerous, but especially once he was gone.

Ishtar was waiting on the other side with a procession of mixed human and jaffa clergy. Zeus's handpicked experts had already started paving the roads, and Raptors had begun the expansion of the gate area. It was the river that was the more immediate area of concern... it was bluntly speaking a septic mess, unsurprising given its use as a trash dump. If it had just been urban waste, the by products of human, and animal waste, the by products of the tanners and dye makers it wouldn't have been nearly as much of an issue. The problem was the mining waste was going into it as well, iron, gold, as well as more exotic mining by products like naquadah or trinium.

In Amestris Alchemy had been uncommon enough that what his most likely course of action would be had been all but unheard of. It had proven useful there, but also in a variety of other worlds, including in support of the last alliance, and undoing the damage Nagash and others had inflicted intentionally. That development in the application of alchemy had been one step to its application in repairing damage caused by Apokalyptan invasion of Earth well over a century afterwards.

Still they were talking about a river that had been the site of a rapid urbanization for nearly the last three centuries. That roughly coincided with Shaq'ran's defeat at the hands of Apophis. That one of the more potent system lords hadn't laid claim to the world was odd, but presumably Ra's enforced peace had been done with the intention of forcing the Goa'uld to not simply to pay him tribute, but also to keep them fractured. Or it was possible that the system lords had insisted on a buffer zone to keep the next war from getting out of hand too quickly.

Whatever the reasoning it didn't particularly matter now. What did matter was preventing the current crisis from getting worse. It was true that Jaffa with symbiotes would be largely fine... the problem was Moloch hadn't really had a lot of those to go around. His return to practices of female infanticide were rooted at least in the fact that he didn't have the income to secure more prim'ta. That didn't stop Jaffa from being Jaffa but it made them largely as vulnerable to humans to common diseases like the storm of cholera and typhus currently rampaging through the city.

A jaffa even one with a symbiote could still be sickened by unclean water, it was just that their symbiote tended to be able to deal with that in most cases. Humans, and Jaffa without symbiotes were about equally likely to die from tainted water supplies as one another. It was one of the things he was going to have to deal with, and that was why he had a genetics lab. Not here obviously.

There were public worlds, like this one would be, and a handful of face worlds with greater orientation towards trade, but some worlds would need to be sequestered. The New standards, and the alkesh were incorporating things he had learned from that head grabbing thing, and the Asgard database, but they were still based on goa'uld technological base. Improved, but with room for improvement further.

--​

Ishtar knew that this world had been selected from a short list of potentials because it met most of if not all the criteria necessary. Most importantly it had the mineral resources and the population base to support the labor of shipyards.

If you had all of the resources on hand you could construct a Ha'tak in roughly a moon's turn. More practically though the process of constructing a Ha'tak required such a wealth of materials, and magic the fastest she had ever heard someone not commanding the massive shipyards at Soma-kesh was about three months. Moloch had never been able to construct a new Ha'tak in anywhere under a year. That of course had been in the face of often chronic shortages of Naquadah. The army had always been the first priority for trading with other goa'uld to purchase weapons, and of course no queen had ever been willing to abide Moloch so goa'uld larvae had always been exceedingly precious.

The latter wasn't something that had been addressed yet but the appearance of the Chosen of Zeus had dramatically resulted in decline of disease among Jaffa who had not been blessed to receive a larval goa'uld. It had also marked a similar decline among humans as well. That had been until she had gotten here, and had to contend with the massive waste polluting the water. The doctors were doing their best to treat the problem, but there hadn't been any other option but to turn towards the gods for relief.

There was a flash of white light and the river glowed. The Dragon had only clapped his hands and touched the river bank. It held that way for a few seconds, just long enough for her to turn her head enough to see that it stretched as far as she could see. It probably stretched the entirety of the river from its source to where it finally reached the sea. He snapped his glowing eyes towards one of the Chosen, "Make sure to show them how to build secondary and tertiary canals, and to dredge them."

Ishtar didn't understand the part about the canals, but then so much construction had been underway she had been unable to keep up with it all. She did suppose it was good that this was a product of waste and stupidity and not the malice of say perhaps the deposed System Lord Nirrti, or another goa'uld. The threat of a goa'uld incursion to this world though was limited largely to the prospect of a gate bound attack. High overhead were a small detachment of Ha'tak. Though it had taken over a year the slow progress of cataloging the realm had begun to morph into the herculean task of organizing new provinces. Given the efforts being expended here in time, and manpower this would likely be the capital of a new province. The fleet above certainly had suggested that before they had summoned the lord of the underworld.

The journey back to the upper reaches of the city was accomplished by hovering skiffs flanked by a small procession of mounted humans and jaffa. Ishtar was somewhat glad that they were on the low flying barges rather than a horse. The priestess wasn't precisely an adept rider, and more than anything hoped to avoid making a fool out of herself.

Some goa'uld, including perhaps whichever god had seed humans on Simarka, liked the idea of mounted warriors, but Moloch had not been among their number. The floating platforms that had been brought with them, and that they now road, though were gate traversable, and could be mounted with a variety of weapons, and were very likely being proliferated for the inevitable conflict against Apophis. There were any number of reasons why they would pursue a battle with the serpent god, but the most easily citable was that Apophis had lost significant standing in the years sense the doom of Ra. It should have been unthinkable with Moloch's domain as a base, but so much of Apophis's domain had been scoured by fighting, most recently against Heru'ur but then also by Sokarbefore. Apophis was no longer as mighty or seemingly unconquerable as he had been even a decade ago.

She looked down into what had been muddy brown before and now the water was clear enough to see fish swimming, and even the bottom in some places. It had gone from an ugly tepid color to a nearly cerulean blue.

"This will greatly simplify preventing any further outbreaks," The 'Chosen' remarked bowing slightly.

Ordinarily humans, even human priests, were not nearly this forthcoming. The closest she could think of the Chosen's brazen behavior was that of the human worshippers of the Asgard. In a particularly embarrassing instance two decades earlier Moloch had attacked a protected planet of the Asgard only for Tyr's berserkers to drive off the attacking jaffa in a nearly suicidal frenzy. They had demonstrated complete lack of fear in death, and Moloch had been forced to concede when the Asgard Ullfrikr had arrived with his warship. She had heard similar stories from other jaffa who had had come into contact with other Asgard protected worlds. It was the impression at least that the Asgard preferred the humans under their protection to speak frankly. "Will not the city simply continue to dump the waste into the river so that it will be carried down stream?" She asked the human.

"Yes, for the most part. The new canals will let us set up filters of sand and other materials to filter out and help us keep the river clean. That will insure disease be much less common." The Greek remarked. "It is a practice that Father Zeus insisted upon soon after his return nearly five centuries ago. It greatly prevents the spread of cholera and typhus in particular." She had seen what those diseases could do... especially given the lengths her heretical sisterhood had went to preserve the lives of infant female jaffa born into Moloch's realm. The problem now was not secreting the infants away, but what to do now that Moloch had been deposed. Protect them obviously. It had been the work of more than a quarter of century. Moloch's doom had in turn meant having to safeguard the Hak'tyl communities from rivals seeking to test the realms borders, but it also had meant facing the massive reshaping of her world into its new vibrant form. Heedless though of these concerns the human continued. "Also since the canals will train into secondary canals before moving into the main waterways the city will be able to extract some of the waste and dispose of it elsewhere before it would reach the main body. This will prevent stoppages, and reduce damage to the fisheries."

Goa'uld as practice did not micromanage. Moloch had wanted to make himself the center of any gathering, or celebration, but the process of labor was not only beneath him but beneath the warriors, Jaffa or human, who constituted his armies. Moloch's domains of yesteryear seemed thin and unproductive in comparison to the new order.

The small talk about the work was largely inconsequential. She would have considered it laughable to spend any amount of time discussing plazas, and tree lined streets. She dismounted quickly as they arrived, and made her way into the great hall. The massive basilica was truly astounding in size, and currently playing host to a great number of various humans, Jaffa, Unas, and indeed other servitor races. It was also interestingly enough playing host to a few minor goa'uld underlords who had warranted the honor of an audience in the Dragon's grove rather than the outright annihilation he had inflicted to the pantheon of Moloch. Even without the crowd it would have stood out from its surroundings given the deep purple it had been painted.

Perhaps it was simply the threat of that which had cowed the underlords, or perhaps it was some other magic that bound them to their oaths. The Unas venerated Sokar in the aspect of the Dragon, celebrating an ancient victory over the evil lord of the dead. The human raised basilica though highlighted other scenes from the equally distant past.

What was interesting was how little Zeus's chosen seemed to pay to the rest of the Olympian pantheon... apparently they had decided the best insult they could make was to ignore them given their betrayal of Zeus to his father. The inhabitants of Tana were a mixed stock of people to begin with having been taken from after the fall of the stargate of Memphis. How Shaq'ran had managed to claim so many tauri from Pelop's chosen stock was lost to history. Tana's inhabitants had been able to rebuild in part thanks to those descendants who shared much of their culture with the Chosen of Zeus.

Moloch had not been able to rule over it long enough to make any real impact in disrupting the mix of Greek, and Egyptian culture. Ra had been abundantly clear that some pantheons were more equal than others in the hierarchy of the system lords. Egypt might have been first among equals, but he had never forced Cronus or Yu, or Olokun or even any of the Celtic pantheons to truly abase themselves before his chosen people The pantheon of Canaan, and Akkad, and others though had been subsumed into largely subordinate roles underneath Ra's dynastic might.

Ra's heir was now in a pitched battle against his uncle, as well as Cronus. As if Ra's doom hadn't also meant that other System Lords, and those without the rank, were clamoring for bits and pieces of the carcass of what had once been the greatest empire in the known universe. Apophis had subsumed much of what remained of the Sumerian pantheon into the ranks of his underlords.

What was perhaps most interesting of course was that their expansion was largely focused on what could actually be secured by ships. Admittedly of course the Dragon's Hatak were endowed with much greater alacrity than those of Moloch, or even other system lords. It was still strange the center piece of securing the domain was naval power rather than the stargate from a military stand point. From a civil standpoint though, as this basilica demonstrated that was where Zeus entered the picture sending his Chosen to provide the practical matter of educating human and jaffa alike. This was probably most ideal because while all of the Unas were well read... they were also the demons of the underworld and having the eaters of sin trying to educate the populace was potentially problematic. Ishtar admitted it was unnerving to see the demon Noyan participate in games of strategy.

The military aspect of such expansion meant eliminating a host of minor goa'uld who were either legally independent of the system lords, or the elimination of a host of outsiders, or other rogues who had carved out small domains beyond the de facto influence of the system lords. During the peace of Ra those domains had largely served as buffer zones keeping system lords from sharing too long of a border with one another. Those semi demilitarized zones coupled with agreements to limit the size of fleets had insured that Ra had been able to keep the other system lords in line, and thus limit the amount of bloodshed. This had been the practice for about the last nine hundred years.

To that end Ishtar was reasonably certain that the eight provinces being formed were military districts to protect the core the system lord's empire.

Tana could hardly be a local capital, never mind planetary or provincial one if there were such problems as rampant disease. At the same time though Ishtar also knew that the reason for a variety of figures was to provide military instruction to the human auxiliaries. Moloch had never had military academies to train his Jaffa. That was a distinctly Hellenic practice, and a number of the surviving warriors looked down on it... or had at least until Zeus had arrived to assist.

It was one thing to lose a match against a demon. Such a trouncing at the hands of an unas was entirely understandable to a jaffa, but losing to one of Zeus's chosen... that had been a humiliation few of the former warriors of Moloch had wished to chance again.

The muscular olive skinned human nodded, "We've begun the process of clearing ground for the academy, but the doctors of medicine," as well as their staff and students, "are for now still working out of the garrison. It was far enough upstream that we didn't realize the extent of the water. Most of that portion of the city have access to springs, and wells."

Ishtar had surveyed the garrison earlier in the year. Shaq'ran had probably had it constructed to watch the mines rather than the city. The mines were significantly more productive now, but also had apparently increased the volume of waste material as well.

One of his companions saw fit to argue the point, "Slurry was already being dumped into the river, the expansion of the mines certainly didn't help, but outbreaks of cholera have been off and on for several decades, and that's been ascertained just from interviewing residents of the town."

There was some clamoring among different parties of the Chosen of Zeus as they prepared to argue amongst each other over the matter. This would have been an unthinkable occurrence a year ago, but now it somewhat normal, common even. The humans would argue over the details of what had caused a particular problem that they had been sent to address. It also wasn't as if her fellow Jaffa were any less bewildered by this behavior than she had been. Especially because the Dragon, and Zeus not only allowed, but generally even encouraged it.

There were limits to this encouragement of course, and this dispute quickly reached it. "Have you surveyed the mountain for any instabilities?" It was a question asked without the hint of threat.

Ishtar had only ever seen flash floods cause what was described to those present. The notion that mining would deposit vast volumes of dirt and debris that might then cascade as an avalanche down the hills into dwellings below was not something she had considered. It was described in such detail that she didn't really need the accompanying holographic images of when it had happened on other worlds in the past to imagine it.

The moved on to other matters, and towards what the planet would be doing in service to the wider empire. "Relocating the gate to somewhere with greater access to the river, would certainly make shipping goods on and off the world easier." Naquadah mined from the mountains near Tana would feed shipyards. It was unlikely that the world would do much in the way of shipping naquadah elsewhere, but it would be serving as a central granary in the event they needed to address food domestically, or to feed armies in the field.

The holographic map of space showed the sum of the galaxy. She had heard the rumors of course. Jaffa warriors were nothing if not incessant gossips when it came to tales of battle. Some portion of Sokar's empire remained intact according to the news. A powerful Goa'uld underlord had rather than declare himself a system lord in his own right continued to fight Apophis, and Kali. That was supremely unusual. Apophis in the mean time was forced to contend with both his rival and nephew as well. She had also heard that Apophis had burned a swathe through his old domain trying to ferret out traitors and enemies from those worlds. This seemed to be a particularly bloody affair, and dangerous given he was surrounded on nearly all sides.

She had been informed of the plans for organizing the empire. The capital province, and eight others each based around a central planet. She understood the reasoning for the size of each province it was to insure that the dragon's ha'tak would be able to swiftly respond to any incursion by hostile fleets. Tana was to become the capital of the River province, the first of eight forges. Heaven and Thunder were to be the last, and most distant of the original eight forges from the capital.

That was the subject they turned to next, the plans for shipyards to construct the basis of a provincial fleet that could respond to a localized incursion. Tana, and its province was in a region of space that had once been dominated by the pantheons of the Akkadians and Sumerians. It had largely come under the sway of Ra, and while Moloch had been able to expand when Apophis had destroyed Shaq'ran many powerful other gods still ruled nearby.

She didn't pretend to understand the delineations of speed for ships, only the practical volume of time it would take for each ship class to make the journey. A few hours from Tana would allow the Ha'tak to be based here to reach even outlying provincial worlds. It also would permit Ha'tak to be mustered to move neighboring provinces to repel stronger invasions, or launch invasions. Svarog could only practically launch incursions by stargate, but Ares was close enough that newer faster Ha'tak could reach this worlds in a fortnight.

The galaxy was changing.
--
Commentary: This is a relatively minor revision of this segment, because well it had already undergone revisions in the previous thread.

 

[Praecursoris]

Question. Where could I find the rest of the jumpchain to read? I'm quite interested in the use of the lizardmen of warhammer over jaffa. I also would like to read the aforementioned war you had in DC against Thanagar and Apokolips.

 

[Imperator Pax]

So is Zeus largely hanging out because he finds the new guy interesting? I mean, the Asgard have basically been forced into a MAD situation with the System Lords for centuries now, so having a new solution pop up is both interesting and valuable to them.

Click to shrink...

So Zeus has been Amnesiac God King for the last five hundred years stuck on a planet with no readily accessible naquadah and at the time of his arrival late bronze age greeks who of course think he's the System Lord Zeus, which is what shaped his identity having an equivalent peer able to fill in the pieces in this case insuring he got his memory back 'knowledge of the Asgard' is a major thing. He's also sufficiently divorced from the Asgard base position by several several centuries, with significantly more investment in the planet he was stuck on coupled with this whole wider galaxy thing to deal with.

Question. Where could I find the rest of the jumpchain to read? I'm quite interested in the use of the lizardmen of warhammer over jaffa. I also would like to read the aforementioned war you had in DC against Thanagar and Apokolips.

Click to shrink...

I'm moving stuff over here piecemeal and not necessarily in order. The DC stuff should be on Spacebattles, but it wasn't very long and there were a lot of time skips and mostly centered around Earth gets invaded one too many times. Its loosely based off of Superman TAS/ DCAU (because it was early 2015 and we didn't have a DCAU jump yet never mind a Superman TAS). It will probably get expanded on at some point, but it'll probably be in the General Jumpchain thread when it gets brought over.

 

[Imperator Pax]

War Among the Stars ​

Raids were a part of the way the goa'uld had maintained an empire. It was ritual warfare in the a much truer sense than most hypothesized about earth civilizations. The goa'uld were detached enough, and had under the Pax Re kept in line by those who remained detached, to maintain the ritual aspect. This was mostly a game to the participants, even to the Jaffa generals. It was less about killing the enemy warriors so much as winning standing and acclaim. It was about status rather than achieving a modern military objective.

Which during the Pax Re when both the System Lords all agreed to largely maintain the territorial status quo for the most part had made sense. With Apophis running around bombing planets from orbit, often his own worlds, or worlds he had formerly controlled, it seemed rather ridiculous to still be fighting in the same kind of ritualized warfare... but Oskyld supposed that was probably why most the goa'uld were shunning Apophis even if they weren't directly fighting him.

Of course that was with good reason given the news from Chulak, among other worlds. Apophis had resorted a degree of heavy handedness that had long since crossed what was socially acceptable for 'proper' system lords, and it was just now beginning to have visible economic consequences. Without Ra around to reign his brother in there was no way to stem Apophis's vengeful excess and thus most the goa'uld of standing had elected to refuse to have anything to do with the rogue System Lord... but Apophis was still considered a System Lord. Apophis was in violation of conventions on decorum but there were other problems to be had.

Oskyld had initially considered this incursion to be the Reetou, even as he felt his flesh ripple and prick at the heat. His eyes flared into the draconic slits, and lightning boiled from his fingertips exploding through the intervening space. Technically speaking he could have used the goa'uld hand device, but his was currently disassembled in his laboratory. Today he shouldn't have needed it. The blast of lightning carved through Svarog's raiding party on the other side of the the ball field. He had been opposed to the design this close to the stargate. No small part of that had been getting confused for some meso american death god, but the raptor of football was one of their few non military past times. So he had acquiesced.


Speaking of the saurians there was a grunt as a six foot lizard dropped down into the dirt from one of the rows of bench seats overlooking the field. The lizard craned his head raising the plasma, what the Raptors translated as 'Star fire', rifle. Rifle was somewhat of a technical misnomer it was more akin to an explosive burst of a staff cannon than it was a more ergonomic, or at least handy, Ma'tok. The prospect of equipping the Raptors with energy weapons though had only really begun a few decades earlier, and it had only really hit its previous peak against Apokolips. That had been less than half a century ago, and in all likelihood the Raptor March here would quickly exceed that one in size and complexity due to the realities of scale. That was going to be a problem theologically in short order.


Jaffa scattered as blasts of plasma rained in and around their few dozen strong number. Svarog was treating this like a game... for that matter this might not even been ordered by the other System Lord. There was a clamoring as Raptor uhlans exhorted cohorts into position defending the valuable shipments of trinium on the hover platform.


He looked across the field with its slowly recovering crowds moving to address the wounded. Most everyone had gotten to cover as the slavic vikings had made their way through the stargate area and proclaimed themselves. If they had opened fire first there would have been more casualties, but that wouldn't have won them as much acclaim in either life or death. They had come through the gate and announced themselves. A habit that was becoming less and less frequently observed by goa'uld as they vied for increasingly greater position in all of the chaos.


Svarog though was still playing at counting coup for the most part. Maybe that was okay.


Right now the goa'uld were watching the massive three way fight between Apophis, Cronus, and Heru'ur. All of whom had according to various reports also abrogated the last of the strategic arms treaties put in place by Ra. Interestingly it seemed someone had destroyed Apophis's own prototype improved Ha'tak. Implication was that the responsible party had been the Tauri, but the method was the more concerning factor. He'd been wanting to avoid making the developing society dependent on magic, but without more information he'd begun ordering a variety of groves, and roads built in specific patterns. None of those were being done near the stargate as the shipyards weren't anywhere close by, unless you were using the ring devises. There were precautions installed on ring transporters of course beyond the simple panels the Goa'uld normally used.


The truth was having to contend with the status demonstrations of various goa'uld, and authorize similar ones though was quickly becoming tedious. Especially given it had taken several months just to pull Moloch's excuse for shipyards apart, and never mind putting them back together. It wasn't as if they could have used Stennos anyway. The Goa'uld Zeus had abandoned it by all indications because the easily accessible naquadah had all been mined. The planet was therefore not very useful for starship construction even if it had had shipyards, and it didn't.


"We have reasserted control of the gate."


"Good," He was getting to the point where even if it would have looked suspicious to the his 'fellow' system lords he was going to start emplacing at least goa'uld built fortifications around the gate. Deployable so called 'staff towers' maybe. It would be vastly less suspicious than something completely unknown to the goa'uld.

It would have been easier to justify if this had been a Reetou incursion. Ever since they had started pushing into Nirtii's domain conflict with the Reetou had been increasingly frequent... of course that wasn't unique to them. He knew both Kali, as well as her ally Bastet, were having similar problems... and he suspected that Cronus was also dealing with the same. Whether Ares was having the same problem was unknown. It wasn't as if they didn't, all of them, have other problems to deal with.

Still that this was just Svarog or one of his generals playing the game had its own benefits. "Transport those to the shipyard immediately." Noyan ordered to one of the uhlans. The junior officer bowed and clapped his fist against his armor. The trinium was a critical component regardless of how effective structural integrity fields could be made. The metallurgy and of course the expense in its use had been a key factor in limited goa'uld shipbuilding. It was actually a limitation that effected several areas, and the goa'uld unwillingness to pay the expense had meant that they'd maintained the less expensive status quo.

--
There wasn't a point in trying to make the move to orbital shipyards. Quite frankly most of the reason to go to orbital shipyards were nixed by the sheer reliability and power to weight ratio of even bog standard goa'uld anti gravity systems. Those made building inside a gravity well of a planet no serious problem, and being able to build on a planet's surface made it much easier to move equipment and material, especially the latter, to the yards by much much lower technology than theoretical maximum that the goa'uld had available to them.

No the real change in the expansion, really the whole sale gutting and overhaul, was in the surrounding infrastructure. This wasn't like the London shipyards along the Thames being rebuilt during the early modern period to be more orderly or less prone to catastrophic fires that change was more stark than that.

To support the hover capable barquess large extensions of horse pulled tramways had been constructed stretching miles to warehouses. They would likely eventually move to electrified rails potentially skipping steam engines, which existed on Stennos, all together. On Stennos of course they were using wooden rails, were these were steel.

There were barracks for jaffa, and humans, but for the most part labor was a matter of supervising moving material from one point to another, up until you reached final fitting out. That was really when craftsmen and carpenters and others came into see about internal decor, state rooms, bunkrooms and the other trim. These shipyards were going to have to be responsible for providing the ships to establish the garrison fleets of the other eight provinces until each of the eight forges could be brought online and begin producing ships to bolster their own defenses.

It created bottlenecks for transporting naquadah, and trinium to build improved ships, but the real delay was in having to contend with the spillover from other conflicts in near space. The last thing Oskyld wanted to contend with was having to have Ares potentially come over the border at the same time as Apophis and embroil him in a three sided fight with everyone shooting at one another, but the other problem was in the refugees, and rebels displaced from Apophis's domain into the area of space nearby that didn't actually belong to those who held the rank of system lord. That placed the world which comprised the Forest Province as the most likely front he'd need to defend.

Oskyld waved a hand at the holographic display even as the golden sphere floating beside him chirped to announce that the launches had begun. The usual Goa'uld Ha'tak was a golden pyramid with black out superstructure. Zeus had wanted to have the pyramids themselves be painted white, which would probably for the fleets that would defend Stennos assuming that when those came online they were still using the standard Ha'tak profile, which was likely. The trio of raising kilometer breadth warships were enamel dark red clay like in their coloring. Their superstructures conformed to the standard shape and structure of the Ha'tak, but that was a factor of expedience in need the ships now rather than in six months when his new 'standards' began wide scale production in the 'new year'.

The reactors, hyperdrive, and shields had been redesigned, which had added months to the time frame. Later flights would likely go to the larger dual mount plasma cannons used on the ships he had taken from Heru'ur and retrofitted. For now though superior power generation made them more effective in naval gunnery, and offered superior protection through more effective energy shields. They were an iterative improvement not a revolutionary one.

The larger form still visible in the swirls of dust from the lifting off of the smaller ships was different. The outer superstructure fused seamlessly and completely around the wider pyramid base. It would be incompatible with the standard goa'uld planetary landing platforms but then that wasn't a design requirement. It was intended to be a dedicated command and space supremacy platform intended to provide superior naval gunnery. It was the second ship of its class, the third after the prototype vessel, all of which were currently in the yards here.

--
Commentary: So one thing to point out is that due to the way travel works SG teams like the one under Colonel Makepeace has been able to wander around planets like Simarka world pretty unhindered. Thats normal for worlds that aren't regional capitals. Don't cause trouble and for most part no one cares. In terms of security on a capital world, or any major world that's different.

The usual Tok'ra scheme of lets infiltrate a goa'uld court doesn't work as well here, or Ashrak for that matter when most upper echelon security is conducted by Saurains who are actively looking for cloaked opposition like Reetou or the like.

There was also supposed to be an Ishtar perspective sgement with this one, but probably next update assuming we don't move into the SG1 'Curse' mini arc

 

[Imperator Pax]

War Among the Star (2)​

Ishtar had come from the market which had been busier than she had ever seen it, even after the largest conquests that Moloch had ever managed. Tradesmen and merchants of every craft and good clamored along washed cobblestone streets... and with them came news.

The clamor of Mesore's beginning, and of the approaching new year marked a mounting disconnect from the past. A century ago all of this would have been unimaginable. Moloch's death was a more tangible real feeling change than even Ra's destruction a few years prior. The death of the supreme system lord was not something she had witnessed. She knew Ra's domain had been sundered with its god's demise, after all Moloch had avariciously looted and plundered worlds that he had no hope of actually holding on to.

Having had first hand witness to Moloch's atrocities Apophis had always from a distance seemed a mild System Lord by comparison. Perhaps part of that had been the moderating influence of Ra, but now word from a hundred worlds was plentiful of the course of the war spread between Serpent, Falcon, and Time. They were not immune. There were border skirmishes between Serpent and Dragon, and what would have been normal in more ordinary times the daring of Ares's Jaffa.

Then of course there were the struggles against Reetou, an unknowable typically invisible race of giant bettles. That though was a conflict of the Unas. The Raptors pursued the verminous invaders with gusto, shattering their carapace whenever they found the fiendish creatures treading upon the land. It was a conflict of demons and one her fellow Jaffa were if not content at least lucky that they did not have to focus on. Unfortunately as Zeus laid claim, in his older brother's name, to the worlds of Nirrti more and more of the insects scurried out. Not that they were the only ones facing them, the word from the Jaffa of Bastet and Kali spoke of great hordes of bugs.

The prosperity that filled the plaza though was new, but didnt cause her to forget the effects of Apophis's violence, and usurpurious chaos. If anything it forced it into the forefront of her mind, because there was abundant word of the atrocities of the serpent god, and of the multitudes displaced from what had once been safe and indeed prosperous worlds like Chulak. That had caused its share of envious eyes to turn towards those with newfound prosperity.

That created problems here, as well as from the outside looking in. During Moloch's reign the prospect of poverty had seemed a strange concern relative to simply ensuring the survival of the next generation of female Jaffa. The prospect that someone would be desperate enough to launch attacks on her sorority's outposts were galling, and dangerous. The Haktyl had been established to secret away as many girls from being thrown into the fire after Moloch had reintroudced the ceremony decades earlier.

Ra had never intervened and put a stop to it, but it had not effectively addressed the problem to which is tried to address. Moloch had no more than a meager supply of primta, of larval goa'uld, as he lacked a queen of his own, and as a result could only supply replacement symbiotes to warriors infrequently. The practice of stealing symbiotes from dead or even dying enemies had been far from unheard even in the limited wars of the Pax Re... but now there was a mounting desperation.

Her sister's hurried babbling quieted at the flare of light erupted around them. There were no rings around them only the light, though she knew the great barque possessed them. The vessel was one of the new motherships, and its sibling sat also amongst a field of stars surrounded by the smaller Ha'tak of the traditional design, but in their new colors.

The holographic image of Zeus appeared. "I will reinforce the Forest Capital with the ships available."

From the dais the Dragon nodded, "I don't believe Ares will cross the border. Attacking during a truce he sent him would be foolhardy." Zeus quirked an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his olive skinned muscular chest, "Foolhardy even for him. He has avoided significant naval conflict thus far, and given the stretch of space we are sharing a border with Apophis."

"I will deal with the snake if he comes brother. Rest assured on that."

The Dragon nodded. "Noyan you have the helm, lay course and take us from orbit."

The Raptor priest bowed and the great warship glided away from the crescent of the world below, and then accelerated into the blue ocean of stars that was hyperspace
--
Oskyld had seen this sort of ... mess ... mess was a good word before. He could guess why during Moloch's reign that this kind of slapdash construction would have been used. He made a mental note to borrow some of Zeus's chosen to supervise carpentry, and what not to turn this into something approaching sanitary at the very least. Only part of the mess could really be blamed on the Rebel Jaffa K'tano. The state of the planet less so.

Ishtar seemed unusually fidgety today... or perhaps it was specifically this planet. Haktyl wasn't a provincial capital. It was located within one of the eight provinces ringing the capital district established over the last year. As a planet it was located on the fringes of moloch's domain. It was reasonably accessible by Tel'tak, which posed a potential security risk... or would have if the rebel jaffa had ships, which didn't seem very likely at this point. A concern for the future though... especially as parts of Nirti's fleet were unaccounted for, and her domain was close enough to be a potential problem. That had been part of the reason for creating the provinces as they had. Each provincial fleet could respond to an incursion allowing a small number of ships to respond quickly, but without having to put a Ha'tak in orbit over every planet. If they received some indication where Nirti's missing ships had ended up, then they could deal with them, but for now there were other things to deal with.

He waved a hand, and the mono eyed floating golden drone banked to his right. The goa'uld claimed to be gods. That was fine. He'd killed alien gods before. Oskyld had also held, on Athas, the mantle and title of sorcerer king, which allowed him to grant divine magic to his vassals. Not that... he'd done that here to any besides his Raptor Exarchs, but given this mess... he was probably going to need to. "Its ridiculous that they're so desperate to attack here." He muttered as the 25th​ century drone gained altitude to funnel information to him. The drone chirped in agreement, and whirred to beckon Ishtar a bit closer. "I will allocate you the funds, and borrow some of Zeus's experts to oversee renovations."

Haktyl was... even calling it an agrarian world was probably overstating its development. Calling it undeveloped was an understatement in itself. Haktyl wasn't even properly an agrarian world, and it was in no real way unique to the worlds which had been a part of the region of space claimed by Moloch. That was actually the most useful facet of it.

"This planet is not very valuable."

"The planet is close enough to be protected by the Forest Fleet against enemy incursion." Or at least any fleet incursion likely to be mounted. Apophis was getting desperate his bombardment, and sack of Chulak and several other of his former worlds had turned into a general behavior of laying waste to worlds he attacked that belonged to Heru'ur and Cronus. They were not the actions of a rational general, and suggested desperation. "War is coming. If K'tano feels he can mount these attacks others will also make such a choice." Ares has proposed a truce a week earlier and had been sticking to it as Apophis's fleet had made themselves more visible on the border, "Vulnerabilities must be addressed, and you have enough of a population settled here to warrant this. Your orphans, yes you can make the appropriate investments to the planet." He replied in response to the temples being already overburdened with their new and mounting responsibilities. "It is doubtful that this planet will ever supply meaningful quantities of Naquadah, and that is acceptable." He glanced to the rows of ger, and tents, and more ramshackle wattle and daub structures. "The stargate will have to be moved, and while my raptors see to the fortifications you can address more permanent housing, and care for these children."

Ishtar swallowed even though her mouth was already dry. This was not how she had hoped to spend the day. She had expected just to have to report the attack, and if anything she had hoped that the task of reviewing the shipyards and the installation of the new cannons he had created for the growing monsters taking shape... that it might take more time. She would have preferred to have had the leeway to put the report together without oversight from the System Lord.

When Moloch had commanded the sacrifice of all female newborn Jaffa it had been a different time. She knew that if they were ever discovered death would likely come after countless indignities and degradation at the hands of the fire god or his torturers. Still she and her sisters had done their best to spirit away as many of the children over the intervening decades in order to spare the girls the fire pits... and they had survived until the Scourge god had sundered the Cannanite Fire god.

The Dragon's gold eyes continued to sweep the ramshackle housing she and her sisters had been able to construct, or procure over the years. "My lord?"

"You may appropriate funds, and laborers to clear the woods, and raise more permanent housing, and schools for the girls." The Dragon repeated. "You would do well to plan for expansions in the future." That was all Sokar had to say, and realizing she hadn't... that certain doom wasn't immediately coming she breathed... they would still be going to war. There would be innumerable orphans even if the devil chose not to attack, but he was... that much was unavoidable.

Ishtar sighed even as the system lord withdrew to the cloister of Unas who had accompanied him. The massive crocodilian heads sweeping side to side searching the air for sin to devour. She heard a noisy exhalation from one of her sisters as she let out a constrained breath.

"I am surprised."

"Yes." She replied. "I still do not believe that symbiotes will be readily available."

Moloch had been loathed by the other goa'uld. Even if he hadn't been it was doubtful any Goa'uld queen would have tolerated him. They were few and far between. Apophis's newly matured queen Amunet had been a great boon for the prestige of the Serpent Lord, and her loss at the hands of the Tauri an even greater blow to his status. "I have heard he has made overtures to the System Lord Morrigan though." Morrigan was the guardian of her mother the Goa'uld Queen Danu who was the mother of many of the Celtic pantheon.

"I do not believe," She began with a slight shake of her head, "it has progressed to the point where such talks have yielded anything." Ishtar replied, though she was curious as to where the fresh symbiotes were coming from. It was a small supply, but compared to Moloch's time where after the death of Ra his jaffa had been in some instances having to take symbiotes from dead or defeated enemies it was something. "I know the number of available symbiotes increased when Zeus returned."

"Nirrti did not," Or was not known to, "possess a queen of her own."

"I am merely observing that the number increased after that. It may not be related." It was not such a number of course that other goa'uld might have noticed... unless of course they noticed because Moloch had never been a position to see to such numbers.

Ishtar looked skyward.

They had come via one of the newest motherships. One of the Improved Ha'tak. It had a more rounded base. The superstructure, and pyramid fused towards the bottom, and the outer superstructure was substantively different in shape to the older Ha'tak. Besides symbiotes of course Jaffa needed other things to be warriors. There had been a steady increase in armor, and weapons beyond what had been available under Moloch's rule. It was a supply of weapons that had allowed the sisterhood to defend the settlement against the incursion.

--
Commentary: I will probably start 'Curse' next week. Quite frankly I should probably expand it and have it just comprise the July updates as a whole, but we'll see...

Speaking of updates... You may have noticed (or not, because who cares) this is Saturday, normally I update on Friday, AoE got updated yesterday... the alternate history thread I have in the NSFW section of the forum. Tomorrow, I will probably end updating Ghost Who Walks, my latest Battletech Story, and Monday I will probably post an update for MCU Jumpchain. Probably. Thats how its looking like its going to stack up.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Domain​

--
Oskyld waited for the light to fade and made his way into the more expansive than a standard Ha'tak's pel'tak of the warship. Nirti's experimentation had strained even his understanding of the biological sciences. He wasn't quite certain without her notes what she had been trying to do on some of her planets. It had been less of a problem to deliver retrovirri, and mutagenic components in conjunction with other means to largely avoid any potential problems, but it would bear watching. There was no point in trying to annex Nirrti's domain entirely though. Not from a territory perspective, a couple of worlds was one thing, but it wasn't worth the hassle to go for all of it. Never mind it would have been directly confront both Apophis and Cronus's territorial ambitions even as both warred with each other... and he didn't want a border with any of the deposed system lords other neighbors.

Nirrti though had been working with what had clearly been ancient technology. Technology she probably did not fully understand. Even if she did it didn't matter they weren't sure where such a device was, and it wasn't a priority either. Neither was, whatever it was that Olokun had found. The latter system lord was worth watching, but only as a precaution. There was a lot of space in the galaxy that was continuous goa'uld domains. A steady movement from one domain, 'connecting to that of another system lord or a minor goa'uld who was powerful enough to be freeholding. Of course there had also been the fact that Ra's domain had been the most sprawling, and expansive of any of them. A domain that had been separate from that of his nominal heir Heru'ur. There were also the domains that had belonged to system lords who had vanished but weren't confirmed dead. Of course in Ra's time this wouldn't have stopped an attack on their territory, but it had discouraged many goa'uld from attacking those domains, Ptah being the obvious exception, for the sake of conquest until after Ra had been dead. After Ra's death, Apophis been quick to more officially fold some of Marduk's surviving underlords into his domain and he wasn't the only system lord to do so.

Other underlords of the presumed deceased goa'uld including Ra and Sokar had underlords who continued to fight on in defense of their domains to some extent at least nominally for their overlords. In Ra's case it didn't even necessarily mean changing sides to Heru'ur, and Heru'ur didn't have the resources, especially not now, to force their compliance.

Apophis's territorial expansions after Ra had died had included formally annexing parts of Marduk's dominion in addition to trying to devour as much of Ra's domain as he could claim. Apophis's latter annexations put him very close to a number of Asgard protected planets, and also with the former effectively on the border with Moloch's former domain. Ares was in between the bulk of Cronus's domain and there were smaller domains scattered between space between with Ares having largely consumed Goa'uld Zeus's domain after the latter's imprisonment in Tartarus. That could potentially be a problem as well given the situation.

Apophis was the larger more dangerous threat, and his domain was on the other side of Imhotep's domain. They couldn't let this continue. Every time Apophis carried out a massacre Jaffa fled his domain for less secure ones, and that was no doubt swelling the rebellion.

"We have validated the message?" He asked finally.

"Yes my lord. Ares begs leave of the field to answer his grandfather's call to arms."

He had little doubt Ares himself had not written the message, but most likely Cronus had demanded he join him in battle against Apophis. Apophis was too erratic, and too reliant now on strategic bombardment to settle his problems. If this continued he'd likely burn his own war machine out, but in the mean time he was killing millions. "You may reply we understand." He had no intention of indicating that they might join Ares against Apophis, though if this kept on for much longer they were going to have to do something. He had hoped though that things might abate, as he needed more time. He had poached a couple of worlds formerly of Ra's domain, a few off of Nirti's, courtesy of Zeus's expedition, and a few here or there besides, but that was mostly to shore things up.

Cronus, and Apophis were too close for comfort... or more correctly throwing entirely too many ships into a meat grinder with one another. Not a fight he wanted a part of given his own reserve of Ha'tak.

Noyan bowed smoothly, "Shall I signal the fleet to make ready?" They did need to be going. With something approaching a government established that could defend itself, and be self sustaining there were other expeditions to mount. This was one more headache he could have done without though. Ares voluntarily agreeing to knock it off was good news.
.
--
He leaned back into the chair, as it reclined. The mind machine interface illuminated the local area of galactic space showing it in real time. Even now he could see the ships moving to redeploy, moving between star systems. Regardless of increases in production, and shipyards that would become operational this time next year it wasn't going to be practical to garrison every world. Not that he'd intended to, they would eventually move to second level provincial fleets, but the provincial capitals were the first line of defense, even though these sensors could have dispatched the fleet from the Imperial Core.

The worlds he had laid claim to though were ultimately enough to avoid any border gore. As strange as that might have seemed in a three dimensional context it provided the domain a near contiguous zone of control alonging the provinces that bordered the Egyptian and Greek Pantheons an ability to move freely.

More to the point it allowed secondary sensor arrays to monitor for cloaked vessels, because while tel'tak were concerning it was the risk of a cloaked Ha'tak, or squadron of, slipping across the border which would have been a real potential headache.

Apophis had after all committed himself to a multi front war, and showed no signs of backing down. There was a good chance he might come over the border in force, or at least make an attempt at it. There was also the question of Ares's truce being solidified, but if Ares was disengaging to aid Cronus against Apophis, well that would be for the best Oskyld suspected.

He needed time though for the naquadah mines to be improved. For vital mines to begin producing in significant quality and quantity to actually feed his forge worlds... and speaking of feeding agricultural reforms were something else he was committed to, because that was necessary as well. He wouldn't be here for the inevitable population boom that would come from superior agriculture, that would in turn improve the ability to people planets and expand mines. That would fall to Zeus once he was gone... that was the way things inevitably were. He could build the foundation, and hope that it was enough to stand there.

The problem was with the way system lords accorded themselves. He needed the defenses provided by his fleet now, and that meant always keeping an eye to see if Apophis intended to come across. Then of course on top of that were the bugs. The reetou incursions were largely localized in the vicinity of the Hindu pantheon's controlled region of space, but that was spilling over. It was not entirely unlikely that these were something the gate builders had meddled in their development, or perhaps that simply an attempt to safe face propagated by the System Lords.

Whatever the case was it was a ground conflict he had to contend with that was tying up an increasing number of his Raptors on garrison duty along a frontier that otherwise required for the moment at least little in the way of ships.

A flicker of light appeared on the star map. This was the great advantage of having a hybridization of Alteran, and Asgard sensors. "Anker," He called. The raptor, or rather the holographic projection of, appeared at the call. "I have what appears to be an Alteran hyperdrive signature in the vicinity of the Earth." He declared relaying the sensor resolution 'showing' a silvery whisp of a ship's profile lifting from the planet's surface, then making the jump from light speed as it cleared past the moon.

"I will pursue it." The prelate answered.

He waved aside the comment. That would have been desirable, but the drive characteristics were such that it was actually probably faster than anything slower than the ships he had taken from Heru'ur after their overhaul. He doubted that the Ha'tak assigned to the Wind Province's fleet. It did bear an investigation though, and if nothing came of it, well he was since he held the rank of system lord to go ask the Tauri about it... treaty obligations.

"The signal the ship has broadcast is another matter. It belongs to the Goa'uld Osiris."
--
Commentary: Alright July will most likely cover the events of the Stargate Episode the Curse. That may or may not start Friday, but it does mean we will largely be jumping back to SG 1's perspective and potentially covering the 'Eyes of the Gods' since Osiris was entrusted with one of those.

 

[Mastersgt]

Hope MC puts more effort into finding Niirti's device. I mean, an Alteran Genetic Resequencer? The things they used to rapidly evolve themselves? That is a gold mine. Never mind using it to fix the Asgard cloning issues.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Curse
Part 1
Chicago, Illinois​

If Jack hadn't been the sort of guy who had picked up reading conspiracy mags to laugh at them the news probably would have skated right by him. The conference Kathy had found him at before the trip to Abydos had been the last unsecure, non security clearance requiring lecture he'd given... and Ra had been dead for years now. Sure he'd spent over a year on Abydos, but after going through the gate for the first time he had basically left life behind except when he needed to request material... and such requests were done through the Air Force's own university system. That wouldn't have been something Steven could have traced, because well he was right, ... well in that nothing Daniel had written wasn't classified to high heaven.

If Jack hadn't read that kind of stuff for a laugh Daniel recognized he wouldn't have been able to make it to the funeral. He was lucky Hammond had been willing to make an allowance for SG 1 to take leave as it was. There was so much going on in the galaxy at large it seemed like a big ask, and the ask just seemed to keep piling up given that he had had to call Hammond. Truthfully he needed an entire team, needed Kathy to come out here, she had current security clearance and knew what to look for. There was a lot of material just left behind in the wake of Doctor Jordan's death, and he hadn't known where to start.

... and then there was of course the fact that there was going to be legal stuff to handle... probate from the estate at some point would come into play... but the 'accidental death' wasn't looking nearly as accidental anymore.

Not that that was necessarily the reason for Special Agent Hartigan to show up seemingly from no where... no that was probably fallout from the SGC using the red phone to come butting into the ATF's gig on Seth... or potentially worse the chance Jenny had friends in the Hoover building looking for answers. Still the FBI special agent showing up had only been after the Chicago Police had come to investigate the Coroner's body. Whatever this was it wasn't from General Hammond's side of things.




Unfortunately Hartigan had had to explain to the Chicago PD, with Steven in earshot, what his governmental pay grade was. That had been enough gobbledygook to get the the police step back, but finding out his college rival was working under governmental auspice... well Steven had flipped his lid over the 'hundred and twenty thousand' he assumed Daniel was taking home. It was more actually with hazard pay,

It was really kind of absurd that Steven was that upset about the money... even if because of his fit Daniel was kind of amused now that he made more money than Steven did... at least from the university. His college rival did have a book on the best seller's list.

"I had always heard college professors made good money," Hartigan guffawed after Steven Raynor had stormed off.

"He's getting a Porsche soon," Daniel replied. It certainly wasn't like Steven made bad money. Daniel glanced over to his own Jeep. If Steven was going to take Doctor Jordan's position well he'd be making even more money. Right now though he was more worried about why the FBI was on the scene so fast. It wasn't like it was the artifacts. He'd considered and discarded that possibility. This was beyond simple theft... if Jordan's death wasn't just a horrible accident.

"Compensating for something?" Hartigan asked, and Daniel felt a smile crack. The FBI agent pushed a coffee cup over and Daniel dumped the requisite amount of sugar into the drink to make it palatable. "I know a guy in the marshals with fancy taste in cars. Managed to get his 67 sting ray vette trashed on the job. Then again, he also said he was getting tired of it." He took a sip of his own coffee, "Chicago PD is preparing to rule the curator's death accidental," Something about bricks falling down the shaft, but Hartigan was clearly skeptical. "The ATF is chomping at the bit to get involved, but the lab explosion still looks like it was a gas leak. Two deaths though related to the museum certainly starts to look like foul play."

Daniel knew he shouldn't mention any missing items. Steven had said that the Osiris jar, the one with the goa'uld inscriptions, had been destroyed in the explosion, which was suspicious. It also probably wouldn't do to mention missing items since he'd been the one to carry the Isis Jar off to the SGC for examination. The missing Osiris jar, and ... also the golden amulet could have just been simple antiquities theft, but Daniel wasn't feeling it. This whole situation was off. "You don't believe in curses?"

"I saw that Mummy movie, I might have to take investing in a cat under advisement if that's the case." The agent replied, "ATF says they're going to bring some people in from another office to examine the scene again."

"Really?"

"I did say they were pretty excited." He paused, "This second death seems to have caught their attention."

Hartigan wasn't in the loop then. Whatever was going on was over the local office's head. Somehow or another Daniel got the impression the FBI and ATF were moving independent of one another and not talking to each other. That of course raised the question of really how much either government agency really knew. No, that wasn't right. Jack had been over this. He shouldn't assume that anyone knew anything. They might have had suspicions, but they would inevitably pretend to know more than they did in an attempt to ferret out information. If they knew something don't be surprised, but don't confirm it either. Jack had been over this sort of thing, and his explanations of this sort of thing were a lot clearer than the mandatory briefings the SGC conducted regularly.

Thankfully the FBI agent didn't know enough and had no indication of the importance of the second set of symbols on the two canopic jars. The basic hieroglyphics were one thing that were going to be an academic issue. The Osiris jar had supposedly been destroyed in the explosion, but he had no idea how the situation with the Isis jar would be handled. Presumably the SGC, or the NID wouldn't just hand it over to the Egyptian government.

"You said the police are ruling it natural causes."

"Yeah. Chicago Police are probably being pressured by the mayor to keep homicides down unless they can close the case. Chicago PD has no leads, whoops falling bricks totally an accident."

He heard a familiar drawl from the doorway that lead into the main body of the hotel. "Yeah, that sounds about right for Chi-Town." Jack, and Teal'c had arrived, and it looked like they weren't alone, but in particular they were loaded down... with what were probably additional equipment for searching trace naquadah, or for energy signatures.

"Daniel Jackson," The burly Jaffa nodded in greeting, "General Hammond believed you would do well with our assistance."

Introductions were made, and moved on from there, "Don't like the windy city colonel?"

"I was born here. My dad was a cop here. I got to hear all about it." Jack remarked and shrugged. "I think I'd have preferred being a firefighter than a cop, at least in this town." Jack hadn't confirmed it, but Daniel was pretty sure he'd fudged some details, like about his age, to get into the air force as soon as possible, only for it to turn around and not matter as he'd end up being accepted to the air force academy. Or something... base scuttlebutt was full of weird stories about people's past.

"Major Carter is still conducting tests with Doctor Fraiser, but General Hammond has made arrangements for them to travel here as soon as they are available." Teal'c stated, and then somewhat more grave than normal, "I have confirmed your translation as well."

Daniel watched Hartigan's head bob up in down at the last sentence. Teal'c didn't generally give off any indication that he was a voracious reader so most people didn't assume that on first impression... unless you had caught him in the library. Teal'c was a voracious reader of a whole slew of subjects now that it was a pastime he could pursue.

Jack interrupted all of that by putting a hard body plastic case on the couch. Thankfully he hadn't put it on the table, but that was only because the coffee was probably in the way. "This is for you Daniel, courtesy of and insisted by General Hammond." Oh guns... that made a regrettable amount of sense. "Really he insists."

Hartigan gave the olive drab case a side long look, but he probably had already guessed. The Agent nodded a bit and sipped his coffee. "So should we be expecting, I don't know DSS?"

Jack shook his head, "No, State will be involved, but," He shrugged.

"The CIA then." Hartigan shrugged, "I was going to say, the bureau has an anti antiquities smuggling database."

"That would be great," Daniel interjected ignoring the case Jack was still resting a hand on, "I will take access to whatever databases you can get me," If only because... because after Seth he really should have considered that yeah people probably had been selling potential goa'uld artifacts pulled out of tombs for centuries.
--
Commentary: Not much changes in this one, because what I am probably going to do is pick up with part 2 from Jack's perspective backstopping the content of the episode in question.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Curse
Part 2​

-
Jack should have known in hindsight that he wasn't going to actually get time off to sit back and relax. He didn't purposefully avoid Chicago... but he had made a concious choice when it came to retiring further west, and there had always been the lake house in Minnesota.... which yeah that had come out of his mom's family. The pager buzzing and Teal'c getting a phone call from Hammon calling them back had just resulted in a short hop from Colorado to the Windy City... not that it was all that windy in the summer months... just hot.

"O'neill?" Teal'c rumbled.

"Its nothing buddy." He replied standing up and moving to the Gulf's overhead compartment. How many people had run away from the draft? He'd volunteered to run away from Chicago. Daniel was too young to understand. Carter too she had flown jets in the gulf while he'd been enjoying the Republican Guard's hospitality. In 68 though Jack had been rushing to get out of town, and the Air Force recruiter had been all too willing to fudge the age issue to get him to basic in San Antonio. Three months later he'd been in Vietnam.

Chicago had been changing even in the sixties... and the city was different today in a lot of ways, but still had the same feel to it. The man on the ground waiting for them was between his and Daniel's age, far too young to have made it to Vietnam and looked exactly the sort to have ridden a desk from when he'd had his butter bar pinned on until the present. The guy was so forgettable Jack imagined he was probably good at his job. He looked more like a banker than a soldier, and that was how the air force liked its spooks. "The Chicago Police Department is still insisting that hte death appears to be an accident, Colonel." The major informed him. "The involvement of the FBI has not changed that. ATF explosives and arson specialists are coming in to review the initial death, but any determination of suspicion will be after their review."

"I understand. Have you received specific instructions."

"National Security sir. We have reason to believe that this investigation has national security ramifications, and that all ongoing matters of review are classified." Glasses responded, which would keep the FBI busy. It would be like trying to argue with a wall unless they filled out the paper work and found someone up high to sign off... and they would hopefully be done before the ink was dry on anything like that. It'd keep the suits running around for a bit.

Teal'c quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing even as they were escorted to the large blacked out SUVs that were thankfully not emblazoned with something as ridiculous as the USAF seal. He understood that Daniel was civilian contractor on the books and it was a lot easier for him to get leave for funerals like this. Jack understood Hammon yanking his leave for this, but he was a full bird colonel for god's sake doing that was going to raise flags if anyone looked. Teal'c was down as a civilian contractor as well people would look less hard at him... but if there was a snake involved in this... they'd recognize Teal'c as a jaffa. Well they'd cross that bridge when they got there.

The flashing police lights of their escorts did little to really cut down on traffic, especially as they neared the rows of brownstones surounded by CPD and cook county EMS. They weren't even the only black SUVs, but their plates, and the baby faces in the windbreakers marked those out as FBI, and if there was anything there... well they'd check tomorrow. Danny's hotel wasn't far anyway, enough that the police cordon actually encompassed it.

Danny was getting chummy with an FBI who was about Jack's height but with a build more like Teal'c and had probably played ball in college. A linebacker maybe? He sipped his coffee as they came in like ghosts, "Yeah. Chicago Police are probably being pressured by the mayor to keep homicides down unless they can close the case. Chicago PD has no leads, whoops falling bricks totally an accident."

Jack snorted, yeah same old. Town hadn't changed at all, he mused as they came into the hotel lobby. "Sounds about right for Chi-Town." He drawled moving towards them cognizant of the plain clothes OSI guy forming rear security. The guy's suit look was somewhat ruined by the Hechler and Koch MP5 hanging from its sling.

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c set his weather resistant gear case down, "General Hammond believed you would do well with our assistance." Hartigan, once the introductions had been made, probably assumed Teal'c wasn't service, or at least not US service... the FBI were big about linguistic studies and there was no telling how much was going to end up in a report somewhere after all this was over.

"Dad was a cop here," Jack replied to Hartigan's question, and then deflected that if he'd stuck around that he'd probably have preferred going into the fire department. Teal'c then proceeded to throw Hartigan for a visible loop as the conversation turned to translations, which thankfully Hartigan was assuming were of Egyptian. A field that Daniel having his translations check on... well linguistics wasn't a field Danny had a lot of competition in.
--
"IS the CIA coming?"

Jack shrugged, and Teal'c raised an eyebrow, but turn a page. "Well, maybe. There are some people I could call." Danny wasn't the only one who had spent time in Egypt of course, "If this is just a matter of theft then sure." That would be have been a nice break... it would suck for Daniel getting your faculty advisor friend blown up by some greedy assholes so they could steal what they thought were just rare trinkets... "I'm gonna send a buddy over there the gas leak report, see if they make anything hinky out of it," He doubted that they probably weren't lucky enough for this to just be a high stakes robbery. "We should be glad Carter took care of Seth."

"Indeed."

Seth did seem to be involved somehow, or at least in the prologue to this whole mess. Seth, Setesh had apparently gone off the rails at some point late in the Goa'uld reign on Earth and seemingly had ... well they didn't know enough when they got down to the specifics of what life in Ancient Egypt had been like. Mythologically it seemed like after the goa'uld had left there had been a divergence... or something. It was a mess, and it was a wonder that their ignorance hadn't bit them in the ass even harder than it had with Hathor. Geez, he didn't want a repeat of that experience. "Police say gas leak, and with the age of the gas mains it might be accidental." If they had any indication on what had caused the spark it would have helped, "But the bricks falling,"

Daniel nodded morosely. "Hartigan wanted to talk about... Steven, and Sarah."

"Not surprising, Danny." Jack replied, truthfully in Hartigan's shoes he'd have done the same thing, and he reached over the case, "Here," He lifted and put it on the coffee table. "This is courtesy of Hammon, and the general is insisting." Inside was an M9, which Daniel was qualified on, otherwise it would have probably been better to issue him out a more conceable Sig. "Keep the credentials with you." The last thing they needed was any trouble with the local police, but sticking Danny with a baby sitter from office of special investigations would thrown up even more red flags. Jack hated the cold war vibes this whole mess was throwing off... it probably wasn't the Russians, but given everything he wasn't prepared to eliminate the chance entirely.

"Do I really need this?" Daniel asked looking from the case to the small portable naquadah detector that they had developed from the Orbanian technological exchange. "I'm just going to sweep the collection for traces."

"You are unarmed Daniel Jackson." Teal'c pointed out looking up from over the top of his book.

"I'm just going to the museum."

Jack gave him the dead eyed fish look that he seldom had to use, "They found the tech who did the carbon dating on the amulet. Or the guy's body." He deadpanned, "The amulet that," conicidentally, "is missing." The one that was supposed to be ten thousand years old. "And we have no idea what that does, but that's three deaths." and Three was enemy action after all, but he left that unsaid.


Somewhat begrudgingly Daniel complied, and when he was gone Teal'c put his book down, "I believed you that you wished to question doctor Jackson regarding this Daniken person's publications."

"I do, Tee." He replied, but one thing at a time.

"And you also believe we should follow him."

"I'm worried yeah," Jack replied shaking his head, "On the other hand if there is goa'uld."

"He would recognize that I am Jaffa." Teal'c declared. "Indeed. This is true. Then we will remain here."

There was a chance that they might detect the trace naquadah in his blood stream too... which would have sucked as well. "Yeah, I'm hoping the Tokra get back to us about the jars." Jack remarked, though he was pretty doubtful they'd have anything useful. They'd come to them about Seth, and he had turned up on Earth, and well that was why they were in this mess to begin with in a way. Osiris, and Isis though hadn't been brought up even when Danny had brought up the myths about them in relation to koolaid guy. "I'm hoping its not one of Danny's college friends but..." It wasn't like they could put them through an MRI to be sure. If Carter got here well... she'd be able to tell but she'd also set off their alarm bells. So they were really waiting to see if the SGC could develop any actionable information, which was admittedly a longshot. More likely than anything was that if they could get a hold of the Tokra it would be so the Tokra could announce some more bad news. Right now Apophis and Heru'ur were both killing the shit out of each other's worlds... and it seemed like Apophis was losing. Jack felt that good news but there was a lot of collateral damage involved to Apophis being on the back foot... and the snake was probably getting desperate. Desperate snakes were even more dangerous than normal.

"Bra'tac has informed me that Apophis's war against Heru'ur goes poorly." Teal'c remarked, "His conflict has forced many minor goa'uld who are not system lords to choose sides. The other system lords are also involved in their own conflicts creating many disaffected Jaffa as a result of the blood shed."

Jack couldn't exactly say that was good. Daniel had explained at one point that 'primitive war' tended to kill more people belonging to one side as a percentage than 'modern war' did. Of course those papers... that whole topic in Sociology was confined to Earth cultures and usually was stuck in the rut of Western European armies from about the middle ages on versus tribal cultures. It didn't necessarily translate well to the goa'uld who at least while Ra had been alive had had some rules in place when it came to fighting. "Know anything about Osiris?"

"I believe he was a minor underlord to Ra, in the distant past this would have been equivalent to a modern petty system lord. High enough in rank for distinction but not powerful enough to be independent from his patron."

"Wasn't Seth a system lord?" Jack asked.

"At one point he was, and his ambitions outstripped his reach." Teal'c replied. "Even to this day the Setesh guard remain the subject of many jokes." Jack admitted his grasp on Jaffa humor was a little weak. Something just got lost in translation. "Do you believe this Daniken person may have some insight?"

"Into our present problem? Probably not." Jack replied. "Apparently Danny isn't the only who was thinking the pyramids were built with alien help though."

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Curse
Part 3​

Daniel wasn't particularly happy with the situation. It would have been different if they'd been offworld but how was he supposed to explain a gun here if it came up. Steven had already found out about his government pay and made enough of a fuss about it.


Five years of absence didn't really explain that sort of change. He'd been incommunicado for so long it... Steven's prodigal son crack hadn't been that out of line. Not that it hadn't hurt, but only because of how true the remark had been... or would have seemed... and he hadn't been prepared to explain the absence. The surprise of the death had caught him so flatfoot he hadn't been prepared for the obvious question of where he had been, and ... he had even less explanation to general Hammond sending Jack and Teal'c in, even though that certainly made sense if this was goa'uld related.


He couldn't just come out and say he had been right, and that the situation was even more complicated than just ancient aliens. The galaxy was spiraling into an even larger mess. He had so many questions about just how mythology on Earth had developed in the upper kingdom, or really how it had developed. The Osiris amulet's already translated segment of text was common by the time of the old kingdom, except that it was ten thousand years old, and the cat was out of the bag on that detail. He had actually been surprised that Steven hadn't ribbed him over the translation, but there was the age of the amulet... not that that by itself was a smoking gun. Most of the Academic Community couldn't read Linear A, but one more undiscovered language by itself wouldn't have a smoking gun. The two together was supportive of Daniel's theory if only because they were talking a much earlier point for writing in the timeline, and even then the simpler answer without further evidence was that there had been an ancient previously unknown developed kingdom. As theory that had more supporters anyway, even if they were often specialists in Mesopotamian studies. Doctor Britsky's work, and publications regarding excavations in Iraq came to mind.
Hartigan stuck his head and shuffled around the various stacked books and boxes waiting to be filled with books and items from Doctor Jordan's collection. "That sounds like it went well." The FBI agent remarked. Something of the other more junior agents could have been missed if they had worn something other than suit and tie, or blue windbreakers, but Hartigan was still big, but old enough he was the right age to be a professor, but his body language was all wrong even as he was just looking up and around the office space's half emptied bookshelves, "I don't suppose you had an inventory of what all was in here?" He asked looking at a statue of a cat. "Something of this stuff might be worth killing over to, or walking off with while its sitting around." Sarah had, or should have had an idea of what all was in Doctor Jordan's collection... or Steven... at the time of his death. "So what's next?"


"I have Professor Jordan's notes being reviewed by someone I trust." At Hartigan's raised eyebrow, he decided to be just go ahead with it. Kathy's father had been Jordan's academic mentor in Egyptology, and most likely even though Kathy had never out and out said it... Daniel was relatively sure it had been conversations with Doctor Jordan where his name had first come up, "It may be nothing, but we'll go through the antiquities archive with that as a initial point of study."


"Fresh set of eyes I get that, I guess it makes sense that its a small community." At least Hartigan had been above making a house divided, or family feud crack, "Chicago PD is still insisting that its initial cause of death remains. We have found any fingerprints for the bricks, ATF wants to poke around up in the shaft so I thought I'd swing by."


"What do you mean?"


"What are they looking for?"


Hartigan shrugged, "Something about a lot of brick powder, CPD won't want to hear it, but ATF is thinking small explosive charge, something timed to dislodge the brick. They can't find anything to explain how it would have been triggered, but they think its a homicide." The idea occurred to him in a flash, Ra's Pyramid on Abydos had had senors in it to provide well modern convenience automatically when directed to. They could be triggered by people carrying items or presumably just a specific person. They had seen other examples of the Goa'uld high priests, and lotars who were automatically set up to use certain goa'uld amenities. "That ring a bell?"


"Yeah,-"


"Call the air force?" Hartigan nodded. "So its the Russians then? I mean." Daniel visibly grimaced as the FBI agent eyed the printing form of the M9 at the small of his back.
-
Jack and Teal'c had taken a break down to midtown to get coffee while waiting for some answers, and then brought lunch back to the small office building the air force had in the city center. "You believe Daniel Jackson's list of cultures taken after the sealing of the Giza Gate represents a security threat?"


"Something like that, Tee." Jack replied, and stopped as the phone rang from inside his coat. "One sec," He picked up the receiver, "Colonel O'neill. Two Ls." Agent Hartigan's voice filtered over the line, "Grab your stuff Teal'c looks like 'Steven'," He said with an exaggerated accent, "done a runner." Teal'c tilted his head, "He booked a flight to Egypt, and has left the country" Jack hung up the phone. "What is it?"


Teal'c looked pensive, and paused before answer, "Hathor was able to locate the stargate. If Doctor Rayner is host to a goa'uld, why would he return to Egypt O'neill?"


"I don't know." Rayner seemed like a prick anyway so maybe the extra prickliness had been the goa'uld being a goa'uld or just magnifying the doc's existing distaste for Danny. The Tokra kept saying that the blending process effected both parties or whatever, "Grab your gear, I'm going to make a call to the CIA, and contact some other friends in the region. If Rayner is responsible for this then I want to be loaded up in case he is a snake." and of course he'd need to call the General as well...


"It is unlikely our allies have come up with the answers you were seeking O'neill." Teal'c replied, "If Steven Rayner is responsible he could be a danger to the public. Additionally if he has fled the country then it would be difficult to track him."


If Osiris started switching hosts they were going to have problems. They needed to grab Danny and get back to the base. They could figure out a plan from there.
Jack dialed the phone and waited for the digital noise to resolve and indicate a secure connection the difference between Illinois and Virginia was a lot less than if he'd been calling Egypt from Colorado after all. He piled in after Teal'c and the big black suburban and the driver waited long enough for them to buckle up before they shot off with the lights on towards the university to collect Daniel.


--


To say General Hammond wasn't particularly happy about this mess was something of an understatement. One might even say it would have been like calling Texas 'big'. "Yes, sir I understand. Yes, sir we will be cooperating with other agencies in this matter." He put the phone down. The SGC was run as a special component of the Air Force and that largely being outside of normal channels gave them a lot of leeway, but at the same time it would attract questions from the FBI. It was both the FBI and ATF asking questions now. The ATF assumed they were looking at some kind of stolen military hardware at least, that could be deniable.


So long as they didn't turn up ancient goa'uld weapons. Doctor Jackson bringing Doctor Langford in on this had been risky. It was true she still lived in Colorado, and her security clearances were still current, but she wasn't a current member of the SGC. They would have to fix that. Doctor Jackson explaining the situation to the FBI agent presented another vulnerability. Colonel O'neill had also exercised his own initiative by going ahead and reaching out to the Central Intelligence Agency, and whether that was going to work out or not was unknown.


He had a preliminary report from Doctor Fraiser, as well as another one where Doctor Langford had taken what they knew and used it to try and explain what had made its way into history. The Osiris amulet that was missing might have been nothing. To the best of their knowledge, well Selmak's knowledge, it was probably just a trinket, but it being stolen suggested otherwise. Unless some hapless thief had walked off with it in all the confusion unaware of all the grief he was causing them, which they couldn't necessarily discount. The inscription related to travelling the stars was something that Daniel Jackson, and Kathy Langford both agreed were common in Egyptian finds depicting kings from the early dynasties.


The canopic stasis jars were used to imprison goa'uld deemed to important to kill, or to preserve the bodies of those who had died and whom the sarcophagi couldn't revive. Seth's murder of Osiris suggested he had removed Osiris the symbiote from his host and dismembered the host but that may have been a latter addition to the tell making it bigger. The Isis Jar they had found, they had less explanation of, there was no mythological evidence to suggest Isis had been imprisoned, and of course the symbiote inside the jar had been preserved but had been itself an odd specimen.


They would deal with those things once SG 1 was on the ground in Cairo in full. Doctor Fraiser was relatively certain the symbiote sedative would be a lot more effective than the previous attempt of doping a host up on horse tranquilizers. "Whats our best case scenario Doctor Langford?"


"The best case would be that Doctor Rayner, or if he is the host of Osiris, is going to the Temple of Osiris where the original discovery was made."


In theory they should have been able to either catch Doctor Rayner and convince him back to the United States. If he wasn't a host well, they would still have questions, but a violent confrontation with a host was the more likely occurrence in their current estimation. That it would be a situation occurring on foreign soil was the bigger issue. "And 31 Expedition?"


Major Davis frowned and interjected, "The Navy isn't sure but on looking at the remains of the ship a second time are concerned that the sinking wasn't accidental."


"Major?"


"We referred all the material we had once details started coming in, the remains of the Steward expedition's transport ship elicited some response that the damage to the boiler may not have been accidental. There is a mini sub being taken down there as we speak to make sure, but the initial attribution that it floundered as a result of the 31 Atlantic hurricane season seems to have been in error."
"Let me know the first thing we hear from the Navy then," He responded, "Doctor Langford, you were saying.


"The original deaths of the steward expedition were attributed to mold spores. That might suggest natural causes, it might have been an intentional booby trap, it could have been something else." In 1931 Malaria would have been running rampant, and there was no telling what else it could have been, but the whole expedition getting wiped out certainly looked suspicious... "I can get in touch with the Egyptian government and curate what items we're certain aren't goa'uld, I can take a team to Chicago and look for any non terrestrial signs and begin shipping all benign artifacts over immediately."


"Do that, Doctor." It would give them some credit. The state department probably would give them a little breathing room to operate on the matter, and hopefully on top of them the Egyptians would take it as a good faith gesture in case they needed to hold on to anything as 'evidence' or some other issue. So far the loss of the Osiris Jar was being taken well, after all explosion, accidents happen, the ministry of antiquities accepted that and if it had been murder then they would likely accept that resolution just as well. The Isis jar could have been a giant headache if it hadn't been pointed out to Doctor Jackson, and if he hadn't noticed the Goa'uld inscription on it in addition to the hieroglyphs. "Selmak, Jacob?"


The Tokra nodded, "As you reported Doctor Fraiser, the symbiot inside is not fully mature. It is certainly not the body of a Goa'uld Queen, certainly not Isis," Selmak responded.


"Does that mean something?"


"It may." Selmak allowed, "It may be nothing. The inscription does attribute ownership of the vessel of Isis, but may be interpreted as belonging to Isis in the sense of not being the resting place for the queen herself."
--
Commentary: A couple of things, now this interlude started about half through the episode it cover, and will cover some extra material. I like this episode of S4 of SG1 there are some changes to it, and we will get to the broader galactic context shortly. In particular in the episode, its obviously a prim'ta or young symbiote prop during the dissection, and I figured I'd use that.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Curse Part 4​

Danny's time in Egypt had probably been very different than Jack's. It had been the eighties, and even discounting the going into Libya, there had been the first gulf war after, and other matters just in the region. As a general rule O'neill tried to avoid vacationing in countries he had worked for while on secondment to the CIA... go down fly fishing in Costa Rica, or deep sea fishing in Mexico, but most of the Mid East just wasn't an option. This was going to be his first trip back in almost a decade.

He tossed a tube underhand to Carter across the isle of the Gulf, "Sun screen major," Cairo was cooler than Abydos, but that was speaking relatively, and at least it was a dry heat. Hopefully they wouldn't be here for very long. Langley was already asking questions about why Air Force Intelligence was interested in something as mundane as the murder of an Egyptologist, and the flight of his ... Rayner wasn't really an assistant, but all the same it was bind he didn't want to be in. The CIA also knew that the Fbi had other interests in the situation presumably going back to Seth, and his koolaid compound, but it wasn't the only situation.


Daniel glanced at him, "I've been thinking about Michael Clark."


"Yeah," A little surprised that it was Michael, and not Jenny, she was the Congresswoman after all, "Does this have to do with NASA?"


"No, I was wondering, I mean he was going to go to Canada to dodge the draft."


"Yeah, so?"


"When we went back in time," He paused, "Downtime you was already in the Air Force right?"


"Yep." He glanced outside to the moving hangars as the aircraft was taxied to its disembark point. It wasn't as if they could fly in commercial. Even that wasn't without security vulnerabilities, they'd get their pictures taken wherever they flew in from, just because the cold war was over didn't mean people weren't watching. The Russians knew about the stargate, they'd gotten the DHD from the Nazis, and who knew what all else. "What do you make of 'Steven' skipping town?"


It wasn't exactly a subtle change of topic, but Daniel rolled with it, "He could be a goa'uld. I can't imagine if, him being a murderer, and even if he was why go to Egypt." Chicago's decision to keep classifying suspicious deaths as accidents was... well there had been Law Enforcement motion to monitor his passport, or do any of that. The FBI hadn't considered it necessary because Doctor Rayner wasn't a person of interest, never mind a suspect, ATF still hadn't reclassified the lab explosion because they were still looking at it, and the backlog for lab time was weeks out at least.


They couldn't exactly bank on Rayner being a goa'uld, but it was a possibility that they couldn't discount... but assuming a snake was running around they were doing a better job at low profile than O'neill would have suspected. Daniel had interacted with Rayner repeatedly and no obvious Goa'uld tells had been made. "Walk me through it, was anything that might give an insight into this?"
"The night the curator died we talked about the items in the Steward expedition. Steven was insistent that the Osiris Jar was destroyed in the explosion, I guess he was defensive. The missing amulet." Daniel shrugged, and after the body of course Hammond had recalled him and Teal'c from leave, and they'd gone to Chicago.


There was jump as the plane went over a speed bump and they slowed to accept the docking collar for the private passenger terminal. "Anything after that,"


"No nothing that would have really been news. We talked about the jars with Sara,"


It was a shame Thor never showed up to fix problems like this, "Anything there?"


"No, like I said nothing that would have been news. We talked about Memphis. I didn't want to talk about anything that might end up related to our work at the SGC, uhm' He paused, "We talked about Thebes, and the city's relationship to Osiris, Sokar and Ptah. We talked about Thebes, Sara talked about the amulet's age." The email of the test results had been rather suspiciously been deleted though, and the tech who had done the testing was dead, and the amulet was of course missing.


There was no smoking gun, and Steven's financials had come back clean. There was no explanation for him running off to Egypt. "Suppose we'll just have to find him and ask,"


"There were two jars, Jack. Seth was here too." Other goa'uld weren't impossible of course they had recognized that after Seth, "and I've got a lot of questions about the time frame that just are increasingly making the sense they used to."


They finished joining up and dismounted the aircraft and then went through the short and expected song and dance from the Section Chief about how they weren't to cause an international incident or whatever, but that otherwise the CIA would be providing any practical assistance either directly, or as part of the State Department mission. The desk rider then foisted them off on, making them no longer his problem, and they moved on from there.
--
As Egypt was an allied country and affiliated with the US as well as for that matter the UK... the CIA office in Cairo wasn't exactly discreet. It was off from the embassy by about a mile or so, and the Mukhabarat building was almost right next door. It was a far cry from the eighties, and the building itself had the air conditioning going full tilt, and looked like an office building on the inside, with cubicles, fax machines, and computers everywhere.


As a general courtesy the CIA annex had put the Russian academic presence under observation... or probably more accurately just stepped up the observations they had been doing. The benefit of hindsight of course had told them that the Russian had been digging around for over a year now, but it had passed under the radar as just the Russian Federation just building better relationships in the region. There was no sign of Steven Rayner attempt to defect or anything. No that would have been too simple or easy.


There was a little bit of push back to Daniel's expressed interest in visiting the Osiris temple that the Steward Expedition had uncovered in 1931. They were in the process of tasking satellite observation on the temple, but it wasn't as if they were going to have any kind of air support either. They had some leeway, but there were limits to what was available. "Its our best lead on where he might be going,"


Not that it really seemed like Steven was trying to hide. He had booked into a hotel, with his actual passport, and didn't seem to be a man on the run. Of course being in Egypt there was no real way to track his rented Land Rover either, it wasn't an uncommon automobile, and nor was it particularly new.


Coventional thinking in this sort of situation would have been to do simple things. Sit on his hotel, the airport, and work up a target package to find out if there was anywhere in Cairo he was known to frequent while in the country, say a restaurant or one of the universities or something. All of that was based around dealing with a non extraterrestrial angle, and they couldn't not ignore that.


"Where are you going?" The spook asked


"I got invited to lunch with a friend." Jack replied, "Daniel call Teal'c when you get a chance see if he or Jacob have turned anything up."


Daniel turned to Sam who simply shrugged, and Jack's departure left them looking at what all the state department and Fbi had compiled of his one time friend slash academic rival's life. "A porsche?" Sam snorted at the paperwork.

--
Commentary: I'm cutting this here, for this one, originally we'd have gone from Sam and Daniel's perspective but I was running into problems with including Doc Fraiser in the scene even though she should be present. As a result I'm holding off on the Jacob/Selmak and Teal'c exposition scene for Part 5, which should culminate in our conclusion in the Osiris temple.

Part 5 should conclude this chapter / episode and we will move on back to the galaxy at large and so forth.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Curse
Part 5
​

Jacob understood where Teal'c was coming from. There was a deep seated part of him that wanted to be in Egypt now, though he supposed that was more paternal instinct than anything else. Selmak was a thousand years old... Seth, Osiris they predated him by thousands of years. They had been around so long his only knowledge of them were memories imparted by Egeria... and by that point both of them were gone.


"Whats the eye of Osiris? Could it be this missing amulet?"


He shook his head in the negative, "It was entrusted to Osiris for safe keeping," Selmak replied to George's question, "An artifact of the gate builders that had belonged to Apep. When Apep was murdered by Anubis Ra took possession of the six eyes and distributed them among prominent goa'uld he deemed trust worthy." It was the only thing Selmak could come up with that would justify going to Egypt, but it might not have been the only reason. "It would be small enough he could take it with him through the Stargate if he could gain access to it, and it would probably be sufficient to buy him the good will and a position at court with any of the system lords even as just a status symbol."


The truth was Selmak didn't know. That hadn't been knowledge Egeria had imparted to the Tokra... only that it had belonged to the gate builders. That coupled with the possibility of a missing Goa'uld queen were easily enough to involve the Tok'ra High Council as a whole. "Osiris would still have to get off world." Though Teal'c admitted that Hathor's ability to locate the stargate might allow them some ability to lay a trap of sorts for the Goa'uld, it assumed that Osiris did want to get off world.


"Osiris is technically a rogue goa'uld. Ra may be dead, but its entirely possible that like Seth he won't want to leave earth out of a fear of some ancient grudge."


"Apophis?" Hammond questioned.


"Its possible, I was thinking Heru'ur personally," Jacob replied, "But Apophis is known to hold grudges," Teal'c responded, punctuated this statement, with a graven nod, "Like Seth his brother would just as out of the loop in terms of recent goa'uld politics, including Ra's death."


"Speaking of that," Major Davis finally opting to speak up, "Since we've brought up Apophis, and Heru'ur."


"Their fleets continue to battle. Cronus and Apophis's rivalry occupies each others attention as well, and for the time being the other system lords are happy to let them bludgeon one another, and few have been thus willing to take the field," Selmak intoned.


"It is not so clear cut with Master Bra'tac or the jaffa rebellion, Apophis's retribution has displaced hundreds of thousands and the fighting in general had spilled over into the border territories." It was a humanitarian disaster in the words of the Tauri, and that was only counting the people who had been able to flee from their worlds through the stargate never mind those internally displaced on their homeworlds. "Apophis has largely been rebuffed by Ptah."


"That's good, right?" Davis questioned.


"It is," Selmak agreed, "Apophis probably hoped that Ptah would be able to help him back engineer the ships he took from Sokar, or even to supplement his own production. Ptah refusing to take sides will keep them fighting, and weaken all of them." It would also reaffirm Ptah's impartiality within system lord disputes, but in particular Ptah not siding with Apophis would also likely slow distribution of any technologies pioneered by Sokar to the goa'uld as a whole, which was another benefit. "Ares has answered Cronus's call to arms, by all reports though Zeus is as inimicable to Apophis as he is to his father."


"He could still side with Heru'ur,"


"The Council has considered this as well," Selmak agreed, and that was the problem Jacob recognized with such multipolar power dynamics. Cronus was never going to actually ask Zeus to come and aid him in battle even if things were desperate, and Zeus probably never going to offer. Zeus's overlord seemed to have been more hostile to Apophis of course, but he also seemed to want all of the participants to... "To borrow an expression from Jacob, to 'stay off his lawn'." Selmak remarked, "yet we recognize that the changes to his domain, and the arms build up will leave him one of the more potent system lords. Zeus as his principle underlord already commands a fleet comparable to that of a lesser System Lord." That would be by itself be enough to potentially tip the balance of the fight, "Heru'ur has the most developed fleet building industry and capacity of any system lord, even before Ra's death," In no small part due to the fact that Ra's favorite son had access, or was suspected by many among the goa'uld as well as the Tokra to have access to Gate builder shipbuilding machines, "if he were to be reinforced..."


"Apophis would become quite desperate." George finished, and grimaced, "Is that why he hasn't made a move?"


"Its possible." No one wanted to take sides if it meant their worlds started getting bombarded from orbit, especially if it was for negligble gain.




--
Jack hated sand. He knew people, plenty of people who had gone to Vietnam, who hated humidity as a result of it, but it hadn't bothered him. He didn't care about elephant grass or that... sand though... bugged him more. Not that Abydos wasn't a nice place, but it did stir up memories of not just the Gulf War, but of the late eighties dancing over the border between Iraq-Iran. Just a messy time all around. The trip through the stargate had pretty much killed any idea that he'd want to go touring the old world, no fishing was the best sort of vacation he could get. Jack accepted that.


This was work, and he would have liked it if Daniel would stop nerding out about the Temple. He ran the light over the walls. "Daniel, answer me this, was this place intentionally buried?"


"That's the thinking. It was known to happen. Dynastic changes saw movement from places, and temples,"


He moved away from the painted facade along the columns of the courtyard. This whole place smelled of goa'uld to him, and that was even without goa'uld markings 'hieratic' all over the wall. He was expecting Heru'ur's beaky boys to pop out from around the corner any minute now. Of course that was in no small part to carter's gizmo detecting a shielded naquadah generator somewhere nearby . This was goa'uld. "Buried beneath the sands at Pharoah's command and all that."


"Uh something like that." Daniel agreed. "The amulet Steven took is ten thousand years old," dating to eight thousand BC, certainly in line for early Goa'uld presence on Earth, but Osiris hadn't been imprisoned at that point. Osiris and Seth hadn't disappeared from goa'uld records until thousands of years later, which was still thousands of year earlier than the present day.


Jack pushed off the corridor wall and to the corner sweeping the room for potential hostiles, but nothing. No jaffa, no chanting cultists, and at least no snakes... of the normal terrestrial kind. Just dust, and sand, and the sunlight trickling in from openings and bouncing off the polished silver disks, that he figured someone would have looted after a hundred years. "This leads down to a chamber."


"Steven's land cruiser was outside he's probably already in there."


"Carter, watch our six." He pushed forward into the room the MP5 at its ready, "Got something, body," Fraiser's footfalls followed behind him as she came around and passed him as he moved left towards the wall, but not enough that he couldn't still see the far entryway on that side. Carter and Daniel switched as he relieved her of rear guard and she moved to assist the doc, and more importantly...


"No Symbiote, he's not goa'uld."


He was bleeding internally. Steven came around to the probing and admitted to taking the amulet, "Its a key?" Jack repeated as a question, and swept room again. Hidden chamber? Right the altar immediately flagged. Now that it had been opened he could see the goa'uld style storage chamber that was popular Ra's group.


The sudden kinetic wave of the karakesh blew him off his feet and tossed him into a temple wall alongside Carter. Fraiser followed winged by a second 'whoosh' as she switched from medical practice to draw her side arm from its concealed position at the small of her back.


Osiris had possessed Danny's college girlfriend... he supposed as he coughed that he should have seen that coming. "You know much of the goa'uld. Where is my brother Setesh?"


"Seth? Yeah we killed him."


"Really." Osiris preened at the notion, "Then you have done me a great service in this."


Keep her talking Danny, Jack was pretty sure the kinetic wave hadn't broken anything but it felt like it had bruised everything at the very least. She seemed a little more skeptical about them killing Ra, "And Hathor," Jack added. "But yeah Sokar's back, well depending on who you ask." He coughed again.


"He has returned?"


"Apophis, Heru'ur and Cronus are all slugging it right now."


"Sokar though has returned?"


"Yeah." She flitted back to Daniel biting her lip slightly, as he grunted the reply, "Huge fleet, Apophis tried to take it over when we blew up the planet's moon."


She chuckled at that. Then Jack depressed the trigger on the MP 5 sending the rounds at the goa'uld before she could get any closer to Daniel. He missed, or he pretty sure he missed before he had to roll out of the way of the karakash. Then the rings activated and Osiris was gone.


There was a rumble from the temple, and then the unmistakable sound and feeling he had come to associate with goa'uld anti gravity engines for small spacecraft. Of course she had a ship, that made perfect sense of why to come here.


--
Commentary: Okay, S4E13 done. Does it cover everything I wanted it to? No, but lets talk about the episode. It came out in September of 2000. That is how old this episode is now. Now I made some changes to the episode, and I suspect that the reason Jack and Teal'c are less prominent was probably actor related. RDA probably had other stuff going on, or they wanted more Daniel centric, or wanted to focus on Fraiser or something. It is a very Daniel centric episode, but I don't really read too much into that. Really the biggest substantive change to the episode in my mind is dialing back the 'mildly military nature' of the show. Jack comes in, is called in to come to participate, but it is an episode I like.


Its in my opinion one of the better ones written by Mallozi.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tidings
Part 1
​

Meter thick armor plate clad the exterior surface of the warship, but that was only part of its defenses. Trinium was simply too uncommon, and expensive to work that its alloys could be used in armor plate of this magnitude. The new improved Ha'tak version intended for mass production was already a significant percentage greater in size never mind mass compared to the line of battle warships that formed the back bone of any 'dignified' system lord.


The trinium used in the ship's core systems had been useful in allowing the reactor to reach far closer to the tolerances of the original Alteran design, and that would draw far far less attention than those outputs might otherwise attract. No the I-series with its larger shape, and greater mass made trades not that the outer armor had been relevant today.


Zeus's image flickered to life from aboard a ship much like the one he occupied. "The Tauri?"


"Anker will investigate and file the report," Oskyld replied drumming long fingers on the throne's arms, "It will be interesting to see how the system lords respond to this... development." The Asgard would, at least working from existing examples, do nothing. Technically speaking as he understood the protected planets treaty Osiris, assuming Osiris had been on the ship, had been leaving Earth, not violating the treaty. Of course now that he had left he couldn't go back without then violating the treaty... at least under the letter of the law. The Asgard were likely to see it that way, and the System Lords were too occupied for any of them to simply decide Osiris had already violated the treaty even though he had likely no idea as to its enactment, or in theory.


He didn't want to describe the Goa'uld as having technologically backslid. That would have been inaccurate for a number of points of discussion. The loss of gatebuilder ships by which to study directly and reproduce had resulted in a drop in quality, but it was also likely that loss of vital machinery to maintain closer to that original design standard had likely contributed. The modern goa'uld fleet was a product of evolution The Ha'tak, and its predecessor the Chel'tak, were increasing armed versions of the Cheops based on adding the superstructure around the pyramid and increasing reactors to power increasingly more powerful batteries of plasma cannons. Neither ship had existed in a time when the goa'uld fleet had consisted of much closer copies of Alteran vessels helmed by salvaged gate builder ships serving as command vessels.


That was thousands of years in the past though, really even before Ra had found earth that trend had been evident in goa'uld history. Ra had certainly been very opposed to the notion that another system lord retaining Alteran built or artisanal copies of such for the threat they would have posed to more easily reproducable ships especially in the Era of the Chel'tak. That had directly contributed to the rise of the Ha'tak. Oskyld for his part in this modern era did not want to end up with a fleet of Ha'tak that had to be delineated first rate through third never mind fifth, sixth or seventh. It would be possible to refit and rebuild some Ha'tak to something of a 'modern' standard, and lessons learned in building the ships like he and zeus presently command from would let them build better standard Ha'tak from the ground up with improved reactors, and engines, but even that represented a marked departure from what was orthodoxy of a realm's management.


Of course even as the ship shifted seamlessly under its reactionless drive out of the planet's gravity well and from the shattered debris of aging Cheops and the modern construction of Chel'tak by second and third string freestanding Goa'uld who formed a combined buffer region across what had been the intervening space between his new domain, and Ares. They had been caught off guard by Ares's decision to suspend hostilities in favor of going to aid Cronus against Apophis, and were now facing the undistracted first and second fleets. Truthfully he had no intention of annexing most of the border worlds, he didn't want the threat of their fleets positioned where they could be called into service again by Ares for a pittance if or when the 'sport' resumed... or at least before he could reinforce the provincial fleets out of their respective provincial capitals.


Not conquering the worlds would also draw less attention. Ra's reign had always been a balance of compromises. The various buffers were quite artificial in nature where Ra or the council of system lords would arbitrate disputes both to moderate wars , or to prevent rising goa'uld from becoming too powerful, especially too powerful too quickly.
... and of course if the other system lords considered his focus to be more concerned with 'digesting' the worlds that had formerly belong to Nirti or Ra then they were more likely to let that be so long as he moved sedately.
By leaving the buffer zones, and more importantly framing it as retaliatory, in place he could mollify some of the concerns about the empire's growth and leave most of his neighbors fixated on the much larger war ongoing between Cronus, Apophis and Heru'ur. That was buying him time, and he was glad that Zeus's world of Stennos had already made the leap to medieval agriculture, and the complex iron work for tools that went with it. He had also introduced trousers for work clothes, even though formal wear still was distinctly greco-roman.


It would take time of course but Stennos's concerns of manufacturing of common goods would insure a growing market. It would drive specialization of labor, and the availability of clothes, and so forth... all the small things that would make managing and integrating countless little fiefdoms into an empire, that would take time to disperse to the worlds he already held.

--
Fall had come to North America, and the SGC had largely returned to its normal state of affairs.

"Unscheduled Offworld Activation." Siler declared into the microphone in front of him. The dampeners helped of course to mask the gate activation but it was still generally obvious before the klaxons sounded, "Closing the Iris." The sergeant continued going through the usual procedure to such an occurrence. Unscheduled Activations were uncommon most of the time. After about a year of stargate operations, following Apophis's original incursion to the base... when he had been searching for a host for his newly matured queen... the goa'uld had stopped making an effort outside of if an SG team had really done something to kick over an ant hill. Since the addition of Earth to the protected planet's treaty even that had largely ceased.

"We're not expecting anyone back."

"No IDC General Hammond," Siler glanced to the general, and then to the visiting General Bauer who had come from White Sands looking to TDY Carter for more of his nuclear experiments. The first indication this was different than the usual came when the lights flickered, and the security team glanced around the gate room before a point of light began to form a few meters in front of the stargate.

"That's a," General Bauer to the rear started to speak.

The light had begun to shift and coalescence into a life size shimmering, and then solidified eight foot lizard person... thing. It was a hologram, rather than a living being. It would have been a major issue if some kind of matter stream could be projected through the stargate to bypass the latest trinium iris that served as the SGC's first line of domestic defense. The lizard was solid and stockily built and appeared to be wearing large black robes. "Greetings humans of the Tauri."

Hammond shuffled his way through the standing around enlisted and junior officers and hit the intercom. "I'm General George Hammond I am in command of this facility."

"Indeed General." The dinosaur like head cocked slightly towards the overview portal looking out over the stargate. "I mean no offense when I say this, however I am legally obliged to ask that you summon Colonel O'neill, and it is my recommendation you summon Major Carter, and perhaps, if you like Daniel Jackson and the Jaffa Teal'c. In short it might be prudent to gather the entirety of your first Stargate Team."

"What's this about?" Hammond replied his voice echoing through the speakers down below being a little awkward. Maybe, he thought, it'd be better to just walk down there.

"Of course," The lizard replied. "I come in fealty to the Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow. The particulars of this visit in regards to the treaty which exists between those titled System Lords, and the Asgard." He waved a clawed hand softly to one side, "It is normal practice, that we monitor and observe the comings and going of FtL vessels in the vicinity of Earth, generally to the wider solar system." That wasn't disconcerting at all. "Under the auspices of the treaty the comings and going of the Tok'ra who are goa'uld are assumed to be peaceable and internal matters of hospitality." The lizard bobbed its head slightly again, "This is hardly a relevant matter as such, and merits little matter for treaty enforcement. However our spatial detection network detected a goa'uld hyperdrive signature and identified its manufacture as a particularly aged example which flagged it for further scrutiny."

A couple weeks previously Daniel Jackson had attended the funeral for his mentor in archaeology. Unfortunately the death had not been accidental. One of the canopic jars the doctor had been studied had in fact been a goa'uld stasis chamber for a mature symbiote. Apparently it had housed one of Ra's underlords the Goa'uld Osiris. Unfortunately they had been following a false lead. Daniel's rival, and more 'orthodox' academic, archaeologist hadn't been the host, had nothing to do with the murders, and at best had been a glory hound and guilty of misappropriating a priceless Egyptian relic to try and rush to make a discovery. That had been a headache, but nothing in comparison to Osiris making her way to Egypt and recovering a buried starship. That was presumably what the lizard was referring.

Not sensing a response forthcoming the lizard nodded again. "This is a matter of treaty follow up, we would prefer to be able to inform the asgard promptly of any potential issues that may arise from this."

"And you need Colonel O'neill for this?"

"O'neill is the Asgard representative for the planet, by the consent of the System Lords, and that appointment is for life. His presence barring exigent circumstances is required for such meetings."

Hammond felt a headache brewing. He had known that Thor had chosen Jack O'neill for the meeting, but he hadn't guessed that Thor had been effectively making what sounded to him now that O'neill was the ambassador for Earth. "They're not on base at the moment. I'll need time to recall SG 1."

"Very well. You may dial in to the planet you designate P3X 797 and either send an SG team or a simple message via radio to discuss establishment of protocol as to how you wish this to be handled." The lizard paused, and then made a brief observation that it might be prudent to include the designation of protected planet treaty markers in front of the stargate in both Goa'uld Hieratic and Asgard, but that was not a legal requirement to the protected planets treaty.

With that, they were done. A few moments later the stargate shut down and the hologram vanished. He barely had to half turn to order someone to go get SG 1 before he heard the affirmative and the rushing of boots. "We should inform Washington of this." General Bauer remarked. In itself that was mind-numbingly obvious. Within forty five minutes Jack and the rest of SG 1 were assembled in the meeting room. If he were being honest he would have preferred that they had taken a little longer to give him more time to think.

"So we got a visitor?" Daniel Jackson seemed perplexed at the notion. "And its about Osiris."

"No this makes sense that they would monitor Earth." Major Carter commented, and then added, "The Asgard probably do the same thing."

Considering the X 301 mess, and now this Hammond really would have liked if they would have been able to find General Carter, and get his and the Tok'ra Selmak's opinion of this. They didn't have time for that, and they needed to find out what all this was about. "What about the treaty?" He'd seen the nine hundred plus pages of document that Thor had had translated into English when he had informed them that he was appointed O'neill to represent the planet. "IS there anything in there about this?"

"Oh yeah," Daniel nodded, "I don't think we need to worry about, well not too much, about this being a trap. The Asgard have probably been informed, and Sam's right the Asgard probably do monitor Earth a little more closely now. The treaty does outline provisions for setting up a meeting, but..."

"But, doctor?" Hammond didn't like 'hanging buts at the end of sentences particularly in a command like the SGC that routinely handled threats from outer space that might destroy the world as they knew it.

"They're going to want to hold it here."

"We can't lock the base down again." The SGC was an active and vital part of NORAD, particularly with its increasing space based detection system designed to search and survey near earth orbital, and high atmospheric trajectory. Even closing down the lower floors separate from the main NORAD complex was a massive red flag and the Canadians weren't stupid... someone in the Canadian military had to have noticed the expansion of USAF personnel over the last few years, and a supplementary command. It would have attracted less attention if the cold war was still going on, but now it was harder to justify that.

"We shouldn't need to, treaty negotiations prohibit the presence but that shouldn't be a concern if we're only dealing with well paperwork," Dr Jackson reached for some other papers, "Thor left some other documents, and it seems like that the system lord handling the investigation, I assume that we're dealing with Sokar, is going to send a functionary who will take a report ask some questions and then forward that to the System Lords and the Asgard. I assume this is because Osiris is a Goa'uld fugitive technically, even though Ra is dead." and besides say Heru'ur it wasn't like most of the goa'uld had been that sad to see him gone.

 

[NakedFury]

Woooo things are moving!

They still havent seen the Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow yet?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Woooo things are moving!

They still havent seen the Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow yet?

Click to shrink...

No, Oskyld has had literally zero reason nor opportunity by incident since killing Moloch to interact with SG 1 or the SGC. I had made the comment previously to another related matter (though not identical) Goa'uld society is relatively open in the movement of people through the stargate you don't have Jaffa or human auxillaries posted at every stargate even every stargate that is directly ruled by a goa'uld never mind tributary worlds as this relates to the other comment this is why the SG teams can travel to a variety of under developed planets including those in Oskylds burgeoning domain without instantly running into or having trouble with local authorities. Part of this is simply a matter of hospitality and safe passage and what not, because especially in goa'uld society you never know who exactly is important enough for some capricious goa'uld to get pissed off about their peaceful travellers getting molested. (And thats partially Ra and the System lords doing, both directly and indirectly because we're coming off a very long period of peace).



So an SG team could go to Samarka wander around not expect trouble, but Moloch's former capital would see a lot more scrutiny, as would any of the provincial capitals, or for that matter Hak'tyl because Ishtar would not necessarily be thrilled at having the Tauri show up there This is part of the fact that even if they did Oskyld might not even be there. The SGC has a very incomplete picture of whats going and is laboring from the public information perspective of 'new system lord' obviously System lord would normally mean goa'uld and Oskyld has the title by dint of killing Moloch, this is further buttressed by things like Zeus's public position, and the SGC assume well maybe this is Hades, or maybe Sokar is Hades (because they did actually think that in canon, because Seth masqueraded as Typhon apparently. 90s-ism).

Its not as if other people don't have the wrong impression the 'conspiracy theory' that Moloch's replacement is in fact Sokar is something that Ishtar thinks, and she has direct exposure (though she knows basically nothing but myths about Goa'uld-Sokar). The other two 'mistaken identity' rumors are that Oskyld is in fact Apep returned or is one of the Ancients either of which would explain the marked ability to build better copies of gate build tech (as of course would being Sokar). The goa'uld aren't stupid, arrogant yes, but they or the SGC for that matter, aren't obtuse enough not to recognize the change over in ship quality (especially given Moloch's fleet was a pittance for a system lord). This is again taken as 'proof' Oskyld is Sokar or some other figure out of the distant past (Anubis returning soon will prevent the fear that he's anubis, but also 'supports' the Sokar theory because historically in canon Sokar aided the other system lords against Anubis (that is how bad Anubis is) last time)

These kinds of misunderstandings perpetuate for a while. Carter (because Jolinar's memories) is basically the one who definitively goes 'that's not Sokar'.

 

[Mastersgt]

Been honestly eagerly waiting for your stories to catch up to the point where they do finally realize he is not Sokar. As well as realize that he really does have and use magic, and not just technology.

 

[ArKFallen]

The Curse
Part 5

Click to shrink...

the threadmarks skip over this chapter. I have been enjoying the story in this thread and its megathread for the entire jumpchain, thank you for the content.

 

[Imperator Pax]

the threadmarks skip over this chapter. I have been enjoying the story in this thread and its megathread for the entire jumpchain, thank you for the content.

Click to shrink...

I've fixed it. The threadmark system hates me, this happens a lot unfortunately where it doesn't threadmark stuff. I don't know if its a product of leaving a tab open too long or what.

 

[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.

 

[Mastersgt]

So... does the MC not remember much of the show, or not have any metaknowledge/foreknowledge? I ask, cuz I REALLY hope he gets one of those Ancient knowledge repositories. Before the Humans and Anubis both ruin them all. Maybe have the MC get Atlantis before Earth, claiming it for his own?

 

[Imperator Pax]

So... does the MC not remember much of the show, or not have any metaknowledge/foreknowledge? I ask, cuz I REALLY hope he gets one of those Ancient knowledge repositories. Before the Humans and Anubis both ruin them all. Maybe have the MC get Atlantis before Earth, claiming it for his own?

Click to shrink...

Though it is not technically spelled out as a drawback, I stated back in 2014 when I started, I was basically writing with no meta knowledge for the series I jumped and that was easier to do for some series. I think I broke that rule for Mass effect in that Jumper knew the Reapers were a thing, and Hellsing kind of a sort skirted it. [I basically when I started writing felt it was too broken, or messed with my writing to work from the knowledge and in some cases I out and took the drawbacks to force no metaknowledge]

He already has the ancient repository downloaded he just hasn't fully digested the knowledge, but he also isn't running a fever from his brain overclocking either. Its a lot of knowledge to sift through and much of the focus is going towards building the machines to build the machines tobuild the fleet and industrial backbone for an empire. And what isn't is being used to understand the Asgard ship core to help Zeus eventually get a better body.

Technically he doesn't get atlantis, but there is an Alteran City Ship that serves a similar role post Saqqara near the end of the Anubis War, but thats like 05 06 in time frame

 

[Mastersgt]

Though it is not technically spelled out as a drawback, I stated back in 2014 when I started, I was basically writing with no meta knowledge for the series I jumped and that was easier to do for some series. I think I broke that rule for Mass effect in that Jumper knew the Reapers were a thing, and Hellsing kind of a sort skirted it. [I basically when I started writing felt it was too broken, or messed with my writing to work from the knowledge and in some cases I out and took the drawbacks to force no metaknowledge]

He already has the ancient repository downloaded he just hasn't fully digested the knowledge, but he also isn't running a fever from his brain overclocking either. Its a lot of knowledge to sift through and much of the focus is going towards building the machines to build the machines tobuild the fleet and industrial backbone for an empire. And what isn't is being used to understand the Asgard ship core to help Zeus eventually get a better body.

Technically he doesn't get atlantis, but there is an Alteran City Ship that serves a similar role post Saqqara near the end of the Anubis War, but thats like 05 06 in time frame

Click to shrink...

Oh, well that's cool then. Was worried there.

 

[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).