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

[JohnSmithMIB]

Agreed, I didn't read any jumps before this one so I'm glad this has been very approachable for a SG fan. I also strongly appreciate that while the MC is racking up wins it doesn't feel like he started the universe with an instant win button.

I haven't paid a huge amount of attention to timeline so I've been assuming the progress and fleet building speeds make sense due to perks and having an Asgard so they're bootstrapping really low-tech improvements (Aka smarter logistics, staging, training, and super-focused tool improvement to maximize impact) and obedience to improve productivity even if most of their population doesn't understand the full logic behind the changes (which is what that priestess lady's perspective is a good example of).

Keep up the good work!

 

[Mastersgt]

"I know that there are several goa'uld warlords, not proper system lords who utilize latin as their preferred language, Egeria as well impated the Tokra with knowledge of it, as it existed on earth during the period Jacob refers to as the Roman Republic."

Implanted


Still looking forward to when they actually get corrected on their presumption that he "Lizards" work for "Sokar". Wanna see that misunderstanding corrected, then everyone's reactions to that fumble.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Agreed, I didn't read any jumps before this one so I'm glad this has been very approachable for a SG fan. I also strongly appreciate that while the MC is racking up wins it doesn't feel like he started the universe with an instant win button.

I haven't paid a huge amount of attention to timeline so I've been assuming the progress and fleet building speeds make sense due to perks and having an Asgard so they're bootstrapping really low-tech improvements (Aka smarter logistics, staging, training, and super-focused tool improvement to maximize impact) and obedience to improve productivity even if most of their population doesn't understand the full logic behind the changes (which is what that priestess lady's perspective is a good example of).

Keep up the good work!

Click to shrink...

We're roughly speaking at about seven years in the timeline, or coming up on it rather and again in Asgard-Zeus's case, he's been managing and slowing uplifting STennos slowly but surely for the last five hundred years and can thus move an Iron Age greco-norman esque population of experts around to planets that are still bronze age who have a much easier time of technical change since you're talking still using horse power, but better plows, better metalurgy some early domestic steam and water powered industry and thus people have better access to clothes (i.e. spare clothes and clean clothes, which does a lot for infant mortality and disease in general)

Like when Makepeace is talking about seeing the chosen of Zeus building stuff, this is the kind of thing thats getting built:

Where as Raptor architecture is by comparison more generally mesoamerican except more sized for lizards that are taller than humans on average so much larger interior open spaces

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 1​

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

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

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

That wasn't the reason though.

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

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

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

"Someone is attacking the other system lords."

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

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

"We have been exempt thus far."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

With the stargate program going on and the number of alien techs in play the whole response would probably looked a lot different. The seattle tower bomb plot and the Ba'al clones arc they did showed a bit of the program's impact on security and surveillance.

As far as the MC is concerned though 9-11 shouldn't even show up on the radar right? No ancient tech, no massive radiation/EMP, and on a world that doesn't seem particularly important at this time. Did the MC come from earth or have a particular soft spot for it?

 

[Imperator Pax]

With the stargate program going on and the number of alien techs in play the whole response would probably looked a lot different. The seattle tower bomb plot and the Ba'al clones arc they did showed a bit of the program's impact on security and surveillance.

As far as the MC is concerned though 9-11 shouldn't even show up on the radar right? No ancient tech, no massive radiation/EMP, and on a world that doesn't seem particularly important at this time. Did the MC come from earth or have a particular soft spot for it?

Click to shrink...

Yes Oskyld is originally from Earth just not SGC Earth, and is also many jumps in now, so 9/11 and the GWoT really should be a trivial squabble by his standards compared to oh look that planet exploded.

The issue with stargate canon is that 911 and at least the early Global war on terror seems to have followed much the same course as history, until at least 05 at which point well we get silly silly international shenigans beyond what was already silly nineties pre war syndicated television action drama politics (Ah, JAG so campy so much nostalgia).

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 2​

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah." He muttered.

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

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

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

"So its a peace conference?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bauer shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

 

[RazeByFire]

I would think that at least more Russian/Western Allies cooperation in the GWOT would happen. Both the US and Russia are worried more about an interstellar threat so they might look to clear the board as quickly and efficiently as possible rather than the OTL mess. More pressure from Russia on Pakistan leading to Spetznaz on the Pakistani side of the border? Would the ?Bush? Administration even go for Iraq with them already knowing that the troops might be needed for an alien invasion?

 

[Imperator Pax]

I would think that at least more Russian/Western Allies cooperation in the GWOT would happen. Both the US and Russia are worried more about an interstellar threat so they might look to clear the board as quickly and efficiently as possible rather than the OTL mess. More pressure from Russia on Pakistan leading to Spetznaz on the Pakistani side of the border? Would the ?Bush? Administration even go for Iraq with them already knowing that the troops might be needed for an alien invasion?

Click to shrink...

IIRC from one the MGM novels it was written in that early GWOT period there was like Russian peacekeepers in Iraq or some shit its been so long since I've touched those books so I might be running it together with some other technothriller but yeah that is sort of what you would expect and again here we know the goa'uld were active in mesopotomia the Russian plot introduces the marduk thing and Britsky's research clearly involved going to saddam era iraq for digs so it makes sense that the SGC does stuff in the land between the two rivers

 

[Mastersgt]

This is gonna be Soooo good once they actually get corrected about "Sokar" and the "Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow".

Love the Artwork and pictures you've thrown up to aid the imagination.

 

[Imperator Pax]

This is gonna be Soooo good once they actually get corrected about "Sokar" and the "Dragon of the Lands Beyond Shadow".

Love the Artwork and pictures you've thrown up to aid the imagination.

Click to shrink...

Yes, thankfully that is almost upon us, Carter's bomb drop of her own once the K'tano / Imhotep masquerade gets spoiled

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

Love the Artwork and pictures you've thrown up to aid the imagination.

Click to shrink...

I'm confused, are there more pictures than the pic above for Zeus architecture?

 

[Mastersgt]

I'm confused, are there more pictures than the pic above for Zeus architecture?

Click to shrink...

Including all his stuff.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I'm confused, are there more pictures than the pic above for Zeus architecture?

Click to shrink...

I mean if you want I can post more pictures of the sub type of byzantine esque architecture that Zeus uses in this story

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

It's all good, I was afraid I was missing out on a ton of goa'uld ship design and character sketches and such. Will now creep on your other threads and search for media threadmarks

 

[Imperator Pax]

It's all good, I was afraid I was missing out on a ton of goa'uld ship design and character sketches and such. Will now creep on your other threads and search for media threadmarks

Click to shrink...

I actually do mean to put more artwork I just rarely get around to it. I've made a couple of soundtrack compilations for several stories

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit part 3​

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The rogue?"

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

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

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

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

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

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

Thanks for the chapter, shoes are starting to drop

First chapter has a typo in the first Hammond and the last sentence has me a bit baffled. The internal referencing is a bit confusing but I think the gist is don't get in trouble, going to a world on the edge of a massive conflict might count as trouble.

What the general probably hadn't intended to do was for them to follow Bra'tac to a world in the border between two rampaging system lords not invited to tea with those system lords doing that thing...

Click to shrink...

 

[Imperator Pax]

Thanks for the chapter, shoes are starting to drop

First chapter has a typo in the first Hammond and the last sentence has me a bit baffled. The internal referencing is a bit confusing but I think the gist is don't get in trouble, going to a world on the edge of a massive conflict might count as trouble.

Click to shrink...

So Jack has a reputation for being antagonistic with the Russians, we really aren't told why other than in canon we know Jack spent most of his air force career doing well in modern terms 'Title 50' shit for Langley. I.e Hammond decides "Jack as flagship team leader and basically second in command of the SGC" ... since Hammond doesn't seem to have a second in command Hammond is a major general he should have someone on staff besides the whole slew of colonels leading the actual teams...

I digress.

Hammond doesn't want Jack starting shit with the Russians, or for that matter Kennedy who is an NID stooge, Jack's words, so thus 'Go represent with Bra'tac', which turns into a hop and a skip through the stargate to a world closer to the front

 

[Imperator Pax]

Summit Part 4​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was better he had to admit.

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

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

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

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

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

 

[ArKFallen]

The system lords convention was exactly what I didn't know I had been hankering for. I hope I remember to reread this after I wake up.

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

Is Yu going to be more coherent and mentally aware? I didn't realize he'd been poisoned and thought it was normal age.

Editing stuff:

Spoiler

Oskyld rested a hand on the molecular furnace's exterior frame housing his consciousness extending.

Click to shrink...

I'm confused by this line is he extending his consciousness to the device to check on it or is the device housing an extension of his consciousness? I think the word housing is what's tripping me up (noun or verb).

though largely due to its scaracity,

Click to shrink...

scarcity

goa'uld had reframed from

Click to shrink...

refrained

 

[Imperator Pax]

Is Yu going to be more coherent and mentally aware? I didn't realize he'd been poisoned and thought it was normal age.

Editing stuff:

Spoiler

I'm confused by this line is he extending his consciousness to the device to check on it or is the device housing an extension of his consciousness? I think the word housing is what's tripping me up (noun or verb).

scarcity


refrained

Click to shrink...

I have made slight changes to the first paragraph. In secondary canon, and in popular fanon, Yu is being poisoned slowly by one of his sons its very slow and makes him appear to be senile. His moments of lucidity are were he's metabolized enough of the poison that it stops, coincidentally this is often when he's away from the retainers who largely are unaware they're lacing his tea.

Yu is one of the oldest system lords, but he isn't significantly older than Ra and Apophis or Cronus, Sokar was also quite old by system lords standards admittedly Yu changes hosts far far les regularly than any of them. I'll have to dig and see if I can't find the generation chart with how old the major system lords are, but it basically made no sense for Yu to be going senile when he's the only goa'uld its happening to and I think in the TV show it was probably Kindler or Mallozi's idea for an episode plot that they just threw in there during the later seasons.

 

[NakedFury]

I have made slight changes to the first paragraph. In secondary canon, and in popular fanon, Yu is being poisoned slowly by one of his sons its very slow and makes him appear to be senile. His moments of lucidity are were he's metabolized enough of the poison that it stops, coincidentally this is often when he's away from the retainers who largely are unaware they're lacing his tea.

Yu is one of the oldest system lords, but he isn't significantly older than Ra and Apophis or Cronus, Sokar was also quite old by system lords standards admittedly Yu changes hosts far far les regularly than any of them. I'll have to dig and see if I can't find the generation chart with how old the major system lords are, but it basically made no sense for Yu to be going senile when he's the only goa'uld its happening to and I think in the TV show it was probably Kindler or Mallozi's idea for an episode plot that they just threw in there during the later seasons.

Click to shrink...

Thinking on those terms you are right.

It makes no sense that such an illness is only happening to Yu and no other goauld of similar age is not even showing symptoms.

Yu being poisoned slowly through the decades or centuries IS actually more beleivable since killing their kin is part of goauld culture.

 

[JohnSmithMIB]

I agree, that hangs together. The only other goa'uld I can remember which seemed to have difficulties with age was Egeria and I could swear she'd been extensively tortured, possibly irradiated or sickened and didn't have access to a sarcophagus. She also seemed coherent during the (admittedly limited) time we saw her.

 

[QQW@tcher]

I agree, that hangs together. The only other goa'uld I can remember which seemed to have difficulties with age was Egeria and I could swear she'd been extensively tortured, possibly irradiated or sickened and didn't have access to a sarcophagus. She also seemed coherent during the (admittedly limited) time we saw her.

Click to shrink...

And she surpassed most with her age aswell.

You know. Founding the Tok'ra.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Summit Part 5​

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"What language was that?" Kinsey asked.

"Chinese?"

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

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

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

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

"Is he always like this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So you will vote yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Imperator Pax]

Tides
Part 1
​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And this is not over much a distraction?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[SIDoragon]

okay, you know what, this would be the perfect moment to FORCE disclosure on the world. Have our MC's people show up in large ships, deal with the asteroid, and then land a diplomatic force in front of the UN building.

Unite the world!

 

[Breadnaught]

Unite the world!

Click to shrink...

Or set the world on fire as every country scrambles to ensure their own national interest, a million special-interest groups act on their own ambitions, and basically every politician in America desperately tries to throw everyone involved with the SGC under the bus for faults both real and imagined, to secure their own political future.

Meanwhile, the ability of anyone on Earth to actually run a Stargate program and ensure Earth's interests and survival on the larger stage is placed in a state of limbo until the shitshow sorts itself out.