Little update gents, to let ya know dis ain't stagnating again and I'll probably do another two chapters after I get back from lunch.
O'Neill gripes, Teal'c wonders if he has Space Excalibur and Drey'ac gets into some trouble.
Enigma - 2
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“I am glad they have released you from your medical obligations O’Neill.” Teal’c had used the four hours to go raid the commissary and indulge himself on some pumpkin pie and various other pastries that seemed to be available in an endless variety now that the base was starting to fill up with personnel and experts again. Or at least what the Jaffa believed was the case, though the mountain had been nearly fully managed when he had arrived, he still got the impression those were reservists who had been activated to fill an emergency quota. Now, the proper people seemed to be here.
There was an Abydonian and a red skinned Kelownan as well. Both eating with an engineer who was likely assist6ing the Abydonians with their endless quest to modernize their world. Seeing aliens on Tau’Ri was something the humans around him had not fully grown accustomed too and seeing a nearly twenty years younger O’Neill seemed to be something no one was ever going to grow accustomed too if the awestruck and mystified looks some of the soldiers were giving him was any indication.
With him, the Colonel brought the staff which had been given to him by Leanan, the Princess of Avalon and the Jaffa felt a sense of relief wash over him. The staff was long, greenish black, shiny and smooth to the touch with silver glyphs carved into the beam, each one representing a tenant of the code of the Sodan. The base was harmless and blunted now but in training he’d made it shift into a spear like tip, but it was the large ruby at the top of the staff which tapered into a jackal like alien whose jaws held the gem in its mouth that captured Teal’c’s eye. It was said the first combat staff wielded by Anubis when he led the first generation of Jaffa into battle looked much like this staff and it too had been forged for him by The Morrigan and Brokkr the Asgardian engineer and shipwright. When Teal’c held it, he could almost sense the power in it and feel a sort of intelligence from it and he had spent many an hour speculating on whether the staff was a facsimile or if it was indeed the legendary staff weapon, lost after Apophis took it as his in honor his elder brother and lost it in battle with the Dark One. Either way, he loathed to lend it to Doctor Carter who wished to study it and it would often reappear in his room during his deeper meditations.
“Carter and McCay can’t make heads or tails of your weapon big guy, I think they want to poke at it more than Frasier does me, but I’m glad to be getting out..I’m done sitting on my ass.” What was the point of being young again if you couldn’t put all that experience to good use in your new body because a bunch of big brains wanted to probe you. He felt alive, energized and was grateful for the second chance to both have more time with his kids and stay on duty beside his team for a little bit longer.
The eventual promotions and old age weren’t things he looked forward to, Jack was always a fighter and dreaded riding a desk.
“I thank you for liberating it from their clutches O’Neill.” Teal’c bowed his head in gratitude and offered Jack some pudding which the Colonel declined, deciding to opt for the burger which Carter was handing to him. He wasn’t used to seeing her in civilian clothes, which was amusing because she was a civilian contractor and he’d forgotten just how long her hair was. She was in torn up jeans and was wearing whatever t shirt she could grab and Jack had a feeling her, Sasha and the lab monkeys were testing out Naquadah shavings in gunpowder again. Mostly because she smelled like an ashtray.
“So, Daniel says you think that thing’s like the Excalibur of your race?” Carter asked, poaching the pudding while responding to Teal’c’s menacing glare at her theft with an innocent smile.
“To a degree.” Teal’c continued, letting the affrontery slide for the moment (Never come between a Jaffa and his food!). “Though it does not grant me a divine right to rule my people nor unite the System Lords as your King Arthur’s Excalibur did, merely that it was that Anubis wished to pass this blade to the warrior he considered most worthy to succeed him in his quest to create the perfect warrior ethos. At the time it was Apophis, but it was stolen from him by the nameless one and believed lost to time.”
“Who’s that guy again?” O’Neill asked.
Teal’c’s jaw tightened. “Jaffa do not speak of such things in the light of day O’Neill.”
Yeah, it was worth a try at least. The nameless horror, the Dark One, the fallen one. Big guy would never elaborate more on him or it or whatever it was, only that it murdered Anubis in cold blood and launched a campaign of despair, murder and horror across the cosmos not seen since the darkest moments of the dark age and even the Asgardians ceased their war against ol’Ra (And O’Neill got the impression king snake had to beg them to do that and then found out later they’d have done it any way out of fear and that had been what pissed him off.) to allow Ra to banish and kill this person, thing. Not even during the briefings would he divulge it when pressed and the Imperial religion on Abydos only talked about it in a way that reminded Jack uncomfortably of certain parts of the bible and he wondered if his theory back on Abydos was right. That they were only able to kill Ra because he completely lost his marbles over Earth because of this thing..
“Alright, alright big guy I’ll let it go.”
“Good, because after our time with the fucking Fae I’d rather not deal with spooky stories.” Carter muttered.
He wouldn’t argue that point and so the crew departed when his kid came for them and suited up, in a mix of MOP gear and arctic clothing that was a combination O’Neill hated (And finding gear for a seven-foot Jaffa was an adventure all its own.)
…………..
Conspiracy
Nineveh -Orbital fleet yards.
Crais had weaved a story almost more fascinating than the results of the interrogation itself, a complex web of what the Fleet Captain had surmised were half-truths, embellishments, and tales so absurd they had to be true. Evidently after the Scarren halfbreed exiled him from military service for his own inability to control his sense of guilt and self-loathing he fell in with a group of escaped criminals who, led by the Lotar Krey-ton (She knew this name, mostly because the Shadow Depository his crew robbed included several of her own accounts.), who went on many bizarre and curious adventures pursued by the ruthless halfbreed who lusted after Krey-ton’s wormhole knowledge. Evidently, he believed that the space bridges created by the Stargates could be weaponized and used as incredibly large scale and crude mass drivers, hurling chunks of stellar matter at planets and fleets.
It was an amusing idea, no doubt something considered by the accursed Alterans, Ori and their inbred Lantean cousins (Who existed more as a fable as there was no concrete proof of their civilization beyond an even more dubious cityship that they could never find.) and one she knew was rejected by Imperial Technologists because any species sophisticated enough to copy and build crude stargates much less create them and update the network could also disrupt the space bridges and if you had such tech, to weaponize it against lesser races when the development of such technology usually meant you had far more sophisticated and energy efficient weaponry was simply put; a total waste of resources and time. Drey’ac didn’t know of an instance where the exorbitant cost of creating an “unstable wormhole” simply to drop star dust on a fleet or a planet was a more viable alternative to say, blitzing a fleet then making a B line for their industrial hub and dumping a few Naquadah enhanced antimatter explosives into the atmosphere or using subspace impactors to create dimensional tears between the vessels in the fleet (Assuming the enemy wasn’t advanced enough to counter this any way.) and it certainly would never be a more economical one.
But then again, the Peacekeepers were ludicrously primitive and only managed to survive the engagement with those museum pieces solely because of the Leviathan hybrids acting as meat shields to protect the command carriers. Any modern Hatak much less a dreadnaught would have ripped them to shreds. The scarrens were slightly more advanced though more importantly they had better guns. So, she supposed desperation made for the sponsoring of dumb ideas…After all had they actually managed to crack this Krey-ton’s “riddle” then the technology developed to create said “wormholes” would leap the Sebacean race several generations ahead. All in all she had been impressed with their resourcefulness and Crais’ willingness to admit to his many sins and atone for them.
The hybrids were remarkable and the lead one, named Elann, for Crais’s father was a both a gentleman and a warrior poet. She’d spent several days in the presence of both his Commander and the ship itself and had come away hopeful that their defective cousins might one day prove themselves worthy of being heirs to Anubis as the Jaffa were. His adventures aside, the Lucian pirates interrogated revealed more questions than they answered. It was clear someone within the imperium had supplied them with technology (Or so she had believed, but the derisive laughter caused her to wonder.) But they were so afraid of whoever supplied them with such technology that several technologists committed suicide before they could be compelled to answer. Currency was found minted within the domains of Set and Haqet, yet that proved very little on its own as this group of pirates had been raiding and pillaging across the borders of the Imperium. Yet, it was clear they had some involvement, but she couldn’t prove that they had supplied the Hatak’s but the worst of it, the most horrifying part was when she allowed her “son” to begin to attempt a psionic probe of one of the captives.
Like Amunet, the young symbiote she carried was extremely powerful mentally, more so than she ever realized and like Amunet, the child had been aware inside of her pouch for many years and so they communed often enough that he asked to help her.
The instant his mind brushed against the captive’s there was a collective scream of pain across the entire barracks.
A deeply buried trap had been sprung, a web of sophisticated mental fail safe’s triggered and every blood vessel in their brain exploded simultaneously, while their personalities had simply evaporated.
It took every ounce of power her Prim’tah possessed and their combined wills to shield his mind from being caught in the psychic backdraft and the experience left them both exhausted. It was disturbing on multiple levels, for only a Peer could do something so complex. Their personalities would’ve had to have been copied, erased or buried deep and imprisoned in a psychic “box” at the heart of their subconscious then the complex layer of self-destruct commands woven into the mind and then the copied personality “superimposed” over the web, grafted painstakingly into place with it built in a manner that it neither remembered any of this nor knew it was a false self.
The Lady, Chamberlain Hathor, The Countess Lady Amaterasu, the Count Lord Izanami, the Princely Duke Lord Zeus, The Duchess Athena and Heavenly Prince Osiris were the only peers she knew of left alive with the sophistication and skill to do something like this. The Heavenly Sovereign King Yu as well perhaps and Chanyu might have been able to, but she was dead. That old Witch Haqet perhaps as well…Ba’al maybe? Her new Lord continued to surprise her.
The implications were disturbing, there were no one else she knew of with such capabilities save the Nox and no one had seen them in millennia until the Heavenly Prince Horus and First Prime Herakles ran afoul of them and they seemed to be content to remain neutral and so who?
One thing she knew, a Peer or several were determined to cause a war between the house of Tartarus and the House of Ra.
The prospect chilled her to her bones…But what horrified her even more was the suggestion her “son” offered her.
Mother, what if it wasn’t a peer, or at least a known peer.
“Impossible child…” she murdered pacing the room “Every peer is noted, documented and there have been no peers born outside of the Houses of the System Lords in the entire history of our civilization.” Well, except Ba’al.
And I agree…
Her blood ran cold…The implications so unmoored her mentally that she didn’t notice the safety shields erect around the room nor cry of warning from her Prim’tah.
She felt the heat though and the concussive force that smashed her through a window and felt the biting cold and vacuum of space and then a curious sensation of warmth and movement as she watched a wave of smoke and debris expand from the ruins of the station’s command deck.
