Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
For a smaller but equally good looking UNSC design look up the Halberd class
Stargate Through the Looking Glass and into Heaven.
- Thread starter The Immortal Watch Dog
- Start date
Hmm...can the program hire David Weber to help plan tech development goals?
Ever read the BOLO series? David Weber helped with that designing the Concordiat fleet. Take a guess what weapon system they favored heavily.
You'd think I could get a moment of peace to post the next few updates but noope.
Also I'm being rained on.
I've got three updates coming.
1, Hammond takes a stroll down Wyryn town and maybe puts a youngster in his place.
2, Makepeace's cynical ass.
3, Teal'c and the leader of the bandits.
Also I'm being rained on.
I've got three updates coming.
1, Hammond takes a stroll down Wyryn town and maybe puts a youngster in his place.
2, Makepeace's cynical ass.
3, Teal'c and the leader of the bandits.
I'm jealous of you.
I live in a swamp! Guess Its far more dry there.
I think we're currently on day 10 or so above 100F.
For that was their way.
Aannnd we move along...Hammond gets himself a POW and the history of the "Japanese" pantheon and its relation to Ra's cosmic dynasty gets some light shed on and they figure out who the leader of the Scarrans is...but but the mystery deepens. Also a bit of info on the state of affairs within the US IC and US armed forces post Apophis' raid.
…………
Wyryn Castle: Outskirts- Planet Hurot
By the next morning the total tally of casualties numbered roughly one hundred sixty. One hundred of which were enemy lizards and none of which were members of the Space Force Marine division assigned to the SGC. Jaffa, giant eagles, war beasts, now ghoulish lizardmen from strange worlds who abducted women in the dead of night. Ranger or Space Marine, his kids acquitted themselves exactly as one would expect from the best of the best and the Admiral was proud of them all. He was also, grateful that the public baths weren’t destroyed, and he was able to clean as much of the blood and grime off him as possible and change into some new fatigues. As he walked through the aftermath of the battle, he was certain the stories about the century spanning unification wars weren’t mere propaganda. Though underpopulated the Wyryn was clearly the center capitol of a burgeoning empire, one that had spent several generations in continuous warfare. The people wept, briefly, celebrated their loved ones and by the time he got out of the bathhouse and made his way down the city streets people were beginning to rebuild their homes and stores.
No day of mourning, nor rest, religious services would be held that night and there likely would be neighborhood feasts held on their rest day to commemorate the dead and they would go on with their lives. It reminded him of the Congo early in his career and of Kosovo in the 1990’s when he organized black ops missions during the conflict. People inured to atrocity could bare an incredible amount of weight until one day they grew tired of the cycle and either snapped and tore down their leaders or pushed for reform in a more peaceful way. It was interesting to think of, as he looked around, he could see the usual mix of nonhuman hominids and human as the base stock in a lot of the men and women in the settlement. There were some aliens too and he was told that some of the human looking people were Sebacean or of Sebacean descent which he was told by Teal’c was a prototype species created before the Jaffa and exiled for being a failure. Teal’c didn’t hold them in very high esteem and from the angry and bitter looks some held at Teal’c the Admiral wondered if his exiled War Master wasn’t just as much of an anachronism as he was.
But what was interesting was that one out of every ten village looked like Serbians, or Russians or Swedes. Which he was told was the result of the Asgardians transporting Vikings lost at sea and their families to their sanctuary worlds. Apparently Hethrir’s ancestral claim to the Throne rested on him being descended from a “Chief among the newcomers”. Hammond wondered which of those chiefs and if they were at all like the brave heroes the history books mentioned when he was a boy or if they were as shrewd, cynical and manipulative as Hethrir.
Hethrir, he reminded the Admiral of someone. He just couldn’t figure out who, until he saw Ecthor’s police force accepting a bribe from a local businessman to buy three demolished “government” buildings for pennies on the pound or whatever the currency was. Coppers on the Gold piece? No wait, Hethrir used platinum as the standard and gold and silver coins were the next most valuable currencies.
Platinum as the standard, Hammond shook his head. Just suggesting that in an interview would be enough to send the global economy into a panic, plus the metal was rare on earth..apparently in Hurot it may as well have grown on trees. But the level of kleptocratic nonsense he and the elder O’Neill’s had seen since he got here (Including things well above your standard fair middle age corpse robbing and other things. He was certain Ecthor was a drug dealer despite how much he enjoyed the boisterous warrior’s company.) Hethrir reminded him of Mobuto. He’d met the Congolese dictator several times throughout his life in the service. Dined with him twice, an experience that left him as disgusted as just about anything else. It was that realization that made him regret just how dire the situation was with earth. “I never thought I’d live to be involved in a second cold war.” This time they were the minor nation making the deals with the bigger ideological power and in turn brokering deals with minor nation.
Hammond didn’t like this.
In fact, he hated it.
But paradoxically; he didn’t feel any regret.
Petty Officer O’Neill joined him, silently on the walk looking like she’d just gotten out of a bath as well and he had to remember to put her up for a promotion for this. Last night she fought beside him and earlier Ecthor, she fought like a demon, and she fought to protect not only her Admiral but everyone around her and she did it without flinching. Barely into her twenties, she showed the kind of bravery aspiring officers of his generation had shown but not something that was so common in the Space Force, which existed unofficially since the Reagan years and officially since the Clinton era and had been the butt of every joke until project Giza succeeded. The discipline, the fact that the different service branches used his service as a dumping ground for flunkies to well connected to washout had crippled it for far too long. It was only the looming alien threat that had begun to instill a sense of virtue and tradition in it. -And the other service branches are afraid we’ll eventually render them obsolete or absorb them now and are trying to sandbag us at every turn-. Hammond thought ruefully..traitors, the lot of them and the less said about the near mutinous feud between the CIA and the NID the better. “The war between rats and ferrets” Daniel had called it. He liked Doctor Jackson, he was a scholar and a dweeb but there was fire in him and the heart of a medieval bard. Plus, Hammond was fairly well acquainted with the works of Doctor Nicholas Ballard, they had prompted so many of his early missions into the jungles, or on submarines chasing after lost Russian subs with the intent to board them in the depths, only to find corpses strangled by the dark seeking ruins and legends. It was a damn shame so much of his life would likely remain classified long after he was gone, he could write a whole lot of adventure novels and thrillers off most of the things he did. Maybe he’d put them to paper and audio and let one of his grandkids profit off it in the future? Hayes had suggested he do that.
The Ballard-Jackson theory was going to become one of the most important methods of approaching alien cultures and their own if not the defining method of analytics. The old Admiral knew that much. “Afternoon Admiral, sir.”
“Sandy.” Hammond responded returning her salute. Sometimes he had to remind himself, she was one of his sailors, not one of the army of grandkids he had. Most of the time she never bothered to correct him. “Still sore?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Shoulder feels better after a hot bath..They look, energized today sir.” The younger O’Neill remarked, her eyes scanning the men and women working to rebuild the damaged parts of their town causing the Admiral to laugh slightly. “These people spent four generations at war, their entire economy and way of life revolved around the consequences of that and mining. Those wars ended a little under twenty years ago from what I remember Xoltec saying. These people had to shift their entire way of life to a peaceful commerce kingdom, in our world societies at this level usually descended into periods of anarchy and banditry as Knights without the income of war tended to go on a rampage when they didn’t have family to maintain them. “All in all, Hammond had to admit they made the transition well, but he couldn’t shake the fact that he suspected most of that change came from the fact that those who couldn’t adapt were sent through the gate to tame other worlds, or worse were sent ahead to raid and settle other landmasses here.
Hethrir struck him as someone who exported his social ills as much as he exported Trinium and other precious metals. Which was one of the dozen different things that made him wonder why the old monarch was absolutely thrilled when it was revealed that all they wanted was access to the hall of Hammers and some Trinium. As if he expected a much higher cost or more accurately viewed their coming as a stay of execution. They continued to walk, mostly in silence though they were joined by a detail of guards and a twenty-year-old named Rynulf who he could tell by the tinge in his skin was one of the many progenies of King Hethrir, probably a grandson of the kids he had with those blue aliens. The boy spoke Imperial Standard (Or Space Egyptian as so many of his boys called it.), he was friendly and helpful, nothing like his grandfather. And he was reasonably certain the youth was flirting with his petty officer..Who had just begun to flirt back.
Heaven shield me from the young! Hammond thought with amusement. They were all eventually going to return to the Wyryn but a crowd assembled on the stoop of what he assumed was the manse of some merchant or noble or one of Ecthor’s warriors. There was a hostile tenor to the jeers that the old seal recognized as something that wouldn’t have been out of place in a vigilante mob. The fury, the rage, the sadistic amusement spurned him on and to his shock flecks of fluorescent purple blood spattered onto his wrist and his eyes jerked towards the gap in the center of the crowd.
The creature that stood at the center flinging wildly was squat. If he was five feet he was standing on the tips of his hind flippers (For that’s what they looked like, frogs’ feet.), he had an enormous chin that looked more like a bloated frog’s waddle and his skin was a mottled green with dark green stripes. Purple blood ebbed from wounds that were rapidly closing, and his wide, overly large yellow eyes were clearly pained by the afternoon sun. There was something innately pathetic about the bandit that made Hammond take pity on him, the indignation below the fear suggested that he didn’t even know why he was there in the grander sense not merely a POW. The prince beside his aid spat and told Sandy that (At least as far as Hammond could understand.) these fools were making the poor creature fight in a blood sport for pennies.
No, he was too valuable a resource to be killed for amusement, they needed intel sorely and this was just cruel. His eyes shifted to the prince who gave him a nod and then Hammond stepped forward, Sandra following him dutifully. One of the local toughs was using an improvised machete hacking at the beast who was only parrying most of the thrusts by virtue of slightly superior reflexes. It managed to get a solid hit off with a pathetic wooden club and when the man cocked his arm back preparing to brain the poor alien Hammond grabbed the man’s wrist stopping his movement dead.
The tough turned; hostile gray eyes framed by a youthful face with a beard that was still coming in. A look of surprise replaced the fear as he recognized the elder leader of the Tau’Ri warband. The recognition caused him a second of hesitance, enough that he dropped the blade and seemed to relent. Only to realize his friends were behind him and rather than taking a light rebuke, he opted to act on pride and his throat made a gesture Hammond knew well.
Too many veterans had been spat on by anti-war protestors throughout the decades, too many of his fellow sailors and marines had been disrespected. His grip loosened on the tough’s hand and then the back of his fist slammed into boy’s mouth. The kid had apparently not expected such force to come from an old man because he staggered and fell backwards farther than Hammond expected him to. Two of the guards were on him while Sandra grabbed the chain around the fat frog man’s neck and asked him if he was alright in Imperial Standard.
The creature answered in the affirmative. Hammond turned to the prince “Have him taken to one of your nicer cells. I’ll send one of my marines to interrogate him later in the evening.” It was a lie, he’d probably send Daniel Jackson and Teal’c along with some food to ask him his life story rather than what they believed he’d do. The youth gave a nod and soon the creature was grabbed and yanked along the streets towards the Wyryn. “You think this wasn’t a good decision?”
Sandra shrugged. “Admiral, it’s not my place to question your decisions. But I do wonder if we can trust anything he says.”
Hammond smiled and slapped her arm lightly. “Experience sailor, lots of experience.”
…………
Wyryn Castle: Outskirts- Planet Hurot
By the next morning the total tally of casualties numbered roughly one hundred sixty. One hundred of which were enemy lizards and none of which were members of the Space Force Marine division assigned to the SGC. Jaffa, giant eagles, war beasts, now ghoulish lizardmen from strange worlds who abducted women in the dead of night. Ranger or Space Marine, his kids acquitted themselves exactly as one would expect from the best of the best and the Admiral was proud of them all. He was also, grateful that the public baths weren’t destroyed, and he was able to clean as much of the blood and grime off him as possible and change into some new fatigues. As he walked through the aftermath of the battle, he was certain the stories about the century spanning unification wars weren’t mere propaganda. Though underpopulated the Wyryn was clearly the center capitol of a burgeoning empire, one that had spent several generations in continuous warfare. The people wept, briefly, celebrated their loved ones and by the time he got out of the bathhouse and made his way down the city streets people were beginning to rebuild their homes and stores.
No day of mourning, nor rest, religious services would be held that night and there likely would be neighborhood feasts held on their rest day to commemorate the dead and they would go on with their lives. It reminded him of the Congo early in his career and of Kosovo in the 1990’s when he organized black ops missions during the conflict. People inured to atrocity could bare an incredible amount of weight until one day they grew tired of the cycle and either snapped and tore down their leaders or pushed for reform in a more peaceful way. It was interesting to think of, as he looked around, he could see the usual mix of nonhuman hominids and human as the base stock in a lot of the men and women in the settlement. There were some aliens too and he was told that some of the human looking people were Sebacean or of Sebacean descent which he was told by Teal’c was a prototype species created before the Jaffa and exiled for being a failure. Teal’c didn’t hold them in very high esteem and from the angry and bitter looks some held at Teal’c the Admiral wondered if his exiled War Master wasn’t just as much of an anachronism as he was.
But what was interesting was that one out of every ten village looked like Serbians, or Russians or Swedes. Which he was told was the result of the Asgardians transporting Vikings lost at sea and their families to their sanctuary worlds. Apparently Hethrir’s ancestral claim to the Throne rested on him being descended from a “Chief among the newcomers”. Hammond wondered which of those chiefs and if they were at all like the brave heroes the history books mentioned when he was a boy or if they were as shrewd, cynical and manipulative as Hethrir.
Hethrir, he reminded the Admiral of someone. He just couldn’t figure out who, until he saw Ecthor’s police force accepting a bribe from a local businessman to buy three demolished “government” buildings for pennies on the pound or whatever the currency was. Coppers on the Gold piece? No wait, Hethrir used platinum as the standard and gold and silver coins were the next most valuable currencies.
Platinum as the standard, Hammond shook his head. Just suggesting that in an interview would be enough to send the global economy into a panic, plus the metal was rare on earth..apparently in Hurot it may as well have grown on trees. But the level of kleptocratic nonsense he and the elder O’Neill’s had seen since he got here (Including things well above your standard fair middle age corpse robbing and other things. He was certain Ecthor was a drug dealer despite how much he enjoyed the boisterous warrior’s company.) Hethrir reminded him of Mobuto. He’d met the Congolese dictator several times throughout his life in the service. Dined with him twice, an experience that left him as disgusted as just about anything else. It was that realization that made him regret just how dire the situation was with earth. “I never thought I’d live to be involved in a second cold war.” This time they were the minor nation making the deals with the bigger ideological power and in turn brokering deals with minor nation.
Hammond didn’t like this.
In fact, he hated it.
But paradoxically; he didn’t feel any regret.
Petty Officer O’Neill joined him, silently on the walk looking like she’d just gotten out of a bath as well and he had to remember to put her up for a promotion for this. Last night she fought beside him and earlier Ecthor, she fought like a demon, and she fought to protect not only her Admiral but everyone around her and she did it without flinching. Barely into her twenties, she showed the kind of bravery aspiring officers of his generation had shown but not something that was so common in the Space Force, which existed unofficially since the Reagan years and officially since the Clinton era and had been the butt of every joke until project Giza succeeded. The discipline, the fact that the different service branches used his service as a dumping ground for flunkies to well connected to washout had crippled it for far too long. It was only the looming alien threat that had begun to instill a sense of virtue and tradition in it. -And the other service branches are afraid we’ll eventually render them obsolete or absorb them now and are trying to sandbag us at every turn-. Hammond thought ruefully..traitors, the lot of them and the less said about the near mutinous feud between the CIA and the NID the better. “The war between rats and ferrets” Daniel had called it. He liked Doctor Jackson, he was a scholar and a dweeb but there was fire in him and the heart of a medieval bard. Plus, Hammond was fairly well acquainted with the works of Doctor Nicholas Ballard, they had prompted so many of his early missions into the jungles, or on submarines chasing after lost Russian subs with the intent to board them in the depths, only to find corpses strangled by the dark seeking ruins and legends. It was a damn shame so much of his life would likely remain classified long after he was gone, he could write a whole lot of adventure novels and thrillers off most of the things he did. Maybe he’d put them to paper and audio and let one of his grandkids profit off it in the future? Hayes had suggested he do that.
The Ballard-Jackson theory was going to become one of the most important methods of approaching alien cultures and their own if not the defining method of analytics. The old Admiral knew that much. “Afternoon Admiral, sir.”
“Sandy.” Hammond responded returning her salute. Sometimes he had to remind himself, she was one of his sailors, not one of the army of grandkids he had. Most of the time she never bothered to correct him. “Still sore?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Shoulder feels better after a hot bath..They look, energized today sir.” The younger O’Neill remarked, her eyes scanning the men and women working to rebuild the damaged parts of their town causing the Admiral to laugh slightly. “These people spent four generations at war, their entire economy and way of life revolved around the consequences of that and mining. Those wars ended a little under twenty years ago from what I remember Xoltec saying. These people had to shift their entire way of life to a peaceful commerce kingdom, in our world societies at this level usually descended into periods of anarchy and banditry as Knights without the income of war tended to go on a rampage when they didn’t have family to maintain them. “All in all, Hammond had to admit they made the transition well, but he couldn’t shake the fact that he suspected most of that change came from the fact that those who couldn’t adapt were sent through the gate to tame other worlds, or worse were sent ahead to raid and settle other landmasses here.
Hethrir struck him as someone who exported his social ills as much as he exported Trinium and other precious metals. Which was one of the dozen different things that made him wonder why the old monarch was absolutely thrilled when it was revealed that all they wanted was access to the hall of Hammers and some Trinium. As if he expected a much higher cost or more accurately viewed their coming as a stay of execution. They continued to walk, mostly in silence though they were joined by a detail of guards and a twenty-year-old named Rynulf who he could tell by the tinge in his skin was one of the many progenies of King Hethrir, probably a grandson of the kids he had with those blue aliens. The boy spoke Imperial Standard (Or Space Egyptian as so many of his boys called it.), he was friendly and helpful, nothing like his grandfather. And he was reasonably certain the youth was flirting with his petty officer..Who had just begun to flirt back.
Heaven shield me from the young! Hammond thought with amusement. They were all eventually going to return to the Wyryn but a crowd assembled on the stoop of what he assumed was the manse of some merchant or noble or one of Ecthor’s warriors. There was a hostile tenor to the jeers that the old seal recognized as something that wouldn’t have been out of place in a vigilante mob. The fury, the rage, the sadistic amusement spurned him on and to his shock flecks of fluorescent purple blood spattered onto his wrist and his eyes jerked towards the gap in the center of the crowd.
The creature that stood at the center flinging wildly was squat. If he was five feet he was standing on the tips of his hind flippers (For that’s what they looked like, frogs’ feet.), he had an enormous chin that looked more like a bloated frog’s waddle and his skin was a mottled green with dark green stripes. Purple blood ebbed from wounds that were rapidly closing, and his wide, overly large yellow eyes were clearly pained by the afternoon sun. There was something innately pathetic about the bandit that made Hammond take pity on him, the indignation below the fear suggested that he didn’t even know why he was there in the grander sense not merely a POW. The prince beside his aid spat and told Sandy that (At least as far as Hammond could understand.) these fools were making the poor creature fight in a blood sport for pennies.
No, he was too valuable a resource to be killed for amusement, they needed intel sorely and this was just cruel. His eyes shifted to the prince who gave him a nod and then Hammond stepped forward, Sandra following him dutifully. One of the local toughs was using an improvised machete hacking at the beast who was only parrying most of the thrusts by virtue of slightly superior reflexes. It managed to get a solid hit off with a pathetic wooden club and when the man cocked his arm back preparing to brain the poor alien Hammond grabbed the man’s wrist stopping his movement dead.
The tough turned; hostile gray eyes framed by a youthful face with a beard that was still coming in. A look of surprise replaced the fear as he recognized the elder leader of the Tau’Ri warband. The recognition caused him a second of hesitance, enough that he dropped the blade and seemed to relent. Only to realize his friends were behind him and rather than taking a light rebuke, he opted to act on pride and his throat made a gesture Hammond knew well.
Too many veterans had been spat on by anti-war protestors throughout the decades, too many of his fellow sailors and marines had been disrespected. His grip loosened on the tough’s hand and then the back of his fist slammed into boy’s mouth. The kid had apparently not expected such force to come from an old man because he staggered and fell backwards farther than Hammond expected him to. Two of the guards were on him while Sandra grabbed the chain around the fat frog man’s neck and asked him if he was alright in Imperial Standard.
The creature answered in the affirmative. Hammond turned to the prince “Have him taken to one of your nicer cells. I’ll send one of my marines to interrogate him later in the evening.” It was a lie, he’d probably send Daniel Jackson and Teal’c along with some food to ask him his life story rather than what they believed he’d do. The youth gave a nod and soon the creature was grabbed and yanked along the streets towards the Wyryn. “You think this wasn’t a good decision?”
Sandra shrugged. “Admiral, it’s not my place to question your decisions. But I do wonder if we can trust anything he says.”
Hammond smiled and slapped her arm lightly. “Experience sailor, lots of experience.”
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Their heathenish hope...
…………
Wyryn Castle: Outskirts- Planet Hurot
It was hard to surprise Robert Makepeace of the United States Space Force, Marine division. He’d like to think he’d seen it all in his rather checkered career. From back-alley deals, political assassinations to a good ol’fashion clash between good and evil on alien planets. Makepeace had seen or done it all. Or so he liked to think, working undercover for the NID while also working undercover for Kensey’s faction or at least pretending to (Makepeace still wasn’t sure if he was as bold as Maybourne who was screwing absolutely everyone but Vice President Hayes over for profit. But he knew loyalty to that maniac was not viable long-term.), he even vaguely believed Fraser about her experience with bigfoot because he’d seen something when he was doing an op in the mountains of Pakistan ten years ago.
Very little surprised him, even fighting rape iguanas and their hordes of lust driven, small-brained lizard men didn’t really phase Colonel Makepeace.
What had surprised him, was just how easily Hammond could play the game against corrupt potentates without so much as a comment about the taste in his mouth. Oh sure, the Admiral was a legend in the black ops community, but he also had a reputation as being somewhat of an implacable man with an iron like moral character that was never going to crease no matter who asked him to compromise himself. So, the fact that he could fenagle a vicious warlord turned miserly merchant king had almost made Makepeace burst out into laughter in the Throne Room. Admiral was an interesting man, having been tasked with observing him and his command, scrutinizing his moves to search for a sign of a compromised command so Kensey’s backers would make a futile attempt to remove a man who answered directly to the President in these matters and had his and the Vice President’s undying loyalty wasn’t going to be easily ousted.
Makepeace didn’t care, they were bribing him well enough, an assignment that got him comfortably paid to pretend to be obeying orders was one of the best assignments around. In hindsight, maybe the Admiral’s ability to play the game shouldn’t have been surprising given that Makepeace was starting to adore the old bastard. Speaking of old bastards, the enormous shadow of Teal’c began to look over him as both he and Daniel Jackson joined him by the column Makepeace had been sitting against for the last couple hours. Teal’c was a career officer from what he could understand of his former Government, born and bred, genetically engineered and a member of a race of super soldiers who’d been groomed to run the armed forces of their damn war God since he was a ten-year-old in the early nineteen hundreds. One hundred and twenty-five years old, talk about old and due to his status as a head honcho, a chief of the bean counters Makepeace wanted to hate him.
Problem is Teal’c was the lead from the front type, he enjoyed those guys. But Teal’c being a young man by his species standards explained why he was still alive. With the exception of O’Neill (and he allegedly died once already, then came back younger and healthier the bastard.) and Hammond, Robert knew of no “lead from the front, father to his men asshats” that survived to see middle age.
Jackson was another kind of dumbass, probably one of the smartest people on his or any other planet but dangerously curious and naïve and assumption prone (Makepeace probably would have shot him in sands of Abydos by the end of week one when they didn’t find the Gate address for Earth.), it was another idiot Makepeace should have hated but had come to find amusement of. “Look’n less purple Doc.” Makepeace teased. The allergy prone idiot had gone and drunken mead made from all the exotic flowers on this alien world and then had some river shellfish on an alien world during the celebration and almost died from anaphylaxis if it weren’t for Captain Stacey Spacek, his red headed medic pumping him full of meds. Jackson smiled sheepishly “Yeah, sorry about that sir, it’s never happened on any other alien world but in hindsight.”
Makepeace laughed “In hindsight you dweebs should all sit down with Doctor Fraser and hammer out some kind of dos and don’ts for alien eating and fornicating.”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow though Makepeace could tell it was less because he used a naughty word and more because Teal’c was shocked they still hadn’t done that. “Is that still in committee? I was under the impression that was given priority. Some of the sexually transmitted diseases in the galaxies can be quite atrocious. I know of one that was common on Lotar worlds in Ra’s domain that caused the flesh to fall off the bone.”
Jackson balked and Makepeace howled.
“I would not concern yourself doctor, it was eradicated when I was an adolescent.”
“Was that fifty years ago? Or a hundred?” Makepeace asked despite himself.
Teal’c regarded him with a playful glare before offering Makepeace some mead in a platinum and gold lined drinking horn that was four feet long and almost too heavy for him to drink from. Damn the stuff was good, even if it did leave his throat scratchy. “The Colonel wishes to speak to you regarding a plan of action.”
“Ah, him and Hammond are gonna go with Ramirez’s desire to hunker down here and ware them down huh?”
Teal’c shrugged. He wasn’t keen on the plan because he believed they were missing a key component of how they were able to get armed men here and if they didn’t have a ship or something nearby. “A Scarran dreadnaught could carry some sixty thousand troops, twice that if they were stretched to their limits”
Makepeace whistled.
“I thought Drey’ac destroyed them all?” Daniel asked.
“There were several thousand of them in the Scarran armada, it is possible one fled. Though I do not know how it would end up out here, their faster than light capabilities are rather primitive. It would have taken them decades.” Either way Teal’c thought they were getting reinforcements somehow.
“You don’t think it could be one of them closed Gate network systems?” Makepeace asked.
Teal’c shook his head. “That technology is a jealously guarded secret and very difficult to replicate”. The Tollan proved that. Closer to the Asgard technologically than even the Goa’uld were and yet they still were only cracking that riddle. Besides you needed to know how to make Stargates to do that and the Scarrans were as ignorant about interdimensional physics as the people of Hurot were of the science behind the SGC’s armed drones. “My belief is that a sizable starship is within the system, though how the Scarrans were able to cross the distances is what eludes me.”
Daniel looked like he was going to say something and held his tongue until Makepeace prodded it out of him. “Well, Sam tells me you think this planet was subjected to some kind of orbital bombardment, right?”
Teal’c nodded.
“Well..These guys don’t seem to really want anything from Hurot, aside from stealing women but Ecthor says they just do whatever they want with them and then kill them. They’re not here to take anything. Almost like they’re out for revenge.” He replied sheepishly. “Like they’re just trying to cause as much pain as possible.”
Ohhh! Huh, the kid was right. “I see what you’re saying Danny boy, if they were just out for revenge why not park their fancy death cruiser in orbit then blast the whole planet to smithereens.” Makepeace offered, damn. Why hadn’t he thought of that? It did explain a lot of the absurdity behind the tactics and actions of the prior raid.
Teal’c blinked, disturbed. “You believe the original Gate to this world was found? But then someone would still have to have arrived via ship.”
Daniel nodded. “Right, but they said the day of the Wyryn’s inauguration that there was a meteor storm in the sky. Uncommon, but not unheard of and so they didn’t really pay attention. Maybe a vessel tried to escape through hyperspace and without the proper tech they were just flung through the stars? Oh but…do Gates even work like that? Can you have two gates to a world that aren’t closed Network gates?”
Teal’c nodded. “Though I have not seen it myself, Apollo’s First Prime once told me of an incident in his youth when he and his commander were forced to repel Lucian pirates from a planet and similarly to us, they could not ascertain how they were constantly reinforcing themselves through their orbital defenses. Until they attempted to rotate troops outside of schedule and the Gate would not dial. I believe which ever gate is active defaults to the primary so long as it is active and if the Scarrans knew the regular traffic hours.” He frowned.
This meant virtually anyone could come through, provided the original Gate to this world was not also of Asgardian make with the programming to remove genetic material midstream that was kindred to the Serpent kings. “This is most alarming..”
“If that’s the case then we need to find evidence to corroborate this and soon because if they come again, they might come with reinforcements in numbers we can’t really match.” Makepeace annoyed. They had to take the fight to the lizards in their lair and hopefully bury that gate or something. Else they’d be stuck here and eventually call for reinforcements, a forever war on an alien planet for resources. He had zero interest in another such foreign adventure, especially since he didn’t get rich off the last one.
This was all terribly shaky, of course. They were doing nothing but speculating, but as Daniel Jackson pointed out, speculation done by members of the SGC seemed to count more for prophecy and the Colonel hoped their luck in that area would hold. Around the time they finished running through all arguments for or against the existence of a backup Gate, O’Neill and Ramirez had arrived with servants on wheeled trays with hot chow. Chow in this case being a stew that was made from some local wildlife. Apparently, there were roaming flocks of elephant birds (an extinct species of giant tropical flightless birds from Madagascar.) all over Hurot and many other flightless bird species that the Asgard had either cloned and seeded throughout their domain within the Milky Way or had transplanted off earth in its ancient past.
Teal’c had also said animals and pollen tended to get through the gate and that also lead to the proliferation of certain plants, insect like and rodent like species. Apparently, these guys had their own subspecies of domestic elephant birds, some used for slaughter and others as nine-foot guard dogs. So, this stew, had a mix of beef (Descended from Aurochs according to Doctor Jackson. whatever the hell those were.) and giant bird. Fighting lizardmen, eating stuff straight out of the Flintstones. Maybe he’d be tempted to ask for a permanent posting here if any embassy gets established? It wouldn’t be too bad, plus he could get in on the local action and there were these gigantic antelope that reminded him Eland’s that he saw grazing on the outskirts of the city once.
The Asgardians had populated this world well.
They had settled down to eat when the Admiral joined them and so everyone shot up to salute and met with at ease. Apparently, Hammond had found himself a POW earlier and was planning on having Jackson and Teal’c interrogate him later. They were joined by a youth with slightly blue skin and O’Neill’s less nerdy daughter. Sandra and Sasha weren’t bad to look at and Makepeace didn’t mind Carter either, or Lahm. Truth be told most of the women on the base since all the fatties got purged were lookers as if Hammond and Landry staffed their facilities with models. Of course, Makepeace didn’t fraternize anymore, not since his wife died; not that it stopped him from admiring the aesthetic. Well, he also knew O’Neill would kill him so there was that.
It was when Jackson and Teal’c began discussing the possibility of a parallel gate that O’Neill grumbled about how ‘These damn things were waaayy too much like cosmic telephones”. But Teal’c and Daniel’s observations seemed to make the Admiral think and when Makepeace asked him what it was the old man shrugged.
“Teal’c, you described Unas as large, broad shouldered with more human like face and armored scales, correct?” The Admiral asked, setting aside his bowl and drinking some water with citrus inside. The Admiral had weird tastes for a southerner. Teal’c gave an affirmative and Hammond nodded, considering his words for a second before asking if their eyes reflected light the way nocturnal predators did or the other reptiles and Teal’c shot up, his reaction almost immediate. “They do not…”
Hammond nodded.
“Admiral what did you see.”
“It’s probably nothing, though with the possibility of a secondary Gate. I should mention I thought I saw the leader of the bandits last night during the raid, he looked at me, same way Apophis did when we first met Teal’c.” Hammond’s voice was faraway, intense yet distant and Makepeace couldn’t help but notice however one was hanging on his every damn word.
“What color was the glow of its eyes.” Teal’c asked alarmed.
“Green..Son, it was green.”
Hassaaaccckkkkk Yahata!
The sheer venom and alarm in Teal’cs voice caused Makepeace to raise his eyebrows.
“What?!” O’Neill asked bewildered.
“Yahata? As in The Yahata? As in the Shinto God of war?!”
“That is Apophis’ position within the religion. Though Hachiman of the Japanese religion bares much similarity to Yahata. He never attained the Status of System Lord, he was the First Prime of Izanagi, a Son of Amaterasu and the last Peer to ever take an Unas as a host and the decision was extremely controversial if I remember true.”
“So..we have proof that there’s a backup gate then? One that predates the Asgard otherwise this Yahata would have been killed getting here.” Hammond asked alarmed.
“Indeed, unless he went in the vessel, Daniel believes landed here. But that does not make sense..He is a criminal, wanted all over the known universe.” Teal’c sat back, in thought, bewildered. “We all assumed him dead…” Teal’c murmured. “He was barred from consideration for the elevation to the Status of System Lord for body theft….I cut his left eye out and Bra’tac routed his forces, when he fled back to his command ship Apophis had hit it with a full broadside from his flagship, nothing should be able to survive such an assault…. Entire planets have not survived such an assault.”
“Is that what made him a fugitive?” O’Neill asked and Makepeace was suddenly deeply focused on the conversation, annoyed that O’Neill missed that tiny detail about how Apophis shot this fucker with enough ordinance to pop a planet, but he was still ticking.
Teal’c shook his head. “No, it was the fact that he joined the Titan's rebellion, claiming his family had forsaken their vows and become pawns of the House of Ra.” The Jaffa went into some long-winded explanation about how the house of Ame no whoever…had launched their own rebellion against the Ori around the time that Ouranos and Tartarus had (The fathers of Ra and Apophis respectively.) and that they hadn’t joined the overall rebellion against them until five centuries into the war and had been the most resistant to Ra’s authority as Emperor only joining after Anubis and Prometheus were able to convince Izanagi who had taken over after his father died fighting the other great races that being part of the new order as opposed to a group of outsiders was the best way to ensure his family’s longterm survival. It still took them two thousand more years to finally submit fully to Ra’s authority and then they became his family’s most fanatical supporters until some bullshit where Apophis raped their princess in which case their devotion switched to the civilization they helped build instead or some nonsense. This maniac had apparently convinced almost half their Jaffa to join the rebellion against Ra and the humiliation of the entire family that resulted left them in a state of semi disgrace. Which Makepeace took to mean a crap position politically.
“But why work with a bunch of rape lizards?” O’Neill asked. “Sounds like he’d hate them.”
Teal’c shrugged. “Yahata has been a Roshna addict nearly as long as my species has existed, I believe he may have gone insane, or perhaps he has grown so despondent over his failure to attain vengeance that he has turned to simple vandalism because he feels he has nothing left to him but to seek a death in battle.”
Oh lovely, an insane, thirty-thousand-year-old drug addicted, suicidal terrorist. Makepeace thought, yup absolutely fucking wonderful.
And that still didn’t explain why the hell the damn Scarrans were here!
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Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Anyways trying to come up with a witty remark about Earth's fleet. "If the SGC is Earth's Dagger in the Night to its foes then our Fleet must serve as its sword, spear, and shield."
"Snake busters"
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Hmmmm on another note I think a related to how Earth's fleet is to be used is simple.
"It takes 3 years to build a ship 300 to build a new tradition." Yes that's paraphrasing a quote as related to the IRL Battle crete
"It takes 3 years to build a ship 300 to build a new tradition." Yes that's paraphrasing a quote as related to the IRL Battle crete
So they're about to throw down with a Peer? Hope they brought enough body bags...
Jack's gonna seriously advise abandoning the planet in the next chapter.
But they can't, since they need the Trinium and the treaty. So they gotta get...creative. Explosively so.
Cue Demon Cah'Tar!!!
Fortunately they have a mad scientist who specializes in making inordinately dangerous explosives!
Her legend grows!
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With the whole of your strength.
@Harlock @Spartan303 Something rather nefarius is afoot as more of the Scarrans motivations are revealed, Teal'c comes face to face with certain prejudices and Hammond and O'Neill spar about how to handle combat with a peer.
@Knowledgeispower and his deviousness regarding vaporizing Snakes has inspired me.
Naquadah powered drones!
Also we learn a little more about Lotars and their lives within the Imperium. Oh and a flashback that'll tie things together in time.
all credit as always to the glorious artists whose work google provides.
…………….
Castle Wyryn’s Dungeons: Planet Hurot.
“The Admiral said the prisoner was to be placed in a nice cell.” Daniel Jackson rebuked, his eyes narrowing in anger at Ecthor as he spoke in Aejir and then again in Imperial standard, just in case the hulking Captain decided to pretend he had issues understanding. “As was your prince” Jackson added the last bit with more than a hint of fury. Ecthor, the great Neanderthal Viking that he was merely grunted and gave an indifferent shrug. “Cree Danyer, ah’ata rishu’vei’n”
Daniel blinked, was that how he sounded to Teal’c? That was so lazily crafted and guttural it was almost hard to understand. Though from the gist of it, he gathered Ecthor said something like “Peace Daniel, this was not my doing.” Which it clearly wasn’t given that he was glaring murderously at the two guards who suddenly looked like children about to be severely scolded. Ecthor barked a series of orders and they swallowed then bolted out of the room heading towards the exit of the dungeons and towards the chief goaler. Evidently rite of conquest was respected here, and Hammond had claimed the POW from a local criminal and as such legally the prisoner belonged to the commander of the SGC. No one was very happy about that, and Hammond looked visibly disgusted at the thought. Apparently, several of his great-great grandfathers children had been taken as slaves by the Comanche and the same generation had opposed slavery despite being behind the CSA border. To say nothing of all the time the Admiral spent in places of the world where slavery was still legal until recently.
But if it kept the poor frogman from being slaughtered.
The miserable creature was chained to the wall, its arms above its head and it was clearly making noises that sounded like sobbing. On his shoulder was a mark that had been covered by uniform until recently, the mark of Apophis and Daniel instinctively took a step back whereas Teal’c eyebrow raised stepped forward. Breaking the dungeon door open with a grunt of effort and to a barely contained cry of alarm from Ecthor. Teal’c narrowed his eyes and demanded to know the poor creature’s station and duty.
It answered that he was a design and implementation supervisor in the shipyards over Karnak, one of Apophis industrial hubs. He built warships Daniel realized and on listening further was surprised to learn he worked under a bonded Goa’uld of one of the middle races, those that made up the bulk of the members of the technologist guilds. His name was Slys and he was a journeyman in one of the larger Guilds. He said that he had been sent to Ba’al’s realm as part of the treaty between the two great lords and was looking forward to meeting his mate and their spawn in their new lake side home. The creature shook his head ruefully, weaving a tale of woe about how he was captured, on a backwater that he had been convinced to go visit by Gate for an evening meal as it had the best tavern in the sector.
Jackson hadn’t thought of the idea that Stargates might be used to commute for something as simple as a meal, but in hindsight it made sense to a degree, but it was a concept that was going to take some getting used too. Idly Jackson wondered if there had ever been traffic jams at a Gate. This whole tale of woe was guttered out in a way that made it too convincing to be a lie. This poor Slys was apparently pressganged into working for this weird collection of lizardmen. “Sleestaks always like a good fight, many of my people live on worlds under Lucian control, not all of us are blessed to be under the dominion of the Star Gods!” he yelped out weakly. Teal’c nodded and struck his chains with the Excalibur like combat staff that seemed to awe Ecthor who had his suspicions about what the staff was but had no way to confirm it until it just, morphed into a plasma ax and cut through the chains before turning back into a staff. The freaky weapon also elicited a look of shocked focus in the eyes of Slys. “Apophis says you were seduced, but..” he nodded. “I see..I understand why you did it Sir.”
Teal’c gave the barest of nods of acknowledgment before asking if he knew Yahata commanded the legions of reptilians. This caused a look of shame to fall over his face. “No War Master, I had no inclination until I was forced through the Stargate and brought to this world to service their weaponry…which I know not how to do, so they broke my hands and when those healed gave me a pulse pistol and forced me to fight as if I were cannon fodder…I miss my children..”
The poor guy was pathetic, too pathetic to be a spy or a plant or for it to be a lie. Teal’c asked him a few more questions about himself and his career that confirmed it. “But I do know he is using their grief to indulge in his bloodlust.”
“Hyrh’keha?” (Grief?) Daniel asked.
The Frog man nodded animatedly. “Yes, yes, Hethrir and his father before him sold small amounts Naquadah to the Scarrans and Trinium, but they were a far larger provider of the ingredients that go into the oils those barbarians use to fuel their energy weaponry. Protected by Asgardian might, no Scarran dreadnaught would ever come here and so Hethrir, and his kin and the leaders of several other worlds gouged them and the Scarrans were fool enough to think this was an untouchable client and thus it made them allies. Hethrir and these leaders promised them they could send their families here and be granted sanctuary…War Master, when Fleet Captain Drey’ac began her invasion of Scarran space.”
Teal’c shifted and Daniel’s eyes narrowed coming to the same conclusion about where this was going. “But when the Scarran Empire fell they didn’t honor their promise?”
‘No, worse…They did and soon a million Scarran women and children were spread out across four worlds within the protected planets Zone…When the Scarran men returned to Hurot and the other worlds for their kin…they found a battalion of Lucian mercenaries waiting for them. It was treachery…Hethrir and the other Kings had many of them massacred and sold their children and women to Lucian slavers..” Slys groaned. “I cannot believe the Asgardians would tolerate such treachery within their own borders…something terrible must be waylaying them for such a thing to transpire without retribution.”
Ecthor laughed and answered in far better Imperial Standard. “And why would they care? Scarrans are rapists and murderers, pillagers and thieves, brutes driven by lust and greed, and they would be mindless Unas descended mongrels if not for their stupid flower.” He sneered at Slys “And this mad serpent, Yahata! What does he want?”
Teal’c turned and eyed Ecthor coldly. “Scarrans are vermin true, but more fool you for inviting them here then trading their flesh for profit.” He snapped back in Aejir, his voice hard and cold.
“They’re Scarrans!” Ecthor sneared.
“And I along with she who is my wife had already broken their fighting spirit and the defective ones moved in and they are not but Peacekeeper thralls now. What point did their further denigration serve?” Teal’c’s voice was brimming with scorn. “Safe for sating your King’s greed.”
There were times, Daniel thought. When Teal’c sounded like what he imagined William Marshall or Miyamoto Musashi would have sounded like. Or what King Arthur or Achilles brooding in his tent might have. He was every bit what he expected from a spacefaring empire of feudal lords who treated their conquest of the stars as some sort of noblesse oblige. With all the good and bad that came with that sentiment.
Ecthor responded, eyes filled with fury. “And do your former masters not conquer whole civilizations? Entire Galaxies have been fed to their insatiable lust for justice over a slight that happened ere the dawn of our races! Do they not rule as God Kings over countless sentients?!”
“Goa’uld do not make slaves of any within their domain!”
“Then what be that thing in your entrails?!”
The question tore apart Teal’c’s indignant certitude like an armor piercing round through tissue paper. “Lotar…” He began.
Ecthor raised his hand, deciding to be the peacemaker. “Tis, true. My kind are treated well by the serpents, but what they do to their own brothers? If not slavery, then what be it War Master? I and mine only sold foreign flesh. Removing mouths to feed who could not be trusted to work and to serve, wielding the fortune gained to strengthen our people. We did not this to own kin…But that which the Peers visit upon the middle and lower breeds of Goa’uld is a malevolence that goes well beyond mere vengeance nor defense. What manner of monster engineers their own kindred to serve as fuel for their war machine?”
It was not a moment Teal’c was prepared for, to consider the reality that the Prim’tah inside his body, that enhanced his already formidable strength and regenerated his flesh and prolonged his youth for centuries had been mothered by something connected to the Peers in part by blood, as the “lowest” of breeds didn’t have the strength to sustain Jaffa, Daniel knew some of the Jaffa and Goa’uld that were apartheid but not so low on the ladder and some Peers hunted the lower breeds of Goa’uld for sport. Teal’c seldom touched on it, because for a hundred plus years he never had to think about it. It was just, a natural law of society, speaking of the equalist movement (The closest thing the Goa’uld had to a civil rights movement.) as if they were just a bunch of entitled bastards making noise for no reason. It was only on earth, studying and reading human history had he begun to question that. As badly as Ra treated Abydos, their lives were a million times better than some Goa’uld subspecies had it.
Teal’c was sustained by a creature that had been modified, experimented on heavily, whose growth was permanently interrupted, halted at infancy and whose mind was shattered by lobotomy before it was even born. To serve as a steroid pack and immune system for the champions of the Gods. And Daniel stayed silent for long enough for Teal’c to dwell on that a bit before he interjected.
Because he’d be damned before he let a child peddling piece of crap lecture his friend. Speaking in Aejir. “Well, be that as it may…The Jaffa race would go extinct without the…sacrifice of the middle born. I see no comparison between what Hurot did and what the Peers did, beyond a surface parallel. As to Slys, Yarl Ecthor he belongs to the great Admiral who wishes him freed so that he might help us protect you from your own sins.”
…………
Nevada Desert -July 14th, 1956
“Last time I was out here, it was a bombed-out wasteland.” Robert Statterfield the second had been here after the A bomb testing, then again in ’47 when he was called out to a desert hotel to wait on orders that never came. He figured it was about the hubbub over some damned weather balloon (Fat chance! It was probably a field test of sophisticated nuke equipment.), calling an OSS boy from the war out there to run misinformation only for the absurd flying saucer narrative to render his mission moot. Damned annoying, it was too hot then and it’s too hot now.
Robert Statterfield was a Setauket man, descended from Anna Strong on one side and a Colonel Woodes Statterfield who served as a ranger under General Washington. In one form or the other his family had been involved in American espionage since the dawn of the country. Which was why he almost quit in fury when President Truman passed his father over for that effete criminal Dulles as Director of the CIA the whole Statterfield family damn near quit it all. Some, like Bob and his brother were still contemplating creating a new kind of private intelligence agency, a new form of Pinkerton. That was until Ike called him up a week ago and he flew into Washington on an overnight (He loved planes; he didn’t understand his wife’s fear of ‘em!) to meet with the President. A man he served during the war.
-Son, I know you’re all still smarting over the Dulles situation. -
Smarting, hah, the Statterfields built the CIA and funded the damn thing behind the scenes, using their own connections and their affiliation with a particular group. It had been their baby and that damned wheelchair bound drug addict and his successors stole it from them. They were so close to getting it back as well, until last week.
-I’m creating a new intelligence agency, in response to all these..bizarre incidents with flying saucers and allegations of international cabals and a million other things that I can’t trust the FBI or CIA to handle. Nor any existing agency for that matter-
Oh lovely, chasing things right out of the comics and magazines his sons read!
The old smoker sensed his disdain then and laughed “Now, now Bobby, trust me. You won’t want to refuse this National Intelligence directorate post.”
The NID? But why? It was originally an organization founded during the height of the Civil war, there might even still have been an old Union boy or two left alive that participated in its affairs, though bent and hobbled they’d be, if not outright senseless from old age. It had been shutdown slightly before the outbreak of the first world war, rumor had it that they were all about chasing nonsense.. Specters, lost cities in the deepest jungles and riddles in the darker places of the world and the way his grandfather talked about it, just a gigantic waste of money so the useless sons of blue bloods could hold a job and feel special. The thought of being saddled with the second iteration of such a nonsense agency made his damn blood boil. It was only their past relationship that led him to take the files home.
He read them.
He agreed an hour after his hands stopped shaking and the bourbon was in his blood.
Now he was here.
He needed to see it.
He needed to know what he committed his family to.
………………
Castle Wyryn’s Greathall: Planet Hurot. Asgard protected planet’s zone
“We need this mining treaty Jack, and we need the Trinium.” Hammond was being patient, more so than he ordinarily might have been when one of his premier marines, the head of the flagship team of Stargate Command decided to act like a frightened teenager (with the near mutinous indecisiveness to boot!). Though in truth that might have been Why he’d decided to give Jack some latitude. Nothing scared Jack O’Neill, not in the near thirty years he’d known the man had the chiseled jawed, wisecracking marine ever shown hesitancy or fear. Oh, sure he’d made grumbles of “forget that” or opted to shoot someone he might have otherwise gone into CQC with. Jack was a bit of a rogue even by special forces standards but genuine fear? “Teal’c says Yahata isn’t as good as Bra’tac or Herakles or Horus.”
“Ohh great…That means when we drop a redwood on his head, he’ll have to pick it up and throw it at us instead of vaporizing it with a damn flaming laser sword thing!” Jack rolled his eyes, his tone exasperated. Neither man discussed Slys’s revelation about just what Hethrir did to piss off the Scarrans, because the fact that they would once again be working with tremendous scumbags was something neither of them wanted to address for fear of doing something..unfortunate. “Sir, we threw grenades at Birdman…hell we threw a Naquadah enhanced vacuum bomb at him!”
“Only a little one” Carter murmured. “There was like..a salt pinch worth of Naquadah in that thing”
“CARTER NOT THE POINT!” O’Neill snapped.
Hammond rubbed the bridge of his nose with his left hand. And Syls who’d been listening to Daniel’s translation meekly offered to go to Nineveh and request the aid of Aris Boch who had been hunting Yahata for the better part century any way. Teal’c’s eyes widened both with the eagerness to work with such a legend and to perhaps get a message to his wife, but he reluctantly pointed out that there was no way in hell some random mid-level factory boss would get an audience with the legendary hunter of the stars. Especially when he seemed to be far closer to being the first ever non-Jaffa or Goa’uld bonded First Prime. Hammond set a hand on the Frog man’s shoulder when he saw the dejected look in his eyes. He was the one he felt the most sympathy for outside of the civilians in town, Slys hadn’t signed up for any of this, he was just a regular joe, the intergalactic equivalent of a working man and it was only the fact that his mate also did the same job that Hammond wasn’t worried about his kids going homeless.
It was weird to think about, realizing that he was looking at a man-sized frog alien and thinking of him the same way he used to think about the construction workers and day laborers caught in the middle of whatever cold war era shitstorm he and his team were caught in at that particular moment. But really, once you got below the surface oddities most aliens Hammond had met (That in and of itself was such a bizarre thought.) were no different than most humans. They worked, paid their bills, loved their families and did everything they could to keep the hell away from the giants in the playground. “Tell Slys the only duty he has is to get home to his family and that I’ll be sending him through the gate the moment this conflict is over.”
Something stirred in the frogman’s giant eyes and Hammond turned from him to look at O’Neill. “I read the report, I read what Horus did to you and I wager that the only reason why he took any injury at all was due to the fact that he underestimated you.” And that he was trying to capture them George left out, that was a sore point. He knew just how strong Teal’c was, and he listened to Teal’cs stories from the Titans rebellion, how Herakles, Bra’tac and Horus had carved through hundreds of Jaffa the same way his mountain had nearly been taken from him. He knew Apophis was capable of similar if he felt so inclined and that it took ten to one odds to briefly turn Ra’s security at Abydos, he knew all this but still the old Admiral had committed the sin of dismissing the tales as slight exaggeration. After all much of the known universe worshipped them as living Gods, exaggeration was bound to enter the equation.
And then his best team was only saved by a combination of a Prince’s sense of honor and damn fairy magic. At least he was able to convince Jack just to radio Abydos for some of the new combat drones and a prototype Naquadah enhanced missile. Apparently, Landry’s ‘302 project wasn’t just for aero-space fighters, but he had been working on modified predator drones as part of the Constellation fleet project and Naquadah had given him the leeway he needed for his “hunter-killer project.”, with any luck one of them would be here within twelve hours. Peer or not, a high-altitude RC plane of death was a high-altitude RC plane of death. Jack grumbled something about how he hoped it would be enough and Hammond sat down on one of the immense leather-bound sofas in the great hall.
The prince who had been flirting with O’Neill had come in joined by several of his siblings, apologizing for their great grandfather’s dishonor and asking to join the SG teams on their hunt for the alternate Stargate.
A gate that, Slys was all too happy to divulge the location of and its defenses.
And of course, it was in a blasted cave complex, behind enemy lines in their well-fortified riverside base.
The Beowulf parallels were too much for this old warrior who had no desire to meet death in battle against a Dragon and so he decided to radio Jack and order him to request a bunker buster or two if Landry was able to do anything with the Naquadah enhanced vacuum bombs Carter had thought up.
Fighting a Peer in CQC might have been suicide, but at least he could deny this lunatic reinforcements and hopefully bring down the entire cave network on his head in the interim.
He just hoped that would be enough.
Slaying dragons was something he was too damn old for.
@Knowledgeispower and his deviousness regarding vaporizing Snakes has inspired me.
Naquadah powered drones!
Also we learn a little more about Lotars and their lives within the Imperium. Oh and a flashback that'll tie things together in time.
all credit as always to the glorious artists whose work google provides.
…………….
Castle Wyryn’s Dungeons: Planet Hurot.
“The Admiral said the prisoner was to be placed in a nice cell.” Daniel Jackson rebuked, his eyes narrowing in anger at Ecthor as he spoke in Aejir and then again in Imperial standard, just in case the hulking Captain decided to pretend he had issues understanding. “As was your prince” Jackson added the last bit with more than a hint of fury. Ecthor, the great Neanderthal Viking that he was merely grunted and gave an indifferent shrug. “Cree Danyer, ah’ata rishu’vei’n”
Daniel blinked, was that how he sounded to Teal’c? That was so lazily crafted and guttural it was almost hard to understand. Though from the gist of it, he gathered Ecthor said something like “Peace Daniel, this was not my doing.” Which it clearly wasn’t given that he was glaring murderously at the two guards who suddenly looked like children about to be severely scolded. Ecthor barked a series of orders and they swallowed then bolted out of the room heading towards the exit of the dungeons and towards the chief goaler. Evidently rite of conquest was respected here, and Hammond had claimed the POW from a local criminal and as such legally the prisoner belonged to the commander of the SGC. No one was very happy about that, and Hammond looked visibly disgusted at the thought. Apparently, several of his great-great grandfathers children had been taken as slaves by the Comanche and the same generation had opposed slavery despite being behind the CSA border. To say nothing of all the time the Admiral spent in places of the world where slavery was still legal until recently.
But if it kept the poor frogman from being slaughtered.
The miserable creature was chained to the wall, its arms above its head and it was clearly making noises that sounded like sobbing. On his shoulder was a mark that had been covered by uniform until recently, the mark of Apophis and Daniel instinctively took a step back whereas Teal’c eyebrow raised stepped forward. Breaking the dungeon door open with a grunt of effort and to a barely contained cry of alarm from Ecthor. Teal’c narrowed his eyes and demanded to know the poor creature’s station and duty.
It answered that he was a design and implementation supervisor in the shipyards over Karnak, one of Apophis industrial hubs. He built warships Daniel realized and on listening further was surprised to learn he worked under a bonded Goa’uld of one of the middle races, those that made up the bulk of the members of the technologist guilds. His name was Slys and he was a journeyman in one of the larger Guilds. He said that he had been sent to Ba’al’s realm as part of the treaty between the two great lords and was looking forward to meeting his mate and their spawn in their new lake side home. The creature shook his head ruefully, weaving a tale of woe about how he was captured, on a backwater that he had been convinced to go visit by Gate for an evening meal as it had the best tavern in the sector.
Jackson hadn’t thought of the idea that Stargates might be used to commute for something as simple as a meal, but in hindsight it made sense to a degree, but it was a concept that was going to take some getting used too. Idly Jackson wondered if there had ever been traffic jams at a Gate. This whole tale of woe was guttered out in a way that made it too convincing to be a lie. This poor Slys was apparently pressganged into working for this weird collection of lizardmen. “Sleestaks always like a good fight, many of my people live on worlds under Lucian control, not all of us are blessed to be under the dominion of the Star Gods!” he yelped out weakly. Teal’c nodded and struck his chains with the Excalibur like combat staff that seemed to awe Ecthor who had his suspicions about what the staff was but had no way to confirm it until it just, morphed into a plasma ax and cut through the chains before turning back into a staff. The freaky weapon also elicited a look of shocked focus in the eyes of Slys. “Apophis says you were seduced, but..” he nodded. “I see..I understand why you did it Sir.”
Teal’c gave the barest of nods of acknowledgment before asking if he knew Yahata commanded the legions of reptilians. This caused a look of shame to fall over his face. “No War Master, I had no inclination until I was forced through the Stargate and brought to this world to service their weaponry…which I know not how to do, so they broke my hands and when those healed gave me a pulse pistol and forced me to fight as if I were cannon fodder…I miss my children..”
The poor guy was pathetic, too pathetic to be a spy or a plant or for it to be a lie. Teal’c asked him a few more questions about himself and his career that confirmed it. “But I do know he is using their grief to indulge in his bloodlust.”
“Hyrh’keha?” (Grief?) Daniel asked.
The Frog man nodded animatedly. “Yes, yes, Hethrir and his father before him sold small amounts Naquadah to the Scarrans and Trinium, but they were a far larger provider of the ingredients that go into the oils those barbarians use to fuel their energy weaponry. Protected by Asgardian might, no Scarran dreadnaught would ever come here and so Hethrir, and his kin and the leaders of several other worlds gouged them and the Scarrans were fool enough to think this was an untouchable client and thus it made them allies. Hethrir and these leaders promised them they could send their families here and be granted sanctuary…War Master, when Fleet Captain Drey’ac began her invasion of Scarran space.”
Teal’c shifted and Daniel’s eyes narrowed coming to the same conclusion about where this was going. “But when the Scarran Empire fell they didn’t honor their promise?”
‘No, worse…They did and soon a million Scarran women and children were spread out across four worlds within the protected planets Zone…When the Scarran men returned to Hurot and the other worlds for their kin…they found a battalion of Lucian mercenaries waiting for them. It was treachery…Hethrir and the other Kings had many of them massacred and sold their children and women to Lucian slavers..” Slys groaned. “I cannot believe the Asgardians would tolerate such treachery within their own borders…something terrible must be waylaying them for such a thing to transpire without retribution.”
Ecthor laughed and answered in far better Imperial Standard. “And why would they care? Scarrans are rapists and murderers, pillagers and thieves, brutes driven by lust and greed, and they would be mindless Unas descended mongrels if not for their stupid flower.” He sneered at Slys “And this mad serpent, Yahata! What does he want?”
Teal’c turned and eyed Ecthor coldly. “Scarrans are vermin true, but more fool you for inviting them here then trading their flesh for profit.” He snapped back in Aejir, his voice hard and cold.
“They’re Scarrans!” Ecthor sneared.
“And I along with she who is my wife had already broken their fighting spirit and the defective ones moved in and they are not but Peacekeeper thralls now. What point did their further denigration serve?” Teal’c’s voice was brimming with scorn. “Safe for sating your King’s greed.”
There were times, Daniel thought. When Teal’c sounded like what he imagined William Marshall or Miyamoto Musashi would have sounded like. Or what King Arthur or Achilles brooding in his tent might have. He was every bit what he expected from a spacefaring empire of feudal lords who treated their conquest of the stars as some sort of noblesse oblige. With all the good and bad that came with that sentiment.
Ecthor responded, eyes filled with fury. “And do your former masters not conquer whole civilizations? Entire Galaxies have been fed to their insatiable lust for justice over a slight that happened ere the dawn of our races! Do they not rule as God Kings over countless sentients?!”
“Goa’uld do not make slaves of any within their domain!”
“Then what be that thing in your entrails?!”
The question tore apart Teal’c’s indignant certitude like an armor piercing round through tissue paper. “Lotar…” He began.
Ecthor raised his hand, deciding to be the peacemaker. “Tis, true. My kind are treated well by the serpents, but what they do to their own brothers? If not slavery, then what be it War Master? I and mine only sold foreign flesh. Removing mouths to feed who could not be trusted to work and to serve, wielding the fortune gained to strengthen our people. We did not this to own kin…But that which the Peers visit upon the middle and lower breeds of Goa’uld is a malevolence that goes well beyond mere vengeance nor defense. What manner of monster engineers their own kindred to serve as fuel for their war machine?”
It was not a moment Teal’c was prepared for, to consider the reality that the Prim’tah inside his body, that enhanced his already formidable strength and regenerated his flesh and prolonged his youth for centuries had been mothered by something connected to the Peers in part by blood, as the “lowest” of breeds didn’t have the strength to sustain Jaffa, Daniel knew some of the Jaffa and Goa’uld that were apartheid but not so low on the ladder and some Peers hunted the lower breeds of Goa’uld for sport. Teal’c seldom touched on it, because for a hundred plus years he never had to think about it. It was just, a natural law of society, speaking of the equalist movement (The closest thing the Goa’uld had to a civil rights movement.) as if they were just a bunch of entitled bastards making noise for no reason. It was only on earth, studying and reading human history had he begun to question that. As badly as Ra treated Abydos, their lives were a million times better than some Goa’uld subspecies had it.
Teal’c was sustained by a creature that had been modified, experimented on heavily, whose growth was permanently interrupted, halted at infancy and whose mind was shattered by lobotomy before it was even born. To serve as a steroid pack and immune system for the champions of the Gods. And Daniel stayed silent for long enough for Teal’c to dwell on that a bit before he interjected.
Because he’d be damned before he let a child peddling piece of crap lecture his friend. Speaking in Aejir. “Well, be that as it may…The Jaffa race would go extinct without the…sacrifice of the middle born. I see no comparison between what Hurot did and what the Peers did, beyond a surface parallel. As to Slys, Yarl Ecthor he belongs to the great Admiral who wishes him freed so that he might help us protect you from your own sins.”
…………
Nevada Desert -July 14th, 1956
“Last time I was out here, it was a bombed-out wasteland.” Robert Statterfield the second had been here after the A bomb testing, then again in ’47 when he was called out to a desert hotel to wait on orders that never came. He figured it was about the hubbub over some damned weather balloon (Fat chance! It was probably a field test of sophisticated nuke equipment.), calling an OSS boy from the war out there to run misinformation only for the absurd flying saucer narrative to render his mission moot. Damned annoying, it was too hot then and it’s too hot now.
Robert Statterfield was a Setauket man, descended from Anna Strong on one side and a Colonel Woodes Statterfield who served as a ranger under General Washington. In one form or the other his family had been involved in American espionage since the dawn of the country. Which was why he almost quit in fury when President Truman passed his father over for that effete criminal Dulles as Director of the CIA the whole Statterfield family damn near quit it all. Some, like Bob and his brother were still contemplating creating a new kind of private intelligence agency, a new form of Pinkerton. That was until Ike called him up a week ago and he flew into Washington on an overnight (He loved planes; he didn’t understand his wife’s fear of ‘em!) to meet with the President. A man he served during the war.
-Son, I know you’re all still smarting over the Dulles situation. -
Smarting, hah, the Statterfields built the CIA and funded the damn thing behind the scenes, using their own connections and their affiliation with a particular group. It had been their baby and that damned wheelchair bound drug addict and his successors stole it from them. They were so close to getting it back as well, until last week.
-I’m creating a new intelligence agency, in response to all these..bizarre incidents with flying saucers and allegations of international cabals and a million other things that I can’t trust the FBI or CIA to handle. Nor any existing agency for that matter-
Oh lovely, chasing things right out of the comics and magazines his sons read!
The old smoker sensed his disdain then and laughed “Now, now Bobby, trust me. You won’t want to refuse this National Intelligence directorate post.”
The NID? But why? It was originally an organization founded during the height of the Civil war, there might even still have been an old Union boy or two left alive that participated in its affairs, though bent and hobbled they’d be, if not outright senseless from old age. It had been shutdown slightly before the outbreak of the first world war, rumor had it that they were all about chasing nonsense.. Specters, lost cities in the deepest jungles and riddles in the darker places of the world and the way his grandfather talked about it, just a gigantic waste of money so the useless sons of blue bloods could hold a job and feel special. The thought of being saddled with the second iteration of such a nonsense agency made his damn blood boil. It was only their past relationship that led him to take the files home.
He read them.
He agreed an hour after his hands stopped shaking and the bourbon was in his blood.
Now he was here.
He needed to see it.
He needed to know what he committed his family to.
………………
Castle Wyryn’s Greathall: Planet Hurot. Asgard protected planet’s zone
“We need this mining treaty Jack, and we need the Trinium.” Hammond was being patient, more so than he ordinarily might have been when one of his premier marines, the head of the flagship team of Stargate Command decided to act like a frightened teenager (with the near mutinous indecisiveness to boot!). Though in truth that might have been Why he’d decided to give Jack some latitude. Nothing scared Jack O’Neill, not in the near thirty years he’d known the man had the chiseled jawed, wisecracking marine ever shown hesitancy or fear. Oh, sure he’d made grumbles of “forget that” or opted to shoot someone he might have otherwise gone into CQC with. Jack was a bit of a rogue even by special forces standards but genuine fear? “Teal’c says Yahata isn’t as good as Bra’tac or Herakles or Horus.”
“Ohh great…That means when we drop a redwood on his head, he’ll have to pick it up and throw it at us instead of vaporizing it with a damn flaming laser sword thing!” Jack rolled his eyes, his tone exasperated. Neither man discussed Slys’s revelation about just what Hethrir did to piss off the Scarrans, because the fact that they would once again be working with tremendous scumbags was something neither of them wanted to address for fear of doing something..unfortunate. “Sir, we threw grenades at Birdman…hell we threw a Naquadah enhanced vacuum bomb at him!”
“Only a little one” Carter murmured. “There was like..a salt pinch worth of Naquadah in that thing”
“CARTER NOT THE POINT!” O’Neill snapped.
Hammond rubbed the bridge of his nose with his left hand. And Syls who’d been listening to Daniel’s translation meekly offered to go to Nineveh and request the aid of Aris Boch who had been hunting Yahata for the better part century any way. Teal’c’s eyes widened both with the eagerness to work with such a legend and to perhaps get a message to his wife, but he reluctantly pointed out that there was no way in hell some random mid-level factory boss would get an audience with the legendary hunter of the stars. Especially when he seemed to be far closer to being the first ever non-Jaffa or Goa’uld bonded First Prime. Hammond set a hand on the Frog man’s shoulder when he saw the dejected look in his eyes. He was the one he felt the most sympathy for outside of the civilians in town, Slys hadn’t signed up for any of this, he was just a regular joe, the intergalactic equivalent of a working man and it was only the fact that his mate also did the same job that Hammond wasn’t worried about his kids going homeless.
It was weird to think about, realizing that he was looking at a man-sized frog alien and thinking of him the same way he used to think about the construction workers and day laborers caught in the middle of whatever cold war era shitstorm he and his team were caught in at that particular moment. But really, once you got below the surface oddities most aliens Hammond had met (That in and of itself was such a bizarre thought.) were no different than most humans. They worked, paid their bills, loved their families and did everything they could to keep the hell away from the giants in the playground. “Tell Slys the only duty he has is to get home to his family and that I’ll be sending him through the gate the moment this conflict is over.”
Something stirred in the frogman’s giant eyes and Hammond turned from him to look at O’Neill. “I read the report, I read what Horus did to you and I wager that the only reason why he took any injury at all was due to the fact that he underestimated you.” And that he was trying to capture them George left out, that was a sore point. He knew just how strong Teal’c was, and he listened to Teal’cs stories from the Titans rebellion, how Herakles, Bra’tac and Horus had carved through hundreds of Jaffa the same way his mountain had nearly been taken from him. He knew Apophis was capable of similar if he felt so inclined and that it took ten to one odds to briefly turn Ra’s security at Abydos, he knew all this but still the old Admiral had committed the sin of dismissing the tales as slight exaggeration. After all much of the known universe worshipped them as living Gods, exaggeration was bound to enter the equation.
And then his best team was only saved by a combination of a Prince’s sense of honor and damn fairy magic. At least he was able to convince Jack just to radio Abydos for some of the new combat drones and a prototype Naquadah enhanced missile. Apparently, Landry’s ‘302 project wasn’t just for aero-space fighters, but he had been working on modified predator drones as part of the Constellation fleet project and Naquadah had given him the leeway he needed for his “hunter-killer project.”, with any luck one of them would be here within twelve hours. Peer or not, a high-altitude RC plane of death was a high-altitude RC plane of death. Jack grumbled something about how he hoped it would be enough and Hammond sat down on one of the immense leather-bound sofas in the great hall.
The prince who had been flirting with O’Neill had come in joined by several of his siblings, apologizing for their great grandfather’s dishonor and asking to join the SG teams on their hunt for the alternate Stargate.
A gate that, Slys was all too happy to divulge the location of and its defenses.
And of course, it was in a blasted cave complex, behind enemy lines in their well-fortified riverside base.
The Beowulf parallels were too much for this old warrior who had no desire to meet death in battle against a Dragon and so he decided to radio Jack and order him to request a bunker buster or two if Landry was able to do anything with the Naquadah enhanced vacuum bombs Carter had thought up.
Fighting a Peer in CQC might have been suicide, but at least he could deny this lunatic reinforcements and hopefully bring down the entire cave network on his head in the interim.
He just hoped that would be enough.
Slaying dragons was something he was too damn old for.
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Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Jack really needs something to enable him to smash peers. Hmmmm perhaps gift him a most mighty and noble mech perhaps a Battlemaster and the skills to use it?
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How do you guys think corn would impact the Galactic economy? I imagine most civilizations have something comparable but Corn has a shitload more uses than just food.
Alcohol and fructose being rather addictive and all.
Alcohol and fructose being rather addictive and all.
I mean, the things Earth makes with the fructose will definitely be a hit.
The fuel thing is not so big a thing for the snakes simply b/c they have more powerful alternatives.
There appear to be a number of corn-family plants in the SG galaxies. So I don't know that it would really be shock to have a plant like it from Earth.
The fuel thing is not so big a thing for the snakes simply b/c they have more powerful alternatives.
There appear to be a number of corn-family plants in the SG galaxies. So I don't know that it would really be shock to have a plant like it from Earth.