I was thinking more this than anything else yeah.
Coca Cola factories on Dakkara...what an age!
Stargate Through the Looking Glass and into Heaven.
- Thread starter The Immortal Watch Dog
- Start date
I was thinking more this than anything else yeah.
Coca Cola factories on Dakkara...what an age!
Harlock
I should have expected that really
This story is broadening into its own mythos, which I am certainly on board with. One of the things B5 had was it mixed a sci fi setting with traditional stories, tales rooted in the classics and I can sense that here. Great stuff.
But the highlight is still the character interactions and chats. It humanises the inhuman while also serving a narrative function. Nothing here seems wasted or superfluous, its a good sized fic but none of it is fluff.
But the highlight is still the character interactions and chats. It humanises the inhuman while also serving a narrative function. Nothing here seems wasted or superfluous, its a good sized fic but none of it is fluff.
There was so much of that already there within Stargate lore, I'm just glad I can flesh it out here and expand it.
And it seemed to me; there were plenty of windows in which to explore that. Not just Daniel and Jack like the show
Oh thank God.... So it doesn't feel too clunky or anything? I worry too much about this
Harlock
I should have expected that really
It serves a purpose, to that end it doesn't matter too much if you take your time or write fairly long scenes so long as it all contributes to the bigger picture. You want to have learned or realised something at the end of a chapter, either about the plot, setting or characters, and in that regard it works.
Let me never become boring 😅
Up next, evil lizard artillery vs a Reaper Drone and poor Jack has to fight a Peer again as the ep marches to a close!
That's Jack's lot in life...always having to punch above his weight class. What's amazing is how good he is at it.
To the point where you would think in the show the Jaffa would have started to see him as a sort of trickster type figure.
Fantastic update. This is a hell of a buildup to what I expect to be a great fight.
I think a variety of Earth based products are going to do well. Exotic fruits and spices, new toys and commodities. Earth is going to rock the Galactic market but wont crash it.
I think a variety of Earth based products are going to do well. Exotic fruits and spices, new toys and commodities. Earth is going to rock the Galactic market but wont crash it.
Not sure I'd go Trickster, but it's certainly close. In Kuritan terms... (Man, I really am a BattleTech nerd!) Jack is the Yellow Bird to the Dragon.
Yeah, simply not enough production to really whack on the galactic scale.
So much rage, both justified and not justified and Teal'c is basically surrounded by people who hate him with every fiber of their twisted beings
The wealth of a great power even if they’re currently a minor one and support from a few of the System Lords. Earth is an underdog but one in a good spot.
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Rotgut hooch and plots.
Alright...Alright So I'm writing out a battle but I thought I'd toss out a chapter dump to hold y'all over.
Back in the halls and alleys of our nations Capitol Secretary of State Elizabeth Weir begins the process of reforging old alliances and making new ones.
And on Hurot, Stargate Command prepares to drop yet another atomic device on the head of a snake. @Knowledgeispower @bullethead shall be pleased! Pure carnage is coming up.
@Bear Ribs and @Navarro Too if they're still reading it. Holiday appropriate fireworks be coming.
Also Yahata hypes up his death commandos.
All due to credit to these phenomenal artists whose work I could never hope to duplicate.
…………..
Washington D.C: September 14th
It didn’t take a genius to figure out something was happening within the US, something massive. It didn’t take extensive contacts within IASA and family members on the boards of tech companies that had once been failing but were now surging passed the established firms to know that something other worldly was at the center of it all. The US economy had been growing dramatically since 2017, several prominent tech firms had either been crashed or replaced by new ones selling computers that operated at speeds that were impossible merely a year before that. Compression algorithms and memory, processing power, all these things coming out of small mom and pop firms and then Mitsubishi and Ford releasing cars made of new lightweight metal and far more fuel efficient in 2018. The growth had been, dramatic but it had spread out over half a decade at least which was fairly consistent with past tech booms. China was being muscled out of the computing game which was ideal for Japan and Korea but there had been so much internal strife within the US about the fact that much manufacturing and tech production was returning home that he was concerned there wouldn’t be some kind of cataclysmic shape up in the global economy.
Then a month ago a new Caribbean bank bought up six trillion in US national debt and began offering retirement accounts backed in gold and platinum and crypto that was luring the baby boomers, the last generation of Americans with sizable liquid assets into shifting away from traditional retirement firms and investment hedges. Then the Bank known as the Woodes and Nasau Mercantile Bank and Trust (Because someone had a perverse sense of humor.) sent the world markets into a free fall when it forgave half that debt. That was a deliberate salvo, an act of economic warfare against the old order so brazen that he found himself shocked that the MUFG was in bed with it behind the scenes. Some of the more hostile nations that profited by US debt certainly could have seen it as an act of war. But the question on everyone’s mind was where the hell the money was coming from.
He had an idea; it was a mad idea but when Ambassador Hiroki Matsukata saw that the archaeologist Daniel Jackson was on the board, the absurd became certitude.
Project Giza wasn’t just a success as his government's intelligence agencies and his personal spies insisted despite the impossible, but it was replaced by something more successful still.
There had always been rumors, his great Grandfather ranted about how the Americans unlocked nuclear power before the Empire had because of alien technology (Ignoring that Showa had proscribed the research and development of nuclear power. because his heavenly highness was at heart an environmentalist. And like so many after him, misunderstood the virtue and value nuclear power.) . His grandfather was a firm believer in the Roswell crash conspiracy theories and the rise to prominence of the designated joke of the US armed forces, the space force and its multiple service branches that weren’t branches and the NID all confirmed it. Or at least, that’s what the thirty-one-year old’s father and grandfather insisted. His wife believed it was all just luck, but no country could be so lucky. Also where the hell did all that wealth come from and whoever was wielding it needed to be extremely careful because they could devalue every currency everywhere. They can’t be shipping in wealth from other worlds! The Americans can’t be that reckless…
The fact that none of their traditional allies had been brought in on this, only those countries who had been bored enough to involve themselves in IASA (Minus England anyway.) was mind bending, this was all leading to a disturbing implication.
There was a mission to absolutely flip the world order on its head, as quickly and as decisively as possible and there was a frightening amount of desperation in it all. Why?
Not that Japan wouldn’t benefit immensely, presuming the nations and megacorps about to get phased out of the limelight if not existence didn’t start a world war to keep themselves around. Already several Zaibatsu’s that had been floundering were experiencing breakthroughs in medical and tech research and had been since the 2015 “incident.” But in the last two months they’d been more than just lucky. Things were being laid in place in Tokyo, Deli and in the Silicon Hills that gave him hope, but it was a hope mixed with manic concern. Too much change too radically could cause disaster. On the other hand, if this was just an opening salvo and things cooled for a time, if their allies played it right.
He exhaled, tossing the mini cigar he’d been smoking out the window as his car pulled up to the entrance of the Hay-Adams, a hotel that would only serve as a clandestine meeting location in a cheesy thriller or some tacky “realpolitik” TV-show. Beside him, his body guard a descendent of some Shinsengumi commander or other (they all claimed to be now a days.) Had a look of distrust and consternation as they made their way towards a more personal and hidden lounge where Secretary Elizabeth Weir who sat sipping what he expected was cold tea instead of warm bourbon. She was almost seventeen years his senior, but he admired her looks, few men could avoid becoming withered when they led a life was unusual as Weir’s or had as many children once they exceeded age forty, much less remained as healthy as she did.
As someone whose hair already possessed gray streaks, Hiroki envied the woman, damn her.
She bowed, addressing him as Genro, he wanted to correct her. That had been his great-great Grandfather Prince Masayoshi and that the Genro honorific was not hereditary nor would it be seen with much favor now. But there was something implicative in her inflection that made him suppress a shudder instead. “Kakka, I thank you for responding to my request. I’m aware the state department must keep you busy at present.” Weir bowed her head slightly; she was good at playing the part of someone who honored the old traditions when she needed something done. Not that the term was used often to describe foreign officials of stature, but Weir had certainly earned that respect as far as he was concerned.
“You mean because the President is about to fire half of it?” She asked with a wolfish grin. Hiroki hastily ordered a Buffalo Trace, handing out information like candy? Oh, this was going to be an interesting meeting. Yes, it would be rot gut tonight as the Americans called it. “That would be one of the reasons. Forgive me Kakka but this game the President is playing is most..Perilous”
Silence as the waiter delivered his rot gut.
“Kantai Kessen always was, but the rewards when it succeeded were innumerous weren’t they?” she asked him causing his bodyguard’s eyes to widen slightly. “An economic version isn’t going to be that much different.”
He almost spat out his bourbon. “In..” he cleared his throat “With all deference Kakka the last time my country did that it broke our backs at midway and the time before that it caused a world war and the American version left you bleeding a generation of blood in the middle East.” They were insane, that had to be it.
Yes, the leaders of the United States had gone mad.
And then a report that was brought to his attention about aliens that possessed humans like demons smuggled out of an NID blacksite made him contemplate utter nonsense and filled him with fear.
“Well, we don’t have a choice, much like the second world war, our nation was struck unawares by an enemy who thought he could plunder our soil without repercussion.” Weir responded, but this time she spoke the words in a dialect of Japanese so old that the only reason he knew it at all was due to his upbringing. It took him a second to realize what she meant and his mind wandered back to the report.
No.
She seemed to sense his thinking and leaned back in her chair, hands steepled in her lap. She gave the barest of nods.
No
His chest tightened. She nodded again, subtly.
No
“What have you done…” he whispered.
She took a breath. He knew about project Giza, the Matsukata family was too well connected, too entrenched in the levers of global power and paradoxically capable of asymmetrical thinking that she was certain he knew. So, she spared him the summary that couldn’t be spoken of in such a place. “Colonel O’Neill was right, we didn’t listen, neither of our governments and so someone else came knocking on our door.”
No!
He swallowed. Trying to keep himself calm, they faced an alien menace, and these were the games being played? A dark thought came to his mind unbidden -How many of the barbarian nations that surround Japan would fight, how many would treat with these creatures? - why was he even thinking that. “H..how bad?”
She leaned in “A year from now, an armada of nearly two thousand alien warships will enter our system, their goal will be to initiate a Pearl Harbor style assault on our entire species, then hold out until reinforcements can arrive to establish a Vichy regime.” It took her a few pauses between sentence fragments, as she tried to remember the correct words in this ancient dialect and each pause allowed him to focus on not having a stroke.
NO!
He wanted to jump up, rip his hair, tear off his clothes and run screaming out of the nearest door. “..What are you..doing to prepare for this..eventuality.” His mind screamed impossibility, but he knew no falsehood in her voice.
“Exactly what we’ve been doing. The question, Matsukata-San; is will Japan help us shoulder this burden? Help us prepare our species, help us grow a better world from this looming conflagration.”
A military man can hardly pride himself for smiting a sleeping enemy, it is more a matter of shame for the one who was smitten while asleep. Filled with rage he shall muster a determined counterattack and how we respond will be the test of our power.
Had that been Admiral Yamamoto?
“The President firmly believes that our salvation lies in new alliances with old and new friends alike. Alliances that, he believes should benefit the citizens of those nations first above all others.” She spoke the words calmly, with a level of certitude that was inspiring enough that he imagined had she chosen the military path for service over the diplomats, she would have set in his soul a bonfire of patriotism. But the way she said it made him realize just how opportunistic and ruthless this new America could be.
“Naturally, our entire species will be defended…yes?” It was a risky question, one that probed. But when she retorted with “As much as can be defended.” He understood at once that they Needed help even if they could shoulder the momentary burden alone. Opportunity, they said knocked but once per lifetime, but he knew it knocked all the time only most were too afraid to answer the door for with opportunity often came calamity.
He sighed. “I will need to speak to my government, but…I believe I can convince them of the merits of further discussions and partnerships.” When she nodded in gratitude he hastily added. “But there must be..some concessions. None too larger of course but.”
“When we speak again Hiroki-san.”
It was a dismissal, from anyone else he would have taken it as an insult, but he left and thanked the stars that he didn’t start trembling until he got into the car.
Everything was going to change.
Everything had changed.
………………
Hurot- Asgard protect planet’s zone.
Samantha Carter probably looked like a kid at a toy store on her birthday. Bouncing on one of the vehicles they used to transport their ammo and other supplies. Her straw blonde hair finally looking like something other than a mess as it bounced along with her body. She’d forgotten they packed conditioner until the resident O’Neill twin reminded her and the public baths weren’t that bad. She’d also taken up training in the palace guards’ personal gym with several of the shield women who fought along side Ecthor. Apparently, they were surprised that she was a “Skald” because she was beautiful and physically fit. Carter wasn’t often praised for her looks, mostly because she had one of the biggest brains in the galaxy, but she did model a little as a teenager (Mostly because she tried to find different ways to cope with her depression, until she realized trying to cope with was stupid and she set herself to unfucking her mind.) and one of the things she stressed to Sasha O’Neill and the one thing her grandfather Jacob stressed to her all the time?
A healthy body begets a healthy mind. He was of course, absolutely right, her own despair over her parent’s deaths, the memories of the smell of human flesh, her own inner demons never quite left her but when she was in front of a punching bag or swimming or doing calculations, they weren’t as loud as they were without. She was also reasonably certain she became an adrenaline junky at some point between kindergarten and when she built her first glider at eight and managed to sail the airs for four acres before crashing into a tree line and being bitten several times by an irate rattlesnake.
That had been fun, the venom induced visions had been interesting though. She spoke a little Aejir (Learning by listening to Sandra and Daniel converse between Space Egyptian as the Colonel called it and Aejir) and she spoke Gaelic because she was dared to learn the language once. And amusingly Syggy the Captain of the guards for the redlight district, this twenty-year-old red headed Amazon who managed to cut a Scarrans heart out in battle with a Trinium tipped knife was from a world that seemed to have humans taken from ancient Ireland and England and dumped there. So, she was able to figure out what the girl was saying in Gaelic and since she spoke Imperial standard the two had hit it off.
They were similar, Syggy was a child prodigy with a sword and string instruments whereas Carter was a natural pilot and engineer. Both prized sharp minds and sharper bodies as a method of maintaining mental discipline and both shared a love of making things explode and both were orphans. The slight blotches of burns on Carter’s thigh and her calf had fascinated Syggy who had similar wounds on her forearm from the fight with the Scarran. When she told Syggy how she got those scars, the woman reacted with a mix of respect and amusement. That was different, she’d been the youngest person in space, doing a test flight on a modernized version of the legendary Farscape-1 module that Astronaut John Crichton had disappeared in twenty-one years ago. One designed to take off from a conventional runway and make it into space then do a few aerial moves before reentering orbit.
The mission was a success.
But also, the cockpit caught fire during one of the barrel roles she did in space and Carter had managed to put the fire and then safely bring her down even taking time to park her neatly between her two sisters Farscape-3 and 4. She’d been thirteen, so naturally everyone felt pity that a kid was put in that situation at all. Well at least the ones who had the security clearance to know about what happened.
Idiots, she was thirteen and chosen to do the first combat maneuvers in space specifically because she had helped her grandfather perfect John Crichton’s design, because she was the only one with the reflexes fast enough to do it and because General West was a ruthless bastard and Admiral Ellis had faith in her skills. She didn’t need pity, no other earthborn human save maaaybbbe Crichton himself could have pulled off the entire experiment. Much less stopped a damn fire and brought the vessel down without the AI support that the 302’s would have. She didn’t need pity.
O’Neill and Daniel had reacted with respect, as had Teal’c who praised her for it, that was why she would always be an SG-1 member first and an area 51 mad scientist second. Outside of the Admirals only Syggy had reacted similarly. That made them instant friends, despite one being a warrior and a female Knight and the other being a mad scientist. Prince Rynulf had come with a detachment of twenty armed warriors along with Ecthor and Rynulf’s father Aerwulf (Which sounded more Saxon than Norse and Daniel agreed.) who Carter had learned was the next in line for the throne when old King Hethrir the avaricious died. They had all wanted to see what the mighty soldiers of Tau’Ri were bringing to contest the arms of the Lizard men now.
And so, when the gate opened and out came four members of Evan Lourne’s security team and then three carts containing four-foot missiles and one twelve-footer Carter grinned malevolently.
A Naquadah enhanced vacuum bomb, a prototype, the first of its kind. Weighing only five hundred pounds and made from polymers developed in the nineteen nineties by project Constellation at the Groom Lake facility that still hadn’t released to the general public and tipped with a drill like missile head that was made from the alloy that was being used as armor for the vessels in Constellation’s fleet. Landry had taken her recommendations regarding the vacuum bomb she used against Horus and dialed it up to eleven the devious bastard. -This is going to turn that cave complex into hell- she thought. There were two more compact combat drones, though these had a different weapon system on them, not the crude rail guns that were deployed against the Scarrans and it took her a second to realize they were lasers.
“So, we’ll be field testing energy weapons?” Carter asked.
“Naquadah in the power source, meaning that these drones can sustain aerial combat for forty minutes and about three days before needing a recharge in the air and with the solar panels on the wings.” One of the men answered her.
Right, in theory, forever. O’Neill was making a joke about how they were going up against lizardmen with ray guns of their own but Carter didn’t like it. She didn’t appreciate the rail gun tests either, in the sense that she didn’t want her Colonel and her second favorite Admiral getting shot up by monsters because experimental tech that was a scaled down version of an abandoned system that was made for the 302’s didn’t work or blew up the drones. The third cart contained the command-and-control system for what was coming next.
The warriors of Hurot gasped as a long jet-black bird like machine with wings folded exited the Stargate, towed by a vehicle driven by a base technician who looked like he wanted to turn right around and leave.
The Raptor.
Built on a predator drone’s template she had a sixty foot wingspan instead of the usual forty nine and fueled by a miniature Naquadah generator that could allow it to run for weeks if just doing surveillance work and sixteen hours if in combat (and able to recharge itself with two backup batteries that were themselves slowly recharged by the main powerplant.), a stealth frame designed to block out most forms of sensor tech that Earth knew about (and if the Constellation’s AI wasn’t lying, some sensor tech that it didn’t know about.), she was sleek, armed with one forward mounted energy weapon that looked like it was taken from two Jaffa staff weapons and two of the mini railguns.
This would be their bomber.
The damn lizards wouldn’t know what would hit them.
In the cart beside her Slys was speaking energetically with the Admiral through Daniel. Apparently, the spaceship engineer was impressed, and Carter beamed. When the Admiral told him just who had designed this thing, he hurriedly ran over and shook her hand, nearly rattling her off the cart in his zeal which caused the Wyryn guard to laugh. When it became clear Slys was much a victim as they were, their hostility towards him all but evaporated. They were an interesting people, the cruelty visited on the Scarrans was treachery defined and they could turn that cruelty off and act friendly with an alien the next moment. Evidently, they considered killing Skalds who couldn’t fight back to be the height of dishonor and counterproductive to the objects of any war and so they viewed his debasement and humiliation at the hands of the Scarrans to be a form of dishonorable conduct so profane that Slys would have been offered a place of honor amongst Hethrir’s house had he not so keenly expressed an interest in sticking with the Tau’Ri.
He babbled, guessing aspects of the design she couldn’t confirm or deny but were so close to the mark Carter felt a grudging respect for the foreman. -We should press gang him and send him home to his family after he helps us build up our fleet- she thought and then felt an immediate a swell of guilt over the thought. She’d felt more conflicted of late about her humanity first approach to the stars, but not enough to go soft. All the aliens out here even the human ones had a duty to protect their planets, species and societies, she could be no different.
Arming, loading and calibrating the Raptor would take time and as the technician and the men assigned to the Abydos base departed, Sam Carter sat there wondering if Slys was right about them lacking artillery and any defenses rated for what passed for modern armies on her world.
She hoped so, she didn’t like the idea of SG teams taking losses. She certainly didn’t want a repeat of Avalon where a bunch of aliens out on a recreational hunt slash meeting put more Army Rangers into the ground in five minutes than have died since the wars in the middle East calmed down.
Back in the halls and alleys of our nations Capitol Secretary of State Elizabeth Weir begins the process of reforging old alliances and making new ones.
And on Hurot, Stargate Command prepares to drop yet another atomic device on the head of a snake. @Knowledgeispower @bullethead shall be pleased! Pure carnage is coming up.
@Bear Ribs and @Navarro Too if they're still reading it. Holiday appropriate fireworks be coming.
Also Yahata hypes up his death commandos.
All due to credit to these phenomenal artists whose work I could never hope to duplicate.
…………..
Washington D.C: September 14th
It didn’t take a genius to figure out something was happening within the US, something massive. It didn’t take extensive contacts within IASA and family members on the boards of tech companies that had once been failing but were now surging passed the established firms to know that something other worldly was at the center of it all. The US economy had been growing dramatically since 2017, several prominent tech firms had either been crashed or replaced by new ones selling computers that operated at speeds that were impossible merely a year before that. Compression algorithms and memory, processing power, all these things coming out of small mom and pop firms and then Mitsubishi and Ford releasing cars made of new lightweight metal and far more fuel efficient in 2018. The growth had been, dramatic but it had spread out over half a decade at least which was fairly consistent with past tech booms. China was being muscled out of the computing game which was ideal for Japan and Korea but there had been so much internal strife within the US about the fact that much manufacturing and tech production was returning home that he was concerned there wouldn’t be some kind of cataclysmic shape up in the global economy.
Then a month ago a new Caribbean bank bought up six trillion in US national debt and began offering retirement accounts backed in gold and platinum and crypto that was luring the baby boomers, the last generation of Americans with sizable liquid assets into shifting away from traditional retirement firms and investment hedges. Then the Bank known as the Woodes and Nasau Mercantile Bank and Trust (Because someone had a perverse sense of humor.) sent the world markets into a free fall when it forgave half that debt. That was a deliberate salvo, an act of economic warfare against the old order so brazen that he found himself shocked that the MUFG was in bed with it behind the scenes. Some of the more hostile nations that profited by US debt certainly could have seen it as an act of war. But the question on everyone’s mind was where the hell the money was coming from.
He had an idea; it was a mad idea but when Ambassador Hiroki Matsukata saw that the archaeologist Daniel Jackson was on the board, the absurd became certitude.
Project Giza wasn’t just a success as his government's intelligence agencies and his personal spies insisted despite the impossible, but it was replaced by something more successful still.
There had always been rumors, his great Grandfather ranted about how the Americans unlocked nuclear power before the Empire had because of alien technology (Ignoring that Showa had proscribed the research and development of nuclear power. because his heavenly highness was at heart an environmentalist. And like so many after him, misunderstood the virtue and value nuclear power.) . His grandfather was a firm believer in the Roswell crash conspiracy theories and the rise to prominence of the designated joke of the US armed forces, the space force and its multiple service branches that weren’t branches and the NID all confirmed it. Or at least, that’s what the thirty-one-year old’s father and grandfather insisted. His wife believed it was all just luck, but no country could be so lucky. Also where the hell did all that wealth come from and whoever was wielding it needed to be extremely careful because they could devalue every currency everywhere. They can’t be shipping in wealth from other worlds! The Americans can’t be that reckless…
The fact that none of their traditional allies had been brought in on this, only those countries who had been bored enough to involve themselves in IASA (Minus England anyway.) was mind bending, this was all leading to a disturbing implication.
There was a mission to absolutely flip the world order on its head, as quickly and as decisively as possible and there was a frightening amount of desperation in it all. Why?
Not that Japan wouldn’t benefit immensely, presuming the nations and megacorps about to get phased out of the limelight if not existence didn’t start a world war to keep themselves around. Already several Zaibatsu’s that had been floundering were experiencing breakthroughs in medical and tech research and had been since the 2015 “incident.” But in the last two months they’d been more than just lucky. Things were being laid in place in Tokyo, Deli and in the Silicon Hills that gave him hope, but it was a hope mixed with manic concern. Too much change too radically could cause disaster. On the other hand, if this was just an opening salvo and things cooled for a time, if their allies played it right.
He exhaled, tossing the mini cigar he’d been smoking out the window as his car pulled up to the entrance of the Hay-Adams, a hotel that would only serve as a clandestine meeting location in a cheesy thriller or some tacky “realpolitik” TV-show. Beside him, his body guard a descendent of some Shinsengumi commander or other (they all claimed to be now a days.) Had a look of distrust and consternation as they made their way towards a more personal and hidden lounge where Secretary Elizabeth Weir who sat sipping what he expected was cold tea instead of warm bourbon. She was almost seventeen years his senior, but he admired her looks, few men could avoid becoming withered when they led a life was unusual as Weir’s or had as many children once they exceeded age forty, much less remained as healthy as she did.
As someone whose hair already possessed gray streaks, Hiroki envied the woman, damn her.
She bowed, addressing him as Genro, he wanted to correct her. That had been his great-great Grandfather Prince Masayoshi and that the Genro honorific was not hereditary nor would it be seen with much favor now. But there was something implicative in her inflection that made him suppress a shudder instead. “Kakka, I thank you for responding to my request. I’m aware the state department must keep you busy at present.” Weir bowed her head slightly; she was good at playing the part of someone who honored the old traditions when she needed something done. Not that the term was used often to describe foreign officials of stature, but Weir had certainly earned that respect as far as he was concerned.
“You mean because the President is about to fire half of it?” She asked with a wolfish grin. Hiroki hastily ordered a Buffalo Trace, handing out information like candy? Oh, this was going to be an interesting meeting. Yes, it would be rot gut tonight as the Americans called it. “That would be one of the reasons. Forgive me Kakka but this game the President is playing is most..Perilous”
Silence as the waiter delivered his rot gut.
“Kantai Kessen always was, but the rewards when it succeeded were innumerous weren’t they?” she asked him causing his bodyguard’s eyes to widen slightly. “An economic version isn’t going to be that much different.”
He almost spat out his bourbon. “In..” he cleared his throat “With all deference Kakka the last time my country did that it broke our backs at midway and the time before that it caused a world war and the American version left you bleeding a generation of blood in the middle East.” They were insane, that had to be it.
Yes, the leaders of the United States had gone mad.
And then a report that was brought to his attention about aliens that possessed humans like demons smuggled out of an NID blacksite made him contemplate utter nonsense and filled him with fear.
“Well, we don’t have a choice, much like the second world war, our nation was struck unawares by an enemy who thought he could plunder our soil without repercussion.” Weir responded, but this time she spoke the words in a dialect of Japanese so old that the only reason he knew it at all was due to his upbringing. It took him a second to realize what she meant and his mind wandered back to the report.
No.
She seemed to sense his thinking and leaned back in her chair, hands steepled in her lap. She gave the barest of nods.
No
His chest tightened. She nodded again, subtly.
No
“What have you done…” he whispered.
She took a breath. He knew about project Giza, the Matsukata family was too well connected, too entrenched in the levers of global power and paradoxically capable of asymmetrical thinking that she was certain he knew. So, she spared him the summary that couldn’t be spoken of in such a place. “Colonel O’Neill was right, we didn’t listen, neither of our governments and so someone else came knocking on our door.”
No!
He swallowed. Trying to keep himself calm, they faced an alien menace, and these were the games being played? A dark thought came to his mind unbidden -How many of the barbarian nations that surround Japan would fight, how many would treat with these creatures? - why was he even thinking that. “H..how bad?”
She leaned in “A year from now, an armada of nearly two thousand alien warships will enter our system, their goal will be to initiate a Pearl Harbor style assault on our entire species, then hold out until reinforcements can arrive to establish a Vichy regime.” It took her a few pauses between sentence fragments, as she tried to remember the correct words in this ancient dialect and each pause allowed him to focus on not having a stroke.
NO!
He wanted to jump up, rip his hair, tear off his clothes and run screaming out of the nearest door. “..What are you..doing to prepare for this..eventuality.” His mind screamed impossibility, but he knew no falsehood in her voice.
“Exactly what we’ve been doing. The question, Matsukata-San; is will Japan help us shoulder this burden? Help us prepare our species, help us grow a better world from this looming conflagration.”
A military man can hardly pride himself for smiting a sleeping enemy, it is more a matter of shame for the one who was smitten while asleep. Filled with rage he shall muster a determined counterattack and how we respond will be the test of our power.
Had that been Admiral Yamamoto?
“The President firmly believes that our salvation lies in new alliances with old and new friends alike. Alliances that, he believes should benefit the citizens of those nations first above all others.” She spoke the words calmly, with a level of certitude that was inspiring enough that he imagined had she chosen the military path for service over the diplomats, she would have set in his soul a bonfire of patriotism. But the way she said it made him realize just how opportunistic and ruthless this new America could be.
“Naturally, our entire species will be defended…yes?” It was a risky question, one that probed. But when she retorted with “As much as can be defended.” He understood at once that they Needed help even if they could shoulder the momentary burden alone. Opportunity, they said knocked but once per lifetime, but he knew it knocked all the time only most were too afraid to answer the door for with opportunity often came calamity.
He sighed. “I will need to speak to my government, but…I believe I can convince them of the merits of further discussions and partnerships.” When she nodded in gratitude he hastily added. “But there must be..some concessions. None too larger of course but.”
“When we speak again Hiroki-san.”
It was a dismissal, from anyone else he would have taken it as an insult, but he left and thanked the stars that he didn’t start trembling until he got into the car.
Everything was going to change.
Everything had changed.
………………
Hurot- Asgard protect planet’s zone.
Samantha Carter probably looked like a kid at a toy store on her birthday. Bouncing on one of the vehicles they used to transport their ammo and other supplies. Her straw blonde hair finally looking like something other than a mess as it bounced along with her body. She’d forgotten they packed conditioner until the resident O’Neill twin reminded her and the public baths weren’t that bad. She’d also taken up training in the palace guards’ personal gym with several of the shield women who fought along side Ecthor. Apparently, they were surprised that she was a “Skald” because she was beautiful and physically fit. Carter wasn’t often praised for her looks, mostly because she had one of the biggest brains in the galaxy, but she did model a little as a teenager (Mostly because she tried to find different ways to cope with her depression, until she realized trying to cope with was stupid and she set herself to unfucking her mind.) and one of the things she stressed to Sasha O’Neill and the one thing her grandfather Jacob stressed to her all the time?
A healthy body begets a healthy mind. He was of course, absolutely right, her own despair over her parent’s deaths, the memories of the smell of human flesh, her own inner demons never quite left her but when she was in front of a punching bag or swimming or doing calculations, they weren’t as loud as they were without. She was also reasonably certain she became an adrenaline junky at some point between kindergarten and when she built her first glider at eight and managed to sail the airs for four acres before crashing into a tree line and being bitten several times by an irate rattlesnake.
That had been fun, the venom induced visions had been interesting though. She spoke a little Aejir (Learning by listening to Sandra and Daniel converse between Space Egyptian as the Colonel called it and Aejir) and she spoke Gaelic because she was dared to learn the language once. And amusingly Syggy the Captain of the guards for the redlight district, this twenty-year-old red headed Amazon who managed to cut a Scarrans heart out in battle with a Trinium tipped knife was from a world that seemed to have humans taken from ancient Ireland and England and dumped there. So, she was able to figure out what the girl was saying in Gaelic and since she spoke Imperial standard the two had hit it off.
They were similar, Syggy was a child prodigy with a sword and string instruments whereas Carter was a natural pilot and engineer. Both prized sharp minds and sharper bodies as a method of maintaining mental discipline and both shared a love of making things explode and both were orphans. The slight blotches of burns on Carter’s thigh and her calf had fascinated Syggy who had similar wounds on her forearm from the fight with the Scarran. When she told Syggy how she got those scars, the woman reacted with a mix of respect and amusement. That was different, she’d been the youngest person in space, doing a test flight on a modernized version of the legendary Farscape-1 module that Astronaut John Crichton had disappeared in twenty-one years ago. One designed to take off from a conventional runway and make it into space then do a few aerial moves before reentering orbit.
The mission was a success.
But also, the cockpit caught fire during one of the barrel roles she did in space and Carter had managed to put the fire and then safely bring her down even taking time to park her neatly between her two sisters Farscape-3 and 4. She’d been thirteen, so naturally everyone felt pity that a kid was put in that situation at all. Well at least the ones who had the security clearance to know about what happened.
Idiots, she was thirteen and chosen to do the first combat maneuvers in space specifically because she had helped her grandfather perfect John Crichton’s design, because she was the only one with the reflexes fast enough to do it and because General West was a ruthless bastard and Admiral Ellis had faith in her skills. She didn’t need pity, no other earthborn human save maaaybbbe Crichton himself could have pulled off the entire experiment. Much less stopped a damn fire and brought the vessel down without the AI support that the 302’s would have. She didn’t need pity.
O’Neill and Daniel had reacted with respect, as had Teal’c who praised her for it, that was why she would always be an SG-1 member first and an area 51 mad scientist second. Outside of the Admirals only Syggy had reacted similarly. That made them instant friends, despite one being a warrior and a female Knight and the other being a mad scientist. Prince Rynulf had come with a detachment of twenty armed warriors along with Ecthor and Rynulf’s father Aerwulf (Which sounded more Saxon than Norse and Daniel agreed.) who Carter had learned was the next in line for the throne when old King Hethrir the avaricious died. They had all wanted to see what the mighty soldiers of Tau’Ri were bringing to contest the arms of the Lizard men now.
And so, when the gate opened and out came four members of Evan Lourne’s security team and then three carts containing four-foot missiles and one twelve-footer Carter grinned malevolently.
A Naquadah enhanced vacuum bomb, a prototype, the first of its kind. Weighing only five hundred pounds and made from polymers developed in the nineteen nineties by project Constellation at the Groom Lake facility that still hadn’t released to the general public and tipped with a drill like missile head that was made from the alloy that was being used as armor for the vessels in Constellation’s fleet. Landry had taken her recommendations regarding the vacuum bomb she used against Horus and dialed it up to eleven the devious bastard. -This is going to turn that cave complex into hell- she thought. There were two more compact combat drones, though these had a different weapon system on them, not the crude rail guns that were deployed against the Scarrans and it took her a second to realize they were lasers.
“So, we’ll be field testing energy weapons?” Carter asked.
“Naquadah in the power source, meaning that these drones can sustain aerial combat for forty minutes and about three days before needing a recharge in the air and with the solar panels on the wings.” One of the men answered her.
Right, in theory, forever. O’Neill was making a joke about how they were going up against lizardmen with ray guns of their own but Carter didn’t like it. She didn’t appreciate the rail gun tests either, in the sense that she didn’t want her Colonel and her second favorite Admiral getting shot up by monsters because experimental tech that was a scaled down version of an abandoned system that was made for the 302’s didn’t work or blew up the drones. The third cart contained the command-and-control system for what was coming next.
The warriors of Hurot gasped as a long jet-black bird like machine with wings folded exited the Stargate, towed by a vehicle driven by a base technician who looked like he wanted to turn right around and leave.
The Raptor.
Built on a predator drone’s template she had a sixty foot wingspan instead of the usual forty nine and fueled by a miniature Naquadah generator that could allow it to run for weeks if just doing surveillance work and sixteen hours if in combat (and able to recharge itself with two backup batteries that were themselves slowly recharged by the main powerplant.), a stealth frame designed to block out most forms of sensor tech that Earth knew about (and if the Constellation’s AI wasn’t lying, some sensor tech that it didn’t know about.), she was sleek, armed with one forward mounted energy weapon that looked like it was taken from two Jaffa staff weapons and two of the mini railguns.
This would be their bomber.
The damn lizards wouldn’t know what would hit them.
In the cart beside her Slys was speaking energetically with the Admiral through Daniel. Apparently, the spaceship engineer was impressed, and Carter beamed. When the Admiral told him just who had designed this thing, he hurriedly ran over and shook her hand, nearly rattling her off the cart in his zeal which caused the Wyryn guard to laugh. When it became clear Slys was much a victim as they were, their hostility towards him all but evaporated. They were an interesting people, the cruelty visited on the Scarrans was treachery defined and they could turn that cruelty off and act friendly with an alien the next moment. Evidently, they considered killing Skalds who couldn’t fight back to be the height of dishonor and counterproductive to the objects of any war and so they viewed his debasement and humiliation at the hands of the Scarrans to be a form of dishonorable conduct so profane that Slys would have been offered a place of honor amongst Hethrir’s house had he not so keenly expressed an interest in sticking with the Tau’Ri.
He babbled, guessing aspects of the design she couldn’t confirm or deny but were so close to the mark Carter felt a grudging respect for the foreman. -We should press gang him and send him home to his family after he helps us build up our fleet- she thought and then felt an immediate a swell of guilt over the thought. She’d felt more conflicted of late about her humanity first approach to the stars, but not enough to go soft. All the aliens out here even the human ones had a duty to protect their planets, species and societies, she could be no different.
Arming, loading and calibrating the Raptor would take time and as the technician and the men assigned to the Abydos base departed, Sam Carter sat there wondering if Slys was right about them lacking artillery and any defenses rated for what passed for modern armies on her world.
She hoped so, she didn’t like the idea of SG teams taking losses. She certainly didn’t want a repeat of Avalon where a bunch of aliens out on a recreational hunt slash meeting put more Army Rangers into the ground in five minutes than have died since the wars in the middle East calmed down.
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For he planned terrible vengeance.
………………
Hurot- Asgard protected planet zone -September 16th.
Colonel Jack O’Neill really, really wished the Abydos and Earth Gates were the size of those big industrial gates, because what he wanted right now wasn’t a pair of miniature phantom rays, but a pair of B-2 Spirits fully loaded with enough nukes to turn half of Western Europe into glowing glass, because after his fight with Horus he walked away convinced the only proper way to deal with a Peer was how he had dealt with Ra.
By blowing them the fuck up with nuclear weaponry from as far away as scientifically and humanly possible. Jack wanted to be sipping a mojito on another planet while “crude atomics” as the snakes loved to call their most sophisticated explosives were shoved up this Yamaha or whatever the hell his name was ass. Teal’c had tried to reassure him, not all Peers he said; were created equal. That Horus was among the greatest of them and even then, the disparity in power between Horus and say his mother or Ra was as deep as the deepest ocean on Earth. That hadn’t actually reassured Jack at all, in fact it made him want to pick up smoking again. “Yahata is weaker than his parents and grandparents, weaker than Horus and below Herakles”
Yeah, below the snake Teal’c said killed two hundred Jaffa with his bare hands in a single evening. Just below that may as well have been “Can and will make a nice set of leather gloves, a wallet and some belts out of the SG teams.”. Teal’c had laughed and said that he wouldn’t be surprised if Jaffa in barracks told the story of O’Neill the Tau’Ri first prime battling multiple Peers and surviving to boast about it. “Let ‘em keep their stories, so long as I can stay the hell away from those freaky boss snakes.”
It was wild to imagine ever trying to fight Ra directly, Horus hadn’t even been trying to kill them. Looking back on the battle he’d reacted to the realization that he stabbed Daniel with shame and regret and while he did throw Danny’s corpse at him, it was done when Horus realized they were going to try and kill him to avenge Daniel. Jack figured, Horus couldn’t have been more than a little bit stronger than Sek’Het or Teal’c and he had been so damn wrong. So damn wrong that it got his entire team killed. And Deus ex Fairy wasn’t here this time to save their asses and Yahata wouldn’t be trying to capture them, he would be coming at them with everything he had seeking death in battle rather than justice and an ass whoop’n from his mother.
His mother, Jack suppressed a shudder. Teal’c had described Amaterasu was a brooding, sullen, isolationist whose domains were populated by giant apes and mastodons and whales the size of submarines. She was apparently a psionic and could do the same funky stuff with lightning that Amunet could do only y’know more varied and more dangerously because she wasn’t a kid. She apparently saw the future too and her first prime was a big foot. She was also an absolutist about the law and wouldn’t hesitate to have Yeehaw flayed alive, over and over again or some other sort of awful punishment before finally letting him die.
..Yeah okay maybe he felt a little bit of sympathy for Yahoo…If he had a mom like that he’d probably also go psycho bandido on everyone. Granted, Teal’c admitted half of what he knew about the house of Kotoamatsuwhateverthefuck was likely filtered through his own biases since Apophis’ family and the Japanese sounding snakes hated each other because Apophis pulled a Fatty Arbuckle with Amaterasu. But even with his tinted peepers Jack found Teal’c to be a solid judge of character and if the big guy said the mother was even crazier than the son then she probably was.
Major Ramirez and Colonel Makepeace were talking with the Space Vikings through interpreters and Hammond was once again asking Carter if this bunker buster of hers wouldn’t react with any Trinium in the cave system and cause an explosion that could kill them all. She was insisting no, she didn’t even think it would explode the Stargate and Slys had been asked to participate and from what O’Neill could make out, he concurred with Carter, saying the only risk would be if the gate was active which might result in most of the heat and energy of the explosion being pulled into the gate. Which was something he saw occur during an industrial accident once that had mercifully saved his life and the life of his crew. Though it wouldn’t actually damage anyone on the other side, and he was pretty sure the cave in would still bury the gate, just that they would then still have some sixteen hundred Scarrans and four hundred Sleestaks and their dog lizard things to contend with instead of almost none. Amidst all this chatter Jack noted that nope, none of the discussions involved what would happen if yeehaw somehow survived. No one wanted to talk about that! No siree.
Damnit all…
................
…………..
Planet Hurot – Asgard Protected Planet’s Zone.
The Caves of the Dragons
“You are certain of this?” The voice, deep and rasping might have been a muted roar for how it carried across the cavern that had become the Stargate chamber. In the dark eyes glowed, joining the subdued light of the room to reflect shadows on the cave walls. A Scarran cast a long shadow, being tall and mighty creatures that often towered above the mammalian sentients of the cosmos.
Yet the figure that stood above the Scarrans kneeling form utterly dwarfed it, rising out of the darkness like a grim, madness infused tower. A thing, most of the reptilians present were unaccustomed to, ordinarily being a head taller than most Lotar’s and other sentients of the galaxies. An indicator that though the Scarrans were a once mighty race, the Unas from which their race partially traces its ancestry were mightier still and more besides. Yahata, a peer and Goa’uld of the highest pedigree inhabited the body of this Unas and shaped it as he willed it.
A five fingered hand, with armored scutes on each of the knuckle bones rested upon the Scarran’s shoulder, or more precisely encompassing all of it. The long snouted reptile steadied his breath, resisting the urge to indulge in the primal fear that most mammalian sentients felt at his own presence. “Yes, First Prime.” Yahata had snapped the neck of one of their commanders once for referring to his presence as “My Lord Prince.” Even as an exiled criminal, determined to die in battle he maintained the discipline of a soldier. Magnificent.
Death in battle didn’t bother him all that much, though he wanted his vengeance first. There was not else to do but die after he tore Ecthor’s heart from his still living body and ate it in front of him. Maugryn knew that well enough, he returned from the fall of his civilization to find the sanctuary worlds they had paid enormous sums of money and treasure to for the right to live as citizens of their worlds and their cultures amounted to nothing. His wife of twenty cycles was dead, his two eldest sons he’d found their hides tanning on a board outside Haelfdan the tanner’s shop who joked and laughed with his son’s and shown them the art of leather working. His youngest hatchlings were sold by Lucian pirates to who knows where and who knew what. His father had died in battle, his mother thirty cycles earlier had perished from one of Lenea’s horrible bioweapons and his brothers had all fallen when the Dreadnaughts they served aboard were torn apart by Drey’ac’s forces. There was nothing left for him, no home, no country among stars no family.
Only a blood debt and then peace.
He wondered if Anubis would welcome them in the afterlife, the Scarrans weren’t particularly devout, most keeping to their ancestral cults of worshipping nature or the stars and some heretics even copied the Sebacean’s blasphemous subspace cult (Though many of them held that the System Lords were Gods within Subspace as well as the physical realms.) but Maugryn’s family had worshipped Anubis, Izanami and Horus since the Unas ancestors mated with his more primitive reptilian kin and created the first Scarran of his line. He tried to live by the Sodan and Yahata who had the honor of being trained by Anubis some time before the Nameless One’s treachery had once told him that everything in the Imperium went wrong when the great and noble God was struck down.
Maugryn believed that everything went wrong for the universe when that happened. But perhaps, he could be greeted in the realm beyond, perhaps he could die with justice and vengeance in his heart, for his people and be rewarded.
“Every Scarran alive knows the faces of the destroyers, Drey’ac the burner of fleets and her foul mate Teal’c the butcher of Katrazi.”
That had been the only time Teal’c had taken a direct hand in his wife’s war. A prime had been attached to command the troops in the fleet and that had been overkill. It took what amounted to the personal “patrol force” of the Fleet Captain to obliterate the Scarran Empire’s entire military and seldom did they deploy troops. They seemed content to slaughter their way through the fleet and leave the rest of the work and clean up to the thrice condemned Peacekeepers (May the Nameless One claim their souls!) but Katrazi? Their most fortified star base, their most top secret. Infiltrated only once in the past by that damnable Crichton had been the place where Emperor Staleek and his ministers had taken refuge. The War Master of the Imperium had no reason to involve himself, save that there were accusations of an assassination attempt on his person by a Charrid. Perhaps desiring to make an example or to prove to the Galaxies that he was not merely a desk commander, Teal’c came, War Master, First Prime and butcher. He cut through the base, his men overwhelmed the Scarran and Charrid detachments and he slew the emperor personally in a duel that lasted four minutes.
Maugryn gave the order to flee then, and he and his unit departed on a Stryker just as a Hat’ak exited hyperspace. He would never forget the sights, nor the view of a seven hundred dreadnaught strong fleet burning inside the nebula that surrounded the Scarran home system. Teal’c was immortalized in the mind of every living Scarran. Yahata withdrew his hand and walked towards the mouth of the cavern, his shadow obscuring nearly all light. “Then it seems, the cosmos smiles upon us both Maugryn.” His voice seemed to flow from a low rasp into a deep thunderous growl that every Scarran for hundreds of meters within the cave network could hear and in the one violation of the harsh laws that governed the Goa’uld The disgraced First Prime spoke with the compelling voice of the System Lords. An offense punishable by death even amongst the peers.
Ah, yes Teal’c had wronged the mighty warrior as well, humiliated him and led his former lord, the great War God Apophis to victory against the Titan’s forces. Now he was aligned with Tau’Ri terrorists, terrorists were trying to deny his people their revenge.
Behind him, the Unas bonded serpent clenched fists that weren’t quite his and his eyes glowed a dark green. “ It is time, my Scarran progeny, time to launch a final assault upon the accursed Wyryn. Time to break all our enemies at once, time to bathe in their blood and feast on their entrails. It is time to lay the flowers of our hatred on the ruin of their world! It is time to meet Anubis! It is time to liberate the souls of your children! To Regain honor!”
“To the death!”
“Revenge!
“For our mates!”
“Vengeance!”
A thousand, hisses and roars echoed across the darkening sky. It would be tonight; it would be tonight Drones be damned.
……………
Planet Hurot – Outside the Gates of Castle Wyryn
Something about all this was bugging Lieutenant Colonel John James O’Neill and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. No, it wasn’t the damn lizardmen, or that he was about to be the first Space force Marine division Colonel (And the first marine corps Colonel ever.) to deploy not one but two tactical nuclear weapons on a battlefield and on another world. Nah, it wasn’t that or the fact that he was fighting the king shit of lizardmen, a renegade terrorist and damn Peer only a few rungs on the ladder below the guy who stomped a mudhole into his team’s asses while under almost continuous fire. Nah, it was none of that, he couldn’t put his finger on it except that all of this reminded him of his high school days but not English class, not Beowulf something else.
“Are you sure we won’t end up any radiation poisoning from the fall out?” Daniel asked, the history dweeb was doing his level best not to freak out because they were pretty damn close to the cave system now. The huge forest that covered the final six mile stretch between the river and the mouth of their underground base loomed ahead of them. Doc Carter shook her head; she’d been given authorization from Hammond to run at least these things by the Frog man and of course Teal’c and both doubted that there would be any fallout at all beyond the usual debris and ash. Evidently Naquadah was fairly “clean” and tended to merely enhance whatever energy source passed through it. The kind of explosive would determine what was released, without anything radioactive there’d be radiation.
Naquadah was weird and seemed to dance on the laws of physics. Jack appreciated that even if he didn’t understand it.
“We’ll be fine..unless I miscalculated the yield, then we might have to run for our lives from a forest fire.” Carter admitted getting an admonishing Glare from Admiral Hammond. Doctor Jackson and his daughter had watched with excitement alongside the Admiral as the immediate forces around the Wyryn and the full force of the city and palace guard had marched out from to bolster the Stargate teams. Four thousand infantry, two thousand armored men on horseback both light and heavy cavalry though they seemed to realize how useless their horses would be in foliage that thick and were grumbling and presumably complaining about having to walk in or else risk charging into a forest.
Not that it mattered, if this went well nearly everyone on the enemy side would be wiped out and O’Neill could get some of their mead before the treaty was signed and he would have to spend a week babysitting the nerd brigade while they rummaged around in that hall of hammers, they were supposed to gain access to after all was said and done. -Hah, yeah, the guys who the snakes needed ten to one odds on are just gonna let us walk into one of their old weapons depots because some wannabe Edward Longshanks promised us we’d get access- Jack still wasn’t sure how the hell any one believed they’d just be handed a bunch of advanced weapons on a pile. Nothing was ever easy, especially that easy. Which was why a damn Peer was on the side of the damn fucking near bullet proof lizardmen.
Those damn Scarrans took a few rounds to kill even with the next generation weapons and their blood was so hot that if any got on you, you’d end up with third degree burns right quick. Hell, one of Ramirez’s boys had a nasty burn on his wrist that was currently bandaged tighter than a mummy’s ass solely because he got near a flailing Scarran and the steam coming out of his body scalded the kids flesh. Damn Peers...
“Hey big guy.” O’Neill called to Teal’c who had finished discussing something with one of the nobles who brought a hundred armored men who all looked like they took a bunch of Angel Dust before setting off on the march. When Teal’c approached and nodded his bald head, O’Neill offered him a nestle crunch bar which the man took readily and handed him a Twix.
It was a little ritual they had.
“Lemme ask you a question, you said without resurrection chambers a snake could keep an average body alive for maybe five hundred years, right?”
“That is correct O’Neill.” Teal’c answered with his usual stoic tone, it impressed Jack how well the big guy could restrain himself. At his relative age (With a Jaffa lifespan he assumed a hundred and twenty-five was closer to twenty-five in human years.) Jack would have been prowling around the camp itching for a fight, ready to go in there and shoot up some lizardmen.
“Then how come this Yeehaw guy isn’t dead?”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow, his version of a belch of laughter Jack was coming to realize. “As I have said those Goa’uld born Peers are biologically immortal. They do not age and their control over their host bodies and regenerative powers are such that they can triple that time.”
“Right but thirty thousand plus years?”
More so, Teal’c thought. Yahata was born when Amaterasu was only two hundred years old, that was before the dawn of the Jaffa and Sebacean races. “Unas have a natural lifespan of near two thousand years, they have formidable regenerative powers and seem to be almost..designed to be hosts.” Teal’c paused before adding. “And those born as Peers are the only ones granted the right to use of the resurrection chambers from maturity, Yahata’s has never been subjected to the ravages of time, neither would his host.”
“Great, so it’s not like we can rely on his lizard suit to be slow or old or at the end of its rope?” O’Neill asked.
“Indeed, though if he has been without Roshna all this time he may be going through withdrawal, it is the only narcotic that I know of that Peers can experience difficulty adapting their system to become immune to. It is possible he is somewhat weakened, but also quite insane as the withdrawal process from Roshna often leaves addicts in a prolonged state of insanity.” Adding after an uncomfortably long pause. “And I do not know what a century of Roshna abuse would do the neurochemistry of a peer without a resurrection chamber to flush it out. No one does..”
Wonderful, Jack thought.
-Please let us pancake the snake druggie in the blast, or this is gonna end up like the Teutoburg forest Lizardman edition-
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And the Rivers ran red and the skies became as a storm of fire.
Alright boys and girls the final battle commences.
And we get an aerial battle and a strategic bombing from the POV of a medieval noble.
Also Carter does what Carter does.
Hope this doesn't suck, nor the coming conclusion.
…………
Planet Hurot - The battle of Red River PT -I
Of course, the skies around their little army would begin cloud in those odd map painting like swirls that reminded Robert Makepeace so much of fantasy movies from the nineteen eighties. Of course, lightning would begin to spark along said spirals and distant thunder would presage the looming battle. Here he stood, waiting with his team and SG-6 who was sitting inside a makeshift barrier where the command system for the combat drones was set up, waiting for Doc Carter to arrive to take over the Raptor which was now courtesy of new AI flying around taking photos of the lands around the Wyryn and atmospheric readings, waiting for a pilot to guide it towards battle.
This was like something out of the old movies he’d watch as a kid, meeting up with friends after football practice and heading out for pizza and cheap flicks at a dollar theatre. Or to one of their parents houses to watch crap on cable, the 90’s were an era where you had to entertain yourself as much as anything. He was here surrounded by an armed escort, a team of archers led by that Gaelic speaking alien who wielded bows made out of bones that looked like ivory etched with steel from some weird alien whale and trinium tipped arrows and steel “threads” and next to them were four armored Viking like Knights on fucking tapirs and another hundred generic warriors. He was fighting next to space knights, on planet Valhalla for the right to obtain a special metal and fucking ancient relics, he was living the kind of movies he and Colonel O’Neill likely watched as kids and now to advance the interests (Namely survival.) of the US Government on another planet. Colonel Robert Makepeace and his SG team would be the only thing besides a bunch of primitives standing between his dweebs and slaughter once they realized their one means of reinforce got buried into part of a mountainside.
That was when Doctor Carter came from the front of the army and nodded in deference to him and slapped the Celtic alien on the shoulder before she hopped over the makeshift barricade erected around their consoles.
Behind them a cavalry group led by Ecthor and containing a gray bearded human who Makepeace recognized as one of the many sons of Hethrir, long faced and grim who was cloaked in pelts of some kind of big cat and riding one of those Tapir descended mounts because of course he was. He might have been there to officially command the army but it was clear the whole force assembled was taking orders either from the semi blue skinned little shit who was flirting with Jack’s daughter earlier or ecthor.
Great, a damn divided command structure.
Prince Long Face looked to Ecthor and then out to Admiral Hammond who was out in front with O’Neill (And really should have been in the rear at his age, his rank and SOP dictated.) Hammond nodded, blue bastard nodded and Ecthor turned and let out a roar that sounded like he was insulting half the universe, and everyone erupted in cheers, banging pikes and lances to shields or axes to shields or armor, even some of the Stargate teams were cheering... Hell Makepeace wanted to cheer. There was something infectious about the half-crazed intensity of the man’s shout that made you wanna toss your guns aside, pick up some axes and go to work the old way.
He remembered a history lesson from an old Colonel he served under, who said he thought fighting in the Middle Ages must have been an unholy mix of tank warfare and one gigantic, highly disciplined, well-organized riot. Where both sides smashed into each other like tsunami’s then withdrew and danced and feinted and did it again all while trying to avoid being runover by draft horses in armor ridden by bastards who could turn you and four of your friends into a kebab on a stick. Makepeace remembered him saying that it must been more terrifying than modern war in some respects and more intoxicating (which he ascribed as a bad thing.) which probably was why those battles could when carried on beyond a certain point devolve into an orgy of carnage.
As Carter announced that she was ready, Robert Makepeace preyed that wouldn’t happen here.
…….
They were a sanctimonious people, Ecthor thought. Knowing what the Scarrans were and still decrying their slaughter. Yet they were a people who had won not only the respect of one of the greatest warriors in the universe but an honored enemy of his God Thor and from what he understood of Thor’s edict, not only the Thunder God’s respect but even the mighty princess of the Aos Si herself seemed to take a personal liking to the heroes of this Essgee wun. They were still fools, but Ecthor understood Hethrir’s willingness to do business with them, one would have to be an even greater fool to sneer at a people who despite being as primitive as his people were to them by the standards of the System Lords of the Imperium of the Goa’uld (the Gods who had been the bitterest of foes to his Gods for so long that they won the recognition of his Gods.) and yet still slew Amun-Ra the King of those Foe-Gods and master of much of the stars and fought Prince Horus one of Thor’s greatest rivals well enough to win freedom and to have humiliated the mighty and hated Apophis not once but twice!
No, only a fool would dismiss such a people.
And when the heavens lit up with lightning and the spiraling skies, he knew that which these newcomers with all their science did not. That the God of Thunder, of wind, of travel, of military might and conquest himself had come to witness the battle. These people were as the Elves of old, as the Aos Si, heralds that presaged great tests and great change, change that wasn’t always for the better. His hands gripped on his ax handles; eyes narrowed into the horizon as faint dots in the sky began to move forward.
He knew of high technology societies, but he had never witnessed the forces of two distinct high technology societies at disparate levels face each other. He knew that the Scarrans were the most feared military power of their galaxies among the “lesser advanced space faring races” whatever that meant and that they were seen as the second power beside the Serpent kings. The forces of the System Lords had fought his Gods for tens of thousands of years, fought them so hard they forced a superior race to the peace table. These Scarrans were terrifying, but he knew the status they enjoyed was pure nonsense and to the surprise of no one within the realm of the Aesir and Vanir the Serpents rolled them over as swiftly as Ecthor had run through those rebellious farmers in the last Island they had conquered at the end of the war.
Like threshing grain stocks. And so, these broken barbarians would now face an enemy that was their inferior for all intents and purposes and with little technology to aid them but that little technology should be sufficient should it not? Ecthor smiled savagely as a thunderous series of pulses erupted from the river beyond the forest and bright orange-red balls of fire shot into the air. What little Artillery they had managed to construct since they learned of the Drones was dangerous enough one of the six lights in the sky blinked out. Ecthor smiled, Judge us! The chosen of the true Gods! Tau’Ri fools!
The other fire lights began to dance, spinning and weaving, moving with a shocking abruptness and he whirred around on his mount to look back at the unimpressive pair of Skald warriors focusing intensely on their little boxes that projected images (He knew of the technical term for such devices from the more advanced worlds they did business with, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember it.) was that the nature of “modern warfare”? Some scrawny runs who desperately needed to fornicate more playing with toys and obliterating enemies’ miles away? -Mistress Sif take my soul before that nonsense infects my world. I do not wish to live to see war fought with such sterility! –
Still, it was impressive, how they bobbed, they weaved, swarming like so many ants and then let loose a terrible roar of its own. One that even from this distance spooked the horses and caused mutters of alarm and Ecthor cursed. “FOOLS! You all know what a firearm is! And what they sound like! Do not act like a bunch of gawking wildmen shouting babble about firesticks!” idiots! There was honor to maintain here and face to be saved!
There was a laugh from behind him, evidently one of the Skalds shredded the accursed reptiles who were manning one of the guns for it fell silent for a moment. They resumed but Ecthor couldn’t help but catch the malevolent grin on the face of the pretty blonde Skald, the demon Kar’Tur as the Jaffa called her. Evidently that pause was enough for her to figure something out and a moment later, from high above the smaller vessels who continued to belch out a sound that to Ecthor’s ears sounded less like the muzzle blast of a musket or a more advanced gun and more like the rapid and sequential striking of a very loud hammer a series of bright green pulses ripped down from the heavens.
There was silence.
And then an explosion of dark crimson flame and the stench of chemical burns filled the air as debris rained down onto the forest and Ecthor’s eyes narrowed. The crazy woman had hit one of the munitions cannisters for their artillery! The damnable oil those stupid lizards used as their ammunition was notoriously combustible if hit with the right amount of energy! And that could easily have spread to the waters, miles of stream and potentially forest could be on fire within moments!
There was silence again, the guns stopped and yet the wasps of the Tau’Ri did not cease their onslaught, red lights and that atrocious hammering occasionally danced in the skies and Scouts were likely being treated to a great many Scarrans bursting from bullets or being sliced in half by what he expected was some kind of light weapon (A Government they did business with bought many precious gems as they apparently were needed to focus those light weapons. Though those people used them for mining and medicine.), but nothing he’d seen yet could have prepared him for what was to come.
Eventually, two of the Scarrans long guns began to light up the skies again.
Two more of the Wasps vanished.
And then Kar’Tur proved why the finest soldiers in the universe considered her a mad skald. Because she whispered “bahms awai” in her odd language with a grin that utterly unnerved him.
All was silent, the Wasps lingered distracting, he supposed their furious fire.
Then something changed, the air grew dry and stale, tasting metallic and the skies above roared with lightning.
Then something exploded.
No, explosions didn’t make such a noise.
The horses screamed bloody murder, their eyes wild with terror, the other mounts who were so predominant on their world bucked, their long noses bouncing all over the place. Explosions didn’t break the very concept of sound, they didn’t roar so loud you lost your hearing for what felt like an eternity. They didn’t send the men at the front back nor cause trees that stood forty feet in height to sway like saplings in a windstorm nor did they create a gout of fire that ripped into the heavens like volcano spewing Surt’s (Whom the serpents called Ouranos, father of Amun-Ra) rage against Thor for the war made upon his children. Lightning lashed out at the immense column of fire which seemed to convert into a huge mushroom like plume of smoke that mingled with the great lightning storm above.
The one called Makepeace rounded on the mad Skald when his senses recovered, roaring at her and presumably damning her madness.
The army nearly broke.
He was certain the league of Lizards was not but ash.
Surely after such a horrific explosion!
But he couldn’t focus on that, the bald one Hammond of Texas and O’Neill Godslayer were rushing towards the barricade eyes burning with questions and remonstrations and he and the princeling had to restore order.
The Princeling for his useless uncle who had once been the air seemed to have bolted away from camp when the battle started and abandoned what was supposed to be his army.
This was pure insanity, but the thunder in the heavens only grew as did the increase of the spiraling clouds.
Thor Odinson it seemed, approved of their madness.
It had to be over, this madness had to be over.
A violent wave of wind hit the army in that moment, several hundred men up in the front were thrown onto their backsides but others held. His Scouts were surely dead and in the chaos of trying to keep his army together Ecthor almost didn’t see the hundreds of birds, flightless and winged and of the beasts of the forest bolting in terror out from the woods.
But he did hear the wails.
The inhuman, utterly alien cries from where the Lizardmen had made their fortress, from where the vile reptiles had been kissed with Tau’Ri fire and madness.
Some had lived.
Worse, some infernal beeping confirmed whatever the maniac Kar’Tur was babbling to the two leaders and then the raven-haired daughter of the blond one. The God slayer ran over to him and told him in accented Serpent speech that it there was no “fire poison” (She likely meant radiation) idiot girl-child! He knew what radiation and chemical poisoning was and what it could do to a person, anyone who conducted business with societies on the verge of colonizing worlds outside the Gate Network within their own solar systems knew of those things. “I’m not a savage woman!” he hissed and then paused.
They were not entirely certain that they hadn’t used an atomic on the Scarrans!
Madness!
“Your kind is new to weaponizing Naquadah.” He whispered in horror.
She nodded.
Had she not been the offspring of the God killer and had it not been dishonorable to slay a herald of an ally in battle even for impudence, Ecthor would have opened her throat on the spot.
Damn these Tau’Ri! They are insane, they are daemons! This is madness!
The tradesmen more experienced in commerce with advanced societies amongst the ranking officers began panicking asking if their sensors were absolutely certain. Realizing then what these felons had just done. And what enraged Ecthor more was that most of them were impressed and praising them! Damn these credulous buffoons! “We must hold!” he shouted. “This is not yet over!”
But did they get the leader of the vermin? When news of his identity was broken by Hammond of Texas in the war council, Ecthor wanted to feign injury and run to his island estates three days by sea from here. King Hethrir had forbidden any from speaking of him less the army refuse to march and the God Killer and Teal’c had insisted that they would endeavor to remove the lead in the first strike.
But if Yahata lived?
A terrible thought came unbidden into his mind.
They had just struck a blood mad Peer dishonorably.
If he lived…How would he respond?
Ecthor knew, there was only one choice in that moment.
To stay and fight.
Because there was nowhere to run and no ocean too deep, nor fortress too strong to safeguard him from the Wrath of one born to the blood of the Gods.
Nowhere.
And we get an aerial battle and a strategic bombing from the POV of a medieval noble.
Also Carter does what Carter does.
Hope this doesn't suck, nor the coming conclusion.
…………
Planet Hurot - The battle of Red River PT -I
Of course, the skies around their little army would begin cloud in those odd map painting like swirls that reminded Robert Makepeace so much of fantasy movies from the nineteen eighties. Of course, lightning would begin to spark along said spirals and distant thunder would presage the looming battle. Here he stood, waiting with his team and SG-6 who was sitting inside a makeshift barrier where the command system for the combat drones was set up, waiting for Doc Carter to arrive to take over the Raptor which was now courtesy of new AI flying around taking photos of the lands around the Wyryn and atmospheric readings, waiting for a pilot to guide it towards battle.
This was like something out of the old movies he’d watch as a kid, meeting up with friends after football practice and heading out for pizza and cheap flicks at a dollar theatre. Or to one of their parents houses to watch crap on cable, the 90’s were an era where you had to entertain yourself as much as anything. He was here surrounded by an armed escort, a team of archers led by that Gaelic speaking alien who wielded bows made out of bones that looked like ivory etched with steel from some weird alien whale and trinium tipped arrows and steel “threads” and next to them were four armored Viking like Knights on fucking tapirs and another hundred generic warriors. He was fighting next to space knights, on planet Valhalla for the right to obtain a special metal and fucking ancient relics, he was living the kind of movies he and Colonel O’Neill likely watched as kids and now to advance the interests (Namely survival.) of the US Government on another planet. Colonel Robert Makepeace and his SG team would be the only thing besides a bunch of primitives standing between his dweebs and slaughter once they realized their one means of reinforce got buried into part of a mountainside.
That was when Doctor Carter came from the front of the army and nodded in deference to him and slapped the Celtic alien on the shoulder before she hopped over the makeshift barricade erected around their consoles.
Behind them a cavalry group led by Ecthor and containing a gray bearded human who Makepeace recognized as one of the many sons of Hethrir, long faced and grim who was cloaked in pelts of some kind of big cat and riding one of those Tapir descended mounts because of course he was. He might have been there to officially command the army but it was clear the whole force assembled was taking orders either from the semi blue skinned little shit who was flirting with Jack’s daughter earlier or ecthor.
Great, a damn divided command structure.
Prince Long Face looked to Ecthor and then out to Admiral Hammond who was out in front with O’Neill (And really should have been in the rear at his age, his rank and SOP dictated.) Hammond nodded, blue bastard nodded and Ecthor turned and let out a roar that sounded like he was insulting half the universe, and everyone erupted in cheers, banging pikes and lances to shields or axes to shields or armor, even some of the Stargate teams were cheering... Hell Makepeace wanted to cheer. There was something infectious about the half-crazed intensity of the man’s shout that made you wanna toss your guns aside, pick up some axes and go to work the old way.
He remembered a history lesson from an old Colonel he served under, who said he thought fighting in the Middle Ages must have been an unholy mix of tank warfare and one gigantic, highly disciplined, well-organized riot. Where both sides smashed into each other like tsunami’s then withdrew and danced and feinted and did it again all while trying to avoid being runover by draft horses in armor ridden by bastards who could turn you and four of your friends into a kebab on a stick. Makepeace remembered him saying that it must been more terrifying than modern war in some respects and more intoxicating (which he ascribed as a bad thing.) which probably was why those battles could when carried on beyond a certain point devolve into an orgy of carnage.
As Carter announced that she was ready, Robert Makepeace preyed that wouldn’t happen here.
…….
They were a sanctimonious people, Ecthor thought. Knowing what the Scarrans were and still decrying their slaughter. Yet they were a people who had won not only the respect of one of the greatest warriors in the universe but an honored enemy of his God Thor and from what he understood of Thor’s edict, not only the Thunder God’s respect but even the mighty princess of the Aos Si herself seemed to take a personal liking to the heroes of this Essgee wun. They were still fools, but Ecthor understood Hethrir’s willingness to do business with them, one would have to be an even greater fool to sneer at a people who despite being as primitive as his people were to them by the standards of the System Lords of the Imperium of the Goa’uld (the Gods who had been the bitterest of foes to his Gods for so long that they won the recognition of his Gods.) and yet still slew Amun-Ra the King of those Foe-Gods and master of much of the stars and fought Prince Horus one of Thor’s greatest rivals well enough to win freedom and to have humiliated the mighty and hated Apophis not once but twice!
No, only a fool would dismiss such a people.
And when the heavens lit up with lightning and the spiraling skies, he knew that which these newcomers with all their science did not. That the God of Thunder, of wind, of travel, of military might and conquest himself had come to witness the battle. These people were as the Elves of old, as the Aos Si, heralds that presaged great tests and great change, change that wasn’t always for the better. His hands gripped on his ax handles; eyes narrowed into the horizon as faint dots in the sky began to move forward.
He knew of high technology societies, but he had never witnessed the forces of two distinct high technology societies at disparate levels face each other. He knew that the Scarrans were the most feared military power of their galaxies among the “lesser advanced space faring races” whatever that meant and that they were seen as the second power beside the Serpent kings. The forces of the System Lords had fought his Gods for tens of thousands of years, fought them so hard they forced a superior race to the peace table. These Scarrans were terrifying, but he knew the status they enjoyed was pure nonsense and to the surprise of no one within the realm of the Aesir and Vanir the Serpents rolled them over as swiftly as Ecthor had run through those rebellious farmers in the last Island they had conquered at the end of the war.
Like threshing grain stocks. And so, these broken barbarians would now face an enemy that was their inferior for all intents and purposes and with little technology to aid them but that little technology should be sufficient should it not? Ecthor smiled savagely as a thunderous series of pulses erupted from the river beyond the forest and bright orange-red balls of fire shot into the air. What little Artillery they had managed to construct since they learned of the Drones was dangerous enough one of the six lights in the sky blinked out. Ecthor smiled, Judge us! The chosen of the true Gods! Tau’Ri fools!
The other fire lights began to dance, spinning and weaving, moving with a shocking abruptness and he whirred around on his mount to look back at the unimpressive pair of Skald warriors focusing intensely on their little boxes that projected images (He knew of the technical term for such devices from the more advanced worlds they did business with, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember it.) was that the nature of “modern warfare”? Some scrawny runs who desperately needed to fornicate more playing with toys and obliterating enemies’ miles away? -Mistress Sif take my soul before that nonsense infects my world. I do not wish to live to see war fought with such sterility! –
Still, it was impressive, how they bobbed, they weaved, swarming like so many ants and then let loose a terrible roar of its own. One that even from this distance spooked the horses and caused mutters of alarm and Ecthor cursed. “FOOLS! You all know what a firearm is! And what they sound like! Do not act like a bunch of gawking wildmen shouting babble about firesticks!” idiots! There was honor to maintain here and face to be saved!
There was a laugh from behind him, evidently one of the Skalds shredded the accursed reptiles who were manning one of the guns for it fell silent for a moment. They resumed but Ecthor couldn’t help but catch the malevolent grin on the face of the pretty blonde Skald, the demon Kar’Tur as the Jaffa called her. Evidently that pause was enough for her to figure something out and a moment later, from high above the smaller vessels who continued to belch out a sound that to Ecthor’s ears sounded less like the muzzle blast of a musket or a more advanced gun and more like the rapid and sequential striking of a very loud hammer a series of bright green pulses ripped down from the heavens.
There was silence.
And then an explosion of dark crimson flame and the stench of chemical burns filled the air as debris rained down onto the forest and Ecthor’s eyes narrowed. The crazy woman had hit one of the munitions cannisters for their artillery! The damnable oil those stupid lizards used as their ammunition was notoriously combustible if hit with the right amount of energy! And that could easily have spread to the waters, miles of stream and potentially forest could be on fire within moments!
There was silence again, the guns stopped and yet the wasps of the Tau’Ri did not cease their onslaught, red lights and that atrocious hammering occasionally danced in the skies and Scouts were likely being treated to a great many Scarrans bursting from bullets or being sliced in half by what he expected was some kind of light weapon (A Government they did business with bought many precious gems as they apparently were needed to focus those light weapons. Though those people used them for mining and medicine.), but nothing he’d seen yet could have prepared him for what was to come.
Eventually, two of the Scarrans long guns began to light up the skies again.
Two more of the Wasps vanished.
And then Kar’Tur proved why the finest soldiers in the universe considered her a mad skald. Because she whispered “bahms awai” in her odd language with a grin that utterly unnerved him.
All was silent, the Wasps lingered distracting, he supposed their furious fire.
Then something changed, the air grew dry and stale, tasting metallic and the skies above roared with lightning.
Then something exploded.
No, explosions didn’t make such a noise.
The horses screamed bloody murder, their eyes wild with terror, the other mounts who were so predominant on their world bucked, their long noses bouncing all over the place. Explosions didn’t break the very concept of sound, they didn’t roar so loud you lost your hearing for what felt like an eternity. They didn’t send the men at the front back nor cause trees that stood forty feet in height to sway like saplings in a windstorm nor did they create a gout of fire that ripped into the heavens like volcano spewing Surt’s (Whom the serpents called Ouranos, father of Amun-Ra) rage against Thor for the war made upon his children. Lightning lashed out at the immense column of fire which seemed to convert into a huge mushroom like plume of smoke that mingled with the great lightning storm above.
The one called Makepeace rounded on the mad Skald when his senses recovered, roaring at her and presumably damning her madness.
The army nearly broke.
He was certain the league of Lizards was not but ash.
Surely after such a horrific explosion!
But he couldn’t focus on that, the bald one Hammond of Texas and O’Neill Godslayer were rushing towards the barricade eyes burning with questions and remonstrations and he and the princeling had to restore order.
The Princeling for his useless uncle who had once been the air seemed to have bolted away from camp when the battle started and abandoned what was supposed to be his army.
This was pure insanity, but the thunder in the heavens only grew as did the increase of the spiraling clouds.
Thor Odinson it seemed, approved of their madness.
It had to be over, this madness had to be over.
A violent wave of wind hit the army in that moment, several hundred men up in the front were thrown onto their backsides but others held. His Scouts were surely dead and in the chaos of trying to keep his army together Ecthor almost didn’t see the hundreds of birds, flightless and winged and of the beasts of the forest bolting in terror out from the woods.
But he did hear the wails.
The inhuman, utterly alien cries from where the Lizardmen had made their fortress, from where the vile reptiles had been kissed with Tau’Ri fire and madness.
Some had lived.
Worse, some infernal beeping confirmed whatever the maniac Kar’Tur was babbling to the two leaders and then the raven-haired daughter of the blond one. The God slayer ran over to him and told him in accented Serpent speech that it there was no “fire poison” (She likely meant radiation) idiot girl-child! He knew what radiation and chemical poisoning was and what it could do to a person, anyone who conducted business with societies on the verge of colonizing worlds outside the Gate Network within their own solar systems knew of those things. “I’m not a savage woman!” he hissed and then paused.
They were not entirely certain that they hadn’t used an atomic on the Scarrans!
Madness!
“Your kind is new to weaponizing Naquadah.” He whispered in horror.
She nodded.
Had she not been the offspring of the God killer and had it not been dishonorable to slay a herald of an ally in battle even for impudence, Ecthor would have opened her throat on the spot.
Damn these Tau’Ri! They are insane, they are daemons! This is madness!
The tradesmen more experienced in commerce with advanced societies amongst the ranking officers began panicking asking if their sensors were absolutely certain. Realizing then what these felons had just done. And what enraged Ecthor more was that most of them were impressed and praising them! Damn these credulous buffoons! “We must hold!” he shouted. “This is not yet over!”
But did they get the leader of the vermin? When news of his identity was broken by Hammond of Texas in the war council, Ecthor wanted to feign injury and run to his island estates three days by sea from here. King Hethrir had forbidden any from speaking of him less the army refuse to march and the God Killer and Teal’c had insisted that they would endeavor to remove the lead in the first strike.
But if Yahata lived?
A terrible thought came unbidden into his mind.
They had just struck a blood mad Peer dishonorably.
If he lived…How would he respond?
Ecthor knew, there was only one choice in that moment.
To stay and fight.
Because there was nowhere to run and no ocean too deep, nor fortress too strong to safeguard him from the Wrath of one born to the blood of the Gods.
Nowhere.
New goal: Be the first fic I've written in a decade to pass 200k views. And maybe earn a TVdopes paige or something.
Also, more importantly....Much more importantly.
I'll try and conclude all of this ep tomorrow.
And, I was thinking of having frogman offer his services to the SGC as a form of compensation. If I go that route, should Hammond and O'Neill accept? Or no?
Also, more importantly....Much more importantly.
I'll try and conclude all of this ep tomorrow.
And, I was thinking of having frogman offer his services to the SGC as a form of compensation. If I go that route, should Hammond and O'Neill accept? Or no?
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
going to need to be outside just the sietch to get that many views.
I know, it was mostly a joke. But I have posted this on AO3.
From hell's Heart I stab at Thee!
Alright gents, happy 4th of July. In honor of independence day. I Present to you, the second part of the epic conclusion to Thor's chariot.
@Spartan303 This one's for you buddy! And for @bullethead Because good ol fashioned firearms don't get enough love in sci fi.
Asgard Protected Planet's Zone Hurot-Battle of the Red River PT-II
Ecthor and Rynulf had ordered that they hold, the Tau’Ri gave the same order and held they did, as the skies blackened and the earth and dust shot into the sky began to spread across the horizon, dispersing with the violence of the firestorm that gave it monstrous life. Above the expanding cloud, lightning roared and the inhuman hollering that had at first sounded like the cries of despair of the dead and dying now swelled into something more violent in its frenzy and it became clear that while a sizable portion of the lizards had been buried or incinerated by the Skald’s mad bomb, that at the very least several hundred had survived.
They had departed slightly before the aerial battle; it would later be determined. Marching across the roaring river on their makeshift bridges and crossing into the forest several miles from the main road leading into the Wyryn. Caught in the explosion, a wave of heat, steam and debris had been hurled by the shockwave (which had decapitated several dozens of them from the kinetic energy alone.) smashed into the group, cutting a force of one thousand Sleestak and Slytharians and six hundred Scarran down to fifty Sleestak, two hundred Slytharians and four hundred Scarran.
It had taken them time to pull themselves up from the rubble, the Slytharians had risen first. Being the ones who healed the fastest and the frog men promptly ran screaming for their lives., Bellowing inhuman cantos of sheer terror until they breached the tree line and were pelted by a thousand arrows from archers and fire from the Tau’Ri. Until Daniel realized they were screaming surrender in Imperial Standard, surrender that Prince Aerwulf who commanded the forward line alongside O’Neill was in no mood to accept. He kicked his horse, his group of heavy cavalry charged into the frightened, still healing lizardmen and began to slaughter them.
They were running them down, running them over. Dozens scattered, twenty or so were butchered like vermin and Colonel O’Neill came very close to shooting the prince in the back to put a stop to the slaughter. But before he could, the bruised and battered Scarrans came out, rushing forward with frenzied glowing eyes and blood covered mouths. Aerwulf tried to rally, but a Scarran hurled a boulder the size of a man’s torso at him. The blow impacting the prince’s mount square in its chest. The beast heaved, blood erupted from his nose and spun backwards falling forward crashing into one of those giant tapirs in armor, knocking down mounts and riders. Aerwulf hadn’t made it to the pile of corpses however, being launched through the air by the suddenness of the impact the man fell face first into grass, his form twisting and bending backwards unnaturally.
Prince Rynulf screamed for his father and was grabbed by Ramirez who pinned the boy to the dirt as Jackson beckoned the Slytharians forward. The madness of their commander ending with him, the rest of the cavalry ran for their lives rushing back to the line and even making a path for the surrendering frogmen. Members of SG-6 and Petty Officer O’Neill opened fire in that moment trying to turn the Scarrans who just didn’t care.
They knew they were dead reptiles. Several died but others managed to get to the warriors of Hurot and they launched into that battle with mad fury. Four Scarrans had stopped at the body of Aerwulf and began to rip his armor off until one of the smooth faced ones ordered them off, at which point he grabbed the Prince’s head and twisted it off, hurling it towards the O’Neill’s and Rynulf and bellowing a challenge.
The Prince slithered out from Ramirez, who simply pushed the boy aside and ran towards the Scarrans. Firing at them with the weapons of the Tau’Ri that were quickly becoming the bane of every advanced civilization that forgot that cardinal rule.
Energy weaponry might have been less costly from a logistics standpoint and more advanced, but that didn’t mean good old fashioned metal slugs hurled at sufficient enough velocities weren’t capable of doing just as much damage and in the case of Scarrans who had evolved to be extremely resistant to heat and thus had natural armor against a lot of the energy weaponry used by the Galaxies at large…had no real protection for bullets.
A bullet caught a long snouted Scarran straight in the nostril.
It’s entire snout split from nose to jawline, brains erupted from the back of its head and to complete the grizzled visage of a flesh canoe teeth and skull fragments slid around the wound as he crumbled. Rynulf lunged at the lead Scarran who had rounded in time to begin blasting Ramirez with heat projected from the hand. The boy plunged a Trinium tipped spear into its side, aiming for what he thought was a kidney, only for it to have been the heat gland itself. The commander howled in pain and swung, smashing the prince in the head with a balled fist as SG-6’s commander opened his chest with a discarded battle ax before rounding and firing on the remaining Scarrans.
Together they carried off his father’s body, under cover fire from SG-1 and SG-6.
“Get Daniel to the back with Carter and Eco or whatever the hell the commander’s name is” Jack muttered to his daughter who looked like she wanted to protest but O’Neill shook his head. “No, get the hell out of the front, these guys are coming through like lunatics and the army’s discipline is breaking, this is going to be a bloodbath, get out and I’ll get the Admiral and whatever Prince is left alive out..We’ll be right behind you.”
“Form a stable cadre at the rear? Rally from there?” She asked, sensing her father’s plan.
Jack nodded. Much as he was terrified of losing another child, much as he resented himself for not just shooting West when he found out he’d approached his daughter’s with offers of a lifetime. Much as he resented Hammond for the crime of looking after them (which was stupid.) She’d been the only rookie in any of the teams who didn’t walk away bloodied from the last engagement, only bruised. More than that, she defended her Admiral to the best of her abilities and her abilities..he was reluctant to admit were as good as his were at her age. “You’re a damn fine sailor.” O’Neill added eliciting a tearful salute from his kid before she grabbed his nerd by the scruff of his collar and joined Ramirez and Rynulf in falling back.
To his credit the prince managed to issue a final command to the warriors who hadn’t mentally snapped and were just bum rushing the Scarrans and the other lizard people and engaging physically superior foes in what looked like the most schizophrenic brawl he’d seen since that mosh pit turned abortive revolution in Belarus back in ’96. He wasn’t sure what the kid had said though, or at least he wasn’t sure until one of the commanders walked up to the Admiral and snapped at attention doing his best to mimic the Salute the SG teams gave Hammond. Evidently, they’d been left in command of this mess.
It started to rain, Hammond’s eyes burned, and he made a few gestures. “We Advance backwards, slowly damnit! Forget the guys out in front, they’ve lost their minds son!” He grabbed a breast plate. “Get your guys under control and move back, let them take ground, let them run themselves ragged they’re half dead already! We get to the back; we kill them all!”
Sometimes, you didn’t need to speak the same language. Sometimes presence and tone were enough. The man nodded grimly and turned and began barking orders at the other commanders who managed to regain control of about five hundred members of the Wyryn guard and the other militias. They began to form rank and organized and under control of a pair of calm commanders, they stopped dying like flies and managed to start slaughtering the Sleestaks and venomous lizards.
Behind them Teal’c was rallying the archers and they were raining hell down on any of the scaled bastards that made it out of the gigantic slaughterfest and brawl between enraged space Vikings and suicidally furious lizardmen. A dozen were cut down, while at least a hundred others were taking wounds that, if not fatal would at least slow them down.
Still, swords were no match for Scarran hide unless made of Trinium and they were slowly slaughtering their way through and managing to inch closer and closer to the retreating band.
It was interesting, if Jack O’Neill wasn’t fighting for his life, he might have stopped to bask in the ego trip this gigantic mess was. Unlike Teal’c he never commanded an army, though like Hammond he helped train up special forces’ teams in allied countries. But the respect this marshal culture held for him, for the Admiral and for Teal’c was a hell of a confidence booster. They were despairing for a second before they were able to figure out just who the baton of command had passed too and then he saw in their eyes. Each and every Viking looked like they were ten feet taller and a hundred times stronger. O’Neill, killer of Ra, Teal’c the youngest First Prime in history, a master of war and mighty Hammond of Texas who commanded them all. Who could defeat a force even if it was a remnant that had such commanders? This was pretty fucking awesome.
It also felt weirdly familiar, and he couldn’t quite shake it. But he knew this. It was as if it was something he had relived a hundred times in his head, thinking less and acting more on instinct.
He knew this.
A book he read as a boy, yeah, one of the few books that really drew him in and made him reread it until the pages were worn thin. He’d been here before, fought this battle before if not in reality in his dreams.
A book, yeah that was it! That was it!
And then a roar so loud it deafened the thunder broke his train of thought. A roar that wasn’t just one voice, but a chorus of voices, all of them torn, agonized and driven by a hatred that was older than his civilization. Primal, bestial and utterly unhinged and O’Neill recognized that chorus.
All fighting stopped.
Thousands of men, hundreds of lizards all frozen in place like frightened children with the bloodlust just, ripped out of their minds by those cries that seemed to penetrate their very souls. Even the animals which were scattering to and frow trying to avoid being killed by a stray arrow or stabbed by an errant sword or lance or ax all froze.
And then O’Neill saw it.
Ten feet tall, with shoulders and a chest that looked like the front of a firetruck. Five long talons on each hand, glowing green eyes, armored scutes covering knuckles and other vitals, horns protruding above the forehead. Green florescent blood trickled out from hundreds of hideous gouges where molted debris had burned into the skin and flesh and was now being pushed out by healing tissue. Scales and scutes flaked off, replaced rapidly by new tissue but in other places, fluids oozed from muscle that had been charred and was being consumed by the body as it regrew new flesh. Half the flesh and scales from the left side of its face were gone, revealing exposed bone and teeth that gnashed in fury and a forked tongue that flickered angrily even as the flesh repaired itself.
He held in his right hand what looked like a gigantic halberd that must have been fifteen feet tall and must have weighed several hundred pounds if not more.
He swung it.
Space Viking, Scarran…it didn’t matter.
Ten people were cut in half and their parts flew through the air launching dozens of feet overheard.
Someone, one of the heavier armored warriors of the Wyryn guard ran towards him and thew a spear. The giant lizard king battered it aside and crushed the man’s skull, helmet and all with a hand larger than his torso and as he licked up the blood, he pointed his weapon forward.
“TEEAALLL’C! ON’YEERR! HAMMUN! KREE’HO’MYR SHAKA! KEEKAI! KAAAAIII!!!!”
Heel! Step forward you cowards, come to me, come out and die!
-Well Jack, at least he’s not Horus…- Yeah, just keep telling yourself that…
Teal’c stepped forward. His eyes narrowed “YAHATA-SHOLVA! KREE! KREEE! KAAAI!”
So the big bastard called them names and told them to come out and die, that was to be expected from a lunatic that looked like he just survived an entire mountain falling on his head and came out with both his brains damaged. Plus it was par for the course for a druggie to run his mouth.
What possessed big guy to respond by calling Yeehaw a traitor who should kill himself to avoid dishonoring us by having to do the job for him. Jack O'Neill would never know.
But they were officially in it now.
And we were doing so well, for once!
@Spartan303 This one's for you buddy! And for @bullethead Because good ol fashioned firearms don't get enough love in sci fi.
Asgard Protected Planet's Zone Hurot-Battle of the Red River PT-II
Ecthor and Rynulf had ordered that they hold, the Tau’Ri gave the same order and held they did, as the skies blackened and the earth and dust shot into the sky began to spread across the horizon, dispersing with the violence of the firestorm that gave it monstrous life. Above the expanding cloud, lightning roared and the inhuman hollering that had at first sounded like the cries of despair of the dead and dying now swelled into something more violent in its frenzy and it became clear that while a sizable portion of the lizards had been buried or incinerated by the Skald’s mad bomb, that at the very least several hundred had survived.
They had departed slightly before the aerial battle; it would later be determined. Marching across the roaring river on their makeshift bridges and crossing into the forest several miles from the main road leading into the Wyryn. Caught in the explosion, a wave of heat, steam and debris had been hurled by the shockwave (which had decapitated several dozens of them from the kinetic energy alone.) smashed into the group, cutting a force of one thousand Sleestak and Slytharians and six hundred Scarran down to fifty Sleestak, two hundred Slytharians and four hundred Scarran.
It had taken them time to pull themselves up from the rubble, the Slytharians had risen first. Being the ones who healed the fastest and the frog men promptly ran screaming for their lives., Bellowing inhuman cantos of sheer terror until they breached the tree line and were pelted by a thousand arrows from archers and fire from the Tau’Ri. Until Daniel realized they were screaming surrender in Imperial Standard, surrender that Prince Aerwulf who commanded the forward line alongside O’Neill was in no mood to accept. He kicked his horse, his group of heavy cavalry charged into the frightened, still healing lizardmen and began to slaughter them.
They were running them down, running them over. Dozens scattered, twenty or so were butchered like vermin and Colonel O’Neill came very close to shooting the prince in the back to put a stop to the slaughter. But before he could, the bruised and battered Scarrans came out, rushing forward with frenzied glowing eyes and blood covered mouths. Aerwulf tried to rally, but a Scarran hurled a boulder the size of a man’s torso at him. The blow impacting the prince’s mount square in its chest. The beast heaved, blood erupted from his nose and spun backwards falling forward crashing into one of those giant tapirs in armor, knocking down mounts and riders. Aerwulf hadn’t made it to the pile of corpses however, being launched through the air by the suddenness of the impact the man fell face first into grass, his form twisting and bending backwards unnaturally.
Prince Rynulf screamed for his father and was grabbed by Ramirez who pinned the boy to the dirt as Jackson beckoned the Slytharians forward. The madness of their commander ending with him, the rest of the cavalry ran for their lives rushing back to the line and even making a path for the surrendering frogmen. Members of SG-6 and Petty Officer O’Neill opened fire in that moment trying to turn the Scarrans who just didn’t care.
They knew they were dead reptiles. Several died but others managed to get to the warriors of Hurot and they launched into that battle with mad fury. Four Scarrans had stopped at the body of Aerwulf and began to rip his armor off until one of the smooth faced ones ordered them off, at which point he grabbed the Prince’s head and twisted it off, hurling it towards the O’Neill’s and Rynulf and bellowing a challenge.
The Prince slithered out from Ramirez, who simply pushed the boy aside and ran towards the Scarrans. Firing at them with the weapons of the Tau’Ri that were quickly becoming the bane of every advanced civilization that forgot that cardinal rule.
Energy weaponry might have been less costly from a logistics standpoint and more advanced, but that didn’t mean good old fashioned metal slugs hurled at sufficient enough velocities weren’t capable of doing just as much damage and in the case of Scarrans who had evolved to be extremely resistant to heat and thus had natural armor against a lot of the energy weaponry used by the Galaxies at large…had no real protection for bullets.
A bullet caught a long snouted Scarran straight in the nostril.
It’s entire snout split from nose to jawline, brains erupted from the back of its head and to complete the grizzled visage of a flesh canoe teeth and skull fragments slid around the wound as he crumbled. Rynulf lunged at the lead Scarran who had rounded in time to begin blasting Ramirez with heat projected from the hand. The boy plunged a Trinium tipped spear into its side, aiming for what he thought was a kidney, only for it to have been the heat gland itself. The commander howled in pain and swung, smashing the prince in the head with a balled fist as SG-6’s commander opened his chest with a discarded battle ax before rounding and firing on the remaining Scarrans.
Together they carried off his father’s body, under cover fire from SG-1 and SG-6.
“Get Daniel to the back with Carter and Eco or whatever the hell the commander’s name is” Jack muttered to his daughter who looked like she wanted to protest but O’Neill shook his head. “No, get the hell out of the front, these guys are coming through like lunatics and the army’s discipline is breaking, this is going to be a bloodbath, get out and I’ll get the Admiral and whatever Prince is left alive out..We’ll be right behind you.”
“Form a stable cadre at the rear? Rally from there?” She asked, sensing her father’s plan.
Jack nodded. Much as he was terrified of losing another child, much as he resented himself for not just shooting West when he found out he’d approached his daughter’s with offers of a lifetime. Much as he resented Hammond for the crime of looking after them (which was stupid.) She’d been the only rookie in any of the teams who didn’t walk away bloodied from the last engagement, only bruised. More than that, she defended her Admiral to the best of her abilities and her abilities..he was reluctant to admit were as good as his were at her age. “You’re a damn fine sailor.” O’Neill added eliciting a tearful salute from his kid before she grabbed his nerd by the scruff of his collar and joined Ramirez and Rynulf in falling back.
To his credit the prince managed to issue a final command to the warriors who hadn’t mentally snapped and were just bum rushing the Scarrans and the other lizard people and engaging physically superior foes in what looked like the most schizophrenic brawl he’d seen since that mosh pit turned abortive revolution in Belarus back in ’96. He wasn’t sure what the kid had said though, or at least he wasn’t sure until one of the commanders walked up to the Admiral and snapped at attention doing his best to mimic the Salute the SG teams gave Hammond. Evidently, they’d been left in command of this mess.
It started to rain, Hammond’s eyes burned, and he made a few gestures. “We Advance backwards, slowly damnit! Forget the guys out in front, they’ve lost their minds son!” He grabbed a breast plate. “Get your guys under control and move back, let them take ground, let them run themselves ragged they’re half dead already! We get to the back; we kill them all!”
Sometimes, you didn’t need to speak the same language. Sometimes presence and tone were enough. The man nodded grimly and turned and began barking orders at the other commanders who managed to regain control of about five hundred members of the Wyryn guard and the other militias. They began to form rank and organized and under control of a pair of calm commanders, they stopped dying like flies and managed to start slaughtering the Sleestaks and venomous lizards.
Behind them Teal’c was rallying the archers and they were raining hell down on any of the scaled bastards that made it out of the gigantic slaughterfest and brawl between enraged space Vikings and suicidally furious lizardmen. A dozen were cut down, while at least a hundred others were taking wounds that, if not fatal would at least slow them down.
Still, swords were no match for Scarran hide unless made of Trinium and they were slowly slaughtering their way through and managing to inch closer and closer to the retreating band.
It was interesting, if Jack O’Neill wasn’t fighting for his life, he might have stopped to bask in the ego trip this gigantic mess was. Unlike Teal’c he never commanded an army, though like Hammond he helped train up special forces’ teams in allied countries. But the respect this marshal culture held for him, for the Admiral and for Teal’c was a hell of a confidence booster. They were despairing for a second before they were able to figure out just who the baton of command had passed too and then he saw in their eyes. Each and every Viking looked like they were ten feet taller and a hundred times stronger. O’Neill, killer of Ra, Teal’c the youngest First Prime in history, a master of war and mighty Hammond of Texas who commanded them all. Who could defeat a force even if it was a remnant that had such commanders? This was pretty fucking awesome.
It also felt weirdly familiar, and he couldn’t quite shake it. But he knew this. It was as if it was something he had relived a hundred times in his head, thinking less and acting more on instinct.
He knew this.
A book he read as a boy, yeah, one of the few books that really drew him in and made him reread it until the pages were worn thin. He’d been here before, fought this battle before if not in reality in his dreams.
A book, yeah that was it! That was it!
And then a roar so loud it deafened the thunder broke his train of thought. A roar that wasn’t just one voice, but a chorus of voices, all of them torn, agonized and driven by a hatred that was older than his civilization. Primal, bestial and utterly unhinged and O’Neill recognized that chorus.
All fighting stopped.
Thousands of men, hundreds of lizards all frozen in place like frightened children with the bloodlust just, ripped out of their minds by those cries that seemed to penetrate their very souls. Even the animals which were scattering to and frow trying to avoid being killed by a stray arrow or stabbed by an errant sword or lance or ax all froze.
And then O’Neill saw it.
Ten feet tall, with shoulders and a chest that looked like the front of a firetruck. Five long talons on each hand, glowing green eyes, armored scutes covering knuckles and other vitals, horns protruding above the forehead. Green florescent blood trickled out from hundreds of hideous gouges where molted debris had burned into the skin and flesh and was now being pushed out by healing tissue. Scales and scutes flaked off, replaced rapidly by new tissue but in other places, fluids oozed from muscle that had been charred and was being consumed by the body as it regrew new flesh. Half the flesh and scales from the left side of its face were gone, revealing exposed bone and teeth that gnashed in fury and a forked tongue that flickered angrily even as the flesh repaired itself.
He held in his right hand what looked like a gigantic halberd that must have been fifteen feet tall and must have weighed several hundred pounds if not more.
He swung it.
Space Viking, Scarran…it didn’t matter.
Ten people were cut in half and their parts flew through the air launching dozens of feet overheard.
Someone, one of the heavier armored warriors of the Wyryn guard ran towards him and thew a spear. The giant lizard king battered it aside and crushed the man’s skull, helmet and all with a hand larger than his torso and as he licked up the blood, he pointed his weapon forward.
“TEEAALLL’C! ON’YEERR! HAMMUN! KREE’HO’MYR SHAKA! KEEKAI! KAAAAIII!!!!”
Heel! Step forward you cowards, come to me, come out and die!
-Well Jack, at least he’s not Horus…- Yeah, just keep telling yourself that…
Teal’c stepped forward. His eyes narrowed “YAHATA-SHOLVA! KREE! KREEE! KAAAI!”
So the big bastard called them names and told them to come out and die, that was to be expected from a lunatic that looked like he just survived an entire mountain falling on his head and came out with both his brains damaged. Plus it was par for the course for a druggie to run his mouth.
What possessed big guy to respond by calling Yeehaw a traitor who should kill himself to avoid dishonoring us by having to do the job for him. Jack O'Neill would never know.
But they were officially in it now.
And we were doing so well, for once!
Can't wait for part 3 where we get the finale. So far it's building nicely.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Well I think I finally found a worthy champion for Earth in the event they need to fight a peer again. Samus Aran at her peak. In the Metroid Universe she's even orginally from a Earth Colony.
Hah yeah, that would be fun to write.