Snakepit : A Stargate - Draka Crossover

[holyknight]

Another thought.....with a dozen of Al'Kesh Bombers, and given how daring are the Draka,.......would be too much to believe that the Draka wouldn't mount a boarding action, slipping into a Ha'Tak, through those same Al'Kesh, adequately "fixed" to make the ships believe that they need an emergency landing on the deck, damaged and without visual communications??

[iborg]

Another thought.....with a dozen of Al'Kesh Bombers, and given how daring are the Draka,.......would be too much to believe that the Draka wouldn't mount a boarding action, slipping into a Ha'Tak, through those same Al'Kesh, adequately "fixed" to make the ships believe that they need an emergency landing on the deck, damaged and without visual communications??

I see that you're putting yourself in the protagonists' mind.
Which is exactly what I do as a writer

[iborg]

And update !


xxxxxx


Rothan felt elated as usual flying his metal steed through the void where no being could survive without the protective magic of the gods. The rest of his flight followed in loose echelon formation behind his own fighter, ready to take on the blasphemers who had dared invade a sanctified world. He glanced aside and suppressed a hint of regret at the bare right wing. Although the harpooned Tollan woman had made a great impression among his Jaffa brethren, and even gained him a commendation from the mothership’s Flight Lord for skillful flying, the decaying body had started to stink not long afterwards and he had been forced to get rid of it. The dead woman was dumped from the nearest airlock.
But it was all right. Soon Rothan would earn live Tollan slaves, which would be even better.

Scattered among the nimble Gliders were the Tel’taks transporting sections of Jaffas. With support from their flying comrades, they were to retake the Chappai and then mop up enemy warriors in the city.
As the spacecraft swooped lower and emerged from the cloud base Rothan got his first view of Atheros City. Tall pillars of black smoke rose from the fires visible even from there, engulfing entire blocks. The Jaffa pilot ground his teeth. He had friends down there, who were perhaps dead or trapped in burning buildings. The Tollans would pay for this !
In the meantime, the tactical view showed new orders for the transports. Some of them wouldn’t return to the Ha’taks after dropping their troop load, instead they would start scooping water from the river to be dropped on the raging fires, thus preventing their spread and protecting the rest of the capital from the flames.

As he dropped even lower and slower Rothan started to make out details. Oddly there didn’t seem to be any activity. As far as he could see the streets were empty. Nothing moved… until the lead transports came in range of the man-portable missiles tracking them from the top steps of the stargate pyramid. The Drakas never intended to contest the terrain, but they did intend to leave a lasting impression, and the incoming Jaffas shouldn’t be left with the feeling that it was too easy.
Eight of the specially-modified rockets streaked upwards, each one locked on a troop-laden Tel’Tak. Initially designed to counter Alliance supersonic fighter-bombers and armored gunships at low and medium altitude, they went hypersonic a fraction of a second after their launch and crossed the dozen kilometers before the pilots even realized they were under attack.
The missiles’ standard warhead was no threat to a shielded Goa’uld transport. Hence why it was replaced by a naquadah-enhanced one.
Eight fireballs blossomed in the darkened sky, lighting clouds and smoke with orange tones. The kiloton-yield charges not only vaporized their targets, every Deathglider in the vicinity was blasted off the sky, the closest ones simply vanishing, the ones further away suffering damage proportional to their distance from the detonations. Dozens of the small flyers were crippled and fell to the ground trailing fire and smoke before digging new craters and adding their share of destruction upon the city and its countryside.

Rothan fought the violent buffeting as the shockwave caught up with his own fighter. Fortunately, he was outside the lethal radius and managed to retain control, helped by the automated flight governor. Below him, the pressure fronts swept the ground, briefly dispersing the smoke and dust and shattering windows. The pyramid was straight ahead, and his keen eyes glimpsed miniature black figures running inside the gaping elevated entrance. His fingers tightened on the firing studs, more a gesture of defiance, he later told himself. The short burst of plasma only damaged the stoneworks further, and then the fighter overflew the tall structure. There was no more movement downside, but Rothan turned lazily overhead, peering down into the deserted streets and avenues.
There were some new additions, it seemed, but their nature was barely recognizable in the poor light.
There was nothing else to do but orbit overhead as the surviving Tel’taks set down all around the place, hovering over the pavement to let the transport rings disgorge their Jaffa contingent.


One of those disembarked at the foot of the majestic stairs. The sheer shock of the welcoming sight affected everyone, even the transport pilot, who reached for a handy leather bag and vomited into it.
The more seasoned warriors merely stood slack-jawed and goggle-eyed as the view registered on their retinas. Starting at the foot of the pyramid and going down all the way to the city council square was a grotesque display of dead and tortured flesh.
Two man-sized, neatly stacked symmetrical pyramids stood at the base of the larger one like perverse imitations. But those weren’t made of shaped stone. They were made of row upon row of decapitated Jaffa heads, artistically disposed so that each faced outwards and showed a rictus of death. Those heads were naturally the most intact ones - the damaged pieces had ended up as filling inside the peculiar constructions. The final and perhaps most terrible insult were the owner’s torn flaccid cock thrust into every dead mouth.
The effect was even worse as every live Jaffa could recognize former friends, brothers and relatives in the heap. Death in battle wasn’t something they shied of, on the contrary, but this… this gruesome exhibition was more than that, it was an explicit declaration and every witness understood its meaning. Whoever had done it took pleasure in showing off their grisly work. It was a declaration of war. It was a personal statement. This is what awaits you if you oppose us.

And it was but the appetizer. All around the pyramid’s base stood rows of stakes bearing denuded bodies, Jaffa bodies, all missing their heads. Tanith’s soldiers, slowly advancing among the scene of desolation, gazed at each tortured corpse. No word was pronounced. At least it appeared, from the plainly visible wounds present on every carcass, that the unfortunate men were already dead when they were thrust on sharpened rods and castrated.
While the place where the stakes entered was clear (bringing many grimaces of disgust to the watching men) they didn’t emerge from the gaping neck wounds. There was something else protruding from those, the broken remains of the Jaffas’ symbiotes sticking out like parodies of man-Goa’uld chimeras.
The leaving Drakas didn’t have enough time to stage more elaborate displays, but those were already striking deep in Tanith’s warriors. Flaring rage, appaled disgust, and a strong undercurrent of fear hid behind the silent vows of revenge.

More troops made their way to the ground as the first wave spread itself along the empty streets. Empty, that is, save for the fresh signs of death. Blood pooling in the middle runnels, guts and pieces of flesh scattered from place to place, bodies nailed to doors, those merciful few and far between. They were booby-trapped too, as the first Jaffas to try unpinning one found out to their own demise. After the first explosion killed four of their number, the rest stayed well clear of the next ones.
And it wasn’t only the dead that were hiding lethal traps. Every door, every clump of debris could be setup as an explosive surprise. Not many died because of them, as the warriors quickly learnt to leave anything remotely suspicious alone, but it would make the securing of the city so much slower. The worst were the monofilament wiretraps set across streets and doorways at head and neck height, or deviously arranged near more obvious set-ups. More than once a self-congratulating Jaffa avoided what he assumed was a hidden improvised explosive device only to tangle himself in the wickedly sharp wire. Panic did the rest and the unfortunate subject sliced himself to pieces trying to escape the near-invisible scalpels.

And there wasn’t a single damn living soul. It was as if the proud city had been emptied of its inhabitants - which was indeed the case. A significant fraction, several thousands had managed to escape into the countryside. About a fifth were dead, collateral damage from all the fighting. The rest was on Abydos, being processed by the efficient Draka machine into a slave system more ruthless and sophisticated than anything their Goa’uld masters had shown.
The streets also showed the clear signs of pillaging - shattered doors, spilled goods too worthless to be taken, poured fluids from broken containers. The famous workshops were opened and empty. Luxury leathers, fabrics, gem-encrusted jewellery, crystalware, wine and spirits - all the pricey wares Atheros was known for among Tanith’s empire had attracted the raiders’ keen eye. What was left were broken tools in abandoned, ransacked workshops, and plundered warehouses.
Maybe, in time, the capital city would flourish again. In any case, it was still the place where passage to other worlds could be made, an obligatory nexus for travelling merchants and interstellar traders. Caravans and sea-going ships from the rest of the planet would still converge here laden with much sought-after goods. But it would take years, generations likely, for the City to regain its former splendor, because its beating heart, its richest and most productive denizens, had been ripped out this fateful day.


Inside the flagship Merciless hovering far above the abused city, the incoming reports from the Jaffa commanders on the ground brought a filtered, sanitized vision of the left-over carnage. Despite this the mood was rather subdued, the initial elation at retaking the planet quickly displaced by the sudden bag of tricks unleashed by the retreating invaders.
Tanith himself sat still and silent on his throne. At last the thing he was waiting for happened. The ornate doors of the Pel’tak opened sideways with their customary lack of noise, and Kopros entered, escorted by a pair of warriors.
The Goa’uld underling bowed down before the raised throne, stooping even lower than usual and trying his best to hide his anxiety. His overlord could very well decide to kill him on the spot, and if that was the case there was nothing he could do. Well he could have remained on the planet… cowering in a dusty temple until he was caught, and then for sure death would have been the final outcome.
Besides, the fact that he had been kept out of the military side of things was his best defence. He wasn’t responsible for this… well, defeat after all. And the Jaffa commander was dead already.

“Kopros” his master pronounced his name rather dispassionately, something the governor wasn’t entirely sure was a good sign or not, “I wanted to speak to you.”
So far so good, he didn’t say “to kill you”, the younger Goa’uld thought, his face and torso still parallel to the floor.
“My Lord” he made his return greeting in a suitably meek and obedient voice.
“Straighten up first”
Kopros did so, silently letting out the breath he had kept longer than strictly necessary.
“I won’t hold this… incident against you.” Hearing these words, it was as if a great weight was lifted off the governor’s shoulders, but he kept himself composed in deferent attention.
“Thank you, my Lord”
“The Tollan blasphemers showed an unprecedented amount of boldness directly attacking my domains. This is the first time they have attempted this. While irritating, there is no doubt that its is a desperate move. Indeed they fled as I arrived, knowing they were powerless against my divine wrath.” Both Kopros and the Jaffas listening in the background nodded in agreement, but only the former opend his mouth to comment.
“My Lord” he started in as respectfully a voice as he could muster “I believe those invaders were not Tollan.”
“Explain.”
“The warriors who came from the Chappai didn’t look Tollan at all. Their weapons were totally different from ion blasters, they wore fully-enclosing armor, and it appears that the majority of the attackers were an altogether different species, bigger than a human. Of course, the ships in orbit were definitely Tollan, but from what little I could glimpse before I had to evacuate the palace, it would seem the Tollans have received help from an exterior party” He breathed in, breathed out, and finished after the pause. “One that is obviously skilled at fighting, unlike them.”

A moment passed as Tanith mulled over his subordinate’s observations. True, Kopros wasn’t a military commander, but as a Goa’uld dignitary he still had access to all the knowledge amassed about the various no-Goa’uld powers. And the scant facts seemed to go along with his deduction. Killing three Kull Warriors was one thing, sending back their mangled remains as a gloating gesture seemed out of character. Or did it ? Maybe this war had revealed some inner steel in those admittedly advanced people ? If that was the case then they needed to be crushed quickly lest they managed to regain the edge.
At least the six Ha’taks wouldn’t have to remain here for too long. He would leave a pair behind as garrison and take the other four back to Tollan space.
Maybe Lord Anubis could even be convinced to lend additional help if the Tollans posed a greater danger to Goa’uld rule in this corner of the galaxy.

“My Lord !” A Jaffa voice pulled Tanith from his reflexion. “We are being hailed, an Al’kesh from this world’s garrison !”
“Display it !”
The Goa’uld lord’s eyes flashed expectantly. So one of the defenders had managed to survive the battle against the Tollan fleet. Good. The bomber’s sensor data would be useful.
The system schematic was replaced on the holowindow by the face of a Jaffa pilot. Tanith recognized him, one of the bomber squadron warriors, even if he was one face among thousands. He certainly looked tired, with a film of sweat and grime obscuring his features.
“Jaffa ! Report !”
“My Lord ! Please forgive our failure to defend this world !”
Tanith imperiously waved away the shame and remorse coloring the warrior’s words.
“Is your Al’kesh the sole survivor from the number defending this planet ?”
Another sharp nod. “Yes, My Lord, I’m afraid none of my squadron mates survived, but they made the blasphemers pay in blood for each of their lives !” he added fiercely. “When it became clear that the enemy couldn’t be stopped by us, my leader ordered me to hide and await your return so I could tell about their sacrifice !”
“It was a wise decision. The sacrifice of every Jaffa who gave his life to serve me will be honored and remembered, and their families will be cared for. Are there any surviving warriors beside you ?”
“Indeed, my Lord. My crew, and a few comrades we managed to evacuate from crippled ships. Most are injured, and our bomber has itself received damage from enemy fire” the Jaffa seemed to hesitate for an instant “I request permission to dock and disembark the wounded, my Lord”

Tanith took in the sight again. The Jaffa pilot showed courage and determination on his face, but he couldn’t entirely hide his wariness, and a damaged bomber wouldn’t be of much use in the retaking of Atheros City. On the other hand, it could be repaired aboard and every attack craft counted in this war.
“Permission granted, Jaffa. And as soon as you are docked inside Merciless, you will report to me. I have more questions for you, but they can wait until then.”
“My Lord” the Jaffa answered ceremonially, closed fist striking his mail-covered breast, and the communication cut out.
As the lone Al’kesh detached itself from the planet’s smallest moon, heading towards the much larger flagship, the Goa’uld lord’s attention turned again to the reports from the ground.

Inside the commandeered bomber, the Tollan operative masquerading as a Jaffa allowed himself a discreet smile of satisfaction. The Imperial Tollan Intelligence service had put its bag of tricks to good use. The mask truly felt like a second skin, comfortable and breathable, and it mimicked the dead Jaffa’s facial features perfectly, especially with a smudge of grime to add authenticity. The voice was unfortunately the agent’s own, for there wasn’t a sample to mimic, but he had done his best impersonation of a Jaffa warrior again and it was good enough to fool Tanith himself.
He glanced back as the connecting hatch opened with a low hiss, revealing a grinning Draka, helmet removed for now although he wore a suit of recon armor instead of his original spacesuit.
“Well, Tetrarch Vöhn, it does look like you’ll have a shot at stealing a Ha’tak this time, if a dozen Al’kesh weren’t enough for your ego.”

[iborg]

Satrian Outskirts
Occupied Nautona


The night was pitch-black over the invaded Tollan world’s capital. The summer storm’s heavy clouds eclipsed the sky, and a steady drizzle had been falling for hours with occasional bouts of heavy rain punctuated by thunder and lightning.
Needless to say, the drenched Jaffas guarding the Chappai felt bored and miserable. They were even past the point of grousing, instead they stood silently with cowls pulled over heads to provide a modicum of shelter against the watershed. They were a hundred-strong force, but half their number was clumped below the cover of a little pavilion, an open circular portico of slender marble columns that used to be a place for bands to play and lovers to kiss. It didn’t provide much protection against the winds, but at least there was a roof, and it didn’t attract lightning as much as the naquadah-laced tip of a staff weapon in the middle of an open field.
The other half was manning the shallow semi-circular trench encircling the Chappai and the quartet of staff cannons trained against the metallic ring. At least the stargate did attract whatever lightning bolts decided to fall in the general area, something the Jaffas firmly believed to be magic attracting magic.
The thoroughly drenched warriors in the already inundated trench fiddled in place, caked in mud up to their hips, waiting for the hour to pass and their comrades to relieve them and sparing envious thoughts for the other Jaffas warm and dry in the Ha’tak hovering somewhere behind them. It was invisible too except when lightning briefly outlined its dark bulk, standing ominously over the blackness of the conquered city.

Satria was mostly empty, save for the buildings where Tollan captives were kept under guard. Most were men, kept there in prevision of the heavy labor that razing the town and clearing the rubble would necessitate. In the meantime they were shackled together, stripped of everything save their undergarments, under the vigilant gaze of Tanith’s guards.
As to the women, they provided a pleasant relief to the otherwise bored Jaffas. Reetak himself, the First Prime left in command by his Goa’uld master, was indulging in the company of a pair of local girls. As befitted his position, he had first pick and had chosen well. He was slightly disappointed that they weren’t virgins, however. Yet another proof that the Tollans were decadent and deserving Lord Tanith’s just punishment. What kind of decent people let utheir daughters lose their virginity so casually out of wedlock ?
At least it had a silver lining : once their initial unwillingness was dispelled (which had involved both immediate threats and promises of ulterior safety) they had proved most adept at satisfying a warrior. Indeed they both showed the consummate expertise of a veteran harlot in the task of bringing pleasure with their mouth.

Similarly Reetak’s subordinates were happily following his fine example aboard the mothership whose nooks and crannies echoed in the moans and occasional screams let out by hundreds of captives of both sexes, but sharing the crucial qualities of youthness and attractiveness. The skeleton crew manning the Pel’tak was thus involved with a number of Tollan beauties, and additional distraction was provided by looted alcoholic beverages in containers of all shapes laying around the room.
Therefore, the Jaffa who was supposedly responsible with monitoring sensors didn’t notice the Chappai’s activation, busy as he was thrusting into a smooth, firm Tollan boy’s ass and listening to the shrill whimpers of his reluctant lover.

The warriors guarding the stargate didn’t miss it though and instantly shook themselves from their previous state of boredom, aiming weapons toward the blue luminous disk.
Alas the thing that emerged seconds later wasn’t what they expected. The low blocky shape of a Hond IV darted out at maximum speed to get clear of the danger zone but to their credit the Jaffa gunners had sharp reflexes. Four staff cannons opened fire at once and didn’t miss, bathing the tank in actinic fire. Armor boiled and vaporized, sensor heads melted or were blasted away, but the tough vehicle drove through the first salvo, its torn left track slipping away. Engines integral to the road wheels kept it moving however and seconds later the tank was straddling the trench while the second Hond crossed the event horizon.
The Jaffas inside the shallow trench learned then why it wasn’t a good idea to stand in a Hond’s immediate vicinity when it was surrounded by enemy infantry. The close-in defense system spat a half-dozen antipersonnel grenades, and a few milliseconds later the area was flailed by the pattern of metal flechettes designed to clear out the tank’s immediate periphery. Those didn’t fail to their task, which consisted in shredding insufficiently protected warm bodies, and Jaffas clad in thin mail suited that description very adequately.
The handful of bodies still recognizable and twitching feebly received a final mercy from the second tank, in the form of a burst of machine gun fire.

Of course, the brutal and sudden demise of their brethren wasn’t missed by the Jaffas huddled below the graceful little building standing two hundred meters away, and the fifty soldiers burst from their open-sided shelter, running to form a skirmish line while their leader fumbled with the precious communicator linking him to the Ha’tak crew.
Unfortunately for them all the nocturnal blackness was no hurdle to the multiple redundant sensors on the pair of tanks, and a fairly unbalanced firefight erupted again a second later, bullets aimed with machine precision easily winning the contest against plasma bolts loosed in the general direction of the enemy.
The warrior leader managed to shout an alarm in his communicator before a trigger-happy Draka gunner gleefully demolished the ornamental kiosk with an explosive 140 mm round.
After all the Tollans could always rebuild later. The Jaffa’s body was disintegrated along with the white marble pillar he was hiding behind.
His sacrifice wasn’t in vain however. On the mothership’s bridge, the alerted operator paused his thrusting for a second in order to check the console he was supposed to monitor, shoving the young man’s torso aside to uncover the screen. What he saw definitely pulled him back to his duties, as the idiot-proof computer-generated representation clearly stated the equivalent of “We’re under attack, you moron !”.

The proverbial gears ground inside the Jaffa’s head and finally clicked in place, enabling a reaction at last, but even the symbiote’s best efforts couldn’t entirely cancel the effects of a high blood alcohol content.
“KREEE !”
The slurred bellow accompanied the activation of the Ha’tak’s secondary battery targeted at the enemy location. Which was right next to the stargate. Had the Jaffa been sober, he might have given a second thought to the wisdom of this, but as it was he simply trusted the computer’s aim and pressed his fist on the firing control.
A gunport flashed open on the mothership’s flank, allowing the blunt man-sized barrel of a staff cannon to poke through, and it immediately began to spit bright glowing golden rounds of plasma at the coordinates fed by the gunnery director at the sedate rate of one shot every half-second.
The first round impacted sixty meters ahead of the stargate with the power of a very large artillery shell, digging a wide crater and throwing soil, debris and pieces of warm flesh in the sky. These didn’t have time to fall back before the next shots landed in a random pattern that crawled towards the stargate itself.
The already damaged and slowed Hond took a direct hit. This time its resilient armor and sturdy construction couldn’t save it. The effect was like an petulant child bashing his toy car with daddy’s baseball bat : torn pieces of wreckage squeezed out from under the hammerblow, all of them unrecognizable as former parts of a complex vehicle. A dented and chewed-looking sheet of exterior plating sliced through the midsection of an arriving ghouloon before it ricocheted off the stargate’s inner metal band and vanished forever into the incoming wormhole.
The oversized ape’s squadmates emerged from the event horizon just in time for another plasma explosion to shred them, and the next volley struck the stargate’s base, managing to dislodge it from its temporary stand. The still active ring fell backwards as the staff cannon’s rounds overran it, and the next pair of shock troopers emerged from the sky-facing wormhole mouth with enough left-over inertia to briefly register their emergence right before they fell back in and ceased to exist.

To their officers’ credit (and thanks to the tactical videolink) the ghouloons’ peculiar demise was recognized for what it was, and the follow-up wave was stopped just before they stepped into the wormhole Abydos-side.
Shortly after, the Nautonan-placed stargate’s internal safety features kicked in and the connection was shut off by its Abydosian clone.

Unnoticed in the confusion created by the multiple explosions and the renewed thunderstorm, a lonely Draka tank sped out of the mangled landscape, its hull blackened and covered in mud but otherwise unharmed for it had caught the edge of the artillery barrage. Its commander spared a self-congratulating thought. If they had stopped instead of driving on without waiting for the infantry to arrive, they’d have ended like the other Hond.
Disintegrated.
As the driver negociated his way through the gently sloping hills of the Tollan park, doing his best to keep protruding parts of the scenery between his tank and the distant Goa’uld mothership and thus stay hidden from the formidable gun, his crewmates barely dared breathing, until at last the vehicle drove out of the uncomfortably bare parkland and into a built-up area. As it rolled between two rows of multi-storey buildings the driver started to slow down from their break-neck, flight or die, speed, and mentally sent its thanks to the Hond’s designers, more precisely whoever had conceived its brilliant running gear. The tracks must have dug wide furrows in the soggy grass but at least they had remained on even during turns taken at the tank’s maximal speed of a hundred kph.

A minute passed and no enemy fire came at them, the tank commander decided to stop under an overhang protruding from a tall elegant building. External sensors showed no sign of activity. The area seemed deserted and judging by the broken window displays all around, the Jaffas had done some looting already.
“That’s it. Nobody else got through.” Decurion Lanke removed her helmet and ran a gloved hand through matted brown hair. Her gunner did likewise and twisted on his seat to gaze at her. The familiar hard-featured middle-aged face was sweaty despite the internal air conditioning.
“I guess we’re on our own until the flyboys arrive then.”
“Always look at the bright side : ” her eyes regained a mischievous glint, “we’ve got plenty of ammo and a city-full of Jaffas to kill.”
“With all due respect Ma’am, I’d rather wait for this big flying motherfucker to be neutralized before we go on a joy-ride again !”
A chuckle escaped her lips before she answered the specialist, a veteran of the Tank Corps like her, and like her drawn from the reserve two months ago to relieve the previous crew. They had served alongside in active service and old reflexes were hardly rusted.
“I think we’ll do that.” She unlatched her restraining harness and opened a storage box on the side, pulling out her rifle and a tactical harness, and spoke again as she started to squirm into the webbing.
“In the meantime, why not have a look at the latest Tollan fashion ?”

[holyknight]

Hoo Boy.....methinks that that crew's "trip" while waiting for the forces to free Nautona, its going to be a macabre exercise on Draka quirks, sex with thankful Tollan, and casual murdering and maiming of Jaffa for profit and fun. Ain't gonna be Bat Country, that's sure.

Another day on the job, no?

[iborg]

How to steal a Ha'tak... Draka style.



Atheros System
Tanith’s Flagship Merciless


“My Lord, the Glider squadrons have docked. We are ready to depart at your order !”
Tanith nodded at his Jaffa subordinate’s report. Staying here was useless. Whoever the invaders were, they had truly left town leaving only destruction in their wake. And the Tollans would pay dearly.
Four motherships would stay over the planet, ready to provide support to the warriors on the ground, along with a number of transports hastily repurposed as firefighters. Those were rather busy shuttling water from the river and nearby lakes to the burning city blocks.
Such large conflagrations weren’t common and the quasi-medieval tech level of the Goa’uld planets meant that local fire fighting gear usually amounted to buckets passed from hand to hand. In the present case, that would obviously not be enough, and anyway the population had fled, and the town was full of the lethal traps left behind by the maybe-not-Tollans.
Kopros would remain there to command the relief and reconstruction. He was good at that kind of thing and Tanith had nominated a new Jaffa commander to keep an eye on him.

The Merciless and another Ha’tak were ready to fly back to Nautona. With the Tollans apparently getting ideas, six of the powerful spacecrafts would be a better deterrent over the conquered planet. Tanith’s suspected that the whole Atheros attack was intended as a diversion, and the brief message received from the Ha’tak left over Satria reinforced this feeling. The Divine Pride and Extreme Prejudice had repulsed an assault through the Chappai according to Reetak, an assault that had managed to overwhelm the guards posted near the sacred travel ring. According to the sobered Jaffa the timely intervention of the Pel’tak duty crew had prevented the attackers from gaining a beachhead. A chaingang of captured locals was already busy repairing the damage, which mostly amounted to pulling the stargate back onto a new pedestal. With Jaffa guards to whip them into obedience.
Since they had atually repulsed the attack, Tanith was willing to overlook the fact that his warriors had unwittingly shot up the stargate. It was a huge taboo among the Goa’uld dominated cultures. Damaging, or attempting to damage a Chappai was tantamount to a crime against the gods. Of course the things were almost indestructible unless one wielded weapory far above what primitives could come up with.

By now much of the population of Satria had been transferred to his Throne World, starting with the most valuable individuals. He would naturally keep the best specimens for himself. The remainder would be sold on the slave markets or traded with other System Lords. With the notable exception of Anubis, the Supremacy’s leaders all showed the same appetite for new human toys.
The rest of the planet’s population was still being gathered. Fortunately, those city-born people had no idea how to properly hide in the wild and the Jaffa trackers were having a field day hunting those fleeing humans.

Tanith took a last impassive-looking glance at the display showing the burning capital of Atheros from above. It would be rebuilt even more magnificient than before. But in the meantime he had more important things to attend to.
“Very well, Jaffa. Set a course to Nautona and engage the hyperdrive.”


Satria
Occupied Nautona

The neighborhood was obviously a commercial district, that much could be recognized even in the pitch darkness. Shops lined the sides of the street, some small, some large and spanning multiple storeys, all currently abandoned and open, doors and windows shattered or blasted away by plasma fire.
Decurion Lanke and her gunner approached with cautious steps and rifles ready. The gaping black door of the closest store could seem sinister and foreboding to some, not to Draka soldiers. Their combat sights showed everything in the silvery shades of augmented vision, turning the night into altered day. They walked silently and without a word, relying on small gestures to communicate. The driver was staying inside the tank to monitor its powerful sensors. For now, they seemed all alone in a ghost town.

Lanke winced. The carpet of broken glass shards from the main doors was making a very faint crunching sound beneath her soles despite all her caution and since her tanker uniform didn’t include all the built-in sensors of infantry combat armor, she had to rely more on her own instincts. Which was all right to her. After all, when she had learnt her deadly trade as a young Citizen most of those electronic gadgets didn’t exist or weren’t so miniaturized. Her generation had learnt to track enemy soldiers, feral humans and escaped serfs with nothing more than binoculars, primitive thermal sights and their own sharply honed skills.
At last they stepped inside the building. The ground-level lobby was littered with tables and chairs, many of them broken or upturned. Lanke almost pictured in her mind primitive Jaffas rampaging through the unfamiliar environment and breaking things they couldn’t even fathom the use of. It was a funny thought, in a way. At least janissaries used to know what a telephone or a vidscreen were !
Apparently the building lobby was a sort of restaurant, given the furnishings and the scattered tableware. The Jaffas had probably looted the kitchen, then. The pair of Drakas crossed the area, taking care to avoid stepping on the detritus littering the floor and checking every angle. There were several exits. The most obvious one was the large carpeted staircase leading to the upper levels, flanked by pairs of elevators. Smaller side doors communicated with the restaurant’s working spaces. A large kitchen greeted the decurion’s curiosity. It had indeed been swept by looters, the opened drawers and spilled contents made that clear. Lanke wrinkled her nose. The pillagers had left the big freezers open and left over food was starting to rot.
She shook her head once and gestured to her crewmate. Nothing worthwhile here, they were going up.

It was perhaps unfortunate that the light-intensifying sight washed out the colors. This had to be an upscale place, tastefully decorated, well, to Tollan tastes at least. It was generally more… sober than the Draka style, which leant heavily towards bright colors, elaborate shapes and figurative decoration. Baroque was the most polite adjective to describe it. The damnyanks had of course called it other names. Garish was the least insulting.
“They dress like clowns” one particularly popular Yankee vidscreen star used to deride the Drakas during his weekly show whenever the “Snakes” made the news. Unfortunately the Final War had left him alive to be captured two years later. His skinned body was left to agonize in the middle of the temporary serf processing camp under the eyes of the captive ferals, most of whom had been loyal viewers of his show.
It took two days for the skinless man to finally die. The first hours had been filled by his screams before they tapered off as moans then hoarse breaths.
And all along the bright red plastic jester’s nose stayed in the middle of the pulpish, unrecognizable face, as the Drakas got their last laugh.
Ingrid Lanke pushed the memory away from her mind as they reached the second level.
Shattered display cases and booths greeted the pair and the woman made a disappointed moue. The damn Jaffas had thoroughly thrashed this area. Not unsurprisingly, as Lanke’s eye caught a small glitter on the floor. She bent down and picked up a small chain. Flipping up her visor, she shone a low-power red beam on the object. It looked like gold and it weighed like it. Smiling again, she straightened up, pocketing the jewel. It wasn’t much, but Lyta would certainly love it, back at the plantation. The Decurion’s teenage granddaughter was as bubbly as they came and she’d delight in showing off the bracelet to her friends. It might look simple, but it came from another planet !

Lanke chuckled silently, and resumed the sweep. Behind her the gunner rolled his eyes wordlessly. It was like shopping with the wife, except there was nothing to buy, no serf attendants to grope and nobody to complain to.


Tanith’s Flagship Merciless
In Hyperspace

The commandeered Al’kesh had docked just a minute before the massive mothership left the Atheros system. Agent Phelim of the ITI had flown a deliberately sedate approach and crossed the already closing bay doors on the heels of the last returning Deathglider. The docking sequence proper was automated, the bomber guided by tractor beams towards an empty berth before the metal clamps gripped the corresponding latches on the spacecraft’s underside, followed by the muted clangs of power and data cables and life support pipes plugging into uncovered connectors.
The cockpit displays confirmed that external power and support were available and supplementing the internal systems, allowing the reactor to enter stand-by mode. Damage control routines activated next as the cradling berth’s repair systems came online. Multipurpose robotic arms started to dance around the sections of hull that showed visible damage. Blackened and crumpled alloy panels would be cut and replaced, components swapped over, while repair nanites would work on the microscopic damage. The whole process was controlled by the mothership’s computer core without human intervention. Even the most knowledgeable Jaffas couldn’t do more than replace interior fittings.
All of this was magic to their eyes and their leaders made sure that it stayed that way.

It also ensured that ordinary Jaffas didn’t dwell around when the “god magic” was active. Even the novelty factor faded eventually, eventually being early in a ship-borne warrior’s life. Why wait and watch the arcane mechanical ballet when there were much more pleasant things to do, like raping captives or merely doing soldierly tasks such as cleaning and repairing equipment, or training in the martial arts.
This and the fact that the hijacked bomber landed last meant that the Jaffa pilots were already streaming out of the bay, and only a small party of four waited a short distance away to greet the supposedly wounded warriors inside the damaged Al’kesh. Damage that was mostly cosmetic, with no actual impediment to shipboard systems… as the Tollan technical specialists had made certain, just in case a quick escape was needed.
A minute later the bay was empty save for the quartet of mail-clad warriors outside the strike ship, and Phelim opened the side door facing them. An arm wave invited them to come in, the gesture colored with just the right hint of worry and relief, like the agent’s facial expression.
“Come in, there are wounded brothers and they need some help to move !”
So helpfully the four Jaffas trotted up to the alloy threshold, following the disguised Tollan inside the darkened interior and eager to render assistance to their injured comrades.
It was a case of good intentions being misled, alas for them. Instead of hurt Jaffas, about two dozen armored Drakas greeted them.
At least their death was swift and relatively painless. In fact, the four warriors died even before realizing they’d been tricked. Their bodies were stacked in a corner of the cargo hold, under the cover of a large tarpaulin. It would only foil a cursory glance, but that was all right.
Phelim crossed the short gangway at a brisk but casual pace and stopped behind one of the structural ribs reinforcing the bay’s outer wall, the nose of the Al’kesh scarcely three meters behind. With swift and practiced gestures he removed a small panel and pulled a tray of the ubiquitous colored control crystals of Goa’uld computer technology. It was only a secondary, strictly local control node for the bay’s internal system, but it was connected to the rest of the mothership’s network to receive commands from the central computer core.

The Tollan operative uncoiled a strand of optical cable and clipped the open end onto the Goa’uld array. The other end led to his attack computer, a very specialized and very confidential piece of hardware indeed, for it contained the best expert algorithms created by the ITI for infiltration and subornation of Goa’uld computers. Not quite sentient, the hacking AI was merely a very smart and adaptive expert system and it immediately started to intercept and analyze the signals circulating inside the control node’s main databus, bypassing the encryption, which was weaker here anyway. It took a dozen seconds for the attack logic to seamlessly insert itself into the local datastream, appearing to the dumb local node to be just another legitimate piece of hardware inside the docking bay.
Once in the local loop, it became possible to warp the data… including data from the bay’s surveillance sensors, before they left the node on their way to the Ha’tak’s central computer core.
And it was precisely what Phelim did, temporarily freezing the sensor picture during the seven seconds needed for two dozen Draka soldiers and three more Tollan Navy special operatives to cross the distance to the exit hatch. He watched the point troops open the pressure door and peek in the passageway beyond, then wave at him as the others poured out of the bay and inside the mothership’s internal spaces. Once they were out he disconnected the attack computer and replaced the cover of the control node, and jogged out in turn, leaving four cooling bodies as sole occupants of the cavernous space.

Outside was a different atmosphere. The boat bay was as close to a “high-tech” environment as could be found inside a Goa’uld ship : bright lights, gleaming unadorned metal surfaces, and exposed machinery. The wide internal corridor where Phelim joined the rest of the assault group, on the other hand, looked tighter than it really was in the dim, uncertain glow of the burning torches casting flickering shadows on the golden engraved walls.
A nod answered Vöhn’s interrogative gaze. Here in the mothership’s inner spaces the presence of so many warm bodies shouldn’t appear suspect, at least until the alarm was raised. But the plan called for a quick simultaneous assault to gain control of the bridge and main engineering deck before the ship’s lawful owners could react.
The Pel’tak was several decks above, in the central pyramid. Engineering occupied the core of the Hat’ak, to accomodate the stupendous size of the main reactor and sublight engines. Two eight-man teams would head there, while another stayed hidden around the bay as a reserve, and to keep open a way out just in case. Each with a Tollan specialist to provide the necessary technical input and handle the Goa’uld systems. Both assault teams had to cross the distance from the docking bay, which was logically placed at the periphery of the roughly disk-shaped main hull, to the central core, hopefully without encountering too much opposition on the way.
In case it became impossible, well, that’s what the contingency plan was for. The reserve team would activate the two-megaton demolition charge and try to escape if they could, but every member of the mission was prepared to die if necessary. If that meant taking out Tanith as well.

Phelim took point on the way to the Pel’tak. He alone walked ahead of the stealthy soldiers, projecting an image of utter relaxation which fooled the first Jaffas he encountered two hatches forward, past the storage compartments and into the habitation sections of the mothership. The three warriors were rather slovenly dressed, one of them actually naked save a loincloth. All were unarmed, a serious mistake in Phelim’s opinion, and heavily smelling of alcohol. They stared at him with barely a glimmer of comprehension, then grinned dumbly and winked conspiratorily.
“Hey brother… loosen up, kree ?” the loin-clothed one managed to slurry out without dribbling too much. “We got plenty slaves to fuck and hours t’ do nothing but fuck ‘em !”
Phelim stood stone-faced as the trio tried to stumble past, holding each other in a barely-working attempt at stability. So those are the people who managed to beat us ? It was almost insulting. Of course, they were feeling safe in their big spaceship, under the protection of their god. Still… it was poor discipline.
And then then something happened that challenged even the veteran agent’s self-control. The slimy head of a Goa’uld symbiote peeked out of the Jaffa’s uncovered chest and Phelim wondered if the little beast was gasping for fresh air. It certainly didn’t look too happy right now.
“Uhhh…” the Jaffa looked down and made an approximation of a worried face. “Back in, you !” His fumbling hand managed to push the protesting snake-like creature back inside the pouch.
The disguised Tollan swallowed a sudden impulse to retch. Fortunately, the slovenly trio must have remembered they had something to do, for they resumed their unsteady progress down the passageway and away from the soldiers hidden behind the regularly-spaced structural ribs, their chameleon suits blending in the gloom to make them harder to see. Especially by drunk Jaffas.
Having watched the whole encounter, Vöhn shook his head minutely before the group resumed its sneaky progress.


Bravo Team’s advance through the lower decks was quieter, as they avoided the crew quarters in favor of less-travelled areas. According to the ship schematics downloaded by Phelim from the bay’s control node, the surrounding compartments were mostly storage for consumables and spare parts as well as life-support modules. The fittings were correspondingly more sober, the gilded hieroglyph walls and burning torches absent, replaced by bronze-sheened walls and recessed artificial lighting strips. There was also a faint, low hum of power machinery that was perceptible by the Draka soldiers’ augmented hearing only. They weren’t very far from the keel of the mothership. Ambient gravity even felt slightly firmer, maybe from proximity to the artificial gravity plating.
The eight Drakas and one Tollan made faster progress than Vöhn’s Alpha team and reached the thick bulkhead protecting the engineering core just as Alpha met the first sober and alert Jaffa patrol they couldn’t avoid, since the only nearby exit led to a large roomful of partying warriors.
The inconspicuous com relays left by the teams like the proverbial bread crumbs enabled them to keep in touch despite the shielding effect of the of the Ha’tak’s structure. Therefore the short “Alpha, engaged” then “Alpha, clear, proceeding” burst radio notices reached Bravo team even as they prepared to cut through the wall. While the lower decks did allow for an unchallenged passage, they also didn’t communicate with the armored engine core. Therefore, the team had to make their own door.

The low grade trinium alloy used in modern Goa’uld warship construction was immensely strong by all accounts, with a very high tensile strength and a melting point higher than tungsten’s. Cutting through a ten-centimeter plate was no small feat, but the combined Tollan and Draka toolbox was up to the task.
A square section of the bulkhead was selected and eight shaped charges applied around its perimeter. The cutting explosives merely destabilized the alloy with their muted detonations. They weren’t strong enough by themselves to cut through.
Then the team’s Tollan specialist began to apply a special paste from a pistol-like container around a square section of the bulkhead. The paste was a thermite equivalent and it burned at a temperature far above the melting point of the alloy. It took a minute, during which the intense white glare cut stark shadows inside the corridor and the air temperature climbed to oven-like levels, and local life support reacted automatically, sending cold nitrogen both to lower the temperature and starve what it recognized as an internal fire, although the warning signal it dutifully tried to sent over to the Pel’tak was intercepted and digested by the Tollan computer clamped on the local control node like an electronic vampire.
The thermal attack further fragilized the wall section, now glowing red and no longer uniformly flat, as the localized mechanical expansion made the heated material bulge ever so slightly.
The next step couldn’t be subtle. Even then the abused metal was still stronger than its equivalent steel thickness and nothing but a strong concussive force would finally displace it.
Bravo Team retreated back two compartments away and the Decurion in charge held the detonator in his gloved hand, ready to activate the single concussion charge plastered on the center of the target square. Everyone accounted for.
“Fire in the hole !”

This time the aftereffects were very noticeable. A sharp tremor shook the deck under the team’s feet, and managed to reach a damage control sensor that wasn’t currently under the spell of the Tollan hacking computer.
A shrill alarm cut the Pel’tak’s subdued atmosphere and suddenly jolted the bridge crew awake.
The duty Jaffa looked at the damage control board and made a perplexed face. On one hand, what seemed very much like a concussion had just happened. On the other hand, there was no fire or decompression alert. It was puzzling. Nobody should be inside that area according to the internal sensors, but better safe than sorry.
Sending a patrol to check the place was quickly done, and the bridge Jaffa relaxed slightly, waiting for the patrol’s report in the reborn silence.

The detonation managed to dislodge the slab of alloy almost clear out of the bulkhead so that it was holding only by a short length of ragged, buckled material. The metal was still extremely hot and the atmosphere scorching, which the Drakas’ armor and the Tollan’s hazardous environment suit thankfully protected against. One of them held a plasma cutter and applied it to the connecting metal, slowly cutting through the length, while another retrieved the portable jack from the team’s forced entry kit and began to force the two masses away from each other, almost like a door, using his own muscular strength to pump the mechanism.
Metal groaned and sizzled in the hellish corridor, lit only by the incandescent glare of plasma flame and cherry-red alloy. Three minutes later, the Goa’uld-created material finally gave up and the tortured slab clattered down on the floor, leaving a new opening to the flagship’s Engineering Core.
Just in time for the Jaffa patrol to cross the airtight doors into the overheated compartment. They didn’t have the benefit of fully enclosed suits and it was therefore an experience akin to stepping inside an oven. The four men recoiled instinctively as scalding hot air gushed out and the quickest one slammed his hand on the closure button. Panels hissed shut to the warriors’ immediate relief.
Ha’taks were not, by far, the most ergonomically and efficiently designed spaceships in the galaxy. Yet, some basic practical concerns were accounted for in their layout and furnishing, such as internal communications. The senior Jaffa used the nearest intraship com panel to reach the Pel’tak and declare an emergency, namely, an internal fire. What else could it be ?

The perplexed bridge operator checked his damage control board. Strangely, it didn’t seem to concur with his brother-in-arm’s diagnostic. In such a situation, the standard Jaffa response was to trust the fellow warrior. After all, even god magic was known to fail, sometimes, a slightly blasphematory notion that nevertheless went a long way towards ensuring sensible warriors a longer life. Usually.
Shrugging internally, he did the logical thing. Fire needed air to burn, everyone knew that. Without air, no more fire.
Fortunately, the affected compartment was close to the external hull. Opening a path from there was straightforward. It would open two more compartments to vacuum, but there was nobody inside, and it would be quicker than simply reversing air flow in the ventilation system.
A few seconds later, a localized hurricane roared through empty and not-empty passageways, venting the steaming atmosphere into the exterior void where it ceased to exist upon touching the wall of exotic energy holding the FTL tunnel open.
The armored hatch on the mothership’s underside closed again, and a low-oxygen atmospheric mix started to pour back into the emptied spaces as the four Jaffas got ready to check the place again.

The canned air was noticeably fresher when the quatuor reentered the compartment. It also felt thinner and less sustaining, but at least it was clear. Their first progress was unimpeded and they failed to notice any obvious sign of fire on the metal walls. This changed as they rounded a corner and caught sight of the still glowing hole in the bulkhead. But that was less of a hazard than the obvious intruders standing nearby, rifles trained in their direction.
It was perhaps fortunate that not all four Jaffas came into view at once. Therefore, the trailing pair merely recoiled in battle-trained reflex as the heads of their leading comrades suddenly exploded in red mist, and quickly came to the joint conclusion that following would not be a good idea. Dropping to a crouch, the pair hurried in reverse, retracing their steps and firing wildly at the distant bulkhead, more for the sake of returning fire than for effectiveness. The airtight dividing doors were closing yet again when a Draka grenade rolled down after ricocheting through the bend and exploded. The half-closed panels caught most of the blast and shrapnel, but not all, before sliding completely shut. One of the Jaffas was dead, the cause being the razor-sharp little spike protruding from his eye socket. More were sticking out from his body, but his chainmail had brought a measure of protection and prevented them from penetrating too far. Alas, it didn’t cover his face.
Nevertheless, the same armor and a luckier streak meant that the last Jaffa was only injured instead of killed outright, and ground his teeth against the pain of torn flesh to slam his bloody hand onto the communication panel.


Vöhn heard Bravo Leader’s report a scant second before the ship wide alarm sounded.
There goes stealth, he thought. “Hold Engineering and place charges on the reactor as planned” - Bravo leader acknowledged the order and the Tetrarch tuned back to Alpha channel. “Okay, Plan A went through the window, so Plan B is smash through and grab the bridge, and hopefully Tanith as well. Let’s go !”
Acknowledgments lights blinked blue on his helmet display. The team wasn’t far from the Pel’tak - according to the downloaded map they had to cross two more intervening frames before they reached Tanith’s quarters and the ship’s command bridge, both of which opened on a common passageway.
And the main barracks were behind them. If they didn’t make it fast to take the top deck, the team would be caught between two fires.

The eight Drakensis soldiers of Alpha Team broke into close quarter battle formation, three on point, three bringing the rear, with Vöhn and his attached Decurion in the center flanking the irreplaceable Tollan operative. The ship-wide alarm was blaring loudly and a heavy drumming of footsteps greeted the team as they approached a crossways : thrusting his rifle around the corner, one of the point men caught sight of a Jaffa reaction squad jogging in neat ranks down the perpendicular passageway. Hostile-coded icons blossomed automatically on the team’s tactical maps, and a burst of rifle fire put a sudden stop to the alien warriors’ advance by cutting down the front rank, prompting the rest to crouch or scatter behind the structural ribbing and return fire instantly.
Plasma fire zipped across the corridor and impacted spectacularly but harmlessly on the walls, sprinkling golden sparks and molten droplets around. Their opponent adjusted his aim calmly through the linked weapon sight and let loose a couple of three-round bursts in quick succession, dispatching the pair of Jaffas crouching out of hard cover.
A Goa’uld shock grenade sailed down, masterfully thrown to bounce off the wall and roll around the corner, only to be ignored as unthreatening to soldiers in sealed environmental suits.
Blinding light and ear-splitting high-pitched noise burst out of the grenade and the Draka soldier stopped firing. Just as expected, the enemy warriors misinterpreted the interruption and leapt out of cover, intent on closing with the supposedly disabled intruders.
They were caught flat-footed by the answering flash-bang of the Draka-built equivalent. Yelps of shock, pain and surprise, and the staccato of rifle bursts from the three point men followed the flash of disabling man-made thunder, finishing off the obstruction.
Hastily but professionally applied, a demo charge blew off the next door right in the face of another Jaffa blocking group, prompting another firefight in the Ha’tak’s confines. This one was short-lived : following their own wall of full-auto suppressive fire, the three Draka soldiers sprinted at the opposing group, covering the short ten-meter distance in a heartbeat and ignoring the scattered plasma shots hitting them, letting their armor absorb the destructive energy. A hurricane of rifle butts, fists and boots and layer blades tore through the surprised Jaffas, the sheer superhuman fury of the assault leaving them unable to react effectively. The farthest ones fired at the melee in panic, hitting their engaged comrades rather than the whirling, shifting shapes in their midst.
In a single low flowing motion, Citizen Force Monitor Gerring drew his pistol from his thigh holster even as his other hand punched the clostest Jaffa’s knee, shattering the joint and yanked the suddenly unbalanced body down in front of him to absorb a zat discharge, right before his answering bullet struck the shooter right on his ritual tattoo and blew his brain back, splattering the bulkhead. Gerring didn’t pause to congratulate himself on the perfect headshot, choosing instead to empty the oversized handgun’s magazine into the still-standing enemies.
Only when all the chainmail-wearing bodies were all dead and unmoving did he check his own state. His armor sported a couple of scorched marks where plasma had burned through the external mimetic layer and ablative coating, and the internal dispersion layer was busy dissipating the uncomfortable hotspots. Nothing to worry about, his enhanced metabolism would repair whatever light surface burn on his skin long before the battle was over.
The bloody coating was just icing on the cake.

His peripheral vision caught a flurry of movement behind him and he turned instantly with the reloaded gun. A smirk creased his lips, unseen behind th facemask. The command group was standing a few paces behind, in the middle of the slaughterhouse-like length of corridor, and the Tetrarch’s extended fist was closed on a screeching, flaying mature symbiote. A mere handspan separated it from the frozen Tollan operative.
Vöhn cocked his helmeted head, bringing the snarling little snake to face him.
“Sorry” he intoned “I know this could have been the start of a beautiful friendship” he continued in a mock regretful tone, “but I don’t have time for tea and crumpets right now !”
His other hand slashed up, gripped the serpentine head and twisted it forcefully. The little beast’s angry hissing was cut abruptly and the last sound it made was a dull thump, hitting the ground bonelessly.

The group’s forward progress resumed immediately and unopposed for the next three minutes, then a warning signal appeared on the team’s helmet displays. It was the chemical alarm and a molecular schematic sprang into view thanks to the suit’s biochemical sensors. Vöhn recognized the molecule’s general outline - it was after all very similar to one particular compound used by the Domination. A fast-acting, colorless and odorless poison gas.
Fortunately, the suit’s protective features were designed against that kind of attack, and so were the Tollan’s softsuit worn under the Jaffa disguise, its translucent integrated helmet deployed ever since the infiltration mission had become an all-out assault. So the team continued its advance unimpeded until they caught sight of the last partition door, richly decorated in gold patterns. Behind it laid the Pel’tak and Tanith’s apartments.
As the soldiers reached the last ten meters they felt a weight pulling at them and getting heavier by the second. The gravity indicator on their displays confirmed the feeling : the ship’s defenders were actually increasing the artificial gravity to try and stop them. It had to be a desperate measure, for it would affect every deck and compartment except the executive core, therefore affecting the Jaffas behind them as well.
Vöhn smirked evilly as he imagined the hapless aliens unable to move, pressed on the decks as their bodies apparent mass suddenly increased to ten times their usual weight. On the other hand, their Tollan ally was well and truly pinned to the ground too, breathing with difficulty and on the brink of unconsciousness. Himself and his Drakensis brethren could thank their designers who had accounted for wide variations in gravity for the purposes of interplanetary colonization and space warfare. Therefore their cardiovascular system, while strained by the present ten gees, was still able to feed the augmented muscles that allowed them to move even in the current conditions, with the additional help of the suits’ pseudomuscles.
They crawled like slugs but they still moved forward, grinding their teeth and willing their bodies to move through the thick invisible molasses. Vöhn dragged the Tollan along and watched his point men reach the golden doors, push themselves on their knees in a superhuman effort and press the plastic explosives on the decorative Egyptian-themed patterns.

They crawled a couple meters back and sent the detonation signal. The backblast was almost lost in the general oppressive downpush, but when the ship’s automated safeties cut in the gravity returned to normal a second later and the lead trio leapt forward to secure the newly-revealed passageway.
Agent Phelim was still groggy and limp, so the Tetrarch continued to drag him like a sack of potatoes inside the even-gaudier compartment and propped him against the wall for the time being, mostly protected by a structural rib.
Now was the decisive moment. On one side, the closest to space, was the pel’tak. On the other were Tanith’s spatious dwellings.
Bravo Team had reported successfully mining the reactor core and beating off a Jaffa counter-attack on their positions. If all else failed they could always blow up the mothership.

The demo charge’s sharp boom echoed in the metallic confines and the well-rehearsed entry dance saw the three pointmen erupt into the bridge behind the blast and methodically shoot the handful of exposed Jaffas inside. Things went awry when a wide kinetic pulse blew them backwards like bowling pins to crash into the walls and a deep Goa’uld voice boomed angrily.
“FOOLS ! HOW YOU DARE ATTACK A GOD !”
Full-automatic rifle fire spat back from the shaken but committed soldiers, splashing ineffectively over the Goa’uld’s personal shield. His mocking cackle greeted the futile effort.
“YOU WILL DIE FOR YOUR TRANSGRESSION !”
Vöhn and his executive Decurion stormed through the torn doorway, firing at a run. They had to close with Tanith to neutralize the effect of his shield. But the self-proclaimed god wasn’t cooperating. More kinetic pulses slammed in quick succession, their wide spread impossible to dodge even for the quick Drakenses. Arminius Vöhn felt himself picked up and flung like a cannonball, and a myriad of bright stars exploded in his vision when his body slammed into the wall, leaving another Draka-shaped imprint in the ductile golden ornamental layer.
Gerring shook himself up and took a step towards the target Goa’uld, fingers closing on the hilt of his combat knife, only for a narrow-setting kinetic pulse to strike his torso. The concentrated energy hit like a giant supersonic fist, overloading his suit’s reactive layer. The shockwave swept through his body, shattering ribs and tearing internal organs, and the Drakensis slumped to the floor, mortally wounded and unmoving. Behind him, a deep imprint on the wall told of the violence of the strike.
“YOU WILL ALL DIE AGAIN AND AGAIN AS I VISIT MY DIVINE WRATH UPON YOU !”

Damn this overbred parasite needs to shut up ! Vöhn readied himself for a concerted rush with his remaining soldiers in the room to outrace the Goa’uld’s annoyingly effective strikes. He estimated that two more would be incapacitated, but even the death of three elite soldiers was a small price to pay for the capture of a Goa’uld lord and his mothership.
He launched himself along with his men. Fast as they were focused kinetic pulses struck them with infernal accuracy before they could cross half the distance, incapacitating two more soldiers with the last wide-setting pulse sending Vöhn careening into the bulkhead and tasting blood.
The hell !
“KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD, BLASPHEMER !”
“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE !”
The unexpected reply caught both Draka and Goa’uld by surprise. The following bright blue energy pulse that struck Tanith straight on was a surprise as well, especially when his personal shield failed to stop it entirely and he staggered back under the shock. The Tetrarch’s peripheral vision caught the sight of Agent Phelim, aiming a Tollan ion blaster in a two-handed grip just before he let loose a second overcharged pulse. Vöhn understood at once : recent Ha’tak shields were upgraded against the phaseshifting component of Tollan ion weapons… but obviously Tanith had forgotten to upgrade his personal shield as well. With a savage grin, he leapt again as a third pulse kept the Goa’uld unbalanced and launched himself like a vaulting tiger onto Tanith just after a fourth Tollan shot. The weakened shield didn’t stop the Drakensis’ bodymass and he slammed into the stunned Goa’uld lord, knowking the breath out of him.
Rolling down, the Pankration grappling training caught in automatically and Taith found himself immobilized in a spread-eagle position, unable to shoot Phelim as the agent closed in and ripped the personal shield emitter off Tanith’s chest.
His Goa’uld flashing angry glare met the Tollan’s right before the operative’s fist smashed into his face and then everything went black.

[Baughn]

There should be a sarcophagus or two on the ship. Hmm. Drakensis with sarcophagi?

They are said to cause arrogance, superiority complexes and evil.

Would anyone even notice?

[Simon_Jester]

If a Draka got any more arrogant, evil, and superiority-complicated, they'd collapse into a black hole of narcissism and never be seen again.

Good riddance.

[iborg]

They would have to grow moustaches so they could properly twirl them.

[holyknight]

They would have to grow moustaches so they could properly twirl them.

Indeed.......Now comes the fun, yet short part, namely flushing the Jaffa by the way of locking the doors of the Engine Room and the Peltak, then literally FLUSHING the atmosphere and the Jaffa into space through the automated systems.

One Ship for the Domination, check!

[iborg]

Flushing the Jaffas, yes, but it would also flush a bunch of Tollan captives, so no.

Update !




Chapter 18
Settling accounts



“Ah. Our friend’s waking up at last.”
The being known as Tanith opened his eyes, with more difficulty than expected. His eyelids felt swollen and sore, and a brief moment of self-examination revealed that his whole face - the host’s face - was rather bruised along with a nose that was clearly broken. Memories came back. Well, the physical shock accounted for the loss of consciousness by both host and symbiote then. The injuries would heal quickly at least.
More distressing was the situation as he discovered it. The surroundings were familiar enough - his own quarters aboard the flagship. That was the only good news. That he was sitting bound and naked on a low wooden chair, one intended for servants, wasn’t a welcome observation at all. Nor was the presence of the tall, hulking even as seen from the sitting Goa’uld’s viewpoint, man who was neither Jaffa nor Tollan, nor even entirely human as his slit-pupil eyes showed in a face whose features could fit a god, a mixture of striking features and underlying hardness. A System Lord could recognize himself in those traits, Tanith surprised himself thinking.
The man’s helmet was off, but the rest of his fighting suit left no mistake. He was one of the warriors who had somehow gotten aboard the Merciless and fought their way right to the top. Presently the suit’s camouflage was inactive and the bound prisoner took a detailed view of the dark, almost black strands of pseudo-musculature making up the majority of its surface, along with unrecognizable details scattered across and the more recognizable devices fastened on carrying hard-points. Grenades of some sort, ammunition packs for the projectile weapons. It was plain and unadorned, closer to Kull armor in its obvious emphasis on effectiveness rather than aesthetic needs.
Who were these people who had rushed to the Tollans’ aid ?

Whoever they were, their leader - he had to be - was clearly awaiting an answer as his eyes bore on Tanith’s. Perhaps it was fortunate that he wasn’t a Tollan - if that was indeed the case. Maybe his people would be open to negociation. At any rate, playing the god act would certainly be useless, Tanith decided. It was better to try and reach an agreement, as annoying as it was. Revenge could come later. Right now, he had to save his own life, for he doubted very much his Jaffas would come and save it - assuming his captor wouldn’t blow his dual brains before in a very unrepairable way.
“I am Tanith. Who are you ?”
Arms crossed, still as a statue, his interlocutor let a few seconds pass in silent observation before replying in an even, neutral tone.
“I’m Tetrarch Vöhn of the Draka. Tetrarch is my rank. You and I aren’t acquainted well enough that I could tell you my first name.” There was a slight accent in the way he spoke the Goa’uld tongue, as if he’d learned it in a different sector of the galaxy. There was a very brief flicker of a smile. “Since you’re not pretending to be a god, I won’t pretend to be a Tollan.”
“Another race then. Let me guess” Tanith fought a smirk and didn’t entirely succeed. “You have only recently discovered the Chappai, and your people are probing your way into the galaxy. You are not the first such case.” Vöhn’s remained inscrutable, and the Goa’uld went on. “Surely you think your level of technological prowess makes you safe. Many races have thought the same in the past. Until they met the Goa’uld and either were destroyed, or realized how outgunned they were and wisely chose not to offer the Goa’uld a reason to swat them like flies.”
“Is that a warning ?” Always this impassive, almost disinterested tone.
“No” Tanith offered his best friendly smile, which was a bit awkward in his current state “an advice. One that your people - Drakas - ought to follow if you intend to live. Not that I can guarantee another Goa’uld won’t decide to crush you under his heel, but…” he took a cunning expression “perhaps I could use my, ah, influence for your benefit”

An unexpected chuckle escaped the Draka’s lips.
“Well, so far I’m rather underwhelmed by your mightiness. After all, you’re held captive in your own flagship. At my mercy, in case you hadn’t remarked. Actually, I think you should feel lucky I’m not Tollan, or I doubt we’d be discussing so… pleasantly right now.”
A spike of anger flashed across Tanith’s mind. That was no way a Lord was usually addressed, so casually, without the slightest hint of reverent fear. But it was true - appearances were against him at the moment.
“I wonder what the Tollan offered you in exchange for your assistance. Their precious phase-shifting technology, maybe ?”
His captor’s head swiveled slowly from side to side, the gesture’s meaning of denegation confirmed an instant later along with a conniving grin.
“No - nor have they anytime acknowledged that such technology exists, although it wasn’t hard to deduce - but their lack of success against your forces made it quite clear it isn’t as useful as it used to be, doesn’t it ?”
Vöhn broke his previous statue-like stance, stepped forward and bent slightly, his hands clasped behind his back, looking every way as if sharing a good story with an old friend instead of a captor interrogating a prisoner.
“Truth be told, it’s not as if we’re stuck in eternal love of the Tollan Empire. Should we find a more valuable… partner, I’m quite sure my government would consider, ah, a change of stance, let’s say ?”

Straightening up and grinning conspiratorily, he went on for the Goa’uld’s benefit, making a show of checking around for witnesses. His men and the Tollan advisor were out in order to let him play this little story - in fact, they were currently busy in the sarcophagus chamber trying to revive the mortally wounded Draka soldiers. There wasn’t much time left before the Merciless left hyperspace, and there was still a shipful of Jaffas to deal with, although they were currently locked in sealed compartments. Simply venting them into space was to be avoided if possible since it would also kill the numerous Tollan civilians serving as pleasure slaves.
“But in the immediate present, I have to consider whether it is more worth keeping you alive or simply shooting you and burning your body.” The sudden change of words was all the more contrasted by the still-friendly attitude. “Or striking a deal with one of your ambitious lieutnants, all of which would certainly love to, as we say at home, become Archon in the place of the Archon”.
Tanith stiffened on his uncomfortable seating. This stated alternative was not only unpleasant, it was also very possible. News of his defeat and captivity could spark a war of succession back home. The thought of losing his standing was almost worse than death. Grudgingly, he had to admit the shrewdness of the Draka’s plan.
“Then what do you want from me in exchange for my… liberation ?” he managed to speak the last word even though it burned his mouth.
Vöhn clapped his hands, smiling wide to show his delight at the “negociations” satisfactory progress.

“Simple. The return of every Tollan captive in your possession, the departure of every Jaffa currently standing on Tollan soil - basically, a return to pre-war borders… and last, the surrender of every Goa’uld ship in the Nautona system.”
Tanith’s eyes flashed in shock at the Draka’s last demand. The first ones were reasonable enough, but this ! It was tantamount to losing a third of his fleet ! It was unacceptable !
“How dare you…! You’re asking me to hand you half my fleet ! You might as well kill me right now !” Such a loss would make him easy prey to any one of his Goa’uld neighbors. They’d pretend to help him in keeping order in his dominion, the sanctimonious bastards, and move in to “secure” outlying worlds - just like he would do in their place. Lord Anubis would probably give his blessings as well. Such was Goa’uld society : it didn’t allow for weakness.
In response, his captor unholstered his hand-held weapon and pointed the business end at Tanith’s forehead.
“Well, then. Your successor might be more sensible.”
The naked Goa’uld stared in defiant anger. “Fool ! If I die, those Tollans are as good as dead - my successors won’t have any reason to send them back ! And I can’t lose half my fleet or you’ll have to deal with every other Goa’uld lord in the sector ! Is that what you want ?”
The tirade seemed to have an effect. The Tetrarch paused before pressing the trigger, appeared to mull over his captive’s words, then raised the gun.
“All right. I can see the logic in your statement. Let’s make it the ship we’re standing on, and the mothership that landed over the Tollan army base on Nautona. That’s my last offer and it’s a generous one. Take it or leave it.”

It was indeed more tolerable. Losing just two Ha’taks, as painful as it felt, would not fatally weaken his fleet. He could hold on his dominion, fend off any attempt by a competing Goa’uld and then rebuild his forces… Yes, it was acceptable.
“I accept. But how can I be sure you will keep your end of the agreement ?”
“You can’t. Except for the fact that it’s indeed easier for us, and for the Tollans as well, although they will begrudge the fact that you’re still alive. It might be wise to make it a treaty of non-aggression between yourself and the Tollan Empire.”
A couple seconds passed, then the Draka spoke again.
“If it’s agreed, then, we’ll have to dress you. After all” a mischievous smile appeared on Vöhn’s lips “it wouldn’t do to address your troops in your present attire, would it ?”

[[R_H]]

Very nice. That bit with the gunner making the shopping comment was a nice little detail, the Draka are different, yet somewhat similar. How many chapters will this story have?

[NecronLord]

There should be a sarcophagus or two on the ship. Hmm. Drakensis with sarcophagi?

You know, SG really did try to make them pretty rare. They were not on every ship, not even Osiris' ship.

[iborg]

Very nice. That bit with the gunner making the shopping comment was a nice little detail, the Draka are different, yet somewhat similar. How many chapters will this story have?

As many as necessary

Tanith's ship has a sarcophagus. Doesn't mean it's going to be used and abused.
There also seemed to be different qualities of sarcs, some apparently having less side-effects (or maybe their owners used them less).

[iborg]

Satrian Outskirts
Liberated Nautona


Dark and sullen, Tanith’s Jaffas were streaming across the disturbed grounds of the park, towards the stargate currently operating as a gateway to their Lord’s capital world, where they were returning unharmed but not in the triumphant way they had expected. While they were allowed to keep their weapons and personal possessions, anything else they had to leave behind. Such were the terms of the treaty their Lord has somehow reached with the Tollan Empire. A puzzling development indeed, for so far everything had gone according to plan. No explanation was given, just a short and peremptory declaration by Lord Tanith stating that the war was over and that Jaffa forces were to leave Nautona, either by ship or through the Chappai. The Ha’taks had already left the System. Every mothership, except Tanith’s own flagship and the one landed on Nautona’s soil.
The strange soldiers who had landed from shuttles minutes after the declaration of peace had formed a cordon around the ship’s main hatch. Their officer had exchanged a few words with the Prime in charge of the Jaffas, and they were ushered almost courteously on their way, asked to deposit their weapons before embarking the transports - Tollan models - with the promise that they’d be given back at the end of the trip. Even as the Jaffas were marching out of the Ha’tak, some of the soldiers, with a few locals in the uniform of their Fleet had come aboard and taken possession of the Pel’tak, no doubt to check if the crew hadn’t left any displeasant surprise behind. The Prime had been sorely tempted to left the self-destruct ticking, but in the end, orders were orders. It felt quite scandalous to surrender a perfectly working Ha’tak to the puny blasphemers - hopefully their godly Lord would explain why.
And if He didn’t, well, it wouldn’t be the first time Jaffas bled and died for victory and then were told to go home and forget about it as the gods argued and negotiated over the fate of entire worlds.

Unknown to them, their divine master was observing the process from the lofty height afforded by the orbiting Merciless, but doing so under the vigilant watch of a heavily-armed group of Drakas. None were particularly talkative in his presence, except Vöhn, who did the necessary talking.
The big spaceship was empty now. The Tollan captives had been evacuated by shuttle, with took a lot of soothing and cajoling given their emotional state. The Jaffas… well, the Drakas had been prepared to let them go.
Until Tanith reasoned that since those warriors had failed to protect him, and were the only ones with direct knowledge that he, too had failed to use his divine power to neutralize the intruders, they were unfortunately expendable. Letting them live and spread tales among the rest of his underlings couldn’t be allowed. Not bothering to explain the full reasons of his request, he had therefore suggested that they be taken care of, arguing for the Drakas’ sake that it would prevent them from trying to retake control of the ship, something Vöhn wouldn’t want, would he ?
The Tetrarch had pondered the request for a while, come to the very conclusion Tanith wanted to keep for himself, and decided there was no harm in granting it.
The Jaffas were told to assemble in a mostly empty storage bay. Then the large exterior hatch was remotely opened and the hapless warriors were sucked into vacuum. Their erst master merely spared a look of satisfaction, which the Drakas found somewhat callous but didn’t bother to comment upon, at least until the frozen bodies hit Nautona’s atmosphere and made pretty fireworks.
Down below, the stargate shut down after the latest batch of departing Jaffas, and came back to life minutes later, this time for an incoming wormhole. Again, the watching Drakas and Tollans tensed and trained weapons just in case. While Tanith had given clear orders, there was always the remote possibility that some Goa’uld underling at the other end might get the wrong ideas. The fear wasn’t vindicated though. From the blue light emerged another line of battered and tattered Tollanites. Wide eyes, disbelieving eyes, traumatized eyes flitting back and forth as they found that salvation had come indeed. Orderlies and medical personnel reached forward to assist those whose shambling legs barely supported them and relieve those refugees who were carrying others - the weakest and the lamest - with portable stretchers and emergency medipacks.
Polignac watched as well the scene that so closely echoed another exodus - the men, women and children from Atheros who had emerged from a similar wormhole into the baking sun of Abydos only to find themselves snatched by the Domination’s serf processing machine, efficient as always, a machinery polished by centuries of practice. Preliminary triage. Separating men from women, young from old, feeding each line into the successive administrative and technical steps. DNA-patterning, tattooing the unique coded identification in orange ink. Preliminary medical exam, wide spectrum inoculations. Orientation towards the temporary holding camps where representatives from the Domination’s serf trading houses would pick and choose from that human stock. Those with valuable skills would commend higher prices - but all would need training in their new environment. If they were smart, they would adapt quickly. If not… demonstrating what kind of fate awaited rebels would serve as an object lesson for the rest.

The soldier’s mind found it ironic that a very similar process was happening before him, only with the opposite goal : liberating instead of enslaving. The Drakas were lending their skill at managing this kind of disorganized crowd, directing the flux of disoriented humanity into orderly processing lines. Their medical technology was at work too, supplementing the Tollans’. Exhaustion, injuries, bruises to treat, infections to stave off, including the possibility of a bioweapon which the Domination was best equipped to detect. But physical harm wasn’t the worst thing. It would heal quite fast. Psychological trauma, on the other hand, would take a long time and constant support to recover, and the returning civilians were showing that in spades. Females especially. The telltales signs of sexual abuse were obvious to Polignac - after all, he had himself inflicted those in the past. The vacant, fleeing eyes, the reflexive recoil when approached by men, the awkward walking stance.
Quite a few males were showing the same as well.
Rape counseling wasn’t exactly developed in the Domination. Mostly an academic field of study. Citizens didn’t get raped, for obvious reasons. Captured ferals often were as part of the Yoke Welcome Package if they were pretty enough, and the resulting trauma was considered a part of the whole experience. Rape happened amongst serfs and it was the owner’s responsibility to deal with it. And by definition, a master could have intercourse with a serf he owned and it would never be called rape.
So the Tollan establishment would have to do most of the heavy lifting there, which was after all their duty. Still, Polignac reckoned, it would be worth studying the effect of Drakensis pheromones on such cases, if only for the intellectual aspect of it. A little curling of his lips went with the thought.

[Baughn]

When I read your story, nowadays, it is with a constant feeling of disgust at what I'm seeing. I know that's deliberate, but there's a possibility it will end up transferring to the story itself, which would be a pity.

What I'm saying is - if you're not going to have the draka and/or goa'uld take a heavy setback sometime soon (and no from each other), maybe you could add an intermission on that american colony?

I'm pretty sure we could all use the relief.

[iborg]

When I read your story, nowadays, it is with a constant feeling of disgust at what I'm seeing. I know that's deliberate, but there's a possibility it will end up transferring to the story itself, which would be a pity.

What I'm saying is - if you're not going to have the draka and/or goa'uld take a heavy setback sometime soon (and no from each other), maybe you could add an intermission on that american colony?

I'm pretty sure we could all use the relief.

Actually, I planned to turn my attention to the New America as soon as the current Tollan War story arc's finished, and it's currently in the wrapping-up phase. I'll have to deal with the Goa'uld war as well. Basically, I'll do that at the start of the Snakepit, Volume 2. I'll probably do some fast-forward in time as well. So far, barely a full year has elapsed in-story. A rather dense year, too...

[Simon_Jester]

I think Baughn has a point.

The Draka are disgusting. That's pretty much the whole point of their existence as a fictional society: to be disgusting to any civilized person. In my opinion, the best possible Draka story is one where they get their asses kicked, because they can make absolutely anything else (with the possible exception of Lovecraftian horrors) look clean by comparison. This is why I'm such a fan of the Drakafic material.

The Goa'uld aren't much better than the Draka, either.

So something that pulls us away from the inevitably horrid Draka viewpoint characters, and/or something that shows the Draka running into serious problems that threaten to defeat them, is probably to the good.

[Baughn]

There are several lovecraftian horrors I'd prefer to the Draka.

Yes, they might drive me insane and then eat me, but at least it won't be drawn out. The Dominion has a larger negative utility than freakin' Cthulhu, because it just goes on and on.

[iborg]

There are several lovecraftian horrors I'd prefer to the Draka.

Yes, they might drive me insane and then eat me, but at least it won't be drawn out. The Dominion has a larger negative utility than freakin' Cthulhu, because it just goes on and on.

Like the Duracell bunny

March 23rd, 2010
30km east of Satria City


The planet’s capital was invisible from the place where Polignac sat. Even with the hill’s elevated vantage point, the planet’s curvature just concealed the top of the city’s highest buildings and the outskirts faded in the haze. At least there weren’t any more fires blackening the sky, the funeral pyres of those left dead behind the retreating Jaffa infestation. Fortunately, the alien invaders were all gone before the true scope of their depredations was fully discovered. Otherwise, the Draka troops covering their orderly evacuation might have had trouble preventing bloodthirsty Tollans from scraping and clawing their way through the thin screen to gouge Jaffa eyes, as some had tried, fortunately isolated incidents. Imperial Navy reinforcements were shuttled in for the grim task of combing the beleaguered town for hidden survivors. About a hundred were found, many of them starving and almost delirious. Outnumbered by the corpses left where the Jaffas had shot or otherwise killed them, and never had time to properly dispose of them. Days later, the bloated and roting bodies stank to high heaven, which made them easier to find, but the actual task of removing them a lot more unpleasant. Fortunately the local custom was to burn the dead. Which was done as fast as those dead were identified, on one of the great pyres which had burned for days and nights without interruption.
The same scenes were repeated across the surface of the liberated world, on a smaller scale.

All in all, the Tollans had gotten off lightly, Anton thought. According to the latest census, the number of dead amounted to about thirty thousand, and another thousand missing. It was possible that some of these were still alive on some Goa’uld held world, having slipped through the great recall initiated by Tanith in exchange for his own liberation.
Still, no less than three millions more had returned through the stargate, a huge pendular movement that took a full week to accomplish. The magnitude of the displacement was enormous. It was truly remarkable given the otherwise artisanal nature of Goa’uld logistics. On the other hand, said logistics hadn’t been up to the task of keeping those people fed and cared for along the way, which explained the exhausted and starving refugees, some having walked for days without a meal before they could be sent through the local stargate, having retraced their way to slavery on one of Tanith’s planetary domains with barely a stop in the middle.
No doubt the survivors would be forever marked by this forced transhumance. And forever grateful to the Domination for bringing them home, Anton smirked behind the pair of stylish sunglasses he had appropriated in the first days, exploring the empty city with a cadre of Tollan officials. Self-polarizing like their Earth-built equivalent, with a frame of light self-adjusting metal, they also incorporated a miniaturized holographic display that was a step above Domination tech. It could pick up and display feeds from the Tollan global datanet - which wasn’t much at first, since most of the local infrastructure was shut down. Their input method was also remarkable - neural impulse actuation, a technology that was already known and used on Earth but not with the same level of miniaturization.
The official news broadcats weren’t very interesting, but the rest was a rather fascinating insight into Tollan culture and mental processes. And once he’d found the barely-concealed porn datachannels, things had gotten even more captivating. Most of the content was downright tame and predictable for Draka eyes, but it seemed there was a market for more exotic tastes. A market the Domination’s movie studios would undoubtedly be very keen to satiate. After all, the State would need Tollan currency in the future.
It looked like Draka-Tollan relations were going to deepen after all. The diplomats’ frenzied ballet in the war’s immediate aftermath had yielded several agreements, all building on the slightly leonine conditions imposed by the Domination in exchange for its military help but appearing to balance the benefits of the sudden windfall from the war spoils. The Tollans were very interested in the upgraded Goa’uld shield technology. The Drakas were interested in everything, and riding their new “allies” coat-tails to greedily acquire more applied technological knowledge, even though the first generation of reverse-engineered hardware was coming out of the pipeline back home.
And some particular pieces of Goa’uld hardware had been safely tucked away, from Atheros straight to Abydos and then Luna. Like the unusual field generator found inside the Governor’s palace, which the handful of Tollan technicians present had been awfully nosy about. A field generator that, as the Drakas deduced quickly, had a lot to do with the neutering of the Imperials’ hush-hush phase shifting tech, and therefore was of strategic importance. Such a generator was probably built into the captured Ha’taks as well, but their study had only recently begun in earnest, as the last prisoner was returned and Tanith was ushered back to his throne world, covertly and during the night to prevent any interference. The Drakas knew it was a gamble, fulfilling their promise. The Goa’uld would not forget them, just as he hadn’t forgotten the Tollans. He would look for revenge. But he was unlikely to do so quickly. A little backstabbing was firmly in the Domination’s diplomatic traditions, and care had been taken, with the collaboration of the ITI, to make it known to Tanith’s Goa’uld underlings that he had just suffered an humiliating defeat. Goa’uld ambition and treachery being what it was, Tanith would certainly have his hands full for some time. Time for the Tollan Empire to rebuild and strengthen its forces, with a little Draka handling so they could serve as a convenient buffer between Tanith and the Domination.

Evidence of the closer association was lying before Polignac’s eyes. From his perch, a flat stone protruding from the grassy hillside, he held a commanding view of the constructions rising on the plain below. Low buildings, most of them single or double storey things, white stone panels on metal frames with expansive glass panels to provide an airy, luminous look. Typical Tollan. Later, the Draka personnel would commit some decoration of their own. For now, the recently planted lawns and flower gardens were no more than brownish patches with hints of green. Once finished, the compound would house about a hundred Citizen scientists and engineers and a sizable military force as well, including a number of ghouloons, hence the place’s relative isolation.
Transport to and from the city would be provided by aircars, both of local and Domination design, and concrete aprons were being poured for orbital-capable ships. One of the hangars was completed, a big blue brick to the right that was housing a captured Alkesh. Despite its unsophisticated exterior, the hangar was a shielded affair. Later, a local shield would be emplaced to protect the whole compound from aerial attack.
The facility was to house the joint Tollan-Draka research and reverse-engineering effort. It hadn’t taken a lot of persuasion to convince the Curia, especially with a certain Citizen Vöhn doing the rounds of Tollan media outlets and playing his hero status to subtly push the Domination’s agenda. But the best ambassadors were the ex-captives themselves, recounting their horrible captivity at the hands of the Jaffas and singing the praises of the courageous and strong Draka soldiers, eyes teary with gratitude. A spectacle which had said soldiers sniggering in private with the irony of it, although their fully enjoyed their status and the perks it afforded them, from free drinks to free sex. Having the Tollans bending over backwards to please them almost made up for not having serfs around.

[1234q1234q]

Out of curiosity what sort of government does the Draka have? A nation of egotistical self centered bastards would be unlikely to share power peacefully and the rain of nuclear ash from their internal political disputes would be fun to watch.

[iborg]

Out of curiosity what sort of government does the Draka have? A nation of egotistical self centered bastards would be unlikely to share power peacefully and the rain of nuclear ash from their internal political disputes would be fun to watch.

From the Wikipedia page :
Politically, the Draka state is described as 'aristocratic republic' with a parliamentary system of government. The Archon is the head of state appointed for a 20-year term by a parliament (elected in free and fair elections). Draka citizens have a considerable degree of free speech, but fundamental criticism of the slave system is forbidden. The Draka economy is heavily dominated by cartels known as Combines, with ownership split between the state and the Landholders' League (Citizens can only own the right to use land, not the land itself, which can be confiscated in the event of neglect or misuse). There is also a considerable small-business private sector. The Draka economy is on the gold standard, with the basic unit of currency being the Auric. In the third novel, with gold becoming plentiful due to imports from space, the Draka switch to the Auric reflecting a basket of commodities.
[edit]

Of course, it is also said in the books that duels are the last word in Draka politics. So yeah... their internal political disputes are fun to watch. Later in Drakon era, Drakensis' primary cause of death is... other Drakensis (works as self-regulation since they're biologically immortal too).

[Simon_Jester]

Really, it ought to all fall apart, because the way they're indoctrinated makes them about as likely to get along as, well, so many snakes.

But then... no one said the Draka were very plausible. Which is why I see them as being best suited to the role of target practice backstop for WMD testing.

[iborg]

Yeah, the Drakaverse isn't too big on realistic odds.
And to close the day, some girly action with Miss Ingolfsson.

Dante Base, Complex B
Luna, Solar System


So fast, Gwendolyn thought. One moment she was standing on the soil of an alien planet at the other side of the galaxy, the next she was stepping on the concrete floor of Dante Base with its featherlight sense of gravity and the familiar faint burnt gunpowder smell of moon dust oxydizing in the artificial atmosphere. The previous days had been hectic. She had to coordinate the afflux of Combine and Space Force engineers and scientists who had arrived through Nautona’s stargate and immediately set about the captured Goa’uld starships in order to study their technology. She also had to act as the interface between them and their Tollan counterparts in orbit, which included telling some of those that no, this particular ship was destined to be the Drakas’ exclusive playground and there were already others earmarked for joint research, thank you and don’t make me kill you, all in diplomatic terms naturally.
Then a replacement had arrived, a Space Force headquarters type who had also handed her new orders, which were to return home as soon as convenient, which unofficially meant “have a bit of fun and sightseeing first, but no more than a few days”. She chose to spend a couple of days on Tollania, where the brand new Draka embassy was busy settling into rented high rise offices with a view to kill for. This had not been necessary, she was told. Two of the captured Alkeshs were purchased by the Empire, and the agreement covering Tollan access to the Ha’tak’s technology also came with a generous payment. Thus the initial year of rent was amply covered.

She quickly found just how much her own prize share amounted to. Not as much as Tetrarch Vöhn, who had become a very wealthy individual in Tollan terms, but still more than enough to pay for accomodation in the capital’s most exclusive hotel. A top level suite, perched two kilometers above ground level with an unobstructed view down thanks to the transparent triple-ply walls (supplemented by a force field for added safety). It even came with dedicated staff for personalized service, which probaby wasn’t supposed to cover everything Gwendolyn had used them for. But there had been no complaint at all.
Apart from an official appearance before the Curia, along with Vöhn and a couple other Citizens who had taken part in the space operations, she’d been left free to roam about. She was fairly certain that she had been under covert surveillance by the Imperial security outfits, which wasn’t unexpected, but mostly she’d been subjected to the almost ridiculous interest of the Tollan-in-the-street crowd. Her distinctive Drakensis looks were quite recognizable, although wearing shades did eliminate the most obvious physical trait and afforded her a little more privacy. That, and a subtle (to comply with the standing orders from Archona) pheromonal cocktail to keep over-enthusiastic ferals away.

But for the most part, interacting with those particular ferals was fun. Especially when it came to playing little private jokes, shattering their usually modest and reserved facade.
A little grin came with the memories. The hotel staff had recommended some shopping places for her little souvenir hunt. All of them very upscale and exclusive as befitted the VIP she was. As a Citizen, and the daughter of a high-profile official in the Domination, she was used since childhood to upscale and exclusive treatment as the Tollans understood it - and beyond.
It had therefore felt utterly natural to set foot in that expensive designer boutique in Tollania’s most decadent district. A staff of young females, sophisticated and obviously keen to look the part even if they couldn’t afford the cheapest trinket on sale in all their lifetime, alert and eager under the professional eye of the older woman behind a counter. A quick glance, encompassing the place and its denizen. Jewels, sparkling and glittering in bright colors, dresses and outfits that were undoubtedly the pinnacle of Tollan fashion and accessories to match. Not so different from one of the fashionable design houses of Archona, all things considered, except the sales attendants weren’t slaves here. She got glances in return, then barely restrained stares from the couple other patrons present, excited whispers Gwendolyn had not difficulty understanding. One of the free assistants propelled herself towards her with a practiced welcoming smile and bright eyes. Mutual glances of appraisal. The girl appeared to approve of Ingolfsson’s current outfit, a local-style off-white dress with silver trimmings with a simple elegant cut, ankle-length but leaving her arms uncovered in a vaguely ancient Greece fashion. It was conservative and blended in the Tollan street - as much as a Drakensis could blend in.

“Greetings, noble lady” The foreign client seemed amused by the translated formula, although it was perfectly normal in the local setting. It also came with a stiff little bow of the head. “I’m Ilina at your service. Would you like to buy anything ?”
The Tollan girl felt the green eyes sweeping her form from top to bottom, as if her own tunic didn’t exist and shivered involuntarily. A drawled answer came next, strange and foreign but unmistakenly amused.
“I’d love to buy you, pretty Ilina, but I suppose you’re not one of the items on sale ?”
The attendant’s blush was fierce on her pale cheeks. Her colleagues attempted to look busy to hide barely-restrained giggles. The woman behind the distant counter stretched her neck as discreetly as she could to try and hear the conversation.

“Aaaah, I’m not, noble lady” Ilina, to her credit, managed to keep a straight face and an even voice. It wasn’t even the first time she had received that answer - in jest, usually, although with some patrons, the undertone was more serious. It was part of the game actually, even if nobody in the business consciously admitted it. For a girl like her, this job was the closest path to riches, if a wealthy client took a fancy to her person.
But right then, she had a customer to serve. And one of those famous alien soldiers too ! Wait till she could tell it to her friends after work.
She took her patented, let-me-show-you pose, feet slightly apart, back subtly arched, right arm horizontal against her chest to support her waving left hand, and began to politely enquire whether the lady was looking to buy something for herself or as a gift to someone else, and yes we can accomodate both wishes, do you have an idea already or should I walk you through our collection ?
As she and her patron settled into the routine, conversations resumed around them and Gwen allowed herself to eavesdrop. The other women were still talking about her, with slightly jealous undertones, which still tickled her vanity even then.
“This dress” she suddenly interrupted, pointing at a silk-like affair of deep reds and golds.
“A distinguished choice” her attendant piped up, perking up to the opportunity. “One of our most sought-after models, entirely hand-made from Dakrian snake-silk” she went on, her tone highlighting the perceived luxury of the thing.
In a society as advanced as the Empire, where automatic fabricators could realize almost any material design, a hand-made garment was a grand gesture of indulgence, not least because few people actually retained the know-how to sew clothing. And the fabric came through the stargate from a distant planet somewhere near the Hebridean system, which meant the traders would have charged through the nose even if snake-silk wasn’t incredibly rare and difficult to procure. The Dakrian snake lived in deep subterranean galleries and secreted the silk to cover its eggs, once every local year. Like some of its Terran counterparts, it was also fantastically poisonous and aggressive when it had eggs to protect. The Dakrian people, to whom it was the only resource worth trading, used yound children - only they could physically fit inside the galleries - to go after the snakes and retrieve the silk. It was a great honour and a rite of passage to adulthood.
The fact that a third of them ever survived the attempt only made it that much honourable.

Ilina picked up a corner of the exposed garment, running her fingers through the rich material. “There is nothing quite like snake-silk. It’s so light it feels like wearing nothing at all !” And it cost the equivalent of ten times her annual incom, she didn’t add, but the thought colored her voice with more than a little awe. It was a dashing, magnificient thing, Gwen acknowledged. But it obviously wasn’t her size.
“If you like the design, may I suggest trying it in the virtual room ?” the helpful girl judiciously added, having recognized her guest’s interest.
The virtual room laid beyond a short corridor lined with pictures and actual examples of the house’s past designs, potted flowers and sitting benches. The room itself was octogonal in shape, white unadorned walls, floor and ceiling with a black circle at the center of the ground. Gwendolyn was invited to stand on the circle and Ilina entered a combination on a recessed keypad. Light dimmed, then the walls ceased to be featureless and white. Instead, they turned into so many artificial mirrors, reflecting Ingolfsson’s silhouette wearing the red and gold dress, adjusted to her size and body shape. The pictures moved, faithfully mimicking every movement she made. It was mesmerizing… for the first seconds of marvelous novelty. Then she frowned. The synthetic picture wasn’t perfect, the proportions were wrong somehow, subtly but noticeably enough.
Ilina made an apologetic face. “I’m sorry, the system can have trouble compensating for your current attire masking your body shape -” she paused, pondering whether she should ask her exotic guest to strip to her underwear as normal clients did. The young woman standing on the circle didn’t allow her to go through with her deliberation. Having realized the source of the glitch on her own, she unclasped the silver shoulder fastener of her white dress and let it fall around her without the slightest affectation.
Ilina gasped mutely. The body just revealed before her didn’t show any underwear. The virtual system had a much easier job now, and the dressed, synthetic dopplegangers resolved into flawless fidelity. Viewed so, the snake-silk garment fit to perfection, clinging and delineating the Drakensis’ feminine curves, even emphasizing them and making the steel-hard body underneath look softer. The rich colors completed the dazzling effect.
“Not bad” Gwen muttered. Aloïs would love it. It even fit with both her hair colors, dyed and natural.

It was a sale, then. This aspect of things taken care of, her mind drifted to more immediate needs, and to the petrified Tollan brunette in the same room who had forgotten not to ogle. Ilina saw the naked body move to face her, a conquering smile, green eyes staring deep into her own. She suddenly felt warm and weak and moist as the room became saturated with arousal pheromones. Seconds later, the virtual display shut down as its logic was overwhelmed by the contradictory inputs.
There were curious stares when both females emerged out of the virtual room half an hour later, the Tollan’s elaborate hairdress in ruins and hastily repaired, and her low-cut collar utterly unable to hide the hickeys blazing on the sides of her neck. She managed to complete the sale process, her voice noticeably huskier, saved from professional shame by the hefty figure on the final bill which drew a brilliant smile out of her director.

Yes, Gwendolyn Ingolfsson thought with relish as she was greeted by the sentries on duty, good memories indeed. And the Embassy staff would see to her Tollan couture dress’ eventual delivery in a month’s time.
Behind her, a floating palette glided silently out of the active wormhole. The Tollan automated light cargo holder would have to go back, unfortunately, once unladen. But here was home. As Gwendolyn headed toward the side exit and biocontrol checks, four uniformed serfs came from another, saluted and started to unload the voluminous luggage off the floating platform.
Home sweet home indeed.

[KlavoHunter]

Really, it ought to all fall apart, because the way they're indoctrinated makes them about as likely to get along as, well, so many snakes.

But then... no one said the Draka were very plausible. Which is why I see them as being best suited to the role of target practice backstop for WMD testing.

As a matter of fact, after the Final War, the number-one cause of death of Homo Drakensis is Homo Drakensis