Stars of Iron, a Stargate-Draka X-over, vol. 2

[iborg]

Chapter 2

...The more it stays the same



Now


“You will tell me what I want to know.”
Fat chance.
In O’Neill’s mind was defiance and more than a generous helping of irritation with the infuriatingly gloating man… or creature in front of him. But to be fair, most of the anger was directed at himself for allowing his team to be captured.
His own stony face and grimy appearance contrasted with the immaculately groomed and richly clad individual standing with his arms crossed and a smug smirk. Even the thin black goatee seemed to be a deliberate statement of… evilness ? It sure sounded cliche, but this thing apparently made a point of playing every key on the “Look, I’m evil and powerful” keyboard.
“For your own good.”
Oh yeah ?
Not that the Major could anything more than seethe inwardly. Not when he was unarmed, hands bound in iron and forced to kneel by the two hulking brutes flanking him, the burnished mail they were wearing adding to the theatrical setting. At least they fit in with the dark humid stone of the dungeon where they’d locked him before bringing him up for interrogation. The high ceiling of the present room was almost lost in the dark, the burning torches failing to illuminate more than a few meters above the floor of polished black marble. The place looked positively medieval, as if he’d been transported a thousand years back to the time when feudal lords laid siege around the crenellated castles of their enemies.

O’Neill glanced aside furtively. This was obviously the throne room, with a high chair of carved wood inlaid with gemstones on a raised dais in the back bracketed by two metal-studded doors that probably led to private apartments. Decoration consisted in various weaponry hung on the walls - swords and halberds and axes - interspersed between dark crimson velvet tapestries sporting gold-thread brocade. More of the chainmailed, tattooed guards stood motionless against the walls, their peculiar staff weapon held at the side. O’Neill held no illusion. Those weapons would be trained on him in a fraction of a second if he tried anything, and although Marine-issue armor might resist one or two blasts, armor would do no good when it had been stripped off during the time he’d stayed unconscious along with every piece of clothing. It was the most basic trick in the book and his OSS training made him immune to it, but his captors were certainly studying the uniforms as well, trying to get information out of them. Probably in vain, but who knew what those people were capable of. While the current setting looked medieval it didn’t reflect their technological level - after all they did have starships and energy weapons, didn’t they ?
And even though they looked human, the leader’s unnaturally distorted, deep voice and glowing eyes made it clear that he was something else. Not a god as he pretended, but something powerful and dangerous nevertheless.

“You speak the tongue of an ancient race” the alien resumed in his infuriatingly calm and self-confident tone. “I very much want to know how you learnt them.” He paused to brush some imaginary dust off the cuffs of his burgundy leather tunic. “And where. Where you come from. You will give me the address of your world.”
The kneeling and bound prisoner remained mute, eyes fixed at a spot on the floor in front of him. It was obvious enough that he wouldn’t submit willingly. Perhaps some incentive was to be offered.
“Answer my questions and you will spare your people as well as yourself. There is no harm in obeying your betters and I rule my subjects fairly.”
The words made the prisoner bristle somehow.
I’m a free man you smug bastard. You can take your Snake-ish idea of submitting and shove it up your ass. The Terran officer remained silent. He’d give his captor no piece of data willingly. Keep silent, wait it out. Every hour gained can mean the difference between vital data and outdated data. Even the most innocuous-looking words can provide the enemy valuable information, so keep your mouth shut. Even subvocalization could betray you. Of course, the OSS course on resisting interrogation had been focused on the likely enemy - the Draka. But the fundamentals were no less valid in the current situation.
At least the Drakas’ abilities were a know factor. What was this new adversary capable of ? The near-medieval appearances were an illusion. Medieval people didn’t have starships and energy weapons and computers and automatic translators that somehow interfaced directly with the mind. The last alone was had worrying implication. What if the could directly read his mind ? But then why waste time questioning him ?

Seconds ticked by with only the faint crackling of torches. The haughty human-looking alien sighed theatrically and made a mockingly pained look, as if he were sorry for the situation.
“Your unwillingness to cooperate is regrettable. I’m afraid it will leave me only one recourse.” A pause. The Goa’uld lord stared down at the man who refused even to reval his own name. He could sense the inner resolve. This was a warrior, a man who considered duty above everything else. Jaffas could show the same stubborness - but all of them eventually cracked under torture. Even if it took days, months, or years - an immortal being could usually afford to be patient, and the more time it took the more satisfying the inevitable outcome.
A human. A glance at his retrieved equipment had convinced the Goa’uld that his species’ usual spiel would be useless. Some of his fellow System Lords had ended believing their own propaganda, convinced that they were actual gods. This brought an amused snort. Gods did not exist. Religion was a tool, a mean to control the masses and ensure their unthinking obedience. He was far above such delusions, but they could be useful and so he kept the pretense when suitable.
This one obviously came from a human society which had reached a scientific understanding of the universe. Impersonating a god would achieve nothing. Well, this left other methods. More entertaining ones at that.
Psychological torture was the most fascinating of all.

The leather-clad being turned aside. His eyes flashed gold at the Jaffa officer standing at the back, near the throne room’s entrance.
“Jaffa ! Bring the female here.”
The grizzled warrior bowed, thumped his chest and pivoted on his heel. His two fellows standing guard around the entrance pushed the twin gates of polished steel-reinforced timber aside, the well-oiled panels opening with a faint groan. The hallway beyond was barely illuminated, but it made no difference. The way to the dungeons was familiar enough.

O’Neill’s knees were beginning to ache dully. The hard floor couldn’t be called comfortable, and his joints weren’t used to kneeling for more than a few minutes. Maybe he should have been going to Church more often, he reflected whimsically. He tried to move his shoulders and work out the kinks out of his neck, cracking a couple of pops in the process. Nothing more he could do with the two brutes watching him like hawks from the sides.
Yet as uncomfortable as the present situation was, he suspected it would soon become much worse. He had no illusion as to the identity of the other prisoner summoned before his captor, and the upcoming confrontation would be embarrassing for her at least. But he was an OSS officer. He would not betray any secret willingly. Next to the safety of the colony, his life and the life of Colonel Carter were expendable.
He could watch his captor from under his brow. The being was standing proudly, arms crossed over his chest, projecting an aura of certainty, lips curling up in a contained smirk.
More than anything he exuded an impression of self-confidence that was rooted in absolute control. Almost like a Draka really. Even the costume was something a Snake might wear, leather the color of dried blood and burnished metal fasteners combining in a statement of personal power.

The sound of footsteps came from the hallway behind, irregular and dragging. The upcoming prisoner was not coming from her own will and it showed in the sounds of struggling or cursing.
“Let me go you big bastards -” the voice of Colonel Samantha Carter was coming closer, strained but defiant and furious. O’Neill winced inwardly.
“- Jack…?” Surprise and relief in the familiar voice as she remarked the presence of the first prisoner, his crew-cut greying hair ensuring recognition even from behind.
She was brought ahead at a gesture from the leader of their captors. In front and in clear view to face O’Neill. He heard a gasp.
The Goa’uld watched the initial reaction of his prisoners with interest. Some human cultures had cultural issues with nudity and he was curious to see if that was the case here.
The woman gasped in soft shock and turned her gaze away from the nude and kneeling form of the man. A fierce blush came to her face and she fiddled in place, unable to hide anything of her own body with the Jaffas pinning her arms behind her back and the weighted ankle restraints preventing her from raising her feet more than a few inches above the floor.
She caught herself. “Major” she addressed her fellow captive more formally. Not that their situation was anything like formal. “You’re alive !”
The Goa’uld let her speak unhindered. Obviously she had less mental discipline as she was talking.

O’Neill cursed her mentally, then softened his reaction. She had never been trained to resist interrogation like him, having spent her entire career in the scientific military establishment. Her workload had never left time for it either.
He had to look up at her and nearly did a mental double take.
She does have a nice body for a brainiac. He thought he should have felt somehow ashamed to harbor such thought, but it was as much a professional assessment as anything else, he reasoned. And to be frank, the female Colonel wasn’t exactly painful to look at. Long trimmed legs, a stomach that barely bulged and breasts which long periods of microgravity had left with barely any sagging. Oh and she’s a genuine blonde.
The evaluation flashed through his mind at lightning speed then his mental discipline reasserted itself. He consciously clamped down on any stirring the sight of the attractive woman might have provoked inside his body and averted his gaze.
“Don’t say anything” he spoke flatly between his teeth.

Right at this moment, their captor made a beaming smile of satisfaction and clapped his hands slowly.
“Excellent.” His expression changed back to the default smirk of superiority. “We are making progress at last. Isn’t it wonderful… Jack ?”
He turned back to the woman and stepped closer, stopping at about an arm length from her. With no pretense at subtlety, his gaze swept her body from top to bottom, lingering over the heaving chest and trimmed pubic hairs.
“A remarkable specimen. Fit, healthy, attractive by most human standards” his head swivelled back to the male prisoner “don’t you think, Jack ?”
Without looking, his neatly manicured finger traced a line from the woman’s chin down to her navel, drawing shudders from her and a vain effort to shake free of the Jaffas’ grasp.
“I’m sure she holds value in your eyes. Am I wrong ?” The smirk was still there, but there was definitely a sinister gleam in those alien eyes when they focused on the female captive again.
“But first things first. It would be impolite to continue this conversation without some introduction first.” His tone was playful, delighted in the game that was only starting.
“My name is Lord Baal. What is yours ?” Neck high, head proud, eyes staring into hers, the Goa’uld was the very picture of his kind. Self-assured, arrogant yet cunning enough to play smartly.
After a moment of silence during which Carter struggled between her instincts and higher reasoning the System Lord’s eyes flashed, bright and dangerous and his hand darted forward. Strong fingers twisted a sensitive nipple and pain made the woman yelp in surprise.
“ANSWER ME !” The combined effect of pain, surprise and the authoritative, deep alien voice made her self control lapse for a short moment.
“Carter” she gasped “Colonel Samantha Carter, Alliance military” she shot out on automatic.

“Shut up Carter !” O’Neill’s voice silenced her. “Don’t say anyth-” he was cut off by a staff weapon’s butt striking his stomach and doubling him over with a cry of pain.
But the advice had its effect, shoring up the Colonel’s resolve and mental defences. Her lips sealed shut, her eyes shone defiance.
Baal simply smiled again, his whole expression fatherly and amicable.
“Don’t worry, Colonel Samantha Carter. You will talk.” The sinister gleam returned. “Whether you break under torture or not.”

[[R_H]]

[Strong fingers twisted a sensitive nipple and pain made the woman yelp in surprise.
“ANSWER ME !” The combined effect of pain, surprise and the authoritative, deep alien voice made her self control lapse for a short moment.

The most effective Goa'uld torture method, moreso than the ribbon device.

[iborg]

Well it's Baal, he only goes for awesomeness.


Two months earlier


It was easy to add two and two. You didn’t even need to be a genius. The concentration of talented brains was therefore overkill to figure out just how to operate the strange piece of equipment found in an out-of-the-place chamber, tucked in a remote corner of Freedom Station's outer shell, far below the habitation levels and right next to a cavernous hangar bay.
Remote, yet a survey and exploration team had eventually stumbled upon it. Actually, the discovery of the massive hangar, so large in fact that its dimensions could theoretically almost accomodate even the colossal bulk of the New America herself save for the fact that not all of it was empty space, far from it - ranks of cathedral-sized gantries and docking cradles were poking out of the walls, skeletal assemblies of metal beams and articulated manipulators and guides for a plethora of flexible piping and cabling obviously intended to service docked ships - had kept the colony’s leadership busy enough and the comparatively insignificant find next door was overlooked at first.
After all, space ships were easily recognizable, even when they belonged to a different civilization and tech level, especially when they were plainly docked in a hangar bay with empty space on the other side of the doors.
Doors that were now open to enable direct access and docking for the colony ship’s shuttles and auxiliaries doing round-trips between the New America and the station.
Viewed from outside and at a distance, the hangar was a tiny gap in the stupendous metal cliff that was the station’s side. Its top edge was located two kilometers “down” from the maglev network and the open rectangular maw only stopped after another kilometer downwards. The opening stretched five kilometers horizontally and its two thousand meters depth made it an almost perfect parallelepiped carved in the floating city’s curved lower flank.

The Alliance naval ratings who had first laid eyes on the spacecrafts arrayed inside docking cradles had experienced something akin to a heart attack and an orgasm mixed together.
True, honest-to-God, alien spaceships. Not flying saucers. The shapes were leaner, owing more visual parentage to wet navy ships and high performance air-breathing planes than with Earth’s spacecrafts, those intended to ply their trade in vacuum and lacking any aerodynamic streamlining or fairing, their geometries basic assemblages of primitive volumes instead of the curving sides and stacked, wet-ship style decks that were only practical along with artificial gravity.
Not all the docking cradles were occupied - at a glance only a third of the available space was in use. And their occupants came in various sizes and shapes - many were of a small model, the size of a transorbital shuttle in the Solar System and likely providing the same function. A couple other types were much larger, their overall shape that of a wedge with concave sides reminiscent of Earth’s early supersonic bombers : elegant gothic wings and blended fuselages, but adorned with geometric protrusions that wouldn’t be there on air-breathing machines. Finally, a quartet of fat cylindrical crafts topped the scale, their design starkly utilitarian in appearance with seams and protrusions telling of machinery tucked inside their shells. Their true function was yet unknown, but their size and appearance still exsuded power and purpose.
All were cold and dormant, yet the hulls were clean and evidently in good repair, built to last and tended by the bay’s automated systems. Those had come back to life when the station was reactivated, and the crewmen now manning the glassed control post gazing out over the bay’s interior could occasionally glimpse one of maintenance robots. They were an ingenious design, black faceted hexagonal boxes at rest, each polygonal slab concealing the articulated limbs which served as their principal mean of locomotion as well as tool-bearing arms.

The hangar bay’s controls were quickly understood. They shared the same and increasingly familiar interface philosophy found everywhere else, with intuitive, clearly-laid out flatscreen and holographic interfaces along with a small number of hard interface elements like scrolling wheels and switches, all neatly labeled in embossed Builder’s script and - recent addition - sticky-notes with an English translation.
The colonists still had the barest of understandings of the underlying technology, but at least it was user-friendly enough to let them operate it. With the most respectful caution.
As one of the crewmen had put it eloquently, they were “like small kids trying to operate their parents’ kitchen without burning or boiling themselves or blowing up the whole house.”

In contrast, the grey metal ring sitting in its low-lit room near the hangar bay’s main access junction didn’t look like something immediately useful.
Until one of the colonists came to see it, who had previously spent some time in what was dubbed the Knowledge Room. And put one and one together. And dragged an overstretched and sleep-deprived Colonel Carter down to confirm his intuition. Strangely, one Major O’Neill had materialized only a moment later flanked by his ever-present pair of Marines.
“Look !” the crewman had said excitedly, pointing at the band of grey metal standing upright on its platform, a dozen steps down from the gallery running all around the circular room “the symbols on that ring ? They look exactly like those on the galactic map !”
Samantha Carter followed the man’s indication with bloodshot eyes, her attention just a bit sluggish despite the caffeine that was threatening to replace her bloodstream. The connection made her harrassed face brighten shortly.
“Uh. You’re right Ensign” she squinted, willing her eyes to focus on the glyphs “I’d have to get Doctor Nagami here to check but… they do look similar”
“And they’re duplicated on that console over there” the finger pointed at an angular pedestal sprouting from the floor and to the side of the erect ring. Its inclined top was taken up by a sort of circular keyboard and the glyphs were indeed reproduced on the keys. The whole contraption seemed made of the same material as the ring itself except for the dome-like bump at the center of the outward-radiating keys, which appeared made of some smooth red glassy substance.

“So what is it ?” O’Neill voiced the logical question aloud. He too hadn’t missed the relation with the sets of glyphs that could be found near some systems in the holographic map of the galaxy. There was an obvious connection there. The Major put forward an answer to his own question when the rest failed to reply immediately.
“It appears to be connected with specific places in the galaxy, right ? So I think it’s some kind of visualization device.”
Carter scratched her head, still considering the possibilities. “Could be” she answered slowly “Type one of the glyph combinations - addresses, really - and a picture of that place appears inside the ring ? A real-time holoview ? Connected to some sensor device at the other end ?”
The lowly Ensign piped up. “Or a communication device !”
“Actually, that’s more what I’d expect, yes” the superior officer rubbed her eyes tiredly and struggled against a yawn. “Some kind of real-time, FTL link.”
“Well there’s one way to be sure…” O’Neill strode down the step, his intent clear. The Ensign went goggle-eyed. “Sir, shouldn’t we wait for…”
“What ? It doesn’t look like a bomb waiting to go off, does it ?” the Major shot back over his shoulder as he reached the pedestal.
“Errrr” was all Carter found to express, her mental processes slowed by fatigue. “What, where -” she stuttered as her colleague began to press the keys in succession.
“Earth” he simply said.
“But -” whatever objection the female officer intended to put out died as the ring started to spin in place with a rumbing vibration. There was a hum of power and steam - or what looked like steam anyway - jetted from the base of the ring where it disappeared under the floor and then a clanking sound as the ring stopped spinning momentarily and a metal chevron at the top snapped down on the first selected glyph, locking for a small instant before retracting and allowing the circle to resume its rotation again.

O’Neill went on, pushing the combination he had memorized for Earth one key after another, steadily and deliberately, his inputs replicated by the moving band of metal. Carter was clutching her hair and staring at the mechanism and her focus was shared by the three other men present, both Marines fiddling with their slung rifles unconsciously.
WOOSH
The sudden rush of displaced air, displaced by something that looked eerily like a horizontal waterspout coming from the space inside the ring, drowned out the seventh and last locking clang. Every human inside the room flinched back instinctively before the unexpected phenomenon only to star open-mouthed at the newly appeared disk of shimmering energy closing the hollow hoop and casting moving shadows on the walls.
It wasn’t like anything they had imagined and O’Neill was the first to find his voice again.
“Okay, that’s not what I expected” he said quietly, then perked up. “Hey at least it didn’t explode !” he called up at the Colonel who was staring dumbfounded at the active ring device. Her gaze switched slowly from it to the man at the controls.
“That… was reckless, Major” the voiced emphasis on his grade was a clear expression of rebuke, albeit she had to concede that so far, there was no obvious and pressing danger. “Now what’s it supposed to do ?”
The barely chastened Major shrugged. “Well, if your first hypothesis was right, the corresponding sensor for Sol might be out of order.”
“Like an untuned vidset showing static” the Ensign interjected, trying to look useful.

That was when one of the Marines suddenly raised his hand to the side of his head in reflex, an automatic and unconscious gesture to somehow listen better at something that couldn’t possibly be heard. His masked face wasn’t visible but his posture shifted noticeably on the spot, tense and ready for danger. His colleague did the same a fraction of a second later, pointing his rifle at the immaterial surface. The sudden attitude change was caught by the others immediately.
“Sir, I’m intercepting a radio signal” the first Marine quickly answered the wordless question in O’Neill’s stare. “It seems to be coming from this aperture” he pointed at the metal ring and its contained pool of energy. The soldier’s tone was steady but also betraying excitation and… fear, anger. “I’m putting it on speakers - Sir, it’s a Draka communication channel”
Neither O’Neill nor Carter had time to think “Fuck, what ?” before a voice called out, flat and tinny out of the Marine’s suit-mounted speaker. Its accent was harsh and unmistakable.
“-ol Stah’gate Control, identify yo’self, ovah’. Repeat, unknown dialer t’is is Sol Stah’gate Control, identify yo’self, ovah’ -” the voice went on, repeating its challenge as the stunned colonists listened on. Eventually O’Neill reacted and broke out of the trance conjured by the voice of the Enemy chasing them seemingly across the boundless chasm of interstellar space. He peered intently at the controls laid out before him and out of intuition slammed his palm on the glowing red dome.
He’d been spot on. The pool of light was shredded out, cutting whatever connection had been established as well as the Draka’s repeating call for identification. Silent fell back in the room after a last vigorous outgassing from under the metal band.
“We have to tell the general, now.”

[declan]

Oh wow, the last thing they want is one of those 4 gigaton weapons coming , lol, way to go O'Neil.

Declan

[KlavoHunter]

Well, shit. Any second now they're gonna have Ghouloons pouring in at 'em!

[1234q1234q]

No, there is no way to track an incoming wormhole so their safe, but the Drake aren’t. The Earth is already a radioactive wasteland, giving its address up as their home world is not only true but is also a very profitable move. Therefore the Drake are likely to get curb stomped as soon as Baal can get over his conditioned resistance to invading “Ra.”

Plus Jack hates the snakes so it’s not like he won’t jump on the chance to fuck up their day while protecting his new home.

[declan]

No, there is no way to track an incoming wormhole so their safe, but the Drake aren’t. The Earth is already a radioactive wasteland, giving its address up as their home world is not only true but is also a very profitable move. Therefore the Drake are likely to get curb stomped as soon as Baal can get over his conditioned resistance to invading “Ra.”

Plus Jack hates the snakes so it’s not like he won’t jump on the chance to fuck up their day while protecting his new home.

The actual gate is on the moon right , in iborgs version. Even if O'Neil pops some canned sunshine into the gate, its only going to take out that moon base. Can't remember tho, is the antarctica gate discovered, or do the snakes have a back door uncovered.

Declan

[Madzcat]

Don't think the Antarctica gate has been discovered. Since the Snakes don't seem to know anything about the Ancients and haven't visited any of the Ancient knowledge repositories either.

Did the Snakes ever put an iris over their gate?

However this will give the Alliance folks a nice edge because now they know the Snakes are using these same gate devices and are out roaming the galaxy instead of just sitting in Sol.

[Kristoff]

Well, shit. Any second now they're gonna have Ghouloons pouring in at 'em!

No, stargates are one-way and receiving gate does not get the address of incoming gate.

[KlavoHunter]

Now why the heck do I keep forgetting that?

[[R_H]]

Now why the heck do I keep forgetting that?

I was also thinking that. Good to hear they're not screwed.

[iborg]

Now why the heck do I keep forgetting that?

I was also thinking that. Good to hear they're not screwed.

Not by the Draka at any rate, yet

And update. Beware, scenes of torture and debauchery follow.

***

“Just what were you thinking, O’Neill ?”
The General’s voice was flat and controlled but it couldn’t be construed as serenity. Oh no. In fact, it was controlled anger. “What you did was insanely reckless !” The reproach was hammered out and Carter, standing back in silence, thought I told him that ! but didn’t intervene. “You might have given the Snakes our location, God damn it !” Frederick Lefarge raised his voice, slamming his hands on the desk again. “We’re in no shape to fight off an assault, not now ! You know this perfectly well, Major !”
O’Neill stood at attention, eyes staring at an imaginary horizon above his commander’s head, accepting the verbal lashing as it came. With hindsight, he did deserve it. Kind of. He always had an unrepentant streak, but the Boss had a point. The colony could not fend off an assault if the Snakes somehow used the ring-shaped device to… invade, if that was possible. They still didn’t know exactly what the thing did. They didn’t have the numbers nor the weaponry to fight off a Ghouloon attack in strength, not inside a giant orbital city whose inner workings were still barely understood.
The “stargate” as the Draka voice had apparently called it was now under guard by a reinforced Marine platoon, which by itself was a significant portion of the New America’s security complement, in space armor and with the most heavy weapons that could be brought to bear inside the station. The eggheads were swarming over the alien mechanism itself, trying to work out how it was attached and powered and whether it could be moved - or destroyed. The primary examination was pessimistic for the latter. Whatever substance it was made of, it would take nuclear-level firepower to damage it, which was already a fantastic property.

“Do you have anything to say ?” Lefarge finished, his voice quieter and businesslike again. O’Neill wasn’t a wet-behind-the-ears officer, there was no point in drawing out the tongue-lashing - the senior man knew the other well enough. Whatever reproach he could make, the man standing in front of the desk had already thrown it at himself.
“And remove that broom from under your uniform.” A very faint trace of a smile accompanied the words.
The Major relaxed then and his eyes fluttered down. Face still serious despite the levity of the commander’s last remark.
“Well General, at least we know the Snakes do use the… stargate. And if it indeed does what we think it does, they might be building an interstellar empire right now.” He paused almost involontarily. The implications of what he’d just said were… worrying to say the least. “I also think that they can’t trace back an incoming connection or we’d already be swarming with them now.”
Lefarge made a tiny nod. “I hope so as well, but we can’t count on it for sure.”
“In any case, they might stumble on our… position randomly. We have to prepare for such a contingency.”
“Maybe we can prevent the device from activating or accepting a connection” It was Carter’s voice cutting in as she took two steps forward. “But first” she stifled a yawn “we have to check exactly what it does and we have to do it soon, General”
“Carter, you should be in a bed, you’re barely able to stand” Lefarge frowned as he took in the woman’s exhausted features, lined bloodshot eyes and sagging shoulders. She’d been pushing herself for weeks, barely sleeping and gobbling stims to keep going. There were so many things to figure in Freedom Station and she felt like she had to take the lead.
“I can’t do that Sir, not now with -”
“Yes you can, Colonel. You shouldn’t have pushed yourself to the brink of collapse as it is, and you’re not going to do any good in your state, so right after this meeting’s over you will go to your quarters and rest.”
He added to cut off any further objection “That’s an order”.

The blonde woman’s jaws worked silently during a couple seconds and then she surrendered with a mix of relief, ingrained discipline and rationalization. Of course it was logical. Fatigue was hindering her mental processes, she could feel it. But it still felt wrong to sleep while the colony was in danger and others were working and doing what she ought to be doing.
“Now, Carter. Go before you collapse on my carpet.”
“Y- awwwn” her hand shot up to cover her mouth as the “Yes Sir” she intended to reply morphed into an uncontrollable gaping yawn that threatened to unhinge her jaw. Her eyes went just as wide in self-realization and she gave up on replying, turned on her heel instead and stumbled out of the General’s office.

“Now, O’Neill” Lefarge resumed after the scientist left “since you’re obviously able to operate the ‘stargate’ you’re going to lead an expedition through it” he raised his hand up, palm outwards to stave off an immediate reply “only if we can determine that it’s safe for people.”
The other man raised an eyebrow. “I think those ancient hovercams we found could be useful for that.”
“Use them, but check with our own equipment too, better safe than sorry.”


Now


Sweaty, naked, moaning and screaming and shuddering, Samantha Carter’s state figured a cruel parody of ecstasy. It wasn’t pleasure that made her writhe in almost lascivious quivers, but pain, absolute and unescapable. Without the pair of leering Jaffas supporting her body by her armpits she would be convulsing on the ground, in the small puddle of urine which had trickled out of her thankfully mostly empty bladder. Her eyes rolled aimlessly, her features twisted in a caricature of their normal attractiveness, jaws clenching tight and teeth grinding together between hoarse screams - all bathed in the unholy glow of the alien’s torture device. It was shredding her, like rusty razor blades slithering along her nerves down every limb and inside her brain, a pain more full and intense it was drowning everything else, drowning out the universe beyond, burning away her conscious identity and leaving only agony to fill her world.
And she could feel - the tiny, remote part of her mind that was still functioning - her life ebbing away, her strength waning. She was dying. She knew it. There was no mistaking it - she knew because it had happened already. How many times she could not remember. She could barely think about it. And she knew death wouldn’t be a release, wouldn’t save her from the pain.
She’d wake up again, alive, only to be brought back into the cursed chamber. Torture for her and for the man who’d been captured alongside her.
Their tormenter knew what he was doing. Millennia of experience to draw upon. Countless souls broken in the same manner. And he was laughing. It was all a game to him. But a game with very high stakes for all involved.

And as if the pain itself wasn’t enough he had introduced refinements. Shame, humiliation, guilt to torment both prisoners’ minds.
Perverse games playing on their particular inhibitions. Taking their culture and morals and returning them as weapons against their will.
For the Major, being unharmed while his female colleague was subjected to the most agonizing of tortures in front of him, day after day after day, unable to close his eyes, forced to hear her cries, was beginning to chip away at his steely resolve. Oh yes, he did rationalize it. Forced himself to remain clinical, impassive. To see the captor’s scheme for what it was. To ignore the acts his body was forced to undergo, against his will.
He couldn’t ignore, couldn’t escape the sensations in his own body, no matter how much he tried. And it still made him feel dirty. He couldn’t even close his eyes. He couldn’t move, his limbs immobilized on the X-shaped timber frame, just barely reclining.
He could feel Carter’s eyes on him, despite the pain and despite her own knowledge that it was all a cruel game they were forced to take part in. What did she feel ? Disgust, pity, contempt ?
He shied from the touch. Tried to. His mind screamed No get away don’t touch me you filthy abomination but the drugs coursing through his veins and the coin-sized thing on his temple warped his perceptions, corrupted his impulses, forced his body to react in ways perverse and unnatural.
The hands didn’t pull away. They continued to dance on his skin and stroke his tightly-knotted muscles, from his thighs to his chest and down his back. Using his own sweat to slide and rub better, tracing arabesques on his body that made him shiver and raised goosebumps. The scent, sweet and musky. Fingers tickling and playing him like a piano, raising his pulse and quickening his breath. Against his will, he gasped, eagerly, expectantly, relishing the light touch of the lithe smooth fingers now curling around his engorged and rock-hard manhood. Encircling the fleshy shaft, stroking and pumping, coiling and snaking down to caress and hold his balls. The mouth continued to brush his chest and face, breathing burning words of lust and forbidden passion in between each wet kiss.
It was wrong. It felt good.
The mouth went down. Lips replaced fingers around the bound man’s cock. Tightened around it and stroked and sucked hungrily.
O’Neill breathing became ragged, hoarser. Unarticulated words of disgust and repulsion mixed with sighs of physical pleasure, faster, quicker. His heart beat accelerated, a flush spread on his face and chest.
He spasmed.

The smooth-skinned, pretty-faced slave kneeling between the masculine legs smiled as he received his prize. He’d done well, again. His master would be pleased. He finished milking the last drops and then stepped back with an impish smirk on his glistening lips, making no effort at modesty, flaunting his androgynous body in front of guards and prisoners alike. With a flourish, he turned away from O’Neill and strutted out of the room at a gesture from his master.
Baal watched his living tool leave then stared appreciatively at his male prisoner, keeping the female one under the spell of his kara kesh. She didn’t have long anyway. But she was still conscious enough to have missed nothing from the obscene interplay. And the man knew that too. It made his self-disgust so much stronger.
The Goa’uld chuckled. Human morals could be so queer. The righteous constructs they built to prop up their feeble minds against their vast ignorance of the universe could be used and abused so easily. Many were primitive and superstitious and the System Lords took ruthless advantage of it to pull the strings on their human puppets.
Other, rare, didn’t fall for the god routine. But they could be exploited as well. One only had to know which buttons to push.

Of course, some - admittedly rare - individuals held up even against the most refined of tortures. It made no difference. Humans couldn’t hide anything from a Goa’uld symbiote anyway. But that was a last resort, for reasons every System Lord knew well enough. Any new Goa’ud was a potential rival and backstabber.
The thought made Baal smirk in amusement. That rule he’d finally managed to cheat a little.

[ziasyn]

I sense Baal clones on the horizon

[Baughn]

Oh, is this where it went..

I'll have you know the Macross battlefleet blew up the Drakas good, but don't worry, they're not all dead. Some of them escaped to the Cthulhu Tech universe, where I'm sure they'll be happy.

[SeaTrooper]

Ahhh, the Dominion has all the fun, so naturally the "Freedom-loving" Alliance escapees are repressed prudes by comparison.

Well, yes, frankly. Sorry about the late post, but this is an important point that needs to be addressed.

Mostly in reaction to the hedonist, individual freedoms of the Citizen caste, Alliance for Democracy members went the other way. A lo-ong way the the other way, becoming rather repressed, prudish and down-right obnoxious about it. It is even noted that one of the major Draka exports is porn, and this wasn't nice stuff by any stretch of the imagination. Think of the Alliance countries as being roughly similar to Saudi or Indonesia. Oppressive over-moralising, with strict laws and fierce penalties, but way more sick puppies than found in more open societies.

Plus, by the Final War, you probably wouldn't recognise the US. Universal conscription had been a fact of life for decades, entire generations of hard science Phds had vanished into various secretive Manhattan-style projects, and EVERYONE was taught basic firearms (including submachine guns!) in high school. There were never any complaints about the Second Amendment here, nor protests against gun control, because the Govt WANTED everyone armed and dangerous for when the inevitable conflict turned plasma-hot. Oh, and made damned sure they had their 'properly regulated militia'.

Forget about personal privacy as well, unless you were in any one of the massively swollen intelligence, military or police services. They had their own version of 'witch-hunts', which seemed not to end with the fall of McArthy, but pursuing Drak-Symps everywhere rather than commies. As in our own time-line, that would have had a very chilling effect on anyone who might have been vulnerable (guilty or innocent) to such accusations.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in either power block.

[iborg]

It's aliiiive ! Sorry for the long hiatus, I had kinda lost my mojo. Now it's back, it seems.




Back

Frederick Lefarge put the tablet-form perscomp aside on the articulated metallic tray attached to the side of his command chair, and raised his eyes to meet Carter’s. She had waited for him to finish reading the condensed report, along with the included pictures. Seeing that her superior’s attention was again fixated on her person, she resumed speaking almost immediately, unable to contain the comments, observations and explanations overflowing in her mind.
“So yes one could say that this first round of off-gate surveys didn’t bring much, and granted we didn’t find an uninhabitable planet as we all hoped, but you have to look beyond that. We’ve managed to confirm the stargate’s mode of operation and basic procedures, including the auxiliary systems in the gateroom-”
“Especially that force field” the General cut in.
“Yes, including that” the scientist made a satisfied grin. “We’ve made several experiments and it seems clear that it prevents incoming matter from rematerializing when activated. With a sentry manning the gateroom round the clock and ready to raise the shield, so to speak, I think we don’t have to fear a Draka invasion, even assuming they found a way to determine a wormhole’s point of origin... which is highly dubious.”
“Wel that’s good news. It’s not only the Draka I’m afraid of. Who knows what kind of dangers might be lurking in the galaxy ?” Lefarge swept his hand at the master holographic plot hovering serenely beyond his station, presently configured to show Samothrace System and the surrounding area in a one hundred LY radius. The volume was centered around Samothrace, which was zoomed in for readability and out of proportion with the humongous bubble of space around it. While impressive, the translation team had concluded that the wider area display only showed stored data. Apparently Freedom Station’s built-in sensors (whatever they were) “merely” managed to show a real-time view of the system itself and a paltry dozen LY around it, which included several other star systems and a small nebula expanding outwards from a small dwarf, the remains of a star who had gone nova millions of years ago.

Three of those systems had their own stargate, according to the galactic map. The Samothracians (as the New America’s exiles had started to call themselves) had dialed all three, sending unmanned sensor platforms first. A good thing, because in all three cases the far side wasn’t too welcoming of human life, at least without protective measures. Two were outright deathtraps, the stargates standing on barren, atmosphere-less rocks bathed in high energy radiation, sleets of cosmic rays cooking soil beaten and ground to micronized dust by eons of micrometeor impacts. Neighbour One was a Mars-sized ferrous-core planet orbiting approximately one AU from its blue giant sun and was a furnace from hell. Neighbour Three was a large moon revolving around a massive gaseous planet twice the size of Jupiter, the massive gravitational interactions creating a bad case of tectonic activity. In short, volcanos were spouting fire and dotting its landscape like pimples on a teenager’s face. The little layer of toxic atmosphere created by the eruptive gasses was constantly stripped away by the onslaught of solar wind canalized by the giant planet’s own magnetic field.
Neighbour Two was merely frozen, locked in a distant orbit of its small red star, its surface stuck in a perpetual winter. Dirty water ice and cold nitrogen to breathe, but men in spacesuits could stand and work on it without cooking. The local gravity was .4, and the remains of a Gatebuilder outpost were still jutting out of the ice a couple klicks from the stargate. A team of three had managed to reach it (after the probes found a safe path) and explore the abandoned husk. Walls of the same alloy as Freedom Station’s exterior hull had withstood millions of years of weathering and environmental assault, but the interior was utterly trashed by invading ice. Scattered, broken and utterly unrecognizable fragments were the only traces left of the outpost’s interior fittings and furnishing. Still, the shell appeared sound and after clearing ice and debris, it seemed possible to recommission it as a base camp.

Based on those early findings one might have wondered exactly why the Gatebuilders, or Alterans as their self-given name appered to be, had put stargates in such uninhospitable places. The answer came in the follow-up pictures taken by the probes, especially the flying holocams embracing a much larger area.
On both N1 and N3 huge excavations were visible, cratering the planetary surfaces. Despite millions of years of erosion softening shapes and lines, the region-sized geometric scars were obviously the remains of extensive strip-mining. More, an artificial structure was spotted in N3’s orbit, sitting right in the region where the field interactions of the gaseous giant focused high energy particles from the local star. The structure itself was a tubular lattice kilometers long, and various hot spots indicated that it was still active. Speculations abounded, and the dominant interpretation (supported by Carter herself) had the object being an energy collector. An interpretation reinforced by the similarity with pre-War projects of building a giant anti-matter collector in Jupiter’s orbit, where intense electrical fields could be harnessed with a sufficiently large capture device.
For now, there was no way to confirm the hypothesis. A holocam could not overcome the moon’s gravity, not with additional weight anyway, and while the starships hanging in Freedom’s enormous bay might reach the place, the colonists were still far from the necessary level of knowledge required to operate them safely.
There were so many things to learn and so few resources, Lefarge lamented. The translation team was doing a good job but there just wasn’t enough trained personnel, so the handful of Alteran-speaking men and women were being rushed from one spot to another with barely time to rest.

At least everyone knew the basic vocabulary now, as well as the various color nuances and graphical symbols that indicated hazards or dangerous areas in the Alteran way, as well as more basic information such as location of the nearest bathroom. Which were all unisex initially. Just another little difference between strains of humanity separated by a temporal and cultural gulf, it seemed, and after a rash of complaints the various loos in the most traveled areas of the station had received little stenciled adornments in the shape of stick-figure men and women.


Now


Feet dragging on the polished stone floor, head lolling, O’Neill let the two Jaffas carry his weight as they brought him, again, to the infamously familiar interrogation room. He did not fight them. It would be a useless waste of his depleted strength. Better grit his teeth and endure until an opportunity arose… not that one seemed close. Now more than ever before he understood why the Draka committed suicide before capture, although back on Earth when you died you died for good, at least.
Maybe if he’d kept the OSS-issued, tooth-carried poison capsule every active agent carried during, and often kept after, a mission. He had it removed on Ceres, a little while after he was drafted into the New America project and sent far away from an possible Snake reach. Whatever people thought, not even OSS men enjoyed having a cyanide capsule ready to pop out in their mouth and removing it was always a relief.
It sure would have been handy this time. No use crying after spilled milk though. Besides, a cyanide-induced death might not be enough against the infernal resurrection technology of the Goa’uld.
“Major O’Neill.” Baal’s voice was honey-smooth as ever, his attire elegantly sophisticated in rich varnished leathers and silk-like fabrics.
“Fuck you” the Earther muttered back, just loud enough for his captor to hear and chuckle good-naturedly.
“Ha ha, still defiant I see. You truly are a remarkable man, O’Neill. It has been centuries since I last tortured a being with your resilience. A shame, really. In other circumstances, I am certain you would have made a remarkably able First Prime.”
“Funny, I thought power-mad bastards like you would only want sycophants at their side” O’Neill managed to grate in a tone that was the closest to conversational he could muster. His remark raised another chuckle from the Goa’uld in front of him.
“Of course I see why you would believe that.” Baal made a grand sweeping gesture at the damp stone walls and flickering torches around them. “But” he took a step closer and bent to speak almost in O’Neill’ ear “I pride myself for being less generally deluded than most of my kind, and I genuinely value competence in my underlings.”
“Still an asshole.”
Baal straightened, his face showing an expression of mock hurt. All the while the Jaffas remained tight-lipped and stony faced, oblivious of the conversation’s meaning as nobody had taught them English.

“Anyway.” The System Lord retreated a few steps and crossed his hands behind his back “those games with you and the female are amusing and in other circumstances I would love to continue… but you see, a being of vast power and domains like me has other obligations, and some of my colleagues are the worst spoilsports in the galaxy.”
“Wooh, too bad. Are you gonna kill us for good then ?” the Major practically spat.
“Oh but no. You’re both too valuable for that. I’ll just have to use a quicker way to get the informations I want.” His smile became sinister and he barked an order to the Jaffa guards.
A brief moment later, two more warriors entered from a side door, carrying the body of Samantha Carter. She was breathing and merely unconscious, and they deposited her on the bare stone floor next to Baal.
Another pair came after in them, escorting a palace slave carrying a small ornate vase.
The Alliance officer had no idea what was in the container, but his instincts screamed warnings in his head and his hairs prickled involuntarily.
The slave stopped and knelt in front of his master, eyes looking down on the floor, arms raised to proffer the vase.
Baal’s left hand went forward and removed the golden lid, handing it off to a Jaffa. A foul smell rose from the open container, and Carter stirred. Her eyes opened, the signal for her Jaffa handlers to hold her hands and ankles firmly pinned on the ground. At the same moment, the Goa’uld right hand plunged inside the vase, and reappeared holding the snake-like abomination that was a Goa’uld’s true shape. The little beast immediately started to hiss and snarl. Both prisoners’ eyes went wide in shock and disgust.

“Colonel Carter, meet your new friend” Baal practically snickered. “Kheshmet, meet your new body”. The little snake hissed louder, crest extended and quivering in anticipation.
“Oh my God what’s this !” the pinned woman blurted out, a look of horror and revulsion clear on her features. The same question was on O’Neill’s mind.
“Kheshmet here is one of my most loyal and worthy underlings. Unfortunately, he lost his previous host body in battle.” Baal explained as he bent down over Carter’s defenseless body. Her nudity made her newfound youth all the more evident. The multiple exposures to the sarcophagus had ended up rejuvenating her body, and she was now looking like her twenties - an otherwise extremely arousing sight, were not the present circumstances precluding the Major from appreciating it.
She put her youthful limbs to stress, struggling in her bonds and desperately attempting to break the Jaffas’ hold. This fight was hopeless and she shuddered, skin covered in goosebumps when Kheshmet was deposited on her belly. It hissed again and slithered up, covering her skin with gooey fluids, pushing its ugly reptilian head between her round breats in an obscene parody of sex.
She screamed, once, twice, as if the noise would somehow make the beast go away, then averted her face as Kheshmet rubbed over her jaw and brushed the corner of her lips. Her very avoidance gesture made the symbiote’s task easier, as it exposed the side of her neck. Baal’s hand clamped down, pinning her head in position.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO-” her ragged scream was cut off when the serpent reared its head and pounced down, puncturing the skin. Bright pain. The whole body of the Goa’uld pushed through the hole, tearing apart tissue as it buried itself in her. A pure look of agony contorted Samantha Carter’s face as Kheshmet clamped around her spine and his invading macrodendrites began hijacking her nervous system.
She screamed again, hoarsely, her body writhed and shivered, her limbs beating a frenzied tattoo on the stone like a seizure patient. Sweat blossomed on her skin, her spine arched, proffering her sex shamelessly.
And then she went still and unmoving as if paralyzed, breathing rapidly, eyes wide open and fixated on the ceiling nothing more betraying the struggle happening inside her body as her mind battled Kheshmet’s for control… and lost.

Her body relaxed suddenly, features composed again, and her eyes flashed a golden glow.
It wasn’t her voice speaking out of her mouth though.
“My Lord.”
Baal smiled to his minion, who rose up, free from the Jaffas’ grip, and glanced down at his, or her, new body, and then at O’Neill with a wicked impish grin.
“Kneel before your new goddess, slave !”

[Baughn]

Figures.

With any luck, Baal will at least focus on the Draka first.. I'm perfectly fine with helping those two kill each other off.

[iborg]

Things will get worse for Samothrace, but "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".


I won't have time to write tomorrow so I'm posting the couple pages I did today.




Back


With millions of seven-symbol addresses available in the database the only problem was trying them all. Fortunately, one could narrow down the selection by choosing those who appeared to offer the highest likelihood of pointing to a livable place. One that wasn’t baked in radiation, flooded in lava or frozen solid. Unfortunately, if there was a way to automate the selection, it hadn’t been found yet. Zooming in a sector of the galactic map, picking an address among seemingly thousands and manually checking the stored data about the system or planet it corresponded to was tedious work. Yet Major O’Neill had been wading through the mountain of data for hours after he was shown how to operate the controls of the holomap, much to the vexation of those scientists who wished to access the database for other uses (and were told in no uncertain words to “get lost”).
With a sigh and a grimace, the military man eventually straightened away from the slender pedestal, removed his hands from the control surface and moved them to rub his lower back. Shifting his shoulder a bit to remove the kinks, he then scooped up the small paper notepad where he’d written down a shortlist of gate coordinates for the second round of exploration, and walked out of the crowded room.

Ten minutes later, he was standing in the Command Center and reporting his finds to the General. Thirty minutes later, he was down in the Gate Room along with Samantha Carter, and the sensor probe techs were busy laying down their instruments in front of the transportation ring.
“Dialing in three, two, one… dialing now !” there was a Navy rating manning the dialing console now, as well as the shield switch, and he had earned the nickname “Doorman”.
The gate went through the now familiar routine of spinning and locking symbols one after another, until the rumble ceased and the wormhole opened with a woosh.
“Connection established and stabilized !” the operator announced in that very Navy way to state the obvious, O’Neill thought.
“Radiation backscatter : normal, EM field appears clear” a sensor tech reported. His sensitive instrumentation didn’t detect anything more than the normal background noise in the EM spectrum.
“Sending the hovercam now !” a second one vocalized as the small dark grey sphere floated towards the gate and was swallowed by the event horizon. After a short while it reemerged to reality thousands of LY away, and the picture it sent back caused an eruption of cheers.
As the Alteran-built camera panned around, more of the stargate’s surrounding became visible. It was apparently located on a hilltop, and the clearing it stood on made way to the lush green jungle that covered the slopes all the way down to the distant shore. The camera made a 360° and revealed more of the adjoining terrain. From its raised vantage point it appeared clear that it was located on an island, or at least a small peninsula, as the haze in the distance made it impossible to determine whether the land continued further away or not. In any case, the shores were a mix of white sand and near-black volcanic rocks and coral barriers enclosing turquoise waters.

O’Neill whistled. “I think we just found our next holiday resort.”
“Actually jungles are often dangerous environments, Major” Carter retorted with total seriousness, until she caught his expression saying “really ?” and remembered what she knew about OSS agent training. “Um, of course you know that” she added lamely for lack of anything else to say.
“Be like telling you that stars are hot” the retort came in a tolerant tone that only excerbated the temporary contrast between the militaryman’s cooly amused demeanor and the scientist’s (albeit a uniformed one) slightly embarrassed blush. She raised her hand unconsciously to twist and fiddle with a lock of hair, as always when she got nervous, he remarked. Fortunately both were saved from further awkwardness by the data rolling in from the holocam and the follow-up wheeled probe.
“Gravity .97, atmosphere density and composition close to Earth norm, no apparent toxicity, radiation count inferior to Earth norm. Preliminary analysis shows no immediate major environmental hazard, Sir” the technician finished reporting.
“Check the dialer” O’Neill answered, business-like again.
The hovercam floated away and around the mushroom-shaped dialing board. The device appeared intact. Of course, the expedition had found that they could operate the stargate with the same handheld controller as the hovercam, but it didn’t hurt to check.

“All right” the Major concluded “Put the probes on stand by, I want everyone suited up, loaded and ready to cross in thirty minutes.” There was a flurry of movement in the room as the various crew assigned to the exploration effort started to ready themselves for the trip through the wormhole, and O’Neill addressed the operator last. “Close the connection.”


A little over thirty minutes later eight humanoid shapes stood on the grassy surface of the hilltop, having emerged from the immaterial seconds before. Despite the setting, they weren’t looking like beach-going vacationers at all. Soldiers in heavy Contaminated Battlefield gear and already cursing the sweltering heat, and less combat-oriented scientists in shapeless sealed plastic suits, ventilated and pressurized. What they lacked in armoring compared to the soldiers’, they gained in built-in air conditioning.
Naturally, this made the biological component of their survey the priority task. The sooner they checked the local microbial fauna for hazardous organisms, the sooner they could decide to take the horrible suits off.

The four Fleet Marines walked away, stopping a good distance from the tree line.
“Hey, why do you think the vegetation isn’t covering the stargate ?” one of them suddenly asked on the general channel, where communication was less formal and more free-flowing. The other voices paused. Apparently the science types thought it was a very good question.
“Well, I have no idea” one of the voices finally came back. It was one of the scientists, but under the shapeless suits it was hard to see which one spoke. “Maybe some sort of field ?” another added tentatively.
“Yeah, maybe from time to time the gate emits a clearing, uh, burst, just like the waterfall effect when it activates, but omnidirectional, see” the last one chimed in.
It sounded as good an explanation as another, O’Neill thought. Except the gate better not do it when people were around.
“Or maybe the locals do it” another soldier commented, every other pair of eyes converging on him as he pointed sideways. Following his direction, the source of his postulate was plainly in sight. At the edge of the clearing, approximately at a 9 o’clock position from the stargate, was a break in the jungle. An artificial one, with a beaten path where thin grass hardly grew out of reddish soil. Looking closer, some branches appeared clean-cut, as with a sharp object.
It was a path down.
“Okay. Get the ‘cam to follow that path. The rest of you” O’Neill addressed the science team “hurry up ! I need to know if we’re viable here !”

Minutes passed under the scorching sky. The similarity with Earth was outstanding, the local sun the same color and size and the water just as blue as in the Bahamas. Judging by the environment the day-night cycle had to be similar as well. Yes, O’Neill thought, it might well make for a fine holiday resort. Assuming the locals were friendly. Which couldn’t be taken for granted.
“Clarke, Wilson, put some sensors and claymores out there, but don’t stray too far, keep in shouting range”
A pair of “Aye Sir” answered and the two soldiers moved forward, plunging in the greenery, watched by the other pair, rifles and grenade launchers ready to make mincemeat of anything arriving with hostile intentions.

[iborg]

***

The portable bioscan gear was a direct adaptation of the Alliance military’s NBC battlefield warning boxes, intended to sift the air for the most minute sign of weaponized microorganisms, chemicals and toxins. The need was compounded by the Drakas being masters of biosciences and never shy of showing it off - in the end, though, the sophisticated analysis equipment didn’t prevent an even more sophisticated Stone Dogs from achieving exactly the result every Alliance war planner had feared. Of course, the madness-inducing virus wasn’t initially disseminated on a battlefield and it had lain dormant, hidden and unremarkable until the Domination’s activation signal woke it up.
In hindsight, it was perhaps a forlorn cause, for the Alliance’s most sophisticated biological detection gear was nothing more than copies of stolen - or otherwise acquired - Draka hardware, wide-spectrum reactants and DNA probes.
Still, the sturdy box sitting on the grass near the stargate contained some of the most cutting edge Earth-developed technology, and it rapidly dissected the air and whatever particles and molecules it carried.
It took a little over five minutes for the portable biolab to complete its scan and beep to signal the completion of its task, and another minute for the bubble-suited operator to read the full printout wirelessly sent on his wristcomp.
At last the verdict came.
“The air is safe,” he stated with relief “we can crack those suits open and breathe freely” a few “weee!” sounded off in response. “But that’s only the air, for now let’s keep the gloves and be careful what we touch, okay ?” he cautioned. Nods of assent showed the team’s understanding, and then the scientist unzipped his own hood, immediately taking a deep breath. Seeing how he failed to drop dead or otherwise cough up bloody pieces of his lungs, his colleagues imitated him a moment later, still keeping a wary eye on the biolab.
O’Neill observed them, and removed his own breathing mask after a short internal debate, feeling that it was too early to trust fully in the local environment.

The Marines were therefore disappointed when the Major told them to keep their CB gear on, just in case.
They weren’t allowed to remove it until the next hour, and by then more interesting things were about to happen.


One day later


“He says the last time the gods came, it was long ago, before his father’s father was born”
O’Neill grimaced. “Not exactly what I’d call an accurate recording, Mr Moore” His remark brought up an echoing grimace of helplessness on his interlocutor’s face, along with spread arms in the classic “what can I do ?” gesture. A tall man, soldily-built and preternaturally tanned for a spacer, Simon Moore was a civilian, a systems engineer belonging to the New America’s recently thawed general crew, but what singled him out among the crowd was the Hawaian heritage on his mother’s side. His father had been a sailor in the United States Navy, stationed aboard a cruiser in Pearl Harbor and he’d taken wife there - not a rare occurrence altogether in those parts.
The Moore family, complete with the dog had moved to San Diego in Simon’s twelfth year, but the boy had acquired a passing knowledge of the islander tongue and later kept using it with his elderly mother, more as a game than anything else. He’d certainly never expected that skill to ever become useful one day… yet he was now the only one who could communicate with the locals on the sunny island planet.

The reason was quite clear when one looked at the natives. Bronze skin adorned with ritual tattoos, naked save for simple wrapped loinclothes, they showed their typical Polynesian features as the Samothracians watched them go about their daily occupations - mostly fishing in the lagoon’s shallow waters or beyond the reef barrier in narrow outriggers. The village, a loose collection of vegetal huts close to the white sand shore, had returned to a semblance of routine after the initial shock of first contact. Women chatting and children playing, men carving wood and cleaning fish and the omnipresent singing ; yet there was an undercurrent of tension.

“Hell, they don’t keep track of time as we do, just like the folks back on Earth used to. They live day to day and don’t really care for a calendar… could have happened a century, a thousand years ago, it’s the same for them” Moore elaborated. He was just back from a lengthy discussion with the village elders, and both men were standing at a distance from the huts, under the tall canopy-jungle where the path uphill began. A three hour trek uphill to reach the stargate, invisible from their current location.
They weren’t alone of course. Apart from the discreet Marine presence doing their best to blend in with the vegetation, the hut closest to the path was occupied by the medical team and there was a small throng of mothers and children waiting outside to have the strange foreigners give them a check-up and heal the odd scratch or sore tooth. T
The humanitarian gesture had been authorized by the General in the interest of starting good relations with the first humans found outside the Solar System - and that fact had not appeared as surprising as it ought to. Not after everything the New America crew had already experienced and learnt.

“Did they tell you anything about those gods ? Who they were, what capabilities they possessed ?” O’Neill insisted. Moore threw his hand in the air. “Major, I’m barely understanding them as it is ! I’m an engineer, not a linguist and they’re not speaking Hawaian either - this language’s clearly related, more like Southern Pacific actually, but it’s like a Frenchman trying to understand an Italian, see ? The words are related but they’re not the same nor pronounced the same way !”
“All right, all right” the officer conceded “I’m not expecting miracles. You’re doing a great job” he clapped the other man’s shoulder. “At least they’re not trying to eat us”.
“Ha ha.” The civilian’s tone made it clear that he didn’t thought the joke very funny. “Another thing” he glanced around, a gesture not missed by the Major. “You know they thought we were gods when we first arrived here…”
“Yes, and we made it clear that it wasn’t the case.” Freedom Station’s orders had been very adamant on that. Samothrace’s history would not start off with them impersonating gods to take advantage of less advanced races. The very idea was deemed abhorrent and reeking of Snake behavior.
“Well, they understand we’re not gods” and that had indeed taken some doing to persuade them.
The natives did not believe their visitors were truly human at first - why, they didn’t have the same skin color ! - and the different… behavioral standards had caused a few embarrassing, if harmless, moments. Mostly embarrassing for the visitors, at least. Especially when the local women had insisted for the first shiny-eyed anthropologist-wannabee to undress and show they belonged to the same species, complete with all dangling parts.
Much laughter and much blushing had followed. It didn’t help that the Marines in the background had snickered loudly when particularly skeptical native matrons had cupped and weighed the guinea pig’s genitals, obviously commenting all the way.
In the end, the examination was conclusive enough and the unwilling volunteer was allowed to gather his clothes and dignity with O’Neill’s personal promise that any video files of the proceedings would be erased after debrief.
And the thoughtful Major had already warned the Marines to keep their dicks holstered, with dire threats of disciplinary duty for whomever caught the first case of Space Crabs.

Moore gave O’Neill a meaningful look. “We’re not gods all right, but there might still be a problem down the way with that… you see, the locals apparently view the stargate as taboo. You know what this means, right ?”
An affirmative nod. “Sacred, holy, forbidden to mere mortals.”
“Exactly. The stargate and the whole hills around it are… well, religious places where only the spirits go. The spirits and the gods, at least”.
O’Neill frowned. “But there were recent traces around the stargate - and the path, too”
“Only the priests and chosen are allowed there for ceremonies, Major. The last one was a couple days ago hence why the ground was freshly trampled. But apart from those times, no one, under penalty of death, can go there”
“That’s… annoying” Especially if they insist on the death penalty thing.
“Yeah well, the elders are miffed with us hanging over their taboo place, I caught that much, but at the same time they aren’t stupid either and they clearly recognize that we’re not them. But all the same we should tread with caution, try not to offend their sensibilities”
“All right, I get the drift. But we’re not going to leave the stargate, sorry, too important. This is the first life-bearing planet we found, Mr Moore. We can’t just go away. I’m all for respecting the natives’ rights, but in the end my loyalty goes to the Alliance, well Samothrace, and this place holds vital importance for it right now.”
“No problem Major. We can probably hammer some kind of agreement with them if we have to, ‘specially if we bring things like medicine and such…”
O’Neill interrupted with a snort. “Bit like old-school colonialism, don’t you think ?”
The other man shrugged. “Hey, better than what the Snakes would do in our place,” the thought darkened both men’s faces until he added in a lighter tone “and I don’t know what the General thinks, but I know I’d love to sprawl on the sand with a Margarita in my hand !”
That perspective at least was appealing enough to bring a smile on both faces.


A week later

One thought blazed in O’Neill’s mind as he sat on the warm sand and surveyed his surroundings.
Damn, Carter looks good in a bikini.
That she did, lying on a beach towel (where she’d found one was a complete mystery, and its bland off-white color gave no clue to its provenance) and shielded from the ferocious local sun by a lush palm tree jutting out obliquely from the ground behind her. Nothing but the distant sound of breaking waves and the rustle of leaves, and the officers’ privacy sheltered by the small cove’s isolation from the base camp. It would have been easy to forget they weren’t on Earth - save for the personal weapons and hand held radio kept at arm’s length just in case the local fauna wasn’t as harmless as it appeared. That, and the low-profile alarm perimeter dropped by the Marines.
Naturally, her being herself there was a perscomp laying around as well as a spilled stack of printouts, kept from fluttering away by a hand-sized seashell that made a perfect improvised paperweight.
“Hi Jack,” her eyes followed him, her face turning fractionally sideways “finally decided to take some time off ?”
“Yes I did, Ma’am” he glanced at her, trying not to ogle. The blue bikini was far from indecent - well, he corrected, it wasn’t compared to what the Drakas wore at the beach, when they bothered to wear something and that, only when they were vacationing out of the Domination - but it still exposed some decidedly delightful curves.
She flipped some sand in his direction. “Drop the Ma’am, it makes me feel old, seriously. We’re both off duty, on a tropical beach to boot. Keep the formality for another time, will you ? You can call me Sam.”
“Okay…” he trailed, not entirely resolved to call her by her name - somehow he felt that it would be too much familiarity at the moment. He shook his head. He couldn’t deny that Carter was attractive - but she was also a superior officer (even if her grade was the consequence of her being a high-level scientist instead of combat experience), and there was the overall context they were in, all of them.

The discovery of Marae Nui - as the natives called their place - had boosted the population’s morale back on Freedom Station. The new world being a close approximation of the stereotypical island paradise, complete with friendly - or at least non-threatening - inhabitants whose ancestry clearly pointed back to Earth, was an additional positive factor.
And the gods they spoke of were another interesting mystery - whoever they were, they used the stargate as well which marked them as fellow technology users. Maybe, the speculation ran, these beings were related to the enigmatic power which had brought the New America to an unexpected destination ? In any case, the natives’ memory didn’t seem to paint them as particularly nasty - more for lack of actual memories than anything else. The “gods”, whoever they were, didn’t seem to take a close interest towards the tribes scattered across the archipelagoes surrounding this island. At any rate the expedition had found no sign of advanced technology, save the stargate itself.
Yet the weight of the Exodus and memories of the lost ones still burdened hearts and minds. And long term survival was not assured for the fugitives, not yet and it rested far too much on alien, barely readable technology for comfort.
Major Jack O’Neill didn’t exactly feel like flirting, yet. Still, there was nothing wrong with enjoying Sam’s company, and the warm sand.

“Actually” he said slowly “I’m surprised you took some time off.”
“Mmmm, the General told me.”
“Again.”
She made a little horizontal shrug. “To be frank, that’s the kind of order I don’t really mind following, even if I feel a bit guilty about it.”
Her companion chuckled. “Hah. Don’t.” He then added in a slow, thoughtful tone “Don’t feel guilty about good times. You never know…” the end of his sentence hung in the air for her to complete its bitter-sweet meaning. She did so, in her mind. You never know when they end. So true.

“Anyway” O’Neill resumed a minute later. “We’re gonna have a fish roast tonight.” His announcement was greeted with a raised brow.
“Really ? Sounds fantastic. Fresh food… not freeze-dried rations… you’re serious ?”
“Like a heart attack. Caught by our new friends. Good thing, I had to order the jarheads not to do any grenade fishing earlier today.”
“Knowing them, they’re probably trying to devise a way to get around that order” Carter observed after she finished laughing.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
Another minute went by with both officers content to merely lie down and watch the sea.
“You know, there’s a hundred thousand people who’d love to be in our place.” O’Neill spoke again.
“Uh uh. The Council’s been thinking about it” the informal government of the colony, namely Frederick Lefarge and his closest civilian and military advisors, most of them the heads of their respective departments, of which Carter herself was a junior member of sorts. “In principle, we’ll set a rotation, everyone will have a scheduled vacation time here -”
“-Won’t amount to much”. Too many of us for this tiny outpost.
“No” she resumed “at least not in the foreseeable future. Hence why we’ll make it a reward as well.”
“Oh ? Reward for what ?”
“Well… it’s not set in stone. It’s probably going to come down to what the council feels deserves it. There’s a consensus on one thing, though.”
“What ?” O’Neill turned a curious eye towards her.
“They want to reward pregnant women. As they say, Samothrace needs babies. There were some objections that we aren’t sure yet how many mouths we can feed, but the General himself favors a natalist policy.”
“Makes sense. Our colony won’t be viable otherwise.” He didn’t add and we’ll probably need more soldiers one day if we take the fight back to the Snakes.

“It’s going to be…” she paused, looking for words “weird, for some, many adults in the crew were already parents and, they… lost, left, children, on Earth” she finished hesitantly, unsure of her companion’s past history and feelings.
“Have you ?” he asked in response, not altogether brusquely, but there was a faint edge in his voice.
She waited a few seconds before answering.
“No” She stared at the distant horizon. “I guess my studies, and then my research didn’t left me time to marry and have kids. The stereotypical self-absorbed scientist” she finished with a self-deprecating chuckle. There was an old pain there, unsaid, O’Neill detected, echoing his own but for a different reason.
“Hey, you’re still young. Who knows ?” he remarked lightly.
“Thanks, but I’m still neck-deep in work - present time excepted. And kids need a father anyway.”
“Yeah… well, sure, that’s a required ingredient, yes.” the Major managed to say before discreetly clearing his throat and mentally strangling the little voice screaming Give that woman your sperm, do it now, you moron !
He scratched his chin instead, then stared blankly at the birds doing circles in the distance to distract his brain. He didn’t know if seconds or minutes had passed when Carter’s voice interrupted his trance.

“What about you ? Did you have a family…” she stopped and gave herself a slap in the face. “I’m sorry” she added quickly as his face hardened “that was stupid of me. Didn’t want to bring bad memories…” she trailed, unwanting to continue and dig herself deeper.
She peered at his face, looking for signs of anger, inwardly cursing her lack of sensitivity. He stared down, and made a deep sigh, his fingers idly sifting the fine sand.
“No” he spoke at last “don’t blame yourself. We all have… issues, I guess.”
He paused for a handful of heartbeats before going again, his voice level, neutral, almost clinical, marking every period between phrases “I was married. We were young, I had just signed into the Army. First years were all right. Not alway easy, being in the military tends to do that for you… Had a baby, a boy. Name was Charlie.” A longer pause. “To cut things short, the marriage went seriously downhill after I joined the OSS. Can’t really blame Sara for that, too, I was never there for the next four years before she asked to divorce and took our son with her to Boston.”
“I’m sorry.” Carter’s expression was sadder than his stoic face. She didn’t want to ask what happened, but the question got an answer nonetheless.
“Eventually Charlie grew up and decided he wanted to be a designer… a fashion designer, would you believe that.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, nothing wrong with that. I wasn’t pissed that he didn’t go career after his service, not after my own family experience, you see. No, I didn’t mind that.” There was another pregnant pause, as if he was unsure whether to confide the rest. With a flash of feminine intuition, his confidante thought she understood.
“You mean… was he…” she didn’t dare say the word.
“He wasn’t into women, yes.” Others would have said it more crudely. Faggot. Queer. Cocksucker. Had it not been his own son, he’d have used those words too.
“I’m sorry” Carter repeated with genuine commiseration. Having an homosexual child in the Alliance’s generally conservative society was a source of shame and disappointment even for the most liberal-minded parents. Homosexuals were something immoral, perverse, unnatural - something only the Snakes didn’t mind, irredeemably depraved and corrupt as they were themselves.
“Anyway, that’s all past. He went to London to study art and design and he was there when the war started.” O’Neill said with finality. There was no way Charlie could have survived London’s nuclear pyre. But still, despite whatever disappointment he might have had with his only son’s choices Jack still felt pain and regret above all. Whatever sins Charlie had committed didn’t warrant what the Snakes had done to him and to everyone else. For that too the Snakes would pay one day, and that hard kernel of hate fueled the cold fire and determination at the Major’s heart.

He almost jumped when Sam’s fingers touched his side, just a short instant before she pulled her hand back, feeling the brief physical contact was enough, that anything more would be improper even if her instincts told her to hug him and murmur soothing words.
Short as it was the gesture of comfort wasn’t lost, breaking the man’s uncharacteristic lapse in melancholy.
“Thanks… Sam.” He smiled at her, and she smiled in return.


Unknown to all on Mara Nui yet, a threat was looming above the planet’s surface. The Samothracians thought they hadn’t detected any sign of advanced technology - but the cloaked Goa’uld surveillance satellite in geostationary orbit above the stargate had not missed the high-energy signatures of several wormhole connexions in a narrow timeframe.
Mara Nui wasn’t a high-value world - it didn’t contain any easy-to-mine naquadah or trinium, its population was small and scattered. But it still belonged to Baal’s domains, and System Lords did not, as a rule, tolerate trespassers.
Low priority as the island planet might be, an Al’Kesh squadron was dispatched from the nearest Garrison World with orders to investigate and capture whoever had dared challenge Lord Baal’s dominion.

[iborg]

Update. O'Neill spends some quality time with Carter - well not really Carter.




Now


“Well hello, handsome”
Major O’Neill flinched as Carter’s fingers touched the side of his head and ran through his hair playfully. A mishievous smile was on her face, a face that was younger than before, and that was just one of those details that kept him very conscious of the act that the women standing seductively before him wasn’t truly Samantha Carter. Yes, it was her body, but the will animating it wasn’t her. It was the mind of a cruel puppeteer who took pleasure in subjecting others to slavery - worse, imprisoned them inside their own bodies. As if to reinforce that reality, her blue eyes shone a malignant golden glow and her voice turned into the deep, distorted one of the Goa’uld.
“Why are you trying to pull away, Major” it smirked, running its fingers down his cheek. Perfectly manicured nails raised goosebumps as they traced a line downwards from his chest to his hip. He shivered again, unsure whether it was from horror or something else. He couldn’t keep his eyes from staring at her form, couldn’t deny the lust he felt even though his conscious mind forced it down. The “goddess” Kheshmet obviously didn’t believe in body modesty and appeared determined to flaunt the perfection of her host with as little compunction as a common Draka bitch. The clothes she wore didn’t even deserve the name - they were more like extended jewellery and did more to display her skin than conceal it. Likewise the heavy makeup made her look like a prettied up whore - an expensive one for sure, but a whore nonetheless.
“I can see that you’re attracted to this human” the unearthly voice went on, “and I know for sure that she was attracted to you as well” a mirthful laugh was the only exterior sign of the mental exchange going inside the hijacked brain, where a furious Samantha Carter was - figuratively - going red at Kheshmet’s revealation of her deepest thoughts and desires only for her impotent rage to augment the symbiote’s sadistic glee.
O’Neill could only listen, torn between satisfaction at receiving confirmation of a suspected mutual attraction, and outrage at the circumstances of the revelation. He couldn’t hide anything of his state either, bound on the familiar tipping frame and entirely naked save the Goa’uld mind-altering device on his temple. Except this time, the device didn’t have to overcome his natural aversion to same-sex partners and merely unleashed longings that were, at their core, entirely natural.

Kheshmet stepped forward, bringing the tip of her nipples in contact with O’Neill’s glistening torso through the thin strands of silver making up her cascading necklace, and rose on her feet to bring her face level with the helpless man’s. She stared in his eyes for a second, a thin smile of awareness and expectation on her lips, and watched his reaction close-by when her right hand went for his erection. She didn’t miss the twitch and the sudden exhalation of breath, but she also read the still-present defiance in the steely-grey eyes. Even now, even through his undeniable arousal, the mind of the Major was fighting the struggle against his body’s instincts.
She began to stroke his flesh slowly, rubbing along the fleshy shaft from tip to base and curling fingers to caress the balls hanging tight underneath. Her other hand found a grip on his buttocks and lower back, massaging the skin and muscle in synchronization with the other hand’s movements ; and she brought her face closer again to lick at his right ear, sending shivers of pure pleasure down the Major’s nerves.
“This is what Samantha Carter dreamed of doing to you” the Goa’uld whispered. “She can feel everything I do with her body…” a small laugh “such a shame your people’s silly morals prevented you from acting on those desires… maybe you both should take it as a favor I’m doing you…”
“You… goddamn… freak !” O’Neill managed to blurt out, and Kheshmet paused. She brought her head back with a supple movement and they stared again eye to eye, the man panting, the female body tensed in frozen motion.

Her eyes flashed again, and then she batted her lashes at him in a parody of seduction.
“Really, Jack” it was Carter’s natural voice speaking lasciviously, “I know you want me and I want you too” her right hand gave a single jerk in support of her statement “why don’t we just drop the pretense ? Kheshmet is right, you know… I really wanted you to fuck me, right there and then on that beach, the second day” she smiled wistfully “and it would probably have happened if the Jaffas hadn’t attacked at the time they did. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful ?” Her smile took on a more present mood. “We can make up for that lost time, thankfully !” She looked at her prospective lover happily, as if expecting an answer.
Which came with -still- stubborn resistance.
“I know you’re not Sam, stop trying to fool me you fucking snake !” he practically spat at her.
Kheshmet feigned a disappointed moue at the response, then tilted her head back to let out a short crystalline laugh.
“Oh Jack, really” her mouth eventually spoke again as her head made a disbelieving, denegating gesture “I am so disappointed by your attitude ! Here I am doing everything to please you… and this is how you thank me ?”
Her blue eyes hardened suddenly as another smile appeared on her lips, one tinged with sadism and viciousness. O’Neill gasped in shock and surprise an instant later, as Kheshmet closed in again, her face an inch from his, erect nipples rubbing on his chest, one hand squeezed between their two bodies as it continued to clasp his hard-on. It was the other hand that drew the surprised gasp though, by inserting an extended middle finger straight up inside the man’s rectal passage.
“Now Major” the Goa’uld voice came back “you should be thankful I’m hosted inside this perfectly fine female body” it susurrated sweetly “I have been too long out of a host, and my kind enjoys the pleasures offered by your species’ reproductive functions greatly indeed. So I will take pleasure as it suits me and you will provide it to me just as this very host body provides me with the carnal envelope to receive it” Kheshmet hammered the fact into O’Neill’s ear.

Realization that he was effectively a body-snatching, power-hungry alien’s sex toy did little to calm the officer’s inner outrage. But the mind-altering disk was still active on his temple and overriding his conscious mental barriers - the artificial state of arousal even made him crave the sudden anal penetration by Carter’s finger. He felt his rectal muscles clench hungrily around the fleshy plug, just like his penis quavered inside her grasp.
“You are only fit to serve us in any case” Kheshmet concluded “and serve you will, whether you truly want it or not !”
Any protestation from the man’s part was stamped out before it could be worded, when Samantha Carter’s commandeered lips parted and covered his own in a hungry kiss, and the sudden terror O’Neill felt as the thought of Kheshmet - in his true form - invading his mouth was the last conscious, independant thought he had, for her hand came up to press on the shiny silver disk on his temple. A mental command, transmitting through the naquadah lacing her bloodstream, dialed the device’s effect up to the maximum, and the Major’s normal thought process was blanked out by a rushing tsunami of pure, undistilled lust.

The hours that followed did satiate Kheshmet’s cravings, and the ecstasy shared with an unwilling Samantha Carter and a willing, if artificially so, Jack O’Neill. Not that he truly experienced them as his unshackled, automaton body merged with the possessed female’s, the whole moment passing as if through a drugged haze until it was all over and Kheshmet returned him control of his own flesh.
Alone in his cell again, covered in a sheen of cold sweat and feeling as if all the vigor had been drained from his body - which wasn’t far from the truth indeed - the Major was left with a perfect recollection of his involuntary deeds.
Only then did he grab his hair and scream, for Kheshmet’s parting words had left no doubt to her intentions and he thought he heard her malicious laughter, long after she had left the cell.
“Do not despair, Major. Soon the rest of your people will join you in captivity !”

[iborg]

And Chapter 3 begins.


Chapter 3

Home Invasion


To say that General Lefarge was worried sick would have been the euphemism of the century. There had been no news from Mara Nui and the thirty-five missing crew for days after the lone confirmed survivor had managed to gate back. And the escaped planetologist’s tale was a dark one.
It had all began well enough. A tropical island, friendly natives, great beaches and no hazardous fauna. Some edible plants, an abundance of fish, and hints of more land available for use in the vicinity. Major O’Neill had given his own go-ahead for an increased presence, and nobody could have guessed otherwise. In any case, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to let the crew breathe some fresh, non-canned air and walk on something else than metal floors or the still barren ground of the Dome, where experimental planting of various Earth essences was just starting to yield results.
Then the sky had fallen on everyone’s head.
As far as the escaped scientist could tell, it began with an incoming wormhole, and a routine warning on the general net. It was an unscheduled activation, he remembered thinking, but nothing to get particularly antsy about. He went about his task of taking magnetic readings on a remote hill without even a Marine escort. After all, he had a gun and knew how to use it, a locator beacon and a communicator. He wasn’t taking much of a risk going around on his own and he did relish the opportunity to spend some time alone, just with himself, and gobble some of the edible berries that grew on some local trees (and were verified as edible indeed, he wasn’t reckless).

His unwary state of mind was shattered seconds later when shouts and the sound of weapon fire burst from his communicator, immediately followed by a general red alert broadcast.
And he didn’t have time to ask questions. There was a sudden burst of static, then silence from the Gate detachment, broken a moment later with a cacophony of yelled “what’s happening ?” and “we’re under attack !” and all the in-between variations thereof.
Spurred by the sudden urgency, he climbed the rest of the way to the top of the hill and then crawled up the topmost tree, remembering techniques he’d put to good use during his childhood.
From this improvised vantage point he had an unobstructed, if distant view on the stargate, big as a hairpin, and even smaller dots were moving out of it. He couldn’t see the native village nor the Samothracian settlement, but his heart skipped a beat when his eyes glimpsed dark dots in the sky, diving from above and resolving into fat wedges of gunmetal grey. Space ships sweeping from orbit, had to be.
The two shapes pulled out of their dive above the sea and came straight towards the land. No, towards the settlements.
He froze, squinting and damning himself for not bringing binoculars.

He didn’t realize his jaw dropping nor his eyes widening in pure shock, nor even his heart skipping a beat. His brain couldn’t do anything but stare, as the flying vessels curved over the distant shores and each dropped a sun-bright projectile. They seemed to arc down lazily - it was an illusion due to distance, the scientist knew - and struck outside his field of vision. But even though he couldn’t see the impacts themselves, the muted flash was clear enough. And then any lingering doubt as to the nature of the things vanished when two fireballs erupted from beyond the ridgeline and grew into sizable mushroom clouds, followed seconds later by the loud rumble of artificial thunder.
Sub-kiloton blasts, his analytic mind told him automatically. Equivalent yield to a fuel-air bomb. Lethal radius of several hundred meters.
His colleagues, and the natives, were dead, he realized. Someone had come from outer space… to kill them, without any warning, without asking any questions. Who could do that ?
He felt a sudden moment of panic and terror. Was it the Draka ? Had they found them… and sent starships thousands of light-years from Earth ? How could it even be possible ? He shook his head, it was preposterous. There was no way the Snakes could build faster-than-light ships… was there ? And if they were here… only a horrible fate awaited him and any survivor. Slavery, at best. The Turk, at worst. He had to get out, had to warn Freedom Station.

He powered down all his equipment, hid the scientific instruments under branches and leaves. He couldn’t see very well what the mysterious attackers were doing, and didn’t dare call on the radio net. Whatever happened around the burnt ruins of the settlements, he didn’t see. He waited two days before he dared make his way, as cautiously as he could, towards the stargate. By that time, the Jaffas had left with the only survivors - though he couldn’t know that. The bodies of the Marines were nowhere to be seen, but there were clear signs of fighting around the stargate. Burns and bullet impacts. The burns he attributed to enemy weaponry.
He spent another two hour lying on his stomach close to the treeline, watching and listening intently. There was nothing but the rustle of leaves and the occasional insect noise. Eventually, in the deepest black of the night he leopard-crawled to the dialing pod, gun ready in his hand, and gingerly pressed the combination for Samothrace, only powering his communicator to make a quick emergency call prior to entering the outgoing wormhole.

Back to Freedom Station’s relative safety he was immediately debriefed by no less than the General himself, and a dark veil of fear had descended upon them all.
The guard was reinforced in the gate room, and owing do the reported space ship threat as many of the New America’s auxiliaries were moored inside Freedom Station, where they would be better protected. Those engaged in the exploration of Samothrace System were ordered to find a quiet place and go dark, as to the mothership orbiting opposite the station, there was no easy way to hide it but the sheer power of its main drive could be wielded as an improvised weapon if necessary, in addition to its main energy and railgun batteries.
Days passed in anxious anticipation of an attack, one the colonists weren’t certain they could fight effectively. There were indications of defensive systems on the station, but so far every attempt at accessing their controls had proven useless, as if they needed a special access key to be unlocked. Which the Earthers felt was certainly a reasonable precaution, but in their current state of trepidation was frustrating to say the least.

And the fate of the missing seemed much too clear. A hovercam was sent to recon the area during daytime and had transmitted pictures of two scorched craters surrounded by still-smoking debris and a ring of flattened, blackened vegetation. A few carbonized human remains in the periphery of the blast zone were all that was left of the natives and crewmen on detachment.
The probe’s mission was the cut short by a stream of bright golden bolts bracketing its flight path from behind, and quickly found their mark destroying the little robotic observer and making the human operator jump on his seat.
After that, no further gate travel happened out of security considerations, against the voices who called for continued exploration - if only to find a safe world to flee on in case Samothrace was found by its faceless enemies.

The wait finally ended, and at first it sounded like a happy end.


March 17th, 2011
Freedom Station, Samothrace System


It was an excited, almost to the point of stuttering, voice who woke up General Lefarge on a bright thursday morning. Of course, it was thrusday morning only so much as the colonists had kept Earth time inside the station, for the artificial environment allowed them to adjust the local day and night cycle to their taste. At least as long as they stayed inside the walls.
The sleepy man groaned at the insistent beeping coming from his bedroom’s intercom panel, rubbed his grit-encrusted eyes, yawned twice, after which his trained organism remembered the routine of waking up before the expected time honed by years of military service, and then ran through the process of leaving the bed without waking up the wife, a procedure honed by years of marriage, idly reflecting on the fact that insistent machine beeping didn’t wake her up, but rocking the mattress lightly would inevitably do so. Something that still didn’t fail to awe him even after years of marriage, too. Maybe, he thought, because everytime he did manage to silence the nagging noise before thirty seconds had elapsed.

“Yes” he half-yawned. He was careful to keep it to audio only. No need for underlings to see him in his just-out-of-bed state.
“General this is Ensign Powell in the gate room we have a situation !” a voice tinged with excitement and apprehension blurted through the speaker without so much as a pause.
Mention of the stargate brought Lefarge to full awareness, and his body stiffened perceptibly.
“Speak out, Ensign” he aswered flatly.
“We have an incoming wormhole Sir… and Sir, we’re getting a transmission. It’s Colonel Carter Sir, she’s alive !”
“What ? What kind of transmission ? Did you codecheck her ?” They couldn’t just assume her identity.
“Affirmative Sir, both recognition words and transmitted datakeys are authentic. We already checked them.”
“Is the cork on ?”
“Shield’s active Sir. Nothing’s coming in until we drop it, only on your order Sir.”
The General deliberated in his head. The guards had followed the procedure, and apparently whoever called had the right recognition codes… but those could conceivably be faked or obtained through torture.
“Can you put her through ?” he enquired a moment later.
“Yes Sir, just an instant.” The Ensign’s voice faded. A short moment later, another came back, not as clear as the first one and heavily filtered by the radio.
“...eneral, it’s me, Carter !”

The man’s brow furrowed. Despite the leap of hope spurred by the lost woman’s voice, there were many interrogations raised and rattling inside his mind.

“Colonel” he addressed the disembodied voice formally “what’s my favorite cake ?” The real Samantha Carter would know that, but it was highly unlikely a foreign interrogator would have questioned her on it.
There was a short, pregnant pause, then “It’s lemon cheesecake Sir” came back as tartly as the cake’s main ingredient.
The brow furrowed even deeper, then the man’s expression relaxed completely, having reached a conclusion. He leaned closer to the com panel.
“Colonel, what’s your status ?”
“I’ve escaped capture after the alien attack, laying low and not transmitting. There are still those alien soldiers patrolling the island, but less than before-”
“Alien soldiers ?” Lefarge cut in.
“Alien, although they look human, using energy weapons. Listen Sir, I don’t think I’ve got much time, I just killed two of them guarding the stargate, I can’t believe the rest will be long finding me out - you have to let me in !” she finished with pressing urgency.
There was a struggle inside Frederick Lefarge’s head. Her story rang true - or at least paralleled the other escapee’s. And if she was on the run, she couldn’t afford to linger on the spot. On the other hand, she might unwittingly lead those aggressors here, or she could be carrying a bioweapon unknowingly, who could be sure ?
“Colonel, we’re going to come to you. Disengage the gate and a Marine squad will -”
He was cut off in turn, but this time Carter’s expression was frantic and underlined with genuine, immediate fear. “I can’t Sir- they’re coming for me, I hear them ! I have to leave now General ! Now please I’m begging you !” she finished on the verge of hysteria.
The man in charge of the colony’s destinies muttered a strong curse under his breath. He hated that, hated the situation, hated having to take such a crucial decision on such immediate notice when there were so many variables left in the shadow.

“All right” he exhaled, “Ensign Powell, uncork the gate and let Colonel Carter in under full biological containment. I’ll meet her at the medbay. Understood ?”
“Affirmative, proceeding now General.”
Down in the gate room the Ensign activated the switch that powered off the translucent force field blocking off the event horizon and signalled the stranded Colonel to come through. At the same time, the waiting party of Marines and servicemen unpacked a portable containment gurney, the clear tough memory plastic inflating to form a sealed bubble ready to transport the incoming person without risk of contamination. The room itself was isolated from the rest of the station’s life support system and would be sprayed with a powerful antiseptic afterwards. Naturally, the personnel involved were all wearing CB gear themselves.
The whole procedure had been formalized by the colony’s authorities as soon as personal travel through the stargate was confirmed as possible. There was no telling what kind of diseases could lurk outworlds, after all and if one danger hung loudly in the Samothracians’ minds, it was the biological risk.
Unfortunately, their notion of “biological risk” eventually proved a little bit too restricted.

Samantha Carter’s rematerialization out of the wormhole’s end yielded a collective reaction of surprise from the welcoming party indeed. First, she walked out confidently and almost unhurriedly, belying the past urgency of her calls. Then, there was her appearance and a few O-shaped mouths greeted her youthful, glowing physique - no longer the unassuming, if attractive mousy scientist, she carried herself with the poise and erect -haughty, really- stance of a queen, head arrogantly tilted back and seemingly looking down on the men arrayed in front of her, frozen in their tracks as her changed appearance registered. The blonde hair were no longer short, regulation length and carried in a practical, simple straight cut. Instead elaborately braided curls adorned her head like thin chains of gold forming spiralling motifs on her temples, and disappeared under a glittering tiara of ruby-encrusted platinum that was as much a jewel as it was a functional piece of technology like most Goa’uld worn items.
An Egyptian-style application of black khôl made her eyes look larger and wider, shadowed by darkly delineated eyebrows, almost hieratic in shape, and luxurious lashes fanning from contemptuous eyelids in perfect coordination with the tight-lipped, sneering mouth painted in dark, purple-red plum.
Further down were even greater changes. Gone was the Alliance field uniform. Perhaps for the better (in the watching male eyes) it was replaced with a tight body-hugging suit of blood-red, vinyl-like material, smooth and thin enough to hide nothing of the curves beneath it just like a zero-gee tightsuit would, except those were worn underneath another layer of cloth. The Goa’uld garment, on the other hand, seemed to flaunt every little bump, cleft and cranny in a way that was more obscene even than complete nudity.
It disappeared at the neck under a golden, platinum encrusted collar composed of flat interlocking plates fanning over the top of her chest and just barely covering the tip of her breasts. A single, gently glowing ruby-like oval crystal was adorning the central set of plates right under her throat, the concealed emitter for the personal shield she had activated immediately after she set foot on the station.
Braces of a similar construction adorned her forearms, sporting rounded crystalline protrusions that were a copy of Kull blasters, and both hands were girdled in trinium-weave gauntlets containing the kinetic pulse emitter and torture device combination usually disguised as hand jewels among the System Lords.
An articulated golden belt hung asymmetrically from her waist, the lower right side bearing the coiled zat’niktel hugging her thigh. A pair of shock grenades was clipped over the left hip, ready to use.

She stopped a few steps away from the stargate in a lanky, hand on her hip pose, swept the room with an arrogant gaze, and flashed her eyes at the group of gasmasked men before her.
Kheshmet spoke.
“In the name of Lord Baal, I, Kheshmet claim this station and the lives of its inhabitants. Bow before me, or feel the wrath of the Living Gods !”
There was a collective “what the fuck” moment, ending with a flurry of raised rifles and the zipping air sound of the shield rushing back to plug the wormhole.
Faced with half a dozen automatic rifles pointed at her, Kheshmet answered with a crooked smile.
“I take this as a no, then. Good” she added coolly “I will take pleasure in washing this station’s walls with the blood of your children !”

Half a dozen rifles began to spit high-velocity armor-piercing fragmentation bullets at her, and the protective forcefield surrounding her person flared into view as it blocked the incoming fire. The soldiers barely had time to think “fuck, what’s this ?” before return fire from Kheshmet’s blasters tore out smoking chunks from their bodies, ignoring the lightweight ballistic armor, and the following kinetic pulsewaves crashed the dying bodies like so many ragdolls on the far wall, along with the containment gurney which deflated with a bang upon hitting the unyielding surface at high speed.
Ensign Powell did his training proud and used the seconds bought by the death of his comrades well. His thumb jammed down on the red alarm button of his communicator, warning the rest of the station of the sudden attack. It was a redundant gesture, since the Control Center’s duty crew monitored everything in the room anyway and were already in the process of raising the general alarm, but he did his duty. It was a small comfort to the Ensign during the agonizing minutes it took him to die after a plasma bolt flash-boiled his intestines.
Of course, by the time he died from shock and blood loss the rapidly decompressing atmosphere would have killed him just as thoroughly by asphyxiation. His blurring sight still managed to catch the intruder in Carter’s body deactivate the gate’s shield and spare him a scornful, satisfied sneer, the last vision he would take into death.

Kheshmet didn’t linger on the quasi-orgasmic release of killing. The blocking forcefield down, she sent the signal for her shock Jaffas to follow and a few seconds later the first rank of armored, helmeted warriors stomped onto Freedom Station’s floor. More followed as the first ones took protective positions in front of the room’s shut doors, shortened staff weapons crackling, faceless under their extended trinium alloy headgear.
The shock armor, a derivative, improved version of Ra’s original Serpent Guard folding helmet, was less cumbersome than the oversized, unbalanced design that caused many a Jaffa of old to bump into low hanging ceilings, and easier to fight in. The collar-folded helmet was worn over a coarse trinium alloy mail and vacuum-rated undergarment that complemented its protective virtues, and the design’s underlying emphasis on sensible and functional extended to the shortened staff weapon. Easier to wield in close quarters, lighter and just as powerful, if was also linked to the helmet’s built-in sensor and targeting grid, allowing a quantum leap on Jaffa firing accuracy.
It was Baal’s answer to the introduction of Kull Warriors, Dragon Guards and similar, improved footsoldier design among the Goa’uld. It was still much cheaper than those overly refined designs, and also much less likely to be wielded effectively against its masters. An adequate compromise, the cunning System Lord felt, as long as the current madness lasted. He was already worried by the rumors of Kull armor falling into non-Goa’uld hands, something that, he was sure, would later bite them in their collective ass.
Which, in his assessment, made it even more crucial that he, and he alone, gained control of the literal treasure trove of technology that was a fully-functional Alteran installation. With such a mythical, never before encountered windfall of first-hand Founder tech, he might even be able to match Anubis’ new designs and take the place of Supreme System Lord. And damn Ra, if the old bastard was even still alive somewhere. His shadow had kept them fretful for far too long already.

Baal -at least the Baal who had dealt with the two humans- would have preferred to put one of the other clones inside the human female’s body, but Kheshmet was the next best one and was immediately available. And as a mitigating factor, the Jaffas under her command were fanatically loyal to his person and his person alone.
That, and he was personally leading a Ha’tak battleship to the target system in full agreement with the rest of the Baal collective. The Divine Fist of Unity was a top of the line vessel, able to match an Anubis mothership in raw firepower thanks to its oversized naquadah reactor. It should be overkill against the primitive human ships, since they didn’t have control of the station’s own weapon systems as the female’s mind had revealed.


Inside Freedom Station a pandemonium was beginning to take shape even as internal sensors showed the flood of Jaffas to helpless operators manning the Control Center. They’d watched in dismay the... thing looking like a slutty, Draka-ish Carter with glowy eyes and unnaturally deep voice tear open an access panel and reverse the local life support settings, canceling the forced decompression. Eventually she had even managed to cut off their access to the local sensors, leaving them in the dark as to the invaders’ dispotitions - and then reports had started to trickle in from panicked, fleeing crewmembers in the surrounding sections.
Armed response teams were organizing and moving towards the infestation as General Lefarge practically ran through the station’s passages towards the Center, communicating constantly with the duty controllers, and the thousands of civilians in the habitats were woken abruptly by the stern, dreaded alert message.
“Attention all military and civilian personnel, the station is under attack, report to your predesignated post at once, repeat, the station is under attack, report to your predesignated post at once !”

The warning echoed along Freedom Station’s corridors, habitats, passageways and maglines, providing an eerie contrast to the otherwise perfectly normal succession of pleasant, serene sights displayed by the holowalls. Running footsteps brought a counterpoint around the vast bulk of the installation as a hundred thousand men, women and children rushed to reach their assigned place. Defensive positions for every adult male and teenager able to bear a weapon, the inner habitats for the mothers and children, where they would hopefully be safe during the coming battle inside hermetically sealed, closed-loop life support environments.
Down in a non-descript intersection, Khashmet walked slowly, a crooked, cruel smile on her lips and an exaggerated sway on her hips, feeling the rush of crushing inferiors under her heel. A quasi sexual thrill that made every nerve of her extended body tingle, her intimate flesh engorged in blood. A hundred thousand humans to enslave and terrorize, cowering before her, their feeble weapons useless against her might and prowess. She would let the Jaffas streaming forward on both sides of her die and kill and rape, above all die for her as was their condition. They’d always leave enough for her. Yes, she would gorge herself today.
Sweet thoughts on her mind, the bloodred woman strode onwards, helmet extended, shield bubble surrounding her, confident and invulnerable.
And deep inside the cold blue eyes the real Samantha Carter kept screaming.


________________

Quick notes. Kheshmet was able to override the station's local systems easily because :
1_ she knew what to expect thanks to Carter's memories.
2_ the station predates Destiny, and belongs to the generation of Ancient tech that provided the basis for the Goa'uld tech tree from bits and pieces left over (and something else, too, which will be a crucial plot point later). In SG:U the Lucians had those little door openers and their tech base is basically leftover Goa'uld.
3_ due to that, a Goa'uld like Kheshmet is much better able to work the station's systems, since they're iike the granddaddies of the stuff she routinely uses as a Goa'uld.

The invasion will leave lasting traces. I'm shaping the Samothracians (those who survive at least) to eventually become a collective of fucking psychos. Trigger-happy, nuke it first and don't question later if it looks even remotely harmful, psychos.
No more stupid virus for them

[KlavoHunter]

How the hell do you stop a Snake'd up Carter and her competent Jaffa shocktroops?

I suppose the privilege of viewing her glorious visage is compensation enough for being her slave...

[iborg]

Yup, you can fap to SexyCarter before she kills you. Messily.

But there's hope, even in the grim darkness of the - hem, well.



Baal’s domain -
Garrison World Maek’nash

There was nothing he could do. Nothing he hadn’t tried already. No exit from the cold cell, two by four meters of rutted stone barely covered by damp rotting straw, rough walls sweating wih humidity, a half-clogged hole in one corner overflowing with the stench of shit and piss, and no privacy afforded by the open iron grating that served as the cell’s fourth wall. The heavy lock looked crude, but it was brutally robust, and the pair of guards watching him permanently didn’t allow any attempt at the bolt. Nor did they answer any call. Stone faced, they stood on the other side of the barrier, backs on the far wall, their eyes following every movement he made, their hand never far from the coiled zat’niktel on their belt and willing to use it at the slightest provocation, as the captive had experienced several times before.
The watchmen didn’t even have to fear killing their charge. The sarcophagus upstairs saw to it. That too, O’Neill had experienced, an object lesson that trying to rush the guards when they opened the door could only end in painful failure. Twice.
He’d lost track of the time, of the days passed since the capture and the current time. Underground, the only light came from the torches and nothing marked the passage of hours and minutes, nothing but the change of guards at various intervals. He’d tried to count his own heartbeats, and came to the conclusion that the guard relief happened no sooner than two hours, sometimes four, or at least what seemed like it. Naturally, his watch along with everything he wore had been confiscated the first day, leaving him naked and shivering. The food wasn’t very filling, and tasted foul, which was expected in the setting, yet he forced himself to eat all, conserving his strength for… for what ? That was a question without an obvious answer. All he could find was, wait, bide his time, wait for an opportunity.

An opportunity to escape, as preposterous as it looked. Escaping from an unknown building into an unknown planet surrounded by unknown, presumably hostile, people ? Laughable, when he thought it over. But that hope was all he had. A tiny, feeble hope, almost crushed for good by Carter’s… transformation, hijacking. If that thing in her head had access to all her memories, there was a high chance that she would indeed fool Freedom Station into allowing her in… a Trojan horse par excellence. And this Kheshmet had indeed gloated about it, gloated about its plans to do exactly that, right before she, it, left him to rot back in that cell. Sneering in that obscene red suit, showing off the clingy material, parading her peeking nipples under his eyes, recalling their perverted deeds with vicious relish and promising more later, promising laughingly to come back covered in the blood of Samothracian children instead. Leaving him, and that laugh trailing her, the laugh of a demon on her way to hell.

He didn’t think more than a full day, 24 hours, had gone by since her departure. Her overlord, Baal hadn’t apparently bothered to come down and see the prisoner. And nobody else had since bar the guards and the old servant who brought the prison slop.
It was a surprise then, when the endless boring wait ended with a visit. O’Neill heard the sound of footsteps, not the rough-shod beat of the Jaffas, not the shuffling traipse of the servant, but steady subdued steps descending the stairs at the end of the corridor of cells and coming closer. Their source became visible an instant later, preceded by the dancing shadows the visitor projected on the far wall.
The Major’s eyes recognized the face in the lopsided flickering light. He’d seen the man before as he was being dragged through the corridors, some kind of flunky or paper-pusher from his looks and attitude. Clean-shaven, a youngish thirty-something appearance, otherwise unremarkable face, brown hair cut short, his suit following his master’s pattern, only less ostentatious, almost sober in dark burgundy. It was probably the Goa’uld society’s idea of a white-collar look, O’Neill had reflected. He remembered the man’s indifferent face as he was dragged by the Jaffas, as if it were a common enough occurrence, something you tended to notice but forgot immediately afterwards. Maybe he’d mentioned it to his colleagues at the alien coffee machine, nothing more.
Then what was the guy doing here in the dungeon ? Was he bored and looking at tormenting the captive for fun and giggles ?

The Major’s eyes perked up, catching the harsh-sounding words exchanged by the newcomer and his guards. He didn’t understand the words, and the Jaffas’ tone was desperately, monotonously, almost comically constant, an air of being preternaturally, angrily constipated.
He eyed the body language as the exchange developed. Office Guy seemed irritated, the Logo Heads seemed to be stonewalling a request, maybe they had orders not to let any flunky toy with the Master’s personal whipping boy ?
In any case the argument came to an end, the Jaffas having apparently told “no” as politely as it came to them, Office Guy making a frustrated face, shrugging, bringing his hands up in a “fuck this” gesture, and turning to leave.
O’Neill relaxed and slumped back against the wall. The interlude was over, who knew how long he’d wait for the next break in his boredom ?

What happened ten minutes later did break his half-doze. One moment the guards were standing, the only sounds those of the torches crackling faintly and the distant muffled squeak of rats, and then two detonations banged loudly in the confined space, in quick succession, his ears identifying them as gun reports immediately.
An assessment readily confirmed as both guards’ heads exploded outwards one after the other, spraying bloody chunks of brains on the wall.
His eyes went wide as the two brawny warriors collapsed down, trailing each a vertical line of blood on the stone. And then Office Guy reappeared, stepping quickly and silently into the prisoner’s field of vision, a gun - an Alliance gun - gripped in both hands, his expression focused, eyes darting and scanning.
O’Neill’s jaw dropped.

The newcomer kicked both dead bodies to make sure they didn’t move, then lowered the gun and faced the cell. And spoke hurriedly, in broken, accented English :
“You, there, with me, come !”
“What ?” was all the captive managed to say, duly flabbergasted by the turn of events.
“I free you, you come” Office Guy, who now looked a lot less like a paper-pusher, repeated.
“Who the hell are you ?” O’Neill shot back. Escape was a wonderful thing, but there was a million questions stampeding in his mind.
His would-be savior made an impatient gesture, shook his head, then took a step sideways and pointed the guy straight at the lock. He pressed the trigger a third time, and the shot rang again painfully inside the low ceilinged space. At least this time O’Neill had time to cover his ears. The heavy bullet smashed the lock and cracked the door open, and Office-Commando Guy kicked it clear before waving the cell’s occupant out.
“We need to hurry ! Now, come !” he called again, urgently, and O’Neill remarked that his liberator’s speech was improving, his accent thinning and the words flowing more freely. Rising up, he asked another question.
“How come you’re speaking my tongue ?”
“I had… aid, device, to learn” the other man explained, then resumed his urgent prodding, looking from side to side. “We really need to go now, those chemical slugthrowers of yours won’t trip the palace sensors as energy weapons would, but they’re loud ! Quick before someone comes to investigate !”
“Right, but… -” “I’ll answer your questions later, Major O’Neill, but first we need to leave this place ! Follow me now !”

He knows my name too ? the officer thought even as he crossed the space between his former slumping corner to the cell’s door. Seeing that his rescue was finally consenting to move, the mysterious rescuer turned and started up the corridor, gun extended.
They didn’t meet anyone climbing the revolving stairs, and out in the next dark passage, until the second intersection where the fugitives met another pair of Jaffas plodding towards them. The gun barked again twice, and O’Neill silently commended his rescuer’s aim. Of course, the Colt Hi-Power with holographic aimpoint was an easy pistol to shoot things with, but still, he doubted the alien had used one previously.
The palace seemed mercifully deserted and O’Neill commented about it after five more minutes going from corridor to empty rooms.
“Most of the garrison is out with Kheshmet” the alien explained matter of factly. “Attacking the rest of your people.”
Shit.
“Baal wants the technology you found, and that’s why I had to act” Office Commando added, perhaps sensing the ex-prisoner’s unease.
“Who are you then, some kind of spy ?” O’Neill called after the other’s back. A backwards glance, and “In a way. Keep quiet now”. The Earther shrugged. Here he was, trusting a complete stranger, and he was still naked too. At least the activity kept him from getting cold.
The stranger paused at the end of another hallway, and stuck his ear against a metal-reinforced wooden door. They were still under the ground level, but out of the crudest part of the maze-like stone palace. There was a stillness in the deserted rooms. It was night outside, the alien had mentioned, the rest of the people were sleeping, which made sense for an escape attempt.
After a dozen seconds he straightened up and pulled a heavy brass key from a pocket, which he used to unlock the door. It pivoted aside with barely a squeak and the sort-of-spy beckoned O’Neill to enter. It was a rectangular room, some kind of storage closet lined with wood shelves covered in shapes indistinct in the dim glow of the closest torch.

There was a faint click and reddish light spilled out of a ring on the alien man’s left hand, allowing the runaway captive to see. And his heart leapt in joy.
Strewn before his eyes were his battledress, neatly folded, his perscomp, rifle and ammunition. He felt like squealing in pleasure.
“Take that, put them on the bag here” Office Commando said, dousing out the moment of elation. “No time to waste, we need to leave the place fast !” He emphasized the fact by grabbing some of the gear and shoving it inside the sack, short-circuiting any protestation. They were both out half a minute later, and continued their trek upstairs where the sound of conversation drifted to their ears. Not Jaffa voices. Servants, from all appearances. And they were blocking their egress.
O’Neill watched his companion draw a narrow blade from his sleeve, and his eyes widened in realization. He wasn’t going to object, though, and merely stood there as the other man walked forward into the light, acting naturally until he was close to the pair of chatting servants, who stopped talking and straightened in expected obedience. Obviously Office Man was worthy of the underlings’ respect, the Major observed.
Unfortunately for them, they shouldn’t have stayed up late. There was a rapid, economical series of stabs delivered coldly and clinically. Both victims fell dead almost before they could realize their fate and the OSS agent silently commended the assasin’s technique, following him and sparing a detached glance at the bodies, who had an expression of surprise, more than pain, on their face.

Another minute and they reached the last door, which the spy-assassin opened carefully, cracking it first to peer out, then a little wider, just enough for passage. The exterior was dark and cold, with a frisk breeze that raised goosebumps on O’Neill’s unprotected skin, and a layer of snow seemed to deaden every sound. The door opened on a small elevated stairway in a corner of a vast interior courtyard, enclosed by tall crenellations, dark ribbons of stone that merged with the blackness of night, and the only light sources were two pinpricks of fire at the other end where a larger set of gates were currently closed.
There was no sign of sentries, possibly because none wanted to stay out in the freezing air, or perhaps because they were facing outwards, not inwards. In any case, O’Neill saw why his guide had led them here. Down in the courtyard laid three dark, sleek shapes, roughly pyramidal with flowing curves. Starships, he realized. Smaller than those who had attacked Mara Nui, but the parentage couldn’t be denied.
He followed his unlikely rescuer down the small stairs and jogged, half crouched, towards the closest ship.
“Not this one” Office Commando hissed, pointing away, “follow me !”
He’d apparently selected the second one for reasons O’Neill could only guess. A tap on a recessed panel on the sloping side of the dark grey craft, and a hatch opened, allowing them to leave the exposed surface of the courtyard. The door closed, cutting out the chill and the naked man began to rub his flanks vigorously, staring around. He was standing in an empty space, a cargo hold probably given the lack of furnishing - save for the gilded walls. Panels of hieroglyphs interrupted the starkness of the blue-grey alloy used on the hull, which gave the thing a preposterous aura. Hieroglyphs ? In a space ship ? Just another question to answer later, he shrugged.
In the meantime, his fellow escapee had disappeared forward, into what was obviously the cockpit of the ship. Passing through the partition, the Earther remarked a hole in the bulkhead where a small panel had been removed, and peeking closer he caught the glint of colored crystals, only it was blackened and dulled, giving the distinct impression of a blown circuit. It was more than he could determine anyway.

Interior lights came on as he entered the cockpit himself, and found his companion already seated in one of the two crew stations, tapping panels and bringing the ship’s system up. A soft hum signalled the engines coming to life, and a hologram sprung out in front of the pilot.
“Take a seat, we’re leaving” the other man said without looking.
The Major did so, eyes trying to take in all the sights, alien ship, glowy panels, cryptic indicators and all, and almost as soon as his bottom touched the seat’s soft surface the spacecraft lifted, doing so without so much as a vibration and only the very faintest feeling of acceleration.
They climbed over the palace’s obscured sprawl, then another flat hologram came up, displaying the tattooed head of a Jaffa who immediately proceeded to spout a stream of words that sounded very much like the equivalent of “Oi you, what do you think you’re doing ?”, followed by a flustered look at receiving a raised middle finger as reply, and then another stream of words ending in “… SHO’LVAH !”
It seemed to be the cue for O’Neill’s decidedly multi-talented neighbour to bring out a small device from his suit and press a crystalline stud. Any question the Major would have raised was rendered superfluous when the cockpit was illuminated by a brilliant flash coming from below, prompting him to look over the side window and see, far under and behind the fleeing craft, an expanding fireball right over the spot where the castle would have been. It was a good thing they were already far away, because it was a very big fireball.
Very unsurprisingly, the Jaffa’s head was also cut off.

Only then did the mysterious stranger turn his head and stare at him, with an “all right, now we can talk” kind of air. And O’Neill nearly jumped out of the seat when the man’s eyes flashed gold, and his normal, human voice give way to a deep, oddly distorted one.
“You must have many questions, Major O’Neill, but first” he smiled, a genuine, friendly, human smile, “my name is Selmak, and I’m not a Goa’uld.”

[[R_H]]

Office Commando

[iborg]

Sorry, not an update (yet) !
Instead, I've put to (virtual) paper the specs for a piece of hardware that's going to feature in the story's future. Let me know what you think, I wanted something that was a plausible evolutionary step and a mix of "hard" canon Drakaverse tech and "soft" SFverse tech.
I tried to check the numbers but I'm not an engineer, I mostly went with common sense (and SGverse magitech).


Tech Sheet
Mongoose class aerospace drone
Domination of the Draka
IOC : 2013


Role/History :

Designed as a mobile counter against Goa'uld Deathglider stingfighters and Alkesh assault bombers, the Mongoose is a stingship-sized, unmanned weapons platform. It is meant to be deployed either from fixed bases or larger ships. Its construction emphasizes acceleration and agility over protection, and uses a little strategic materials (such as trinium and energium) as possible.
Early design drafted jointly by Tesla Combine and Aerospace Force Technical Division following a 2011 War Directorate tender for a mass-produced, unmanned space-focused fighter using post-Contact technology to reach levels of performance previously thought impossible.
First prototype built in October 2012, followed in February 2013 by a training/evaluation batch of 30. Final acceptance and mass production began in July 2013.
Further improvements were made to its subsystems but the general shape and capabilities remained throughout its nearly 70 years of active service.
Replaced by the Mongoose II, beginning in 2057.


Appearance and size :

Length overall : 18m
Height (max) : 25m
Main body diameter, max : 7,2m
Mass, C version, basic combat load : 39t
Mass, C version, dry : 27t
Mass, C version, maximum combat load : 59t

The Mongoose's focus on space operations is reflected by its general shape. A fat, barrel-like main body contains from back to front : the main propulsion thruster, the cold fusion power module, central control logic and electronic bays, modular mission package bay. High-pressure hydrogen tanks are distributed around the core systems assemblies.
From the body, three wings extend and provide moment arm for the three maneuvering gravity-induction thruster assemblies. The wings, or foils, are equidistant and arranged in a Y pattern (when viewed from the front or back). Their lateral surfaces feature ceramic thermal dissipation strips while their leading edges sport active-array antennas for the L-band long-range radar system.
At each wing tip lies one of the three maneuvering thruster assemblies.

Construction is mainly carbon and matrixed carbon nanotube composites in order to lower weight and material costs. The frame is stressed for 25G of lateral acceleration and 40G of in-axis acceleration. Note : those are the felt acceleration values. Observed real-space acceleration can be higher in the main thrust axis.


Power and propulsion :

⁃ 1 x cold-fusion generator module, 60MW rated max continuous operating power.
⁃ 6 x distributed supercapacitor banks for energy storage and restitution.
⁃ 1 x plasma-ion reaction thruster for positive in-axis acceleration, maximum continuous thrust : 12G real at basic combat load, 400G observed after 120s limited by weight-and-inertia cancellation values.
⁃ 3 x gravity-induction maneuvering thrusters, reactionless
Small-scale mass-reduction and inertia-cancellation modules built into the main thruster assembly, drawing power from the engine itself. As such, the observed effects are limited to in-axis acceleration only. This system is directly copied and scaled-down from captured Goa'uld bombers. The reactionless maneuvering thrusters are based on Deathglider engines. On the larger and heavier Mongoose, they play a secondary, if crucial role, providing it with its extreme agility.

The cold fusion generator (a scaled copy of the power supply found in a stargate's dialing pedestal, the design itself provided by the Tollan) is used to trickle-charge the capacitor arrays during a mission. A Mongoose typically launches with a full charge (provided by its parent ship or facility) and draws peak power from it during combat or high acceleration.


Sensors :

Forward sector search, track and identification :
L-band and X-band active array search and imaging radar system, 6MW peak transmitted power. FoV : 160° forward cone.
2 x optronic search-and-track systems in the forward hemisphere covering visual and IR bands with integrated 60x zoom.
1 x LIDAR emitter for close range detection, ranging and identification

All-sector surveillance :
X-band and millimeter-wave spherical coverage for approach warning and threat avoidance.
6x distributed aperture infrared detection and warning, staring array imagers, 2 on each wingtip
Passive electromagnetic detection, tracking and classification in the radio/radar bands

All above systems light-speed limited

Passive subspace-skein sensory array, short-range - detection of an Al'kesh-sized hyper-window at 0.3 AU, hyper-wake vector tracking at 1LS
Subspace-based detection is instantaneous


Communication and data-transmission :

Tight-beam laser and radio transmitters/receivers. Omnidirectional subspace transmit-receive system.
Tactical datalink and squadron coordination on both systems.
C variant's laser armament can be pulsed for very long range data transmission.


Weapons :

C variant is the energy-armament fighter, armed with a 210 MJ Point-Defense Class advanced compact free-electron laser in the forward mission bay. Reduced in size (compared to the version mounted on new Shark-class System Defense Frigates and the projected Galaxy-class interstellar dreadnought) thanks to the removal of the homing head assembly, the laser can only fire in the main thrust axis, thus aiming involves pointing the whole craft at the enemy.
The 130 cm aperture laser can operate from IR to UV frequency bands, adapting the frequency used to the conditions (UV is the favored band for space combat, other bands can be used in atmospheric conditions).
Normal mode is pulsed where the laser's peak energy, equivalent to 50 kg of TNT is transmitted to the target in a femtosecond-scale pulse with highly destructive explosive results.
Instantaneous destruction of a Deathglider-class target can be achieved at ranges in excess of 30,000 km in space.
Rate of fire in pulse mode is one full-power shot per 4 seconds, a rate which can be sustained for a maximum of 3 minutes before the thermal dissipation system reaches its limit in typical cislunar space conditions.
Alternate mode is continuous, where the beam can be used to heat or cut through material.

3 x multipurpose hard-point/external weapon attachments on the hull (between the foils) can be used to carry
⁃ missile loads (up to 9 anti-fighter missiles in space superiority, or 3 SM-8 space combat missiles in heavy strike, configuration)
⁃ energy weapons such as plasma repeaters (Deathglider type)
⁃ kinetic energy weapons (3 cm railguns)

M variant : laser is replaced by a missile magazine containing 16 AF missiles launched at a rate of 1 every second.

P variant : heavy plasma launcher, Al'kesh type, suitable in the bombardment or anti-ship role

R variant : no primary armament, the mission bay instead is fitted with a powerful sensor/recon package and an improved subspace datalink.


Protection :

The Mongoose is not armored against energy and kinetic weaponry. It is equipped with a bubble-type energy shield which is meant to provide protection against space debris and improved aerodynamics during atmospheric flight. It is estimated that a Deathglider grade plasma repeater can overload the shield with 2 or 3 bolts in close succession. Of course, the problem for the Glider pilot is actually hitting an evading Mongoose.


Tactics :

The Mongoose is meant to be employed in swarms using datalink coordination. They can be deployed around a capital ship as an extended point defense and sensor shell, or to escort other drones and gunships, or to intercept enemy fighters and attack crafts.
Its control logic employs a mix of Earth and Goa'uld computing technology, with advanced expert programming acquired from the Tollan Empire. However, while extremely capable as a fighter thanks to its versatile armament and agility, the Mongoose has a relatively inflexible mind and is incapable of true creativity. It is a low order AI and far from any sentience, relying on its organic or high-order AI controllers to provide overall tactical guidance.


As of 2015, Sol System alone was able to produce up to 700 Mongoose frames per week.