NationStates Jolt Archive

Like a great mouth, the stargate swallowed Tahrqa up. A long line of others followed after him through the stony ring and the glowing puddle of unreal water filling it, herded by a number of helmeted soldiers jabbing out with sticks, known as rods of agony. Simply put, after he’d felt the business end of one of those the first time, he had no desire to feel it again.

Tahrqa came from the relatively unimportant backwater planet of Toshka. Several generations ago now, the natives had been told that they fell under the domain of a ‘god’ named Shafu, and after that, they had been absorbed into the domain of an unimaginably distant and remote overlord called Atum. It was told that Atum had created the universe, and many believed it, so awe inspiring was the size of his domain, hundreds of planets like his own, with millions of people on each one. It was hard to truly grasp the scale of the domains of Atum.

And so, after that, the planet of Toshka had largely been forgotten until now. Two months ago, Horus Guard, the feared emissaries of the great Lord himself had come through the circle of the gods, erected in the centre of the largest city of the verdant and peaceful world, if it could be called that, and demanded that word be sent to every village that the strongest men be sent to the capital, to go on a holy journey through the stargate.

Tahrqa hadn’t exactly been a volunteer, but eventually, pressure had become unbearable. After the first lacklustre showing, the Horus Guards had promised that the Lord would curse the harvest of the agri world with a terrible blight next year, and that earning his wroth was far worse than loosing a fraction of the most effective labourers. Less than a volunteer, Tahrqa had eventually chosen to go because of the endless stares and insults he got from those in the community when they saw him. Being blamed for starvation next year would be far from pleasant after all – going on this sacred journey couldn’t be worse, could it?

The camp where he and the other volunteers had been penned up while they waited for transport was an unpleasant tent-city, with tens of thousands gathered from all corners of the land crammed into a guarded stockade. He had thought to himself while he was there how little trust the jaffa – holy warriors – had in them if they needed to erect such defences to keep them in.

As he passed through the stargate and onto the other side, he threw up, the jarring sensation of travel when one wasn’t used to it was often known to cause such discomfort. He regretted sinking to his knees as he did so though, as fairly soon he was being kicked and forced to roll over to avoid being trampled as the rest of the ‘volunteers’ were herded through.

Standing, rubbing a bruise on his arm he looked around. What he saw took his breath away. The stargate was on a raised island in the fork of a river, connected to the three shores by great bridges of dressed stone, with turrets, in which there were dozens of bulbous ended weapons that resembled the plasma-staves carried by the jaffa warriors. Hundreds of such warriors milled around the stargate, a contingent soon taking charge of the new arrivals. A falcon headed guard shouted, his voice amplified by his all encompassing helm. “YOU WILL FOLLOW!” he demanded, turning and walking away down one of the bridges.
As they passed under the arch in the bridge of stone, wrought iron doors open wide, designed to be closed from above so that the bridge could be sealed off from attack form the gate… or even from the other side, they could see cages hanging from the towers. In these cages, the atrophied figures of men, either living or dead, it was difficult to tell, either from sight or smell, for none moved and all stank, hung, surrounded by great vultures from the desert plains.

The Horus Guard stopped. “See now!” he shouted, “the fate of those who do not serve the Lord!” Tahrqa looked up, and all doubt about the lack of holiness of this particular journey vanished. He said nothing as they trudged on once more.

The work was going on. The work.

It couldn’t really be called work, in Tahrqa’s opinion at least, it could only be called labour. This part of the facility was known as the Ironworks. For obvious reasons. The deep mines he was forced to labour in were designed for the getting of iron ore. Sophisticated mining means were considered a waste of effort by the jaffa overseers, and the labourers worked on with simple picks and shovels, excavating slowly.

Those who failed to meet up to expectations suffered. Every day there were punishments. He remembered them vividly. Those who had been selected for punishment the previous day were penned up in front of the marching herds of slaves as the shifts changed. Things were thrown, they were spat on. It amazed Tahrqa that the populace would turn on their own so very quickly. Finally, though, there came the real danger. The tyrannical chief overseer would step up to the pen, and invoke Atum’s wrath on the poor souls within.

A great lance of lightning would stab down from the heavens, and into the cage. Most survived and were turned loose, simply tossed into to roadway. Some died, and their corpses were burnt on the same hill on the evening shift, the awful smell reminding the slaves of the price of failure as surely as the humiliations of the morning.

Tahrqa shuddered at the memory of the punishments and hefted his pickaxe with fervour against the wall as one of the jaffa walked past in the gloom of the mine, his rod of anguish in hand. Selecting one of Tahrqa’s fellow workers, perhaps for lack of work, perhaps just to sate his malice, he jabbed the blunt butt of the device into the back of the man’s knee, and hitting the man over the head with a feral grunt.

Tahrqa tried even harder, raising the pick, smacking it into the wall and breathing the stale, due to the sheer numbers in this tunnel alone, air deeply. The overseer walked past, but he carried on for a few moments before stopping, panting heavily. Suddenly, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“You,” said the overseer, “you’re on carry detail.”

He bit back a reply, and tried to shy away as he felt the sharp jap of the Rod of Anguish’s business end. The overseer pressed a stud on the shaft, and Tahrqa collapsed, screaming – he didn’t know how, or why but a harsh yellow light shone from his mouth as he did – his muscles spasmed wildly and he collapsed to his knees. The pain seemed to be without end, carrying on for an eternity. He fell to one side, and the overseer kicked his abdomen, “clearly mining isn’t hard enough for you.”

Another kick, “now, get up and going meat,” he snapped, “or you’ll think that was pleasant.”

The camp administrators did not technically sanction the low wattle hut that passed for the local tavern, but they turned a blind eye to the illicit brewing and consumption of alcohol for one good reason. It kept the slaves quiet and placated.

What they didn’t know, or at least, they didn’t believe, is that such gatherings were also breeding grounds of dissent. Tahrqa watched in amazement as a man, bold as brass, spoke against the shameful conditions of the worker’s encampment, berating the walls that face inward and the guards that exercise their excessive brutality. His aching shoulders called him to agree with the speaker, but he shied away as the man, a bronze skinned fellow with more tattoos than sense, stated demanding something be done.

“Stop!” he said, pointing at Tahrqa, his actions and voice dynamic, “Brother! Do not leave!” Tahrqa stopped in his tracks, halted by the mesmerising voice of the man. “It is men like you we need!” he said.

“We all fear the goa’uld,” he said, “and what they can do. But that is no excuse to simply let them get away with their evil!” The orator stopped, “and that is the truth! No matter what you all have been told! No matter what you believe. The goa’uld are not gods. Their magic is nothing but trickery, their morals are nothing but evil, and their promises of afterlife are nought but lies!”

“I have been here almost a year! I have seen dozens of ships,” he pointed through the walls in the direction of the mothership assembly grounds, “leave here, and hundreds of thousands of slaves like us perish as their price in blood!

“I say no more! And I am not alone! I promise you, as surely as I am here tonight, there are a hundred cells led by men just like me ready to take up the call to arms! The call to fight the opressors!

“We just need more people like you to join us and we will be ready!”

The sound of heavy boots, that seemed to clank even in the work down and toughly trodden mud of the path outside could be heard, and Tahrqa felt an instant of panic. A patrol! If this zealot was still taking when they got into earshot they’d all be executed, probably in a particularly unpleasant manner. His mind flashed back to the blasphemers hanging in cages he had seen on his arrival. What had they done before they’d earned that fate? Likely less than this man, maybe less than he had in listening to the heretic.

He whirled, knowing that running into the street would likely get him shot by a suspicious jaffa. “You fool,” he hissed, “shut up!”

The orator smiled, counting the footsteps. Three others with him sprang up, and they pulled weapons from their clothes, one tipping the poorly made table, another availing himself of one of its legs in addition to a zat’ni’catel. There were only four other patrons in the small drinking den, and Tahrqa suddenly realised that they’d been expecting this all along.

He took the only course of action left to him, and ducked down out of sight behind a stockier table. The first of the jaffa entered, drawn by the commotion. He swept the room with his staff weapon but caught a lightning like blast from a repel gun to the middle of the chest, and sagged to the floor. The second through the door let fly with his staff and hit the table being used as cover, splintering it into a thousand burning fragments. A bolt from the side of the doorway, shot by the rebel with the table leg, took him down. He sagged, but his assilant also went down, a bolt from one of the other jaffa, outside, piercing the dark skinned man through the leg. Three more burly jaffa bustled into the room, and Tahrqa could see that this was all of them.

Their weapons fired wildly, here smashing apart a barrel of home brew in a cloud of steam and burning splinters, there taking another of the rebels down, this time with a shot to the head. They were upon the tattooed speaker in a minute, clubbing him with their staffs. Tahrqa was motivated more by self preservation than anything else.

They were going to kill him anyway, and it was surely better to die fighting than on one’s knees. The staff of the second jaffa had fallen near him, and he snatched it up, trying to figure out how the supposedly magical weapon worked while the others were ignoring him. He pushed a button on its side, and the front crackled.

Another button-push and a searing bolt of golden plasma blasted across the room, igniting a poorly woven curtain over a round, glass-less window. One of the jaffa turned, and almost on instinct, Tahrqa shot him through the armoured belly. He stumbled back and fell into a crude wooden chair, toppling it over and crashing to the ground.

Two more… And they were on to him. One was a little too slow, and Tahrqa, with more skill than he ever imagined that he might have, killed him too. The other one however, was not slow, and fired.

He missed as the tattooed rebel tackled him, pulling him to the ground, bleeding from a split lip. “Shoot!” he croaked, and Tahrqa froze up. Fortunately, the other rebels were more professional, and another snatched up staff weapon felled the final jaffa. The tattooed man limped over to Tahrqa as his compatriots attended to their wounded, and patted him on the shoulder, “Good work man! We need brothers like you.”

What have I gotten myself into? Tahrqa wondered…

(OOC: A meddling Thelasi Tag... as soon as I get finished with that invasion... or as soon as my friend posts!)

And so, as part of the cell run by the tattooed man, whose name he learnt was Nakul, Tahrqa learnt of the ever growing rebellion against Atum, whose mysterious leader, ‘Captain’ Rafi, had announced that he had a plan to get everyone off the planet. Eventually, word came that one of the jaffa from the skirmish, the one put down by the non-lethal zat guns, had put out a description of Nakul.

Fifteen men resembling Nakul had been rounded up and been executed at different places around the slave encampment’s perimeter. Nakul was far from happy about it, but he had eventually, after a few hours, reconciled himself to the price of the cause.

“Tahrqa… I think you’re the only one who can do this,” he said, eventually, three days after the initial skirmish. Tahrqa was cautious – he knew that the Brotherhood needed missions to be done to further its aims, but he had never imagined it would happen so fast to him.

Why is this all happening so fast? He thought once more as he worked his way slowly into the facility near the gate island. He’d been expecting a danger fraught mission, infiltrating slowly, passing guards by using forged passes. He’d actually found himself, of all things, slowly crawling through a vent too small to pass through comfortably. The Brotherhood had dug a tunnel into this ventilation system months ago, and he was slowly crawling along through the ducting, pushing a small, rolling ball through the vents.

This mission was of vital importance to the plan. He’d not been told why, or what precisely he was after. He had even accepted the explanation. If he was captured, they’d get less about the plan out of him. As it was, he only knew the instructions. There’d be a piece of papyrus with further instructions on it in the appropriate room.

The ducting terminated over a toilet, of all things. Unlike the squalid holes that the slaves were made to use, this was actually a sophisticated ceramic construction with water, and some apparent means to change the water in it. The door opened, and his training over the past few days paid off. The jaffa, wearing no more armour than simple leather shirt, went down to the first zat shot. Two more erased the evidence – he had seen the ingress point, and it had been explained to Tahrqa how valuable this route past their enemy’s security really was – by killing the unfortunate and then disintegrating his corpse. Tahrqa quickly sealed the duct again, and stole out of the cubicle, thankful for being able to do so without incident.

Tahrqa carefully stole into the corridor beyond. Three doors to the right and past a checkpoint manned by two guards. The flashy golden plated walls, designed to instil awe of the wealth of the goa’uld, seemed somewhat over the top.

One door.

Checkpoint.

Touching a button on the grenade Tahrqa tossed it, rolling it into the recessed firing point the jaffa guards used. There was a flash of brightness and a battering of screeching sound as the shock grenade ‘detonated’ and the sound of a pair of armoured guards hitting the floor. He stole into the alcove, and looked at them. Time to avail himself of their equipment.

He had come lightly equipped (not that the rebels he had fallen in with had much equipment to speak of) so that he could don a suitable disguise to allow him to leave unmolested. Hoping desperately that no one would come by as he changed, he donned the armour of the hours guard, and was pleased to see that he had a helmet-piece.

He looked at the stripped jaffa, and pointed the man’s staff at him, trying to bring himself to finish his fallen opponent. He couldn’t, however, manage it, and he lowered the staff. There was however, one other thing to do. Looking at the other jaffa’s weapons, which he couldn’t make use of, he stubbed the muzzle of the staff weapon against the middle of the other staff and fired. A loud crack sounded as the other weapon was destroyed, and Tahrqa cursed, moving on, and leaving his victim with a sidearm. He scooped up the shock grenade, and ran down the corridor, hoping madly that the nearest conscious guards hadn’t heard the crack.

He was ready for the next room though. Two guards in the room, three technicians. The Horus helmet made the advantage of the shock grenade all the more potent. He ran into the room, simply dropping it and detonating it as he brought the staff to bear on the first guard, a lance of plasma stabbing through his victim’s torso. He could see the flash, but the vision of the helmet automatically compensated, and as the other guard reeled, he murdered him too.

He held off on the technicians though, lowering the more lethal staff weapon and shooting each once with the serpentine sidearm. Right, he thought, that’s half the job done.

Tahrqa found getting out of the facility less problematic than getting in, after he copied the contents of the blue crystal he had been instructed (by note) to copy. It was a simple matter, even without technical education, to connect the small jewel with its reader and press the appropriate button. Sneaking out of the building was quite easy as a Horus Guard, one simply had to bark about an important task to anyone who thought to question one.

Eventually he passed the scanner off to a dark skinned woman with a rather surly attitude, whose entire thanks consisted of ‘Good, I see you didn’t break it.’ He looked at Nakul and raised an eyebrow quizzically. The other clapped him on the armoured shoulder, “Rose is rather stressed,” he said, “the plan is coming to fruition.”

Tahrqa started, “Oh?”

“Yes,” he said, “we have three thousand people now ready to escape,” he said. The flickering candle in the safe house near a rise in the centre of the slave’s encampment illuminated Nakul’s face as he smiled. Tahrqa frowned, “but a hundred thousand jaffa guard this place... Getting through to the guarded gate island would be impossible.”

Nakul smiled, “Yes,” he agreed, “it would, and the goa’uld know it.”

Tahrqa nodded, “So,” he asked, “how are we going to ‘escape’ then?”

Nakul clapped him on the shoulder, and pointed out of the window. Beyond the squalid shanty city, and beyond the walls constraining it, the golden tetrahedron of a freshly completed ha’tak rose, illuminated by the lights of countless workers taking scaffolding down that surrounded it.

“Any time now in fact,” Nakul said, grinning. Tahrqa looked out, and he could see some sort of commotion, flashes reflecting off the lower hull of the great metallic behemoth. Nakul smiled, “I think it has begun.”

A rolling noise like thunder echoed, and a massive portion of the wall was suddenly gone, in flames and fury. The ground shook as the mothership fired, and Nakul stepped back instinctively. “It’s begun,” he said, “it’s definitely begun.”

Lights stabbed upward from the grounded vessel, golden beams like rays of sunlight stabbed up at the night sky. Tracers. They moved, and as one, flashes of golden light ran up their length, the beams becoming no more as the bolts passed upward, flying straight towards dozens of defence satellites in orbit – the orbital data for which Tahrqa himself had just gathered, transmitted by Rose just before the revolt aboard the ha’tak had begun.

Now, hundreds of workers had turned on the guards around the vessel even as its future captain lay garrotted in his chair, and the revolt was in full swing. From the far side of the encampment, Al’kesh anti-ship bombers rose, but they did not fire – over a dozen of these too had been taken by the precisely planned uprising. Instead, they swept over the island with the stargate on it, unleashing their lethal payload, the surreptitious training that had been provided by the few heretical jaffa in the midst of Atum’s colossal forces paying off as the towers around the stargate were toppled by orange blasts from the bombers.

The most daring manoeuvre from the fertile mind of Captain Rafi was yet to come. Sporadic fire glanced off one of the Alkesh as it hovered above the stargate. It and its companions returned fire, as a set of five rings fell around the ubiquitous dialling device. The dialler flashed into a beam as the rebels stole it. Not yet satisfied, another Al’kesh landed, and its occupants began the procedure – only possible for a very short time before the massive garrison descended upon their distraction – of loading the stargate itself upon the ship.

“Time we got out of here?” Nakul asked, grinning wryly.

Meanwhile, on a distant world, Atum himself was blissfully ignorant of the uprising in his shipyards. Instead, he was walking on an island planet, as comfortable as he ever was in his all encompassing black robes despite the heat and moisture of the tropical island, the only land in an endless ocean, perpetually under a lightly clouded sky. The planet, generally referred to by the name of its most important resident, was chosen to reflect her love of all things aquatic.

The goa’uld queen Tefnut was one of the oldest, progeny of Ra and Hathor, or perhaps of Atum and Hathor, though no one barring Atum, and perhaps Ra, if as some furtive rumours said, he still lived, could say which. She was remarkably understated for a goa’uld. As a queen, a position of independent power was effectively denied to her, and thus she could afford not to be as overdressed and dramatic as most goa’uld. She dressed in a simple and loose watery blue dress, her long hair strawberry blonde, with streaks of the soft blue of open seas, flowing down to the middle of her back. Tefnut possessed sparkling sapphire eyes, eyes that could seduce with a glance, or burn with anger and cow all but the stout hearted as she desired.

Walking at his side, Tefnut ‘chatted’ with the System Lord, open sandals crushing a bed of roses that was strewn over the limestone paving by a pair of slaves – twins – in white garment. “So,” she asked, solicitaciously, “have you found a use for the symbiotes you wanted modified?”

Atum turned, walking slowly, his mask regarding the other goa’uld, “No,” he confessed, “not yet. But that species will likely appear again by the time they are incubated fully.” The twitch of his leather-gloved hand was the only visible sign of his enduring rage.

“I see,” Tefnut replied, casually plucking a glass of some particularly expensive wine, with chilled diamonds serving instead of ice cubes, and quaffing it back, expertly – or almost expertly – she hissed something unintelligible, and coughed. The other supposed god glanced at her in concern – she was a considerable investment after all. Her value was the major reason she had been kept alive when he had overrun her supposed brother, who had thought to usurp him.

Atum watched casually as the other goa’uld decided to take out her anger on the waiter, a young man, who had served her the drink. He watched the wine and accompanying diamonds drop to the floor dispassionately, and waited with a measured patience until she was done with the helot, who lay on the floor, gulping as if he were a fish pulled from one of the many nearby pools. “But in other news, you will be glad to know that my plans seem to be coming to fruition. Soon I shall be able to claim my rightful title.”

Tefnut, her murderous rage sated for the moment, worked a hand about her throat, and took another sip of her drink, “Well,” she said, “congratulations then, Supreme System Lord.”

He turned, and began walking again, “Indeed,” he said, “it will be interesting. We shall have to see how many of them turn up.”

At that moment a tall woman in the armour of one of Tefnut’s jaffa, based on the garb used by the System Lord known as Bastet, complete with claws on the fingers, barged her way through the seemingly endlessly expending reunite of slaves who were kept on hand to attend her lady’s every whim, as a wolf might charge through a pack of sheep. She kneeled down in front of Tefnut, disturbing the rose-petals. She was one of only a few thousand warriors in Tefnut’s service, whose function was to keep the planet’s small population of a few million in line. “My lady,” she said, waiting for permission to speak further.

Tefnut stopped, “Speak,” she said.

The woman nodded, “My lady, we have received a message for the Lord,” she said, extending a hand containing a small communication device, shaped as a grey ball. Atum took it, and turned away for a few seconds listening. A wordless shout of rage echoed as he railed about the news.

This changed everything. He would be a laughing stock now, even assuming he suppressed the rebellion, he would have to work to repair his reputation now. This would require bringing forward his plans for the invasion of the modest territories held by the goa’uld Pelops. He turned, “take me to the stargate!” he roared at the warrior, “Now!” He would have to return to his Seat, and then prepare a fleet to run these rebels to ground if the incompetent locals at that shipyard proved unable to deal with it.

He vowed that heads would roll over this fiasco.

Nakul was the last one aboard the ha’tak as it lifted off. Boarding it had been difficult, the few available hatches in its hull were all raised from the ground or under heavy assault, and he and his cell had been forced to camber up a seemingly endless teetering tower of shoddy construction. Unfortunately for the pursuing guards, the escaping slaves were largely more familiar with these appallingly unsafe scaffolds. They had been forced to work on them. The vast majority of the guards hadn’t had that misfortune, simply patrolling the more sturdy walkways.

The wooden decking of the rickety catwalk outside the hatch exploded into fire as Tahrqa, Nakul and several other renegades, covered by the defensive notches and braced firing positions intended to repel boarding efforts via the hatch, let loose at the rope and wood construct, which shook wildly with the vibrations emanating from deep within the massive hijacked ship.

A guard in a chain shirt fell to one side, toppling off the bridge with a cry of horror as one of the ropes holding the catwalk steady gave way. Another rushed backwards as the deck in front of him exploded into splinters. Rose was busy near the thick hole in the hull, pushing buttons wildly. “Dammed thing,” she screamed, “of all the systems on this ship, why do you have to be the one that doesn’t work?” She practically tore open the pane, and fired a zat’nik’tel into the opening behind it, shouting something in pure rage.

A sizzling bolt of plasma screeched past her ear, and she scrambled herself into the corner, hitting her head against the opened panel. With a heavy grinding, the door began to close, ponderously sealing the ship off from the slowly advancing jaffa. “I have no idea what I did,” she confessed later.

The entire ship shook fiercely. Endless tiers of wood and stone shook and began to subside, rattling apart and sending the pursuing horde of jaffa down upon upon the rocky barren ground below, into which were carved multitudes of deep ruts. The crowds around the base of the massive ship surged backwards as it lifted off majestically, beginning its slow ascent into the sky.

The occupants of the ship weren’t done yet though. It had power enough for their purpouses, and though some parts of its original crew still held their posts, it was under their control. The massive turrets on its underside swung about, ear-splitting blasts deafened those on the ground as the renegade ha’tak opened fire on its deserted neighbour, almost completed.

The stockpiles of the mineral naquadah held aboard the other ship exploded, a titanic blue blast tearing it apart from the inside. It imploded, its vast bulk combining with the energy released to tear thorugh the shipyards like a howling gale, burning up its support infastructure, made of the same crude materials of the renegade ship, in a fraction of a second, flaming debris of trinium-steel and lesser materials raining down on the guarded garrison.

While this was all underway of course, the Al’kesh were still as busy as ever, doing their best to retrieve the isolated cells that couldn’t make it to the main ship. Al’kesh were, after all, far from small vessels in themselves.

The mothership fired again, bringing low another half constructed twin, this one exploding outward violently. The nearest walls of the slave encampment – what was left of it – fell at last, the massive ground disturbances too much for them. The sporadic staff cannon fire from their battlements stopped at last.

The mothership continued its ascent to the stars, striking at other key facilities of Atum’s shipyards as it went, fleet of lesser ships swarming about it. Its greatest challenge lay ahead though.

I'll read this later...TAG

Lord Atum stepped out of the circle on the floor that denoted the area where the transporter rings operated, and into the dark room beyond. A flaming torch upon the wall was the only illumination. The Lord’s leather gloved hand wrapped around the shaft of the torch, and he lifted it high, bearing it in front of him. He touched it to several bowls of oil which ignited, casting a flickering glow around the room, and its sole contents. A great metallic ball on a raised plinth of jet black stone in the centre of the room and a chair before it, which looked out of place, being a comfortable armchair.

A foot wide, the ball was reminiscent of the portable devices used for long range communication by goa’uld agents, but much larger. It was a derivative of the same technology though, and some very special modifications Atum himself had made to it. It incorporated a version of the technology used by the long ascended ancients to control their technology, a mind reading system, in essence, though Atum himself was uncertain as to the entire workings of the device, it usually functioned well enough, and so he only required minimal input by more conventional means.

This device, one would learn, was more than a simple communications device though. It was indeed, a hacking suite of a sort. It was able to filter through every similar device in Atum’s domain at will, and more importantly, it was able to tap into, with effort, the exertion of Atum’s prodigious will, other goa’uld communications devices of a similar nature. He usually found it barely worth his while, but now and then, his long hours of seclusion paid off, and he found valuable information from his enemies.

But that was not why he was here this time, and as the device slowly came to life, clouds of darkness retreating from its surface, to reveal a hacked image of the court of the Goa’uld Lugh, one of the next targets of Atum’s plots. The image was somewhat grainy, interface from a not-entirely perfect decryption system. That was not what Atum was looking for now, and after a moment, this image too dissolved into mist as Atum’s mind directed it.

The ascended goa’uld cast the gaze of his mind through a nebulous map of the galaxy he had built up for this very task, narrowing on the region in the inner Perseus Arm where many of his assorted projects were underway. The device displayed his chosen target and after a few moments he felt that he had achieved a satisfactory lock on one of the many potential targets.

He waved his hand over the orb, and, simmering into view was a scene of pandemonium. Jaffa operators scurried this way and that, manning any of a multidue of controls. Some flickered with sparks and others simply displayed vast amounts of red script flashing to attract attention. Atum was pleased to note that three helmeted Horus Guards stood at attention in the midst of all of this, like islands of calm and tranquillity.

The underlord tasked with the prestigious job of running the facility however, was in an utter panic. He was screaming loudly, his voice resounding around the room, panicked. He was yelling about shooting ‘them’ down and wildly gesturing his rage at his underlings, the fear of his lord’s wrath was clearly upon him.

And with good cause was he panicked. Atum pressed one of several buttons that controlled the device, switching its communications to two-way. He fell into view on a stone wall of the control bunker. The guards seemed to pull themselves even more to attention as he did, and the underlord, Remok, started, trying to moderate his tone and trying to find something to say.

The lesser goa’uld did not have time to speak though, as Atum simply snapped, ‘excecute him.’ The vision faded, and one of the Horus Guards spun his weapon upon the underlord, who, rather than pleading or begging, simply broke into a sprint for the door. He did not get far though, and was felled by a blast to his back. He staggered down to his knees, and a second bolt of plasma tore into him, pushing him to one side and frying his chest.

That incompetence dealt with, Atum turned his attention to the matter of the uprising. After a few more moments searching he managed to locate the ha’tak these humans had stolen. This would require some special attention. He drew himself up to his full and unimpressive height – which he had, alas. No control over – and observed with interest. They seemed to be having some difficulty with the finer aspects of the controls, and there was some heated discussion about the exact operation of the hyperdrive systems.

Once more, he switched the device to two way communications, and leaned forward, the mask that covered his coweled face rippling like water. His leather clad hand grasped the armrest of the chair and squeezed, “Fools!” he hissed, “how do you dare to defy me!”

They looked up, and Atum was gratified by the looks of fear on most of their faces. He grasped out in a gesture as though tearing the heart out of the closest human, “every second you continue in this farce simply damns you souls to ever greater torment,” he added.

A human man, clad in the same rags as the rest, but seeming to possess an inner vigour undimmed by his recent treatment stepped forward, “Go back to the abyss your priests claim you came from!” he said, his eyes twinkling with an inner fire of anger and contempt, “we will have no part of your sham now. You are a feeble little worm. You wrap yourself in pomp and power to hide your pathetic vulnerability. I pity you.”

Atum leaned back, recoiling as if struck.

“You are a puny creature that thinks it can use technology it did not create to make itself feel important. Go away, before I taunt you a second time…”

Atum glared. Then, infuriated, he switched away to order the destruction of these ‘insolent humans.’

A figure emerged from the mist, and the rebels fired their weapons. Dozens of blasts of plasma raked the black armoured figure, enough to fell a man or a jaffa warrior many times over. They smashed into the armoured torso, and it glowed a bright gold, and the colour seemed to spread and fade as the energy from the bolts was absorbed by the suit’s shielding systems.

The warrior’s blue glowing eyes surveyed the opponents ahead of him with contempt, and his black helmeted head swung from side to side as he assessed them with contempt. He was a recent innovation, a fearsome Kull Warrior, the sharpest arrow in the quiver of the former System Lord, and the most terrifying warrior the Goa’uld had ever produced.

Atum had only recently ordered that his kind be stationed aboard every ship, so that they could be reclaimed in the eventuality of the ship’s commander getting ideas above his station. Such had happened a mere three months ago when the minor underlord known as Astennu, a former minion of Thoth, had decided to set up on his own and made off with a mothership.

The black clad warrior raised his arm and let loose a torrent of plasma bolts of even greater intensity than those of his opponents, felling four of them in quick succession. The rest continued to fire, one of them, overcome by his fear, breaking and running. The nameless, almost mindless but for combat instincts, warrior shot him in the back with the weapon mounted upon his other wrist, his contempt for cowardice showing.

More shots hit him, and he loosed another volley at his assailants, striding forward implacably. The drone warrior punched the nearest defender in the face as he cut the remainder of them down with the plasma repeater on the other wrist.

The blast door beyond had been sealed, but he had ways around that. Waiting a moment for the plasma repeaters on each wrist to recharge, he aimed very carefully at the bottom of the heavy steel door, and let loose a prolonged burst of fire. A tiny portion of the metal splashed across the floor, melted by the impacts of no less than ten bolts of super-heated ionised gas. Even so, the door was many inches thick, and would take an inconveniently long time – the warrior only had ten minutes internal air supply, if the hijackers of his master’s vessel pumped the air out of this section, they could suffocate him before he got through the door.

More bolts followed, passing into the sides of the door and liquefying it where the kull warrior knew the bolts holding it shut were. As his knees bent, the HUD showed the increased draw of his shielding system as it redirected energy to counter heat. It was the heat of his hands pressing into the molten metal, moulding a grip from its edge. He pushed upward, and the door began to shift. It had an immense weight in dense metal, but the warrior was bread for speed and strength, with little regard to longevity. A device created in a workshop by Atum himself was secluded in his hidden alcove, which kept him alive in a suspended animation state, and would even repair physical damage to the construct that served as his host.

Eventually, the door began to hold itself in place as the melted locks cooled, but there was already a wide gap between its base and the floor.

The warrior marched on, killing those he saw with maximum brutality, incinerating them with plasma bolts to areas that were unlikely to cause instant death. All that the creature cared about was that these infidels had betrayed their god, and were to be killed.


Tahrqa was rather amazed by being let onto the bridge of the Ha’tak, which was even more chaotic than it had been before. Three people were clustered around the golden control panel, arguing about the meaning of numerous symbols on the illuminated display at the front of the room. His ‘mentor’ however, was rather comfortable about the whole thing, and immediately set about discussing something about an unstoppable warrior.

Surprisingly there was a jaffa on the bridge of the ship, an elderly looking Hours Guard officer of some sort by the looks of him. He was however, disarmed and being carefully guarded. Tahrqa sidled up to one of the unoccupied people on the bridge and asked who he was.

“I don’t know precisely,” she said, “he’s a jaffa master who surrendered at some point. Changed sides in fact.”

“Oh,” Tahrqa said, looking at the man with a little more respect. The jaffa was talking about something called a Kull Warrior, and saying that he knew of no way to stop it. Tahrqa was about to ask what this warrior was when it burst onto the bridge. There was pandemonium.

The warrior opened fire, killing two of the rebel crew outright, and looked around, watching as the leader – apparently, took cover behind a control panel. It clumped over, ignoring the rest of the humans, blowing open the front of the control panel with its plasma repeater.

Shots went wide, and struck the force field that passed for the window of the bridge, splashing against it and causing it to flicker. The warrior at last found the leader of the rebels, and executed him with a prolonged burst of fire. Even as he turned however, Tahrqa had managed to outwit him. A loud shot from his staff weapon smashed into the wall below the window, exploding. “Run!” he cried, already moving back as the field collapsed in on itself with a flash. The Kull warrior turned, its glowing blue eyes set into its black helmet narrowing on Tahrqa as he ran. It brought up its arm, but too late.

Some of the rebels were swept off their feet before the Kull Warrior, hanging from the edge of the control panel it had destroyed, before it too, with a loud scream of rage, amplified by the systems inside its suit, was swept out into the airless oblivion of hyperspace, bright blue white energies swirling beyond the window.

Tahrqa clung to the edge of the doorway, slowly pulling himself through. There were more beyond – the jaffa and three guards made it out at last, as the doors slowly and automatically sealed.