NationStates Jolt Archive

Beneath the Sun God's Gaze

When traveling the galaxy, there's always one common theme that holds true, at least as far as humanoid species are concerned. Someone always has something that someone else wants or needs. Naturally, this would make it possible for one to make a career out of acquiring items required by others and selling them at profit. To these ends, of course, there were both legitimate and illegitimate means, and really, the more dangerous, while perhaps less rewarding over the long term, offered opportunities that could, if one was lucky, provide for the seller for a very long time.

Now, when the only thing one's managed to finagle into his possession is a rather beat up ship, and no one is particularly interested in buying it, one must continue to improvise. As such, the Arasi Saldeen, a name that was comprised primarily of gibberish, had departed for some areas declared as lesser risk, though as such the potential payoffs were also somewhat lower. Unfortunately for the current occupants, of course, those more lucrative markets also happened to be those where active warrants and shoot on sight policies were in effect.

Against proper authorities, the small corvette, belonging to the oh-so-ubiquitous Imperatrix class that so dominated the commercial starship market in Kajal, would be so horribly outmatched that it would be advisable simply to make one's quarters in the escape pod. Around less advanced worlds, in particular those that were guarded by perhaps a single large vessel at any given time, and largely rural, such a small ship, with even the modest armaments it sported, could actually be seen as a legitimate threat, if detected.

Fortunately for the Arasi's occupants, the mechanisms of the vessel's gravitic drive allowed for somewhat effective 'cloaking', wrapping light and gravity around the ship whilst still allowing the occupants to see out through somewhat more esoteric means. Such a trick would never work in any properly civilized space, of course, but when utilized in areas where the dominant technological culture had no real working knowledge of gravitics outside of the extreme ruling classes, the small corvette may as well have never existed as far as they were concerned.

It was with no fanfare, then, that the ship approached a planet, relatively unpopulated, and from what they had gathered previously, an altogether hideous local name. Oifiuch, the natives called it, apparently, but the planet had apparently been inhabited for quite some time, and if they could find some relics, the Arasi's crew could afford to eat again, or maybe even fix the port turret if they were able to swindle some poor fool for it.

There was, of course, only one real problem. Oifiuch was a goa'uld planet, ruled over by afar by the inscrutable Lord Atum, of which none aboard really had any particular knowledge of. He was, of course, apparently analogous to some major villain in popular cinema, oppressing the masses whilst expanding his empire through force, but hey, if he had problems keeping largely agrarian societies in line, then how exactly would he be expected to deal with some denizens from a society where the word "agrarian" wasn't particularly applicable, and entire worlds lived by the trade of high technology and the media associated therewith?

There was no question about it, really. The Arasi's crew was slumming it. It still beat getting shot to pieces before even reaching orbit, and for what little they did have, it'd go further on the poorer worlds anyways...

"So, what'd you say they call this dirtball, again?"

"I already told you, Serenn, it's Oifiuch. It looks like a dump."

"Okay, but there's loot somewhere, right?"

"Maybe, there has to be some temple with some trinkets we could fence down there..."

"I thought you said there'd be tombs, Li. You know, easy stuff."

"Maybe if we were over a planet that actually had any tombs... This place hasn't seen a baron, never mind royalty."

"Oh crap, we have Al'kesh. We still cloaked?"

"Gravydrive's fiiiiiine. They can't see us. They're just Goa'uld. Sides, we outgun em."

"Well, as long as it's only two of them."

The Atumite world was like most others of its ilk. The kind of think that most hardcore romanticists would enjoy, were it not for the occasional armed-to-the-teeth patrol, and curved winged fighter craft faintly stylised after falcons. It had large cities with picturesque buildings and rudimentary sanitation, and small villages with strange and unhealthy customs that varied from valley to valley.

The planet sported a number of large pyramids, but they were mostly in the cities, or very close to them. Here, pyramids weren’t for burial, nor the tips of buried spacecraft, but were instead, a form of landing platform for the older generation motherships used in the domain of Atum as bulk transports for tithes. The Atumite Domain was in some ways, quite advanced, mostly by the directives of its ruler, than any social progress. The availability of immense areas of land for its agrarian societies was regulated, and where one system suffered a famine, taxes – or rather, tithes, though as a theocracy they were the same thing – of goods from other worlds were routed to it to pick up the slack, according to arcane calculations and the reports of the time, which were regularly updated by a flavour of uninterested bureaucratic priest

Oifiuch was, in its way, a fairly prosperous, middle of the road world. It boasted a grand city with a population of over a million, with the stargate at its centre, in the inner courtyard of a fortified temple to Atum’s Magnificence.

While the planet lacked any tomb structures of the kind of prominence one would expect for societies that encompassed billions, most Atumite worlds also had their own societies with their own leadership, albeit often curtailed by the taxation from Atum’s own forces. This meant that there were many generations of tomb structures to be found, but unfortunately, many had been built over by the central city.

The others were scattered around other settlements, but the most interesting site for archaeology was not a domestic tomb, but rather, a repository high in the mountains, inaccessible by ordinary means, but with enough flat space around it to be accessed by ships. Aside from being a source of heat that indicated human – or goa’uld – activity, there was nothing to indicate activity in the place, and it seemed accessible enough.

More importantly, given that it was heavily protected by thick walls of dense metals it seemed to contain something of technological or monetary value to the local rulers. What precisely that was, remained to be seen.

"Well, at least this isn't a total loss."

"I'm sure you'll find some way to turn it into one, Serenn. We wouldn't even be here if it weren't for that incident with the Savaati."

"Oh, please, it's not like they're important... I just didn't expect them to call in the Border Patrol..."

"Right. At least this place seems to have some primitive version of indoor plumbing... See that? Streets are too clean."

"This is probably the biggest city on the planet, and it's only big enough for what, a million?"

"Maybe two. Temple's big. Waaaaay too heavily guarded, though."

"Huh. Are you sure..."

"Not a chance. 's probably got its own private army."

"Fine, we'll go a little further out."

"Hey, that's interesting... Take a look out starboard. See it?"

"I got nothing. There's just mountains."

"Yeah, I know, but look closer."

"Hey, there's a flat spot. Looks big enough to set down..."

"We got a heat signature off of it, easy enough to read, no sign of anything around it though."

"A little goa'uld hidey hole, huh? Wanna take a peek?"

"Hey, if it doesn't pan, there's always the rest of the planet."

The Arasi set down, of course, a short while later, and given the admittedly brutish cloaking method, became rather visible, at least up close. From further out her appearance was mottled, and blended somewhat with the surrounding rock, thanks to a sort of active camouflage that had been acquired sometime during her active life.

Perhaps most offsetting to the "archaeologists" (something that was, perhaps, only loosely accurate), was the choice of walls. It wasn't guaranteed that they'd be able to force their way in, but hopefully, another method would suffice.

Of course, such walls also meant that whatever weaponry could be spared - including, of course, the heaviest - was carried off the ship with the crew, just in case.

The ‘tomb’ structure was hidden behind a wall of rock, but the sensors the Kajali had was handily able to find the wireless mechanism that controlled that doorway. It was simple enough to send an instruction that made the rock wall slide backwards, with a loud rumbling of poorly maintained mechanisms.

Inside, there was a pile of sand that had blown through the cracks in the doorway structure, mounting up against steel walls, blowing in piles that completely obscured the silvery tetrahedron shape of a goa’uld cargo ship, and the arc-shape of a fighter craft. Both vehicles were obviously damaged by sustained small-arms fire. The interior bay had space for another cargo ship, with scuff-marks around marking where someone had made a quick escape at some point in the past.

Beyond, a doorway stood open, surrounded by a few scorch marks, leading into a small room, containing a few ransacked crates. Deeper inside, beyond this room, several metal cylinders, inches thick, stood about waist high, with pipes leading into them. Several immensely heavy bricks of a grey material stood on the table, and around, numerous instruments covered in a mixture of sand and a more normal dust. A golden coffin-like structure occupied one wall, its insides blasted, the remnants of a human – or humanoid, stockier, differently built – figure, skeletal remains along with burnt fragments of whatever it was.

Deeper still, was something that might interest the Kajali more. An opulent, if rotted, set of quarters that had once contained expensive furnishings, but now only really contained pottery and metal goods in plenty; including a fair amount of gold ornamentation.

There was power, too, heating systems, somewhere, and a wall that showed other parts of a structure linked to it by a vertical shaft from the other room.