Stellar Reich (AU Stargate TL)

My attempt with this TL was to do something Nazi related that seemed as realistic as I could get while still being in the largely unrealistic Stargate universe. This one focuses quite heavily on fleet actions as apposed to troops and gate operations, but there is enough of the latter to keep the feel of stargate. Note, there are also quite a few story sections spread through this, especially after the TL catches up to O'Neil and SGC. I love writing for those guys :)

The link for the discussion thread for this timeline is here

(Note, right now I'm going through... slowly... editing this attempting to get the tense consistent, spelling and grammar correct. Up to part 11 right now. I'll go through the rest and update this as I go.)

(OK, that's weird! As I went through my backup of the story on my HD I found an episode that never got posted, either here or on AH.com! If you've followed the discussion thread and just want to see that post it's #51)

Stellar Reich

April 1932

With a grand flourish the German government was proud to announce it's acquisition of an ancient Egyptian artifact. The huge stone ring (original significance and use unknown) was shipped from London to Berlin with some difficulty, but little incident and soon was on display in the Neues Museum, much to the delight of the German people. A separate deal struck between England and Germany almost traded the 'Ring of Giza' for an ornate pedestal called the 'Nordic Sockel' along with other artifacts later in the year. However those responsible realized the Ring had been added to the list due to a clerical error due to information for both being in the same office at the same time, and should not be merely traded away. In fact it was found to be a related piece to the ring with similar markings. In the end a different exchange was made, with the Ring and the Pedestal put on display in the Neues Museum. Both were treated with considerable caution, due to their apparent antiquity, and the public could only view them from behind glass.

After they were mounted there was a curious report from one of the staff who had helped mount it that part of the pedestal had glowed during transit. He was discounted as a drunk at the time, especially as he couldn't recollect what he'd done that might have caused this. It was merely assumed that light had come in through a window and reflected off the artifact and he was miss-remembering (by those polite enough to assume he was not so drunk he was seeing lights as well as pink elephants!)

If the museum had checked their records further they would have found two other similar statements over the last few years as the device moved around about lights from the device, though usually faint as it rarely occurred when it was away from sunlight for it to be clear it was artificial. Who knows what may have transpired if these statements had been believed before the Reich came to power?

July 1937

When the artifacts were cordoned off for their first cleaning regimen great care was taken, but at one point one of the staff pressed a little too hard on the pedestal and was shocked when it not only lit up but the great ring actually moved, clunked and lit up briefly itself. The staff did not quite know how to handle this, at first some insisting that the records be checked for any curses relating to the dig at Giza. However, saner heads prevailed and two scientists were brought in to examine it.

By the end of the week the entire device had been appropriated by the government and locked away in a secret facility with dozens of technicians and scientists studying it. They did manage to take samples, despite the difficulty in obtaining even dust from the very sturdy device, but the studies of the time could make little headway as most tests on the material simply did not make sense. It was soon ascertained that the entire ring was mostly comprised of some metallic element that did not correspond to any known on Earth.

When the higher ups in the Nazi government learned of these details they considered lauding it publicly as proof of ancient Aryan heritage and their supremacy over the locals. However, given the paper-trail obviously linking the devices to Giza Egypt this was halted. No-one wanted to be made a fool for such a statement.

Work continued in carefully attempting to find out what the device was for. It was obviously technological in some manner, but no mechanisms or components could be found in the ring, and when the pedestal was finally opened the crystals inside looked so delicate that the technicians refused to examine further for fear of damaging the device before it was learned what it was for.

May 1937

One use became obvious when attempts to study the device's electrical properties was attempted. It seemed to be a perfect ground, electrical energy being soaked up like a sponge. After some careful tests on the dust collected from the device it was labeled a 'super conductor' and further tests were able to store and retrieve vast amounts of electrical energy from the device. Not only that, but as 'buttons' were pressed on the pedestal energy seemed to appear as if by magic in the ring, which was able to be siphoned off for other uses. Using such energy was tricky due to the intermittent nature of the energy 'sent' via the pedestal and some odd frequencies of the energy stored in the ring.

During these tests the limit of seven symbols became obvious. The device would engage the chevrons, one at a time, as the buttons were pressed, but in the end when all lit up nothing happened and the lights on the ring faded. One of the researchers suggested that the sequence was some kind of locking code, perhaps to release some hidden effect within the device or open some hidden panel, but early on more effort was made on examining the technology than testing codes.

August 1938

After many tests over the past year, one of the few 'test sequences' made connected and the researchers were shocked when the ring 'flushed' in a water-like explosion before stabilizing in a vertical puddle of liquid. Most of the researchers were shocked. Two were too busy being disintegrated to feel shocked as they were in the way of the 'flush'. Immediately the military stepped in, demanding effort be made to determine what this effect was and if it could be duplicated.

Further tentative research with the now known 'code' showed the 'puddle' mostly lasted less than a minute before disappearing, though sometimes lasted longer. It wasn't until one researcher found a correlation between the local radio transmissions and the long duration puddles that it was thought to study how radio waves affected the device. It seemed a concentrated radio transmission, if strong enough, would force the ring to remain active for up to nearly forty minutes.

September 1938

When testing with actual devices it was found that anything pushed into the 'pond' would vanish, but could be withdrawn as long as the device did not shut down due to reaching the 38 minute time limit. Similarly it was found that anything extended into the pond and let go would not reappear when the device shut down. Some researchers thought it was some kind of matter storage device, a 'magic pocket' that could store whatever you needed. They just hadn't found out how to bring such stored objects back yet. Other researchers thought that instead it was a doorway, the objects 'vanished' instead appearing somewhere else. When notes from the original team at Giza (though badly damaged from treatment in the Egypt desert) were recovered a translation was uncovered that indicated the device was called a 'door' or 'gate'. Perhaps Heaven Gate, or Star Gate, depending on which Egyptologist you asked. When this was determined the second group of researchers got permission to do research as to what might be on the other side.

Unfortunately the notes were only partly evident, and efforts to contact the original team to find out more failed, as they had left the country for America. Tentative efforts were made to contact Paul Langford there, but without giving more details than they were willing to he refused to work with Nazi Germany. At the time the government were more confident in their current scientific staff and focused on funding the project than attempting to gain the insight of a mere archaeologist, even when their staff begged to get more information from Doctor Langford.

The cover-stone was never brought to Germany from the original dig, and the notes with attempted translations of the cover-stone were partially damaged. It was found that some of the symbols there were the same as on the gate, but that was all that was determined at that time. Efforts continued to make out the blurred notes while work continued on the gate.

October 1938

After details of the latest versions of Baird's 'electrical camera' were obtained via various means an attempt was made to use them to send signals back from the other side of the gate. Initial trials with cables failed to get any signal, but efforts using a camera on a electric trolley with a high powered radio transmitter did bear fruit, and soon blurry, streaked images of a barren plain were presented to the Fuhrer. A dusty plain with a night sky very different from Earth's! With such a blurry camera is was hard to make out details, but further missions with various magnifying lenses and simple radio control mechanisms for the heavy truck were able to track back and forth to be sure there were no known constellations in the sky!

This was an alien world!

Cameras proved that this world also had a pedestal to control it's ring, but so far no one knew the 'code' for Earth. As such even though it was possible to go there no known way to return was found. So the Fuhrer at first forbade any efforts to send colonists (even volunteers) through the gate to this new world. Although breeding room was called for he had already publicly stated Russia as his choice, and with no way to return home it was deemed better to maintain secrecy about the project. After all, who knew what other secrets the device had, or could be found on that planet? If they could figure out how to bring samples back home.

January 1939

Some success was made in decrypting the damaged notes from the Giza dig, and it was believed that there were two, partial 'codes' there, written down from the missing cover-stone. However they still were unable to get exact details on the codes, but even the fact that other codes existed meant that more than two rings were around and so efforts to randomly dial other such codes continued, hoping to locate another ring on another planet.

February 1939

Even though there was still no way to return home, progress on decrypting the Giza notes seemed to be going well, new chemical techniques to bring out almost invisible, scrubbed text. Thus the Fuhrer finally agreed to a small group of about forty military personnel to establish an outpost on this new world. Building materials and supplies were sent, checked by camera to see that they arrived, and then volunteer troops went through. The researchers were very relieved to see that the men had made it safely through, though radio reports said some of the men had felt 'a little odd and dizzy' going through.

The outpost was slowly constructed and staffed, and soon regular shipments of food and other supplies were shipped through the gate on simple unmanned trucks (by the expedient of locking the steering prior to sending it through the gate). It was reported that the area did have some unknown scrub grass, but little else in the vicinity, and none of it seemed edible. Given the poor dirt quality thoughts of starting any farms up were quashed, and instead the food shipments continued.

April 1939

Finally a random code attempt worked, a new planet being found and incidentally finding that the last code seemed to need to be the same for each. When an electric cart camera 'drone' was sent through it reported a verdant, grassy world before it's batteries died. It was not long before a second outpost was established here too. At present these worlds were merely marked 'Planet 1' and 'Planet 2' for the scientists until they could go there and study them properly, and name them according to what they found (though some scientists did attempt to name the worlds after themselves. This was not well received).

It was soon found however that the gates on the two known worlds could not immediately dial each other. Soon the reason was determined. One symbol on each gate was different, and that one symbol on the Earth gate was the last one in both codes they knew. It seemed to be an identifier for the sending gate. Once this last symbol was exchanged for the local symbol both worlds could contact each each other successfully and send troops and material back and forth, much to the relief of those stationed on the almost desert like conditions of Planet 1.

Curiously, it was only a week later that the team working on the Giza notes were able to recover one of the six digit codes recorded from the cover-stone. When the last digit of Earth was added and attempted, nothing happened. Almost as an afterthought it was attempted from Planet 2 with their last symbol and miraculously the Earth gate was dialed.

They finally had a way home!

Unfortunately the other code in the Giza notes seemed too damaged by the elements to be readily recovered. Efforts were continued, but they felt without finding the original cover-stone it would likely not bear fruit. At present though no-one knew where the cover-stone had ended up. Best guess was in the United States of America with Paul Langford, but if so it was not part of any major, listed museum exhibit they could find.

May 1939

After some time to consider the situation the Fuhrer decided that a small colony and research outpost on Planet 2 was needed, especially as there appeared to be ruins around the gate that might suggest who had built the artifacts. One of the researchers insisted that the ruins were Aryan in origin, and began calling the planet Teutonia, claiming it was where the original Aryans had come to Earth from in ancient times. At first these efforts were quashed, but when the Fuhrer heard of it he heartily endorsed the name and immediately promoted the man. Thoughts of exploring and colonizing the ancient home of the Aryan people began to take shape, efforts to locate large numbers of people of suitable heritage to man such a colony were undertaken, though carefully at first. The project had started as a secret and had only grown in importance. No-one wanted to let on that the Nazis had access to alien technology!

June 1939

The first selected group of a hundred 'True Aryans' were sent through the gate along with a large number of military, initially a battalion of infantry. Supplies were sent to start construction of a 'poster town' of what true Aryans could accomplish. However the initial concepts of a beatific village were ended when it was realized how much effort it would take to ship supplies continuously for as large a town as was planned through the gate. Soon farms and industry were planned as well to supply them locally, though suitably out of the way so as to not obscure the effect the town would have on visitors.

The Fuhrer kept both concepts going, strangely. On one hand viciously keeping the gate a secret. On the other hand planning a town for public viewing. He stated that after 'things were settled' the world should view the magnificence of the Aryan people in their original setting. Not all on his staff agreed it was the best use for the gate, but none dared disagree with him.

At first, now that travel back and forth was achieved, SS officers ran the slowly growing town of Volksburg on Teutonia, the prestige in being associated with the Fuhrer's grand plan drawing many who wished to impress him. But the isolation due to intermittent use of the gate often caused the staff to cycle, eventually deciding that, despite the pleasant environs, they would rather please the Fuhrer in other ways. Those that had the clout to reassign themselves often did after a month or so.

September 1939

When Hitler liberated Poland the war effort began to take precedence over the gate project in favor with the Fuhrer, especially as no new technologies had been developed from the project. Even the efforts to study the 'flush' that disintegrated objects did not bring any worthwhile results. Although colonists continued to pour through the gate on Hitler's initial plan, the project on the whole began to drop in favor, especially among the SS officers involved.

January 1940

The Wehrmacht officially were ordered to 'maintain order' over the town of Volksburg and the gate on Teutonia, a young Major named Schmidt was technically in charge of the base now, though a small staff of SS officers remained behind and 'supervised' him for the moment, most of these were higher rank than himself and maintained control despite the orders listing him as head of the facility. This did not sit well with Schmidt, especially as the SS officers involved invariably rotated out of the base, and the new ones often had very different ideas that he should adopt 'but it is only a suggestion of course Major'.

It grew very tiring.

By now the town had grown to over 30,000 people, though often still needing supplies sent through as the farms were having difficulty with the local soil and native animals, let alone adapting to the slightly different seasons. The area near the gate was becoming just as picturesque as the Fuhrer had planned, and the industrial sections were kept several miles distant with a multi-track railway to ferry workers back and forth. The governor of the town was not given much power, instead mostly under orders from Major Schmidt... or more to the point the SS advisers. The Fuhrer wanted to maintain strict controls on the town as it grew.

March 1940

During archaeological excavations the researchers found human remains among the stone ruins surrounding the gate, 'proving' to them that ancient Aryans once existed here. Despite the military wanting to establish a tight cordon here the archaeologists insisted the area must remain intact for study and so far held the will of the Fuhrer in this. At present such gate defense was limited to sandbagged gun emplacements and temporary wooden buildings, but these were kept somewhat distant from the gate due to it's proximity to the ruins. These archaeological discoveries briefly brought the project back into favor with the Fuhrer, but he soon lost interest again and the slow increase in SS staff, then their decrease made a nice barometer for the Fuhrer's opinion of the project.

While the project was in one of it's upswings Major Schmidt got a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, which more suited such a commander, even over such a small military presence as was there currently.

June 1940

As the local seasons changed on Teutonia the farmers decreed that they had (mostly) solved the problems with the soil, and even found local places to extract the additives the soil needed to grow plants effectively. Until a full season of growth was completed they wouldn't be sure everything was going well, but things did look up.

September 1940

It was at this time that the Fuhrer first came up with his 'Final Solution' to the Jewish problem, though it would be some time till it could be implemented in sufficient number. Since 'Planet 1' was so inhospitable, perhaps he could simply send the Jews there, out into the wasteland, and be done with them! Plans were drawn up to begin gathering up more of the intransigent Jews from various locations to be sent to staging camps before the final details were made.

December 1940

The first of the Jews were sent through the gate, wearing little more than rags and carrying no supplies, and were commanded at gunpoint to head out onto the barren plains. Over the next few weeks the soldiers of the Wehrmacht staff operating the outpost on Planet 1 came down with more and more mysterious illnesses, some 'serious' enough to be shipped back to Earth. When this trend was noticed (along with some complaints from certain suicidal soldiers) the guard duty on that world was switched to a small group of Waffen SS which seemed curiously immune to the ailment that had befallen their Wehrmacht brethren.

February 1941

With spirit high in the victorious war in Europe, and the Americans still not joining in the war, (even with the 'failure' of the Battle of Britain the previous year) more resources were becoming available, and the leaders in Berlin behind the Stargate project desperately attempted to get some improvements for themselves. Even though the favor of the project was not high currently, they did manage to get some improvements, including additional military detachments. The defense now included one armored battalions and three infantry battalions with one of these as anti-armor infantry. Despite joining in the project's poor favor currently Schmidt got yet another, rather rapid promotion to full Colonel.

Colonists through the gate saw a sharp upturn at the beginning of the year too. Going from 120,000 in December 1940, to 170,000 in February 1941. The huge increase in numbers strained the infrastructure in Volksburg significantly, but slowly, with additional supplies, they managed to stabilize the local agricultural and industrial efforts

April 1941

Celebrations for the two year anniversary of Teutonia's discovery were intense, and the Fuhrer even paid a visit in the middle. This did briefly revive his plans for using this town (rapidly becoming a city) as a proof of Aryan supremeity to the forefront of his mind, but didn't change the favors of the base much over the coming months. However some well respected German astronomers with enough political clout to learn of the project (few and far between) managed to get posting to the area to begin astronomical research.

July 1941

An unexpected guest arrived in mid July, in the form of one Major Reinhard Gehlen of the Wehrmacht. His transfer papers were vague to say the least, and the man himself was less forthcoming. Schmidt got the impression that the man had done something to displease someone high in the party and had been shunted here to get him out of the way. After some surreptitious checks he found that his previous job had been in intelligence analyst for the Reich and Schmidt wondered what he'd done to get sent here.

November 1941

With the failure of the Battle of Britain and with recent events causing the Americans to join the war, things started to get a little darker for the Reich, though generally the spirit was still high. The Reich spread across most of Europe and into Northern Africa after all! However the possibilities of bombing runs destroying critical areas inside German territory sparked numerous fears, especially with nagging rumors that some kind of super weapon was possible, at least in theory. Such 'Atomic Bombs' were pure pulp fiction to most, but it was enough to get one or two of the Reich's research establishments relocated to Teutonia where there was no possibility of enemy bombs striking any facilities. After they were forced to sign extensive documents on the secrecy of the enterprise, many budding physicists and engineers ventured to Berlin, often without any choice in the matter.

Although finding purpose in such activities, it was still seen as more of a sideline, not a proper part of Reich activities, certainly for the SS at least. As such the few SS officers stationed there gradually changed from prominent members to those that had come into disfavor or those who dared to question their superiors.

Population was now over 250,000 people on Teutonia, and some of the population were in small hamlets that were growing up nearby, bracketing in the farmland surrounding the city. The industrial effort was maintained downstream from the main river (which had curiously been named the Vol meaning Flight. Perhaps an obscure joke based on the city's name by some councilor or other) and had expanded significantly, already seeing to most of what the city needed by itself, though efforts to mine the hills surrounding the area did not yet get quite everything they needed in chemicals and minerals. Some still needed to be shipped from Earth

January 1942

Some concerns in high places in the Nazi party worried that the atomic research program (then still under the auspices of the Wehrmacht) might be located and bombed by the RAF. Although Goering insisted there was no risk of this the head of the project managed to get at least part of the research group to begin setting up an alternate research site elsewhere. He was not aware of the Stargate project and was very surprised when his team, including himself, were sent through the gate to Teutonia on orders of the Fuhrer. Although it was deemed too hindering to the flow of the research to move the entire project, the team that did travel included a few notable physicists and engineers from the project, including Werner Heisenburg.

The new Atomic research plant, focusing their efforts on a proposed atomic reactor with some work on uranium processing, was stationed about fifty miles down river towards the coast with another railway linking them to the city. Work commenced with somewhat censored communication between the old facility in Berlin and the new one on Teutonia allowing them to avoid duplication of effort. To an extent at least.

However, almost immediately, due to political wrangling and the indication that no significant results would be likely before war's end, the Berlin facility was returned to civilian ownership and all contact with the Teutonia facility was halted. No additional supplies were forthcoming through the base for the off world facility and the team had to make a lot of hard choices about what they were to do. Eventually, even given the strict military controls, they opted to remain and work on the project, despite the military's lack of enthusiasm for it. Thus the Teutonia team were not aware of the break up and redistribution of their old facility into different projects and the poor end result later on.

April 1942

The third annual celebrations were not as festive as previously, partly due to more frugal spending necessary due to less supplies travelling through the gate. Recently the Fuhrer had ordered an increase in the Jewish 'Final Solution' and had taken up more and more gate time. Even then he seemed to not feel this was sufficient and ordered camps established to deal with as many more as they could. The increased throughput to Planet 1 had even necessitated more troops there to clear away those that died close to the gate from exposure and deal with the bodies. Although population on Teutonia had seen a boom in the end of the previous year, reaching almost 400,000 by the start of 1942, by April it had barely reached 460,000, and quite a few of that was due to a slight increase in birthrates locally. Schmidt was desperate to get more materials in, especially certain chemicals needed in industrial processes but the Reich staff back home were not interested such things. He sent several scouting teams to the surrounding territory, heading further and further out, in an effort to locate missing materials for industrial effort.

Over the next couple of months most of these were isolated, and the remaining few missing materials had alternatives found. Rubber was in short supply for a time, but after an airbase and a detachment of the Luftwaffe was established Schmidt sent teams off to locate areas with the conditions necessary for rubber trees. It was a trek of well over a thousand miles, needing landing strips made in a few places for the light planes to refuel, but a place was located that had the conditions necessary and a plantation was begun. Some other crops that could be grown there were started, but all of these were somewhat risky operations. The entire effort to start the rubber plantation was questioned, asking why green houses could not be built nearer Volksburg. True the cost of setting up the shipments via air would be high (it was inland and no route to the sea had yet been located from this new site) but green house construction and maintenance would also be costly for such a large plantation. In the end since Schmidt was the head of the facility he had his way and the plantation was established in the distant location.

Schmidt did attempt to get increased funding for his Luftwaffe but interest in the party was limited. After much pushing he did get assistance in transferring a small R&D establishment, primarily to test experimental aircraft, free from anyone either spying on them or attacking.

During the resource prospecting several samples of tungsten and silica were noted, and somehow this filtered through the party back home. Soon a small research plant was being assembled by a team of computer engineers on orders from some high ups within the Reich. The team wanted to manufacture Thermionic Diode Valves away from fear of bombing, and making use of these relatively pure samples Schmidt had recovered. Headed by Konrad Zuse this facility began initial efforts to build programmable computers, building on Zuses former work. Given the small size of the current facility and a sparsity of materials relating to relay manufacture, his efforts were slowed, but hoped to improve usage of valves in specialist machines for the Reich military.

September 1942

Ever since the end of the Battle of Britain the RAF had commenced night air raids against German cities, and the location where the gate was established to the south of Berlin was realized to be at risk. The facility was already underground, but the above ground facilities were improved, including heavier anti aircraft weapons. After the summer of 1942 when the US began serious daylight bombing it was improved even more. This was unfortunate as this increase in defenses was noticed by allied intelligence and, although they did not know what the base was, it was obvious it was important. Being far enough outside Berlin to avoid most of the massed AAA fire from that city itself (though not those in the surrounding area) it was deemed a good target. Unfortunately they had no idea how hardened a facility it was, and given the large numbers of trucks witnessed traveling too and from the area it must be fairly extensive.

The US air force decided a heavy strike was called for with a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs. This proved striking. As the air raid sirens were blaring the base commander dialed Teutonia and warned them they were under attack, but the communications were cut off abruptly. Incendiary bombs had ignited the considerable ammunition store in the base and the resulting explosions flattened it topside, and caused considerable cave-ins underground. The roof of the gate room collapsed, burying the gate. With a population of just over 520,000 they were stuck with the personnel and materials they had as no more would be coming from Earth.
 
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October 1942

At first the military managed to keep knowledge of the loss of contact with Earth from the public on Teutonia, but as repeated efforts to 'call' Earth failed several leaks occurred. The few SS stationed on Teutonia cracked down hard, locking away any who leaked such matters, and not listening to the supposed commander Colonel Schmidt. At first, fearing retaliation from the Fuhrer when gate access was re-established, Schmidt allowed their activities to continue, but as the days dragged on it was obvious that Earth wasn't dialing them, and they seemed unable to dial Earth.

Annoyed at the Wehrmacht 'inferior' efforts with the gate the SS took over running it. Schmidt was at a loss as to what they thought they could do better. All that was involved was simple button pushing, but then that was perhaps all the SS staff were good for? However, as they took over the facility around the base, they demanded all records to be sent to them, even demanding all staff who had run the gate in the past to be assigned to the Waffen SS. Schmidt had had enough. He was planning an armed assault of the gate zone on the fifth day after contact was lost... when the gate began to dial in.

The SS assumed their efforts had been successful where the mere Heer forces had not, and Schmidt hastily began to withdraw his units before they could be noticed. However while he was giving orders dozens of men, followed quickly by over a hundred more, trod through the gate and these were definitely not soldiers of the Reich. Wearing, of all things, chain mail they strode in from the gate to the amazement of the Waffen SS battalion stationed there. The officer in charge hailed them and demanded them to explain their presence, and was promptly shot by one of the unknowns by what had been thought before to be some kind of ornamental staff. Instead it was revealed to be an unknown weapon and a firefight broke out immediately.

The SS weapons seemed to have difficult penetrating the enemy armor with the general issue MP40 SMG. Despite it's apparent primitive looks the armor resisted modern bullets quite effectively, and the few SS that were equipped with the older bolt action rifles switched to Armor Piercing rounds. Those, and the few higher caliber machine guns they had, seemed to work, but the initial shock and the sheer firepower that was unleashed by the enemy, devastated the Waffen SS battalion.

Schmidt did yet another turnaround and the troops he had just ordered to withdraw assaulted rapidly, his anti-armor units particularly. With three extra battalions and with snipers stopping any of the unknowns from dialing the gate, the force was defeated. The Waffen SS battalion had taken over 25% losses in that initial horrible barrage, the sandbag defenses providing virtually no cover from the 'fire staffs' the enemy used. Given the large number of SS against merely a 150 enemy it was likely the SS would have defeated them given more time, but the shock and initial assault had stunned them after so long on a 'dull' posting as Teutonia. Without Schmidt it was not certain the Reich would have had victory.

Things abruptly changed as the SS immediately took charge, ordering a re-armament and and training against this new threat. Schmidt was torn. He almost gave the order to take the SS out then, but the officers were correct in their thinking and it was hard for him to turn on them after living through a firefight like that. Reluctantly he agreed, beginning a recruitment campaign in the city and attempting to increase production of weapons from local industries. The enemy weapons and armor were retrieved, along with the many bodies, and stored.

Attempts to examine the bodies had some odd situations, as several 'white eels' were discovered among them, and upon investigation the rest of the enemy had versions of these eels in pouch-like hollows in their abdomens. It seemed though that the vast majority of these eels were dead when found. The living eels encountered appeared vicious and were at first shot on sight by the Wehrmacht, considering them 'disgusting looking'. Scientists decried the loss of live specimens, but when one was captured the next day it was already weak and it died shortly after. No other specimens were found alive after that.

It was a week later that an SS officer approached Schmidt and Major Gehlen (whom Schmidt had begun to trust more of late after having experience with the man) and told them that the SS staff were, in the officer's words, 'Insane'. Apparently they had decided that it was only the surprise that had made such enemies effective. They were colored after all, and far inferior to true Aryan forces. The SS had decided, in it's infinite wisdom, to simply bolster the gate and deal with the enemy as they came. If more came through then that would just mean more alien weapons to examine. They were moving all gate related research to the buildings around the gate, had ousted the archaeologists as well as Wehrmacht soldiers, and were setting themselves up as a primary defense complex.

It was too much! These alien people were a real threat that could not be ignored. Major Gehlen pointed out that anyone capable of creating the 'fire bolt weapons' that the enemy had used must have considerable technology at their disposal, no matter how primitive their appearance made them seem. It was obvious that anyone capable of building such weapons would have tanks, planes and other firepower that could easily wipe out such a fledgling colony of Volksburg. Yet again Schmidt brought back his plans to take out the SS, but this time he had assistance from two of the SS officers themselves who had had enough of the over the top mentality of their fellows. If they could be in charge of the SS when this was all over, and they had promises that this new enemy would be dealt with as a real threat, then they'd gladly assist against their brethren.

On the 21st of October at midnight Schmidt moved. Three battalions of infantry, one mortar battalion and an anti-tank battalion moved on the SS held gate zone, which hadn't yet been turned into the fortress the SS were intending. Using information from the turncoat SS Schmidt managed to defeat guards and patrols around the area to position his forces without being discovered and got into close range before the alarm was raised. In a pitched battle Schmidt's forces smashed most of the SS battalion, despite the latter having more modern equipment, mostly due to surprise and careful preparation. Over whelmed the SS officers, feeling betrayed and suspecting they would not live through this even if they surrendered, decided to destroy all records and information they could. The copies of the Giza notes, the details so far understood on the limited translations from the 'Jaffa' enemy's interrogations, the last two years of research on the ruins around the gate, all were burned, including the gate code for Earth. Unfortunately the staff that had been dialing the gate for the last two years had also been kept here (or moved back) by the SS and in the end. After the smoke had settled Schmidt found he presided over a gate with no known codes, either for Earth or Planet 1.

A couple of the SS officers did survive, but either refused to divulge anything or simply never knew what the codes were. Even if the gate on Earth became operational again no-one on Teutonia now knew how to dial home!

At this time Major Gehlen was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel directly under Schmidt, taking up his role as military intelligence analyst once more to estimate the threat posed by the new enemy in the long term.

November 1942

The aftermath of the overthrow of the 'corrupted' SS (as it was publicly stated) proved to be a chaotic time, not least of which due to the public reaction to being cut off from Earth. But calm was restored fairly quickly, even though tensions remained high for a while. Resources on Teutonia were not quite enough to maintain the existing industry on it's own, and while Schmidt's earlier efforts had allowed them to find sources of the few things they had only shipped in before, the amount they required was still way short. During November rationing of certain produced items, mostly anything involving oil during production, was introduced. Prospecting for new sources of petroleum was engaged, but slow going and alternative efforts on fuel oil, to allow what sources of petroleum to be used in production, were tested, leading to altered internal combustion engines designed to work on crude alcohol fuels for civilian use. Such practices were not popular, but overall the necessity was understood.

Since the dial codes had been lost a new 'cold dial' program to find new codes for worlds (and hoping against hope to stumble across Earth's code) was started. Unfortunately at first, just like the effort on Earth had been after locating Teutonia, no results were found. The language of the 'Jaffa', as the enemy troops called themselves, was slowly detailed by academics and found to be a derivation of ancient Egypt and the Jaffa were found to be surprisingly literate for such a primitive seeming people. Given the lack of any information on how ancient Egypt was actually spoken the connection was not found at first, but as soon as it was it helped a great deal in translation. Very few of the Jaffa had survived the defensive battle by the SS and Wehrmacht forces, and a few of those that did starved themselves or found other ways to end their lives rather than help their vanquishers. As the translation progressed it became clear why. It seemed these beings thought that the people that ruled them were literally gods and would welcome them to the afterlife. Whoever these 'Goa'uld' masters were Schmidt did not relish the thought of meeting them.

January 1943

After a few small colonies had been established for certain goods, whether to be mined or farmed, Teutonia seemed stable as far as the people were concerned, though the infrastructure to maintain, or even to build up, the military had not quite caught up yet. Industrial output was only partly in large factories at present, due to the large numbers of different industries necessary to keep modern civilization going. Thus to begin with it was a series of small workshops that did most of the work, though a few larger factories started to be constructed.

Still, by the start of 1943 rationing was slackened off a bit, though it still held on a while as the government saw whether the farms would hold up over a season or two without support from Earth. They had food reserves to tide some food stuffs over, but it was safer to keep the usage down if they could.

May 1943

No-one felt like celebrating the anniversary in April and it passed with only billboards and one or two presentations noting it's passage. Afterwards though was something to celebrate. On March 2nd the cold dialing program turned up a code that worked!

Several of the old electric carts with cameras mounted on were still around, and with some work two were put back in working order. However before the cart was even sent through, a radio message was received. Unfortunately Reich technicians were unable to decode the signal, and the gate closed with it unanswered. Some work was made on decrypting it, but some was determined to be some kind of video image that didn't seem compatible with their existing display units. The audio segment however was able to be decoded and a crude mechanism to allow the staff to converse back and forth was built. However there was some surprise at the content of the message. Although there were a few stumbles in recognizing it, it was soon found to be a derivation of the Celtic tongue, sounding Irish to some. The content was a wary response telling those who listened that they were prepared to defend themselves if necessary and no assault through the gate would be tolerated.

The next day the gate was dialed again and this time the transmission was answered, with several Wehrmacht officers (lead by Lt Colonel Gehlen at Schmidt's request), one of the turncoat SS officers and a scientist, all decided to be the negotiators. At first translation books were hastily put out, though needed to be updated as time went on and more detail was extracted from transmissions.

The first two way contact was wary, but cordial, and by radio only. It was obvious that the Eurondans, as they called themselves, were considerably more advanced than the Reich, though they had not deciphered any codes to use with the gate. In fact it was treated as a bit of a curio, though one or two of their scientists had apparently been studying it's history on their world lately.

After five such conversations the Eurondans suggested a meeting in person. Schmidt's personnel had already hotly contested what to do if the Eurondans asked for the code for Teutonia, but in the end they opted to rapidly increase defenses around the gate in case they were attacked, but to allow the meeting. They would ask if the Eurondans would not observe them dialing home, but wouldn't force the issue. This was more a test of how the Eurondans dealt with them than anything, as the complexity of the video signal proved their advances in such systems must be considerable. It was guessed that they could, if they so chose, place a hidden camera easily to watch them dial home no matter what the Reich soldiers did. Especially as the team would not know the normal layout of the area around the gate to spot anything out of the ordinary.

The team that had so far carried the radio 'meetings' was chosen to go through the gate to the alien planet, and soon had met their Leader, a charismatic scientist who had apparently helped the Eurondans in some kind of war. Initial contact by the gate on the other side was stilted, as the Reich staff were not terribly well versed in the Eurondan tongue. When escorted into the base the Eurondans referred to the Reich personnel as 'Kindred' and claimed that according to some records unearthed near the gate recently that it was likely that the Reich was from the world they originally came from. The leader called himself Adarian, and though he was elderly he seemed to govern the huge underground facility the Eurondans inhabited well. His people certainly seemed to trust Adarian and followed him implicitly. After introductions were passed around the Eurondans produced small hand held devices that they said would aid in translation. These machines needed to 'learn' the Reich language and things were still slow, but better than before. The devices were not given to the Nazis, but on loan while they were in the base, the Reich scientist repeatedly asking for samples of the device to keep, with little luck.

The Eurondans seemed to relate fairly well with the Nazi group, and after the SS officer began discussing some suitably abbreviated historical matters they even began to show some signs of sympathy. The meeting ended however with nothing really decided. It seemed that the aliens had all they needed in supplies for the time being. They said they were merely waiting their enemies out. Beyond that cryptic statement they refused to comment further.

The 'test' seemed to go well as the Eurondans were perfectly happy to not observe the Reich when they dialed home. It still wasn't certain they could be trusted as Gehlen still couldn't determine whether cameras were present in the tunnels the gate was in, but it looked as if they were being honest.

Time would tell.

June 1943

Two more meetings occurred before some interest was shown in anything the Nazis had to offer. Some of the Nazi staff suspected that the Eurondans did want something but were holding back, hoping to get a better deal if the Reich became desperate. However at the end of the third meeting one proposal was given. Luxury food stuffs they did not have in stock or could grow with their underground greenhouses.

However they were rather restrictive on what they would trade. They said this was in part due to bad experiences in the previous war with 'The Breeders' in which the Eurondan's superior technology was constantly under attack from spies and other agents wishing to take their machinery. The Reich discussed the matter among themselves (somewhat carefully as they weren't sure the Eurondans nearby could understand German or not) and eventually decided to ask for assistance with power plant design and medical drugs in exchange.

This was turned down, but in the following meeting they did offer to show the Nazis how to build a thermo-electric converter that was much more efficient than conventional dynamos in exchange for seeds for a hundred varieties of fruit. It was not a complete power plant system but helped Reich engineering a great deal.

July 1943

Finally, after Schmidt had authorized it, the Reich team offered access to a few of the Goa'uld weapons they scavenged from the fallen Jaffa warriors. A sample, a Zat'Nik'Tel electric weapon, was brought with them to show off. There was some minor concerns at first, but at last the Eurondans had shown more than a passing interest in something the Nazis had. The Reich suggested a joint research project, where Reich and Eurondan scientists would meet and study the weapons together, sharing the results.

This was a little more than the Eurondans were considering and took two more meetings before they eventually relented. Since space in Euronda, and especially in the cramped underground base, was severely limited the Eurondans, after only a slight hesitation, agreed to the Reich's proposal to construct a research facility on Teutonia for the purpose. When they returned from that meeting work was begun on the project almost immediately, and inside of a week a small building was prepared with a connection to the Volksburg power grid, as well as it's own electrical generator, with as many modern scientific devices as the Reich could supply.

When the Eurondans arrived a couple of days later they brought their own tools with them, including amazing portable computation devices and some kind of wheeled cart that held a sort of limited manufactory. The Eurondans refused to explain what it was, but in practice it was able to reproduce primitive tools without having to send home for components. It seemed as if it could, albeit slowly, build anything the Reich could design as long as sufficient materials were presented. Also, finally, the Eurondans had decided to share a handful of their translation devices which were well received, even though both sides had people learning the other's language by now. Attempting to refocus their attention from the Eurondan technology to the planned research the team got under way, examining the alien staff weapons which the Jaffa indicated was called a 'Ma'Tok', as well as the Zat'Nik'Tels. A couple of the Jaffa had eventually offered to assist the Reich and join their cause, but most had either killed themselves or refused to say anything other than insults when they found they were unable to escape. Those that did assist showed the new team all they knew of the weapons, which seemed to be only operation details. It seemed only their masters knew how the weapons were made. To the Jaffa they were magic gifts from their gods.

August 1943

As the research continued the rest of the complex was completed and both Reich and Eurondan equipment and staff were brought in. Though the Eurondan science team were initially dismissive of Reich technology they gradually showed a grudging respect for the way the Nazi scientists were able to do much with so little. The two teams grew to work well with each other over the months, even if the negotiation meetings back in Euronda still were a little strained.

Adarian's son, Adar, joined the research project as a guest. The child was in his late teens and fascinated by technology and had persuaded his father to let him see the open skies of Teutonia. However the research staff took a shine to him and soon were teaching him their way of science to supplement the Eurondan skills he had already learned from his father.

The odd schedule of visits by Adar soon evolved into him turning up almost every other day for at least a few hours, sometimes most of the day. He was also fascinated by the animals and the picturesque city the Reich had built for themselves, almost as much as the science they were doing.

October 1943

Two months of research had merged the two teams into a tightly bound group, and some considerable research had been done. From what the Eurondan scientists had let slip they currently used remote controlled helicopter drones to fight off ground and air attack surrounding their base, but were looking to design a more advanced hovering jet aircraft labelled an 'Aerofighter' to replace it. The work analyzing the Ma'Tok staff weapons was surprisingly useful as the base technology seemed to be a hugely improved version of the plasma pulse pistols the Eurondans used at present.

The Reich hadn't actually been too impressed with the Eurondan Plasma pistols. They had a significant power pack enabling them to shoot for a very long time on one power cell, but their armor penetration was not very high. AP rounds from a Luger pistol was far superior against armor, even though the plasma pistol did more damage to an unarmored target and weighed less. Slowly, the joint team began to design a new weapon in two sizes. One a light carbine system for hand held use, and one a larger cannon suitable for use on the proposed small aircraft the Eurondans were designing back home. The Eurondan scientists were surprised by the help that the Reich team gave in attempting to 'pinch' the plasma bolt the weapons produced, hoping for a tighter, more penetrating blast.

The reverse engineering of the Goa'uld weapons helped in these developments in improving the Eurondan weaponry, but without access to the material the Jaffa called 'Naquadah' that seemed to power the alien staffs, the new carbine and cannons were still not quite as efficient as the Staffs, and the carbine only held about a hundred shots before the bulky energy cell needed to be replaced. This was when the Reich discovered that the gate was made from a solid version of Naquadah, some kind of high tech alloy of the metal. For them to build such constructions as these Stargates out of the material there must be huge mines for it somewhere.

Testing with small amounts of 'liquid Naquadah' extracted from the power-cells of Staff weapons did let them get some interesting studies on the substance, but they needed a larger supply to design a weapon around such a material. However another project was begun, this time something that the Reich could work on their own afterwards. An attempt to disassemble a couple of staff weapons and then use the components to develop a more practical weapon. They only had access to about seventy working staffs after some had been disassembled during research so even when the project completed they would likely only end up with a handful of weapons, but the practicalities of the system would likely be far more than the Goa'uld Staffs.

The Ma'Tok Staffs seemed designed to instill shock and fear into an enemy using devastating firepower and single shot kills, rather than be a combat effective weapon overall. Lack of range, and poor rate of fire limited it's effectiveness even though it did have an adjustable power system, and on low settings could fire twice as rapidly, although at considerable range reduction, making it really only useful in ranges less than a dozen meters or so.

November 1943

More negotiations between the Reich and Eurondan government had managed to accomplish a few other minor trades. Mostly the Reich offered materials such as rubber or silica that the Eurondans were in short supply of, and the Eurondans reciprocated with some minor technological tidbit. It was odd, especially as the joint research project was far outstripping the negotiations in what the Reich was learning from Euronda.

What was more worrying was the distinct feeling that the Reich negotiating team had that the Eurondans were hiding something significant about their war. They had only retreated into the bunker a few years before contact, but already they were starting to grow weary of staying underground. However whenever the suggestion that they move through the gate to another world was put forwards they managed to, carefully, change the subject.

For some reason, even though the Eurondans had admitted the land above was poisoned by the war, they wanted to stay here and continue to fight. The negotiators knew there was something they were missing.

Meanwhile the first results from the joint research project were being completed. The new plasma carbine manufactured with Eurondan technology finished going through prototype stage. During this process the Reich scientists had learned a lot from the Eurondans and more about how Goa'uld technology works. Efforts to duplicate the Eurondan's crystals in control circuitry rather than the bulky Thermionic Diode Valves and relays they currently used were underway, albeit slowly. Similarly the Eurondans had let slip other things, such that the mobile manufactories used tiny, insect sized machines they called 'Mu Constructors' in large quantities to assemble objects directly from raw materials. It seemed that the Eurondans suspected from traces in the Staff weapons that the Goa'uld had a more advanced version of this technology that used robotic machines the size of molecules! The Reich scientists were incredulous at this, but the Eurondans insisted such things were possible, even if their own engineers had not been able to achieve this.

Once their production efforts went beyond the prototype stage the Eurondans offered the Reich ten of the new Plasma Carbines for their own use while they set about getting the underground factories back home to begin to mass produce them. It seems the technology was too advanced for Mu Constructor units to handle and required more precise fabricators. The other project, to rework a couple of staffs into a more practical weapon, took considerably longer to complete however and was still ongoing.

December 1943

Separate Reich researchers had been taking the results from the joint project and applying it to other, independent research, and soon had come up with something interesting. With the ongoing study into the crystals the Eurondans used in their control systems and by studying their methods of electrical interaction, the Reich scientists gradually perfected a heat ray weapon that projected needle thin beams of light to burn a target at considerable range. The devices could be made by purely Reich technology, and even the crystals could be grown in vats in conventional plants. Unfortunately such heat rays were low power for their size at present, but very accurate and with far better range than Staff weapons, although in an atmosphere random variances in air density tended to spread the beam over distances over a few kilometers.

A separate research project was started to build a more effective Heat Ray for both personal use and on a Luftwaffe fighter. One main problem was energy storage. On a fighter craft a thermo-electric generator could create energy from the main engine, but the heat ray would require some kind of storage cell to collect energy for the very rapid burst of energy it needed to fire, even if this was recharged over time. So far Reich batteries or capacitors were not sufficient. Tests with the Naquadah from Staff weapons suggested that, as well as being 'burned' as a power source, in some forms Naquadah could store vast amounts of electrical energy, the way the alloy version in the gate could. Perhaps if they could get samples of the raw ore of Naquadah, or perhaps other samples of solid Naquadah they could manufacture such energy storage cells?

Repeated requests for the Reich scientists to join forces with the Eurondans in developing their hovering 'Aerofighter' drone aircraft were rebuffed, though some of the Eurondans in the joint team seemed more inclined towards the proposal. One of the team even had worked on some jet technology before the war began and began to give hints to the Reich staff. Nothing advanced, and little beyond what they already knew, but the assistance did get a few of the Luftwaffe researchers, notably Kurt Tank, to accelerate their own work on jet engines, and they were able to built a prototype propulsion system by late December. It would be some time before a practical aircraft could be designed to utilize it successfully however.

February 1944

In February problems during negotiations between Reich and Eurondans almost halted the joint research project. One of the Wehrmacht officers was caught sneaking around the base among some huge bays filled with pods. Each pod seemed to contain a person. Now that they were discovered (and after tempers had cooled on both sides) the Eurondans claimed it was a protection measure. When the base was established before the war, they needed to secure their people safely somewhere. Unfortunately the base could not hold support all their race. Thus most went into a form of medical hibernation to see them through the decades until the surface was poison free again.

This story seemed somehow wrong to the Reich officers, but they went along during the negotiations. If at the start of the war, when they were living above ground, they prepared all this, how did they know that the surface was going to be poisoned by the war later? They would have needed considerable time to prepare all of this before hand. Something was amiss.

After the brief problems in negotiations things went ahead again, and a new project was started in the Teutonia facility to work on something that the Eurondans had given up since before the war. The Eurondans had used space travel in a limited way, but even then their population had been low, then the tensions rose between nations, followed by the war, they did not have the resources to do much development in that area. Now they were looking forwards to when they would once more live on the surface (though they would not say how, just 'when the air was clean again') they proposed a re-examination of a proposed 'EM rocket' they had been working on.

This rocket used high amounts of electrical energy to both produce a plasma (similar to their weapons) and to then accelerate this plasma rearward to provide thrust. Perhaps, since it was seen as a purely orbital engine, and the Reich had no launch capabilities, Adarian thought it was safe to conduct such research with the Reich as they could not use it for the foreseeable future. In this they were mistaken.

May 1944

Adarian was surprised when the joint research team produced a working prototype of an EM rocket, vastly superior to anything they had previously envisioned. In air a jet engine was still superior, but this EM rocket would function in atmosphere (if inefficiently) and was very efficient, and gave considerable thrust, in vacuum. Not only that but a slightly simpler version of it was able to be built by Reich technology! Adarian was stunned by the development, and after some obvious nervousness over the Reich having this technology he began work on a vessel and a launch bay in the base to use it. A suborbital bomber using the new drive may be able to hunt down the outposts of the 'Breeders' that still sent forces against his people and strike them directly, rather than just defend the base.

Still, it was obvious that Adarian had come to the conclusion that the Reich was not someone he wanted to deal with for much longer.

Then, in late May, came the clincher. Another cold dial was successful, and another inhabited world, Heschel, was located, also with humans originally from Earth. The people here were primitive, probably at at most medieval level of technology, but when the Reich contacted them they considered the advanced Germans as gods. This sickened the Eurondans when they learned of it, despite Schmidt's obvious negative reaction to the 'god' overtures, and tensions were raised. Even more so when one of Adarian's seconds, when he was conducting negotiations on Teutonia, saw one of the 'Heschelians' and decried them as 'Breeders'. It seems the slightly Asian look the people of this new world had did not sit well with the Eurondans, and the Reich saw things begin to deteriorate.

June 1944

Although the science staff at the joint team had similar, if less pronounced, reactions when seeing the Heschelians, over time they at least grew accustomed to the presence of the emissaries that visited the Reich leadership, and also saw that the Reich was attempting to disabuse them of the 'godhood' they fostered upon the Reich forces. Thus when the order came through from Adarian for the joint team to break up and the Eurondan scientists to return home, they hesitated.

At this critical point Gehlen approached the head scientist, Felar, and asked why the Eurondans would be so dismissive of people when the variance in appearance was minor? They weren't blacks after all! During his response to this, where Felar stated that Eurondans believed their race, and only their race, was fit to be dominant on their world, he let slip that the 'poison' that had polluted their world and killed the vast majority of the planet's inhabitants, was released by Adarian himself! Gehlen was shocked that Adarian would commit mass genocide, even if the 'Breeders' had started the war as Felar insisted. He immediately ordered the gate sealed by means of a stone block inserted in the aperture (since the Jaffa had told them that 'burying' the gate would stop it from functioning) and contacted Schmidt.

Schmidt was worried, more over what Adarian was planning over there. Moving quickly he gathered as many infantry as possible on short notice and while that was being organised he went before the Eurondan scientists. He stated that Adarian was a mass murderer, that the Reich itself had also suffered under such extremists before but had never let them rule them (which Schmidt honestly believed... to an point, having not been aware of the extent to which the Fuhrer back home had taken his 'final solution' on Planet 1). Schmidt could not allow this to continue, but did not want to commit genocide himself. He said he would arm his men with as many of the Zat'Nik'Tel Goa'uld 'stun' weapons as he could to save lives, but he would be assaulting Adarian's complex. He then asked the scientists present to chose who they wished to serve.

Despite the degree to which the scientists had come to like the Reich, over half refused point blank, never being able to condone such actions. These dissenters were very surprised when some of their number did agree with Schmidt and said they would join the Reich formally, asking for asylum. One of their number, Felar, suggested he and a few Nazis go through the gate to allay Adarian's fears before an assault followed behind. When the small team went through the gate though, somehow Adar (who had been with the researchers at the time) managed to sneak past the troops, and before anyone could stop him had run through the gate.

Adar had heard what was happening and was shocked, frightened and desperate to return to his father, but his 'new friends' also were high in his mind, especially the extent that they appeared to want to limit any injury to the Eurondans from what they'd said earlier.

Gehlen and Felar were shocked when Adar came through, but managed to avoid panicking. Adar immediately confronted his father, demanding to know what his intentions were. Dismissing the boy without commenting merely annoyed Adar, who refused to leave as ordered and asked his father if it was true what he'd said about the 'nice people from Heschel'. Adarian was horrified, immediately blaming Gehlen for corrupting his child. When Adar still would not do as ordered he actually cuffed the boy, lightly perhaps, but given his already heated attitude Adar became outraged. While Adarian confronted Gehlen the boy grabbed a Zat'Nik'Tel from one of the troops and shot his father again and again, screaming at him. Adarian's staff froze, not understanding what had happened, and The Reich gave the signal while the gate was still open, brought their guns to bear on those Eurondans present, and tried to calm Adar down. They also attempted to explain that his father wouldn't be waking up later. Adar had heard that these weapons were stun guns, but hadn't known multiple shots killed.

Adar collapsed into Gehlen's arms, horrified by what he'd done, while the rest of the troops moved into the base. Unfortunately they did not have enough Zat'Nik'Tels to equip all the troops, so a good many were armed with machine guns. They attempted to maintain order during the assault, and many Eurondans were taken through the gate unconscious or merely injured for medical treatment, but as the fighting in the base intensified more and more casualties, on both sides, occurred. After a day of vicious combat in the tunnels the base was finally secured. Felar and his fellow scientists that were helping the Reich made sure to keep the defense field generator functioning to avoid the further problem of Breeder assaults on the base damaging things.

Of the seven hundred Eurondans awake in the base, less than three hundred survived the assault.

After the surrender of the few remaining Eurondans the Reich forces put the survivors in an encampment outside Volksburg. In some ways they were in better conditions than they'd been since before their war with the Breeders, but they were hardly enamored of the Reich and the base had to be enforced rather stringently with troops to maintain order. It was stated that any Eurondan that wanted to would be allowed to formally join the Reich forces, but no return to Euronda would be allowed. The Eurondan base would slowly be dismantled by the Reich forces, and eventually the 'Breeders' would be allowed to think they had won, destroying the remains of the base. They would be inheriting a poisoned world, but they would have peace at least.

This was not well received by the captured Eurondan forces. Only the shocking news that Adarian had been killed by his own son had avoided the devoted forces fighting to the last man. Confused by this turn of events, then later revelations that Eurondan scientists were working with the Reich after disavowing Adarian and his followers, some few began to accept the Reich's offer. However the majority did not. The camp would remain in existence for a long time and would, a few years later, be moved to an island to the east where the remaining Eurondans would be given their own land, although they would be given very little technology to sustain themselves.

The great debate was what to do with the hibernation cubicles storing tens of thousands of Eurondans. Schmidt could not see shutting them down. Murder on such a scale would be worse than what Adarian had done, and awakening such large numbers of rabid fanatics would be suicide for the Reich! In the end it was put off, the hibernation cubicles maintained while the base's technology was studied.
 
July 1944

The examination of the Eurondan base revealed a lot of technology that the recalcitrant people had kept secret. The revelation of the 'Defense Field' that the scientists had informed the Reich about during the assault was definitely something worth pursuing, but when they later discovered the base ran on atomic fusion power this attracted even more attention. Werner Heisenberg insisted on coming to see such a plant in operation himself and was amazed at the listed power output. Over the next few weeks numerous papers suggesting research projects came from Heisenberg and his team to attempt to duplicate this plant in some form, though with the resources at their disposal very few projects were started. With assistance from Felar's team work was begun on a simple nuclear radiation experiment designed to test atomic fission on scientific scale. Unfortunately due to the lack of any useful radioactive materials to work with the tests were not something that could be expanded to either atomic power production or a bomb.

Dealings with Heschel progressed, and it was found that the planet was surprisingly underpopulated. Best estimates gave a population, spread through many small 'cities', of perhaps 700,000 at most. As the Reich learned of legends that 'ancient gods' had brought them to this world a few thousand years ago it was guessed that the Goa'uld had brought a small group here, and over time they had expanded to the current populations. The Reich wondered how many other worlds this had happened on?

September 1944

The jet aircraft project was well underway, with an air-frame under test, when suggestions were put forwards to simplify the transport between Volksburg and it's colonies on Teutonia. Zeppelins could travel such distances with ease, and cheaper if done right, even if they were not as fast as the transport propeller driven airplanes currently used. Although the effort to build the manufacturing and maintenance facilities would be challenging, the project was given a moderate budget and began to take shape.

The Luftwaffe R&D center now had four separate facilities doing different research, and more were planned.

November 1944

As contact teams established embassies in the various states on Heschel several teams began trading in the Bazaars there. One team turned up a surprising find. A rock that looked like Naquadah ore! It seemed to be native to Heschel, though later research would prove it was only in small quantities now. Two old Naquadah mines were found, and given some of the ancient ruins nearby it was guessed this was the reason the Goa'uld had brought humans here originally. The mines were mostly mined out, but modern Reich technology seemed up to extracting some Naquadah from the pits and negotiations with the locals were begun to get mining rights for the material.

January 1945

The jet aircraft prototype was tested successfully and efforts were made to refine the design for combat usage. With the completion of both heat ray weaponry and some more advanced sensors based on Eurondan crystal scanners, the vehicle was considered a huge improvement on the Messerschmidt designs they had been using. Still subsonic, the fighter was a test bed for new component designs for years to come, even after it was obsolete as a fighter craft.

The heat rays were only practical with small, Naquadah based, superconductor storage cells. Each only enough to store energy for one shot, but constantly recharged by the thermo-electric generators off the heat from the Jet engine. This did limit their rate of fire somewhat, but proved effective. With the limited supply of Naquadah at first only four of the planes were built, but as the mining efforts on Heschel produced at least some of the material for use this was expanded.

March 1945

Work in the Eurondan base had extracted a lot of knowledge from their databanks and found ways to build crude Nazi computers to be able to read the data as well. However research was becoming limited and some actual equipment needed to be brought back for analysis as the Eurondans were unsure how to use Reich tools to build Eurondan technology. Mu Constructor devices were only so useful as a lot of advanced Eurondan tech was beyond their capabilities. Attempts to remove parts of the defense field generator without shutting it down were proving problematic. Some spare components were retrieved from stores, and construction facilities in the base were set to build more of these components, but the defense field had been the concept of Adarian and some of it was irreplaceable and the knowledge of some details lost with him.

On one such attempt by Felar and Heisenberg, something went wrong. The field began to cycle down and repeated attempts to restart it failed. Suddenly the base was defenseless and the Reich had to rush to rip out everything they could before the daily bombing raid proved to the 'Breeders' that the Eurondans were defenseless. It was after the bombings began and Eurondan sensors detected troop vehicles moving towards the undefended base, that Felar belatedly remembered the hibernation bays!

Suddenly efforts were switched to attempting to revive the Eurondans before the Breeders invaded, but unfortunately the enemy aircraft proved too effective, bombs beginning to demolish the base before the first sleepers could be awoken. The Reich and Eurondan people were forced to depart, making sure no trace of the gate code for Teutonia was left behind and indeed planting explosives to seal the chamber where the gate was kept.

Schmidt was shocked to learn that his team had had to abandon the base, but understood the rush. Attempts to re-dial the gate were unsuccessful and it was suspected that bombs had caved in the gate chamber, burying it.

May 1945

Another cold dial was successful, but this one lead to a dead world with no atmosphere at all. At first the drone that had gone through seemed to show a normal world at night time, but when the drone's mechanical components stopped functioning the scientists realized something was amiss. Soon the sun panned slowly past the still barely functioning camera, with the sky still black behind it, and the truth was found. Luckily no scouts had been sent or the results would not have been pretty!

The world was labeled as Verboten for now and a pressure sensor was added to the drones for future use.

June 1945

Efforts to duplicate Adarian's field generator with Reich components reached a partial success in a small test bed unit that could produce a weak field in a disk in front of it. Repeated efforts to improve it's output failed however, and tensions rose. Some heated arguments and even some fights occurred, with some shouted statements about the Nazis 'leaving their brethren to die in Euronda' showed that feelings on the fate of those who had been in hibernation was still high.

August 1945

Yet another cold dial was successful, and this time seemed marginally habitable. A cold wasteland showed itself and exploration of this new world was put on hold, hoping the weather on the other side would get easier later in the year. From the frigid conditions the nickname 'New Siberia' was coined, and eventually, despite efforts to name it 'Utgard' after the city of the Ice Giants in Norse mythology, the Anglicized name stuck.

October 1945

The first air trials of the working jet fighters were completed in October. The FW-250, or Vampir as Kurt Tank named it, used two Felwesh turbojet engines against the body, with long, slightly swept back wings. the wing tips were left flat with the possibility of adding missiles as that project had recently started. The idea of using Eurondan crystal computer and sensor tech to get a missile to pilot itself towards a target was revolutionary at the time (they had not heard of similar, slow developments late during the second world war, being isolated here on Teutonia). Also, from the Jaffa converts, they learned that Naquadah had an explosive amplifying effect that had been witnessed by them during battle.

The first missiles produced later started out with conventional high explosive warheads, but later Naquadah Enhanced Chemical Explosives, or NECE warheads, were added, vastly improving the yield of the devices on a par with what theory showed low yield nuclear weapons might accomplish! The problem was getting sufficient Naquadah to build such devices.

November 1945 to March 1946

This period was one of recovery. Gradually more of the Eurondans, tired of their exile from the rest of Reich civilization and from their fellows in the city of Volksburg, opted to become German citizens. However even that statement was getting tense. The few SS officers, even if a mild in demeanor compared to those that went before, still believed strongly in the Aryan mythos. With the records of the Archaeologists lost with the destruction of the original gate facilities the remaining SS merely assumed that the facts they'd heard were true. That this world was the Aryan homeworld, where the ancestors of the German people came from.

A movement, also involving the civilian governor, despite his lack of true authority, began to call themselves 'Aryans' in name officially. Schmidt thought this lunacy, but with the growth of the movement there was little he could do. He had for some time wanted to move more control of the state to civilian hands. It had been the Nazi part at home that had ordered the military to be in charge here. However this idiocy did make him rethink his proposals. In the end both the 'race name' change and Schmidt's proposal did go through, and in March 1946 a new Fuhrer, the then Governor Frederich Himmler (no relation to Heinrich Himmler of Nazi fame... or infamy, depending on who you asked), came to power to govern the 'Aryan people of Teutonia'.
 
June 1946

Two of the states surrounding the gate on Heschel had now formally joined the Reich. Given the Heschellian people's Asian descent and the current Aryan fervor on Teutonia, there was some talk of segregation at first. In truth there was little interest in people moving in either direction permanently. No 'Aryans' wanted to live on a medieval world, and the Heschellians (in general anyway) consider the Reich to be far too above them to dare to suggest they live on the same world as them. Pilgrimages, yes. Habitation, no. The debate however sparked interest on both sides, for and against segregation, and raged for weeks in the state halls. Eventually the Reich decided against segregation, at least in this case. If the Heschellians wished to live in Volksburg they won't be limited, but will be subject to the same laws as Aryan citizens.

December 1946

The first NECE warheads were built for the new Rapier-3 air to ground missiles. Efforts were begun to make the weapon a multi-purpose missile, capable of either air to air interception or air to ground targeting. With the large warhead yield, even from a low mass bomb, the device could easily be used against either kind of target if it was designed correctly. The possibility of switching out the avionics in the tip for different purposes was proposed and work commenced on the Rapier-4.

January 1947

Another cold dial was successful, and another, more advanced, drone was sent through, now with multiple sensors on the platform and a more detailed (but still black and white) video camera. Shortly after arriving energy blasts annihilated it however, and the cameras showed a brief view of a Jaffa warrior before the view was cut off.

They seemed to have discovered a Goa'uld world, but the Reich had no idea if the Goa'uld had any way to track a gate connection back to it's source. They built the gates after all didn't they?

In desperation an armored group was sent through, three light tanks (all that they had, given that was all that would easily fit through the gate) and a battalion of infantry. Overkill it seemed, when they arrive and find four Jaffa guarding the gate, with no sign that anyone had moved since the camera drone arrived and was destroyed. One Jaffa was actually run over by the first tank, but the other three attacked the 'abominations' and their weapons proved surprisingly effective in penetrating, but the machine guns on the tanks, and the following troops, made short work of them.

The immediate vicinity around the gate appeared barren, but better than Planet 1 had been. Plus woods could be seen in the distance so the planet must have been more habitable. The Wehrmacht forces secured the area, and the heavily damaged tank was sent back to be repaired. Halftracks were sent through for the troops and soon two squads were using them to scout the vicinity, with several on motor bikes taking point.

Following tracks they found an outpost nearby guarding some kind of open air mining facility. It looked like a fore-runner of what the mined out facilities on Heschel must have begun as. Noise from the halftracks and bikes hardly let the Nazis sneak around however, and a fire-fight broke out with the guards of the mine. The guards were barely twenty in number, and even the troops on the halftracks present could deal with them. It was hardly one sided however as the Jaffa's weapons were powerful and often killed a trooper with one shot. One thing did become apparent, despite their previously captured Jaffa's talk of 'skill and tradition of battle' the Jaffa tactics seemed ill suited to ranged combat.

The human prisoners were over a hundred in number, and were a mix of race. This caused some difficulty back home with the SS when they asked to live on Teutonia. Further debate was this time quashed by the Fuhrer who simply stated that they had no part in any aggression against the Fourth Reich (as he labels the current regime) and had instead been put upon foully by the hated Goa'uld. The Fuhrer seemed to prefer to step up hatred of the 'false gods' as the friendly Jaffa have called them recently, and was less inclined to listen to the SS officer's rantings of late. Some of this was perhaps his association with Werner Heisenberg in the last few months, starting when he oversaw the start of a test to see if the Reich could master atomic fusion. So far the results of that were negligible, but the Fuhrer was considering making Werner head of science for the Reich and increasing funding for such projects.

That planet was soon confirmed as being rich in Naquadah, and the mine even had quite a lot already mined waiting shipment off world. There-in lay a problem. They'd liberated a mine and killed the guards, but the Goa'uld would be expecting shipments soon. They could have attempted to keep up the facade and continue shipments, but given their poor understanding of the Goa'uld government and how they operated they felt they were more likely to fail miserably and let on what had occurred. Instead, reluctantly, the Reich pulled out of the planet they were now calling 'Naquin'. A few scouts were secreted near the mine and near the gate and reported back via radio regularly. Hopefully they could warn if any Goa'uld presence returned wondering what happened to their mine.

March 1947

After studying the Jaffa chain mail armor they had long since discovered that it was made from an alloying of two metals. One is Naquadah that they knew of. The other the Jaffa called 'Trinium' and they had been unable to find this metal anywhere else. Attempts to prospect it on the planets they knew had turned up nothing.

On New Siberia the wait for the climate to let up had ended. It was obvious the planet had all year round freezing conditions with the only variance the 'summer' snow storms. Hence teams began preparations to survive the cold and make an examination of the immediate surrounds of the gate at least. It would have to be done sooner or later after all. Surprisingly when they did they found traces of Trinium in the hard, frozen soil. They went back and took core samples further down and got varying results, but it did make the possible expansion on to that world something that the Reich wanted really badly. Vehicles were improved with an effort to survive the harsh, freezing environment, better heating units and power systems were established (the power systems being Liquid Naquadah power cells from twenty staff weapons tied into a thermo-electric converter) and cold weather clothing was mass produced, including new electrically heated underwear.

Prospecting in the frozen conditions was slow, but at the end of March a deposit of Trinium was found a mile from the gate. From some traces of old, decomposed and frozen buildings it was suspected that the gate was here close to the deposit for a reason. It had been mined in ancient times. Yet again the Goa'uld seem to have been to this world before them.

May 1947

Scouts on Naquin kept close watch, expecting Jaffa through the gate, or perhaps aircraft to swoop in from a base on another continent. What they were not prepared for was a gigantic pyramid to float down from the sky, spit various odd shaped flying craft, then settle into a hovering position near the mine. The scout attempted to retreat to the gate on foot, but found the gate was guarded by Jaffa, greatly outnumbering the scout party.

The scouts waited, observing odd looking, bat-wing type fighters patrol the sky, and later that day the gate was dialed from Teutonia. Making radio contact through the gate they informed their superiors of what they've learned. The Jaffa on the planet meanwhile seemed wary, pointing staffs at the gate while open, but curiously standing close by with absolutely no cover. After the scouts described the situation a mortar detachment carefully set up in front of the Teutonia side of the gate and fired in, devastating the Jaffa on the other side and letting the scouts redial back home and leave.

Now the Reich leadership must decide what to do about the huge alien ship hovering over the mine. It was decided to mass produce as many missiles as they could, which mainly was limited by their supply of Naquadah for the NECE warheads. Existing stocks of missiles was high, but most have much weaker HE warheads. When the problems with mass producing NECE warheads became apparent Schmidt ordered all efforts switched to the warheads, and just use every missile they could use. Special launch racks began to be assembled in front of the gate to fire the missiles through to Naquin and a drone was heavily armored to survive as long as it was able to keep video image of where the Goa'uld space ship was. Hopefully it would remain in place, as that was currently in sight of the gate and open to direct fire through it. Also efforts were made to build the largest variant of a heat ray cannon they were able to and point that through the gate as well, powered directly by the Volksburg power grid.

It took almost three days of feverish activity to produce the warheads, the Luftwaffe co-opting workers from several other factories to assist in assembly, but finally they were completed. Troops were prepared and a last desperate effort to get the heavy heat ray weapon finished and mounted was completed, though the technicians were not hopeful about it's effectiveness. They have had little time to test anything. Troops armed with staff weapons, anti tank Reich grenade launchers and some with the few of the plasma carbines gifted to them from the Eurondans before their collapse, readied themselves. Tanks and artillery ranked behind them and the gate was dialed.

When the probe reported back that the ornate pyramidal ship was seen to still be in place, hovering over the mine, the attack order was given. The heat ray fired simultaneously with the missile barrage, dozens of them at a time, pouring through the gate and carefully staggered so the exhausts of one missile wouldn't affect the following one. Crude inertial targeting was used, as, after the first missiles went through, infrared detectors that they have recently developed would be confused by the exhausts of multiple weapons ahead of them. So far radar homing weapons hadn't quite been perfected yet, but that was close to being put into production. For now this seemed to work, and the Goa'uld were taken completely by surprise, the heat ray visibly distorting the defense field, or shield as the Jaffa call them, around the floating ship, and they apparently did not manage to regain their composure before the missile barrage began to impact. Over sixty missiles struck the ship in the initial bombardment, with warheads far more powerful than any the Reich as ever used before... and it remained unaffected as the troops tanks and artillery poured onto the planet.

The commander realized they may have made a dreadful mistake as the vessel opens fire with enormously powerful weapons. They seemed to avoid striking the gate, but any forces venturing away were annihilated. Soon the flying aircraft seen by the scouts earlier also attack, similar smaller bolts of energy striking the Reich troops, and the retreat order was given. Barely a quarter of the original troops survive the assault and return home, and the Reich was stunned at the power of the enemy. The Wehrmacht commander however used smoke grenades to cover their withdrawal and he was fairly certain that the enemy does not know their gate code. Also, annoyingly, he placed a large satchel charge by the pedestal before departing. It was assumed to have destroyed that planet's ability to dial out.

Schmidt is frustrated. In a way he hated that the man did that. He wanted those mines! However, after consideration he decided not to reprimand him. If the Goa'uld had learned of the code for Teutonia they could have laid down a massive invasion. No matter how crude the Jaffa's tactics seem to be, it's obvious that this was one enemy the Reich cannot underestimate!
 
June 1947

The aftermath of the Naquin disaster was considerable. Schmidt received his first chewing out from the Fuhrer since his rise to power, however compared to what Hitler would have done it was minor. Also, what Schmidt was questioned for was the audacity of thinking he could attack an enemy he knew so little about!

A recruitment drive was begun to make up the battalion that was mostly destroyed, and attempts to design better light tanks are started. Publicly it was stated the Reich was 'defending the old Fatherland' (meaning the supposed Aryan homeland of Teutonia), but this causes some disruption in power. The SS do not want to be seen as being on the defensive at all, and see it as a weakness. However, given the obvious disparity between Reich and Goa'uld forces they let the matter drop at present.

Technical efforts to make NECE warheads more powerful have limited effect. They can make a more powerful warhead, but only at the cost of more Naquadah per unit. At this point the mine on Heschel was only producing minimal amounts, though more advanced mining equipment was, it was hoped, going to improve that. Also efforts to seek out a different deposit of Naquadah on Heschel begin, so far with no result.

Curiously a small deposit was found on Teutonia, though the amount detected was small and it was across the Eastern ocean on a smaller continent.

July 1947

Progression of defensive build up continues, with heavy stone emplacements and pill boxes mounted around the gate, a swinging arm to rapidly block the gate during dialing if an incoming gate connection is not expected, and a series of underground bunkers to store troops and supplies along side the gate. Thought was given to moving the gate underground to it's own facility, but at present it was seen as better to build up around it to a more defensible position.

The Naquadah mining outpost across the Eastern sea gets going, but produces little for the effort. The deposits are scarce and poor quality and take some time (and some hit and miss testing) to refine to a reasonable grade. With this supply, and that from Heschel, they do perfect a more refined metal of Naquadah for use in energy cells, improving their storage capacity slightly, but otherwise little comes of it.

August 1947 to January 1949

Things slow down militarily over the next year and a half, though dealings with Heschel go well. Two more states surrounding the gate area enter into an alliance with the Reich and relations with others nearby were fairly good. Some issues with old enmities between the states began to surface, but so far the small size of the population and the disparity in technologies allows the Nazis to control where the locals do disagree with them. They actually manage to avoid (mostly) being heavy handed about it to, for the moment at least.

The city of Volksburg does not grow much over this time, though two new settlements nearby are founded, villages close by some of the mining centers being created. Feelings among the people settle a bit as it becomes evident that the Goa'uld are not going to immediately drop from the sky or pour through the gate.

Research into atomic power goes slowly, but some headway is made at employing certain techniques the Eurondans used in their early experiments with fusion power. A coastal facility was built to extract Tritium and Deuterium from seawater and this was sent inland by train to the research facility. However at present practical results seem far off.

Heat ray weapons increase in capabilities considerably in this time, as the Reich find better ways to grow the crystals the Eurondans use and identify one that acts as a free electron metastable state amplifier. At first fragility limits the use of these to small size and are used in pistols and a rapid fire carbine weapon, but it seems with better facilities larger crystals could be grown reliably and rifles or even cannons could be made this way. Without relying in the inefficient gas heat rays they had been using for large scale work the power and range of these weapons would increase dramatically.

NECE warhead production attempts to increase the size of the blast, but with limited Naquadah mining this slows production of the warheads. With that and the inability to produce a working fission bomb, missile work tends to be put to the side lines for the moment, though it still goes on, more focusing on developing the flight, homing and engine capabilities of the missiles.

Some effort is also made to side step the need for fission bombs entirely. Some Eurondan scientists claim that it should be possible to stimulate Naquadah into a highly energetic reaction without a conventional energy blast to amplify. However initial research does not show much promise in this field.

Work to reproduce Adarian's defense field gets a little better, the small disk systems becoming practical now with enough strength to see use outside the laboratory. But the generator to create it is large and the energy required high. However the advantage of a shield covering the Stargate is a hefty incentive and more funding is given towards building such a unit so they can stop enemies coming through without stopping the gate from activating in the first place. Attempts to build production models of these generators were begun.

The FW-260 Vampir, a minor upgrade to their current jet fighter design, went into service in mid 1948. More advanced Jet engines and more maneuverability helped the craft's capabilities a lot. Newer, rapid fire crystal heat rays were mounted internally in the wings. These were still limited by the lower crystal size, meaning lots of smaller beams rather than one power powerful one, but in a strafing run it was very effective against unarmored targets. Best of all no ammunition supply to worry about. As long as the aircraft's jet engines were working the weapons would receive power.

During this period the recordings from the drone of the battle at Naquin are examined. The hope is that if they could find weaknesses in the enemy shields they could return and defeat them. Of course this assumes that the Goa'uld replaced the destroyed pedestal to allow any forces sent to return home. However, at present there was a moratorium on scouting or sending drones to Naquin. Also the cold dialing program was halted. The Reich did not want to bring any attention to themselves until they felt they were ready to face the Goa'uld.

One thing was learned. While the explosions from the NECE warheads did affect the shields moderately, the heat rays seemed to affect them out of all proportion to their damage. If a sufficiently powerful one could be built (or many less powerful ones perhaps) it might be possible to bring the Goa'uld shields down with them. Unfortunately heat rays were not terribly damaging by nature so other weapons would likely be required once the shields had been dropped. Such as missiles.

February 1949

There had been many 'talks' with the Jaffa, both polite chats and full on interrogations. However details on their masters, the Goa'uld, had been sparse. Those Jaffa that survived the initial assault on the Teutonia gate were not very highly ranked Jaffa and merely treated their masters as the gods they said they were. The survivors of these became loyal to the Nazis, but did not give a lot of information.

Those few that were brought back in the chaos of the Naquin assault almost all died, and the two that remained were not cooperative. However, after considerable 'persuasion' it became apparent that one of these two was highly ranked in the Jaffa pecking order. In February it was finally discovered what the 'Eels' in the Jaffa's pouch were.

They were baby Goa'uld!

What was more, the Jaffa commander finally gave up one last scrap of intelligence. He'd witnessed his gods 'possessing' humans by the Eel simply burrowing into the person's neck. There had been tales from the other Jaffa slaves that the Goa'uld 'took' human bodies, but it had been thought some kind of religious metaphor, or a technological trick to lull these gullible savages to work for them. This described process was extreme and rather horrific, but comparisons with the Eel corpses they had discovered seemed to corroborate the story, and the varying development of those that died suggested the vast majority of them were infants in the 'white worm' stage. A later stage described as a 'Black hooded Eel' with an odd kind of spiked hood or fin behind the head, seemed to be the adult, or near adult, form.

The Reich immediately began checking all involved in that battle, so long ago now, just in case one of these Eels had taken over a Reich soldier. It was assumed it could not have happened or the Goa'uld would have done something since then to bring attention to themselves. Either to escape or cause destruction on Teutonia, but the mere suggestion that their people could be subverted like this made most of them shudder. Thankfully no such possessions were found, though it was still possible they might be missing something. New additions to the troopers uniform with a ribbed metal and hard leather strip completely surrounding the neck was introduced to attempt to stop them from taking one of their troops. Whether this would be effective was unknown. Surely if they could burrow at all they could merely start somewhere else and keep going till they reached the neck? Still, it was better than nothing.

March 1949

Finally efforts to scale up heat ray crystals were successful, and cannon sized weapons were now possible. A variant of the FW-260 labeled 'C' was produced, with two of the new, high caliber heat weapons in the body of the aircraft, rather than dozens of the smaller ones in the wings. The weapon seemed powerful enough to be a threat to a Goa'uld shield, but only if fired continuously for a LONG time. The best estimates from the scientists were that one such weapon would require over fifty minutes of continual fire to bring down a Goa'uld shield. Impractical at best. Of course many different weapons fired at the same time would shorten the period, but it still seemed difficult to make use of.

Attempts were made to scale the crystals up further and build still larger weapons, but that would take a while.

Efforts to build Plasma weaponry from the lost 'joint team' project had not gone well. Without the factories in the Eurondan base it was almost impossible to reproduce the weapons. They had three working versions of the cannons they salvaged from the base, and about six carbines left after the Naquin debacle. However, going with the other project completed back then, a team of scientists managed to take ten Ma'Tok staff weapons, disassemble them, and then put it back together to create a large, rapid fire, plasma weapon.

The weapon was easily four times the power of a staff weapon, much more rapid fire, and some effort had been made to compress the plasma pulse, maintaining it's cohesion longer and extending the range. The weapon went from the staff's estimated effective range of between 50 and 100 meters up to over 700 meters. Still not as good as a good sniper rifle or heavy autocannons, let alone a heatray, but a vast improvement, though the weight was ten times the staff's. Accuracy was still low, but better than staff weapons. The cannon proved effective against a test shield that the scientists attempted to tune to be of a similar type (though vastly weaker) to the Goa'uld shield. It was not proof positive, but it seemed this would be a viable weapon, if sufficient numbers of staff weapons could be acquired to use as parts to make them.

May 1949

Although the loss of the factories in Euronda had been a blow, the teams of scientists and engineers, both Eurondan and Reich, had been attempting to marry the two technologies into something the Reich could produce. Mounting several of the small Mu Constructor units the joint research team had with them into a small workshop, the teams managed to produce a rather advanced production facility, more advanced than anything the Reich could build up till now. Mu Constructors were partially used directly on simple technology, but also were used to interact and improve other fabrication machines and to maintain them. Levels of precision went up, costs went down, though the complexity of setting the workshop up were high. Similarly training both the staff to run it, and the computational systems to control the Mu machines (individually they were too dumb to guide themselves), were long winded. However by late May they had two working facilities produced and had started on a third.

Production of more advanced systems using the new Mu Fabrication plants went ahead, as did research on the Mu Constructors themselves. At present the capability to build the tiny Mu machines was non-existent except for the several hand carts, or 'Mu Pods' as the Eurondans called them, recovered from the Eurondan base. The machines could build more of themselves, but this took all their time and was inefficient. The Mu Pods had used small, electrical fabricators to fashion the tiny machines with some kind of electron beams that literally etched the devices from plates of layered materials, also made in the small devices by some kind of deposition technique. A special variation of the Mu fabrication plant was begun, aiming at duplicating the Mu Pod technology so the Reich could mass produce the tiny machines.

September 1949

Production began on a new rapid fire projectile gun for Reich soldiers. The LK-7 assault rifle was a short, SMG like weapon but with greater than usual accuracy and range for such a gun. It also used the standard 7.92mm rounds used in the K98K carbine, though slight advances in the propellant mix did improve stopping power slightly in latest production runs of the ammo. The new weapon could fire at fairly high rates of fire, almost twenty rounds a second on fully automatic fire, but the new addition of a six round 'burst' feature proved popular with the troops. There were some issues to do with the first model's reliability of the attachable targeting scope, but given that in normal use the scope wasn't required upgrading to fix the issue was not given high priority.

The weapon was fairly heavy, but did hold a lot of ammunition in it's drum magazine. Experience with the Eurondan's plasma pistols with their huge energy supply had persuaded the manufacturers of the weapon to attempt to stretch the size of the 'clip' as much as possible, despite the problems with handling characteristics with the added weight of the drum clip.

December 1949

The first practical, production run shield generator was produced, able to create a large shield of disk energy, designed to fit in front of the Stargate. The generators were large coils that fit around the gate, with huge electrical field columns on either side. Two massive generators were installed to power the device, and it was believed to be powerful enough to deflect a single blast from a Goa'uld Pyramid spaceship, such as seen on Naquin at least. Efforts were increased on improving the technology, especially the ability to ease out 'stress' that built in the shield after it was attacked. Effectively it's ability to repair shield damage over time. Now at least they had a defense against invasion through the Stargate on Teutonia, even if it probably still required refinement to be effective.

April 1950

In early May the first successful efforts to shape the Naquadah/Trinium alloy used in Jaffa armor was successful. At first simple plates of the metal were produced, and standard military uniforms were modified to have 'pouches' in the front and back into which these light weight but tough plates could be inserted, providing protection to the wearer. This increased the weight of the uniform, but it was not deemed debilitating, and might stop a staff blast as long as it didn't hit between two plates.

This development, along with using the alloy in a handful of tanks (they did not have much of the material in stock), the new assault rifles and the successful recruitment and training campaign, let the Fuhrer feel confident enough in Teutonia's defense to allow the cold dialing program to begin once more. Plans were also begun for a second assault on Naquin, hoping the Goa'uld there had restored the pedestal by the time they were ready. Given the failure last time efforts went into larger production runs, hoping to overwhelm the ship (if it was still there) with firepower from heat rays and missile barrages, with artillery and tank fire as backup. The newer missiles used more advanced radar homing systems, and in testing was less likely to stray off target. Testing against shields showed a decent, if odd radar return, and the targeting systems were constantly upgraded with better ways of holding a lock on a shielded target.

Estimations were that they would be ready for an assault on Naquin in about a year.

November 1950

The Reich did not get that much time.

On November 2nd the frigid mines on New Siberia dialed Teutonia, desperately radioing that they were under attack from a Goa'uld mothership! Shock ran through the Reich planning staff as a desperate operation was flung together on short notice. In the harsh conditions on New Siberia the enemy had not deployed troops (unsurprisingly, given the Jaffa's crude garments) and the Reich troops prepared their cold weather gear with as much enthusiasm as they could muster. New Siberia was not a popular posting, with good reason, but there was little choice now if they wanted to maintain their Trinium mines there and the Wehrmacht prepared to assault the enemy. Soon, radio signals from New Siberia stopped. This would have to be done soon!

As the missile batteries and heat ray cannons were readied in front of the gate, tanks and troops lined up, and the incoming gate shut down with the loss of the radio transmissions from the mining base, the troops tensed, waiting for the moment. The gate was redialed from Teutonia rapidly and a probe was sent through. The Reich immediately found they had to re-position their heat ray weapons. The mothership was stationed off to one side, still just in sight of the gate's front arc, but not an easy shot. Surprisingly they did not fire on the probe unit at all and several Wehrmacht officers suggested that the snow might be interfering with their radar or whatever detection system the Goa'uld used.

Targeting from the probe was fed to the missiles, fuel systems were prepped on the vehicles, and weapons readied. Finally the command was given and the battery of over a hundred missiles ripple-fired, while the twenty heat rays fired through the gate, the probe confirming direct strikes on the target. Troops and tanks charged through the gate, even while the missiles were curving around to strike the mothership, and the Reich soldiers spread out, taking what cover they could. They all knew the power of the mothership's weaponry.

It was then a shock when, shortly after the first wave of missiles struck, that they saw the shield fail, and further missiles, and the heat rays, impact it's hull. The attack had been a complete surprise and it was suspected that the shield was not fully charged, or that it was hindered by the conditions (the engineers insisted a shield system should not be affected by weather, but it seemed that was a possibility from the visible evidence).

Rocking from the attack, followed by strikes from tank guns, artillery, and anti-tank rocket grenades from troopers (not that the later weapons were likely to damage such a huge craft significantly), the ship wobbled, attempted to gain altitude, then fell like a rock, shaking the snowy plains where it struck. Most of the soldiers were knocked from their feet by the impact, but not many were seriously injured, and soon tanks and troops were struggling through the snow to get to the crashed ship. No celebrations were had back at base. The failure at Naquin had made them quite pessimistic about the whole deal, and they wouldn't assume success until the crashed craft could be proven to be secured.

It took a long time. Thousands of Jaffa guarded the ship's interior, and though they were ill prepared for the cold winds blowing in through the damaged hull, they still fought like demons and their focus on hand to hand skills and limited range weapons proved of greater use in the confines of the ship's interior. Reich troops set up fire zones down certain long corridors, but a lot of the space was close-in work, though the rapid fire LK-7 proved rather effective with AP rounds and as two full battalions forced their way deeper into the ship they found fewer and fewer Jaffa to fight.

Eventually the forces cornered the injured Goa'uld himself in his throne room, but he appeared to have some kind of personal shield, as well as an incredibly powerful weapon molded to one hand that generated waves of concussive force. Weapon's fire seemed not to hinder this shield, but given their experience with such systems the Reich forces assumed they could simply overwhelm it with firepower. Surely it would collapse eventually?

After ten minutes of gunfire, rocket propelled grenades and even captured staff weapon fire, with forty casualties, and a lot of frustration and anger, the Goa'uld was still there, laughing at them. But one of the officers noticed debris from the damaged ceiling fall easily through the shield to drop at the Goa'uld's feet. The officer made the connection and realized that slow objects passed through the shield. It must be some kind of trade off. Such a strong shield must have some weakness after all. So, if rocket grenades were too fast to pass through...

A lull in the firing confused the Goa'uld for a moment, then a single statement, in the Goa'uld tongue 'Catch' was uttered from the officer, and the 'God' was very surprised to see a small object lobbed towards him passing unhindered through the shield. Instinctively he caught it, and his arm was promptly blown from his body as the grenade detonated.

Carefully approaching the screaming 'God' the troops 'pushed' through the shield and eventually found an off switch and proceeded to strip him of any technology they could find. They carried the bleeding Goa'uld from the vessel, but made sure to bind him (as much as they could with one arm) securely in case he had any surprises they hadn't detected.

Finally the Reich forces mopped up the few remaining Jaffa and closed on the mines. Goa'uld bombardment had demolished the upper buildings, but quite a few of the miners had retreated into the mines. Some collapses had injured a number of miners, but most were alive and they were evacuated through the gate for medical treatment and would remain on Teutonia until the buildings here could be rebuilt.

The Reich had won, and now had the remains of a crashed enemy ship to examine as well as a captured Goa'uld! Though after interrogating a few Jaffa prisoners it seemed their weapons were likely still under par against Goa'uld ships. It seemed from what the captives said that the ship had just won a battle in orbit against another Goa'uld vessel, and it's shields were greatly weakened. It had retreated to the surface of New Siberia to recuperate, then noticed life signs and moved to investigate a possible new 'resource' of human slaves. Poor decision on their part!

Finally celebrations were in order and cheers broke out in command back on Teutonia. The engineers did not relish working on the alien vessel under the harsh, freezing conditions, but the other than that, things looked up.
 
November 1950

Victorious troops returned to Teutonia to parades and goosestepped their way into the public's hearts. No matter how it had been done, the Reich had dealt a stunning blow to the vile Goa'uld 'False Gods'. The phrase had been picked up from the few turncoat Jaffa and made it's way into the population where it was used with glee. The Nazi hierarchy gladly held rallies and made speeches, decrying the enslaver enemy and promoting their own glorious victory. In private they knew better.

The Reich had lucked out.

Right now there was strong feeling that the cold dial program should be halted once more. They just weren't capable of dealing with another mothership right now, let alone anything else the Goa'uld could throw at them. Efforts to get the captured 'God', called Kel'Kesh, a minor Goa'uld under Camulus, to talk to the Reich were not going well. Standard torture techniques did not seem effective against him, and miraculously his arm slowly beginning to regrow! Efforts continued but the arrogance of the 'God' and his assumption that these 'upstart humans' would soon be annihilated by one of his brethren was frustrating for the interrogators.

Analysis of the ornate hand device he'd used in combat as well as his personal shield were begun, but they seemed to not respond to probing. How the alien had even activated them was unknown at this time.

In the end the cold dial program was scaled back, while a large effort to make an enclosed area from the gate on New Siberia to the crashed ship was started. It was 'summer' there now, and though the winds were fierce the temperature was a mere -20 Celsius. They didn't want to be still outside working on the ship when it turned to winter! While that was underway efforts to extend this to the mine area and to rebuild the above ground houses was also begun. Trinium mining was halted for the moment, but it was hoped would begin again before the end of the following year.

March 1951

Although efforts to repair the 'Hatak' vessel, as the Jafa called it, were unsuccessful at first, there seemed hope. Most of the damaged systems seemed to be at least understandable to some degree by either Reich or Eurondan scientists. Various instruments analysed the wreck and lists of what was damaged beyond repair and needed replacing and what could be repaired was written down.

The study of the ship continued with thoughts of reproducing the alien tech behind it, however this went slowly. On orders from the Fuhrer they were not to dismantle anything that they were not sure they could put back together! He wanted the ship repaired and brought back to Teutonia to guard the planet against the possibility that it should be attacked in the future.

Meanwhile scientists struggled with the data from the probe during the battle, and such information that they managed to take from Jaffa on how the battle had progressed, they attempted to figure out how effective Reich weapons would be against such a vessel in future. A few discoveries were made. It was believed the Goa'uld shields, vastly stronger than anything the Reich could fashion so far, could withstand direct nuclear blasts of considerable size if the energy levels detected were anything to go by. Since the Reich still hadn't managed to build an atomic device this was mostly academic, but there was some interesting points. Single huge blasts my not be the way to go to defeat shields. Heat rays certainly worked, and they were needle thin beams of energy. Perhaps other types of energy would work better? Efforts to make heat rays with different frequencies of light, and of building weapons with entirely different concepts of causing damage, were started, but it was not known how easy such efforts would be.

May 1951

Efforts to imprison the captured Jaffa had been going well, isolating them to an island to the East, but this failed as it was revealed that somehow a couple of them had hidden Zat'Nik'Tels and proceeded to kill the small guard post on the island. Before they could escape the Luftwaffe strafed the island, killing the ringleaders and cowing the rest, but it was obvious this method would not work. A base on New Siberia with no direct connection to the gate was established far to the North. If the Jaffa wanted to fight their way through the freezing conditions to the gate they were welcome to try.

Reaction on Teutonia to reports about the Jaffa were minor. The public simply saw them as inferior primitives, focusing their ire on their masters as the true foe.

June 1951

A heavy version of the plasma cannon based on disassembled Ma'Tok staffs was developed as a tank weapon system. With the huge number of staffs recovered from the Battle of New Siberia twenty such weapons were assembled and mounted on a new tank with Trinium armor plating. Stocks of the metal were still limited with the mines shut down, but this did not seriously deplete the stocks and soon the first tank proved that, in tests, it could resist the Goa'uld's staff weapon fire numerous times before the armor weakened. New Armored Battalions were assembled and training begun, with the elements of the single, old battalion going into the new units. The new Ursa 'Gate Tanks' were just small enough to cross the threshold of the bottom curve of the gate easily, but were somewhat over powered in weapon for it's size. A light heat ray on a ball turret on the front of the hull provided light anti-personnel or anti-shield use, and two side mounted machine guns on similar ball mounts provided all round protection. There were only places for three crew however, and manning all four weapon systems and driving the vehicle were impossible. Later versions of the Ursa used computer control to guide the small turrets from one station, while the other two crew drove and manned the main plasma gun, but the early models required gunners to shift around in the small vehicle and only control one, or at most two of the smaller weapons at once.

After considerable effort a large, efficient power plant was designed for the tank, assembled from the small power cells in the staffs. The generator was finicky, but provided a lot of power for the electrical drive train and the main weapons, but early versions tended to shake themselves apart in rough terrain. The numerous small components were difficult to reassemble in the field as well and during tests several found themselves either out of power or on severely limited power when things fell apart.

The Ursa was eventually put on hold for field use until these issues were sorted out, though the two armored battalions still trained with the old vehicles until the upgrades were complete. The tanks were nicknamed 'Whining Winfried' for the high pitched sound the engines made. This was toned down on later models and later they gained a reputation for quiet, stealthy approaches.

October 1951

With Heschel coming more and more into Reich influence an effort to 'uplift' the savages to a modern society was started. With the reverence that most Heschel treated the Reich it seemed easy at first to improve their lot as they did whatever they were asked without question. Soon however problems arose. Attempts to get them to adopt standard weights and measures went well, but the new metallurgical techniques were another matter. They treated the new 'writ' handed down to them like laws from god and wouldn't adapt to situations. It was frustrating to the Reich engineers, used to a very different way of operating.

The process was changed after a Heschellian plant caught fire outside of Irent, one of their main cities, and threatened to spread. Reich fire fighters were able to arrive in time to avoid the fire spreading to the city, but the plant was a right off. Several people blamed the incident on lack of ability to read signs and poor understanding of safety. Parallels with Goa'uld and their primitive slaves using technology they thought was 'magic' was brought up in the press back home and new schooling was started instead to attempt a more long term solution.

By now the facilities on New Siberia had finally been completed, a building sealing the gate in with heated corridors leading to both the ship and the mining facilities. Mining work began once more and efforts on the ship sped up.

January 1952

From Eurondan data and their own knowledge the Reich engineers believed they might be able to build rockets that could launch into space. However the sheer cost of such endeavors was huge, and the project to build 'EM rockets' was still underway, delayed by the loss of the Eurondan tech base. They knew the engines could be built with Reich tech but getting there was a struggle. The Nazi leadership was keen to establish some kind of sensor system in orbit to warn of an impending attack from space, though scientists warned that they were unsure that current sensors and scanners would give much warning anyway. The giant ships seemed to be able to move rapidly when they wanted to.

However, even though launching rockets was out of the question right now, they did have access to a planet with no atmosphere and low gravity through the gate. The first 'Verboten' world that Teutonia had found after losing contact with Earth. Tests began on early pressure suits, then work on a base on 'Leere', the name decided on for the airless planet, that could begin examining hardware for proposed space exploration and military usage. There were several accidents at first, and bases consisted of sealed units carried through the gate on carts, but eventually a working facility was established. Training began on working in their prototype suits in the a vacuum, hoping to practice assembling larger structures. Eventually they wanted to build a base around the gate to make transfer between Leere and Teutonia easier.

For the moment things were limited until they developed better vacuum suit technology. Two deaths and several injuries in the first month of tests was enough to prove their systems were not up to such conditions just yet.

March 1952

A minor problem on Heschel forced an increased military presence on the planet as a bunch of mercenaries, hired by a far off empire, attempted to destabilize the new civilization set up between the Nazis and the Heschel 'Center States' as they were termed. While the surprise assaults lost a few shipments of Nazi materials, following attacks proved the locals were not very good at partisan warfare, and the Reich forces began rounding them up with fast strikes in the vicinity. Captured mercenaries soon pinpointed the empire paying them, and in an abrupt move the local commander decided he could not tolerate this and ordered the Heschel branch of the Luftwaffe to bomb the Empire.

Schmidt was, to say the least, 'unhappy' with the commander's decision, but in the end was forced to go along with it. It certainly improved relations with others in the vicinity, and to be honest it was not much different than the various military campaigns waged before the Nazis arrived on this world (other than the odd method of attack from the natives' point of view). The locals were more surprised when helicopters began arriving with food and medicine for the survivors a few days later. The state collapsed from an internal revolution shortly after and the new government vowed to join the Nazi cause. It seemed the people were rather used to such invasions and did not hold as much of a grudge afterwards as they Reich had assumed they would.

July 1952

Populations had increased all over, both on Teutonia and on Heschel, over the years. Teutonia's population had risen to 570,000, a fairly steady growth, but stable, while Heschel, used to high infant mortality and poor medical treatments started to increase sharply with the increased usage of the few hospitals in the Center States (initially for Reich use only, though this was relented a couple of years after their completion). Heschel's population on contact was estimated to be around 700,000, with the cities that comprised the current Center States having populations of a little over 300,000. Now the Center States had soared in population, partially from decreased death rate, but also from emigration from outer civilizations, up to over 500,000. Estimates for planetary populations varied, but the best guess was around 750,000, still a marked rise in the short time since contact in 1944.

The work on New Siberia was going well, with Trinium mining back up to the pre-battle levels, and the examination of the Hatak was proving very useful. The shield system had been jury rigged back into operation and now tests of Reich weapons were performed against the shield. These were angled obliquely in case something penetrated. No-one wanted to explain to the Fuhrer why they had damaged his ship!. The main reactor was, thankfully, not seriously damaged and had already been restored to full operation. Reich science as yet did not understand how the Goa'uld managed to directly tap Naquadah for power and the device was beyond their ability to repair more than superficial damage.

The engines and other systems had been carefully cataloged and the weapon systems seemed to be mostly intact. One or two of the incredibly powerful weapons that had been lightly damaged were removed for study, and the Reich hoped to replace them with other weapon systems of their own to test. Already designs for a truly massive heat ray were being put forwards, but so far this did not seem a practical design. Some scientists were suggesting the new variations of heat ray that were 'just around the corner' might prove far more interesting. Reich scientists were testing methods of frequency shifting, altering the base type of crystal generating the beam, and possibly using a staged system, one crystal 'pumping' another, separate crystal. The most promising of these, a frequency shifting system based on some reverse engineered Goa'uld tech from staff weapons, was hoped to shift the Blue, visible light beams up to high ultraviolet wavelength, or perhaps even into the low X-rays. Such weapons should be far more powerful than existing weapons.

A second project to accelerate the plasma generated by a staff weapon far faster into a needle thin, long-ranged beam seemed have hit some problems, but was progressing. The base system in the staff weapon generated a plasma 'pulse' which used magnetic fluctuations to hold itself together for short periods until striking a target caused it to rip itself apart in an explosion. For the plasma beam weapon they were designing it did not need these fluctuations at all, just a plasma source and focusing equipment. By now the scientists had become frustrated working with the sealed in components of the staff weapon and had opted to build their own plasma generator instead, but still use Staff components to accelerate and focus the beam to high speeds. If it worked it should provide a large, long range plasma weapon that should rival anything the Goa'uld have, short of those devastating cannons on their motherships, while at the same time having more sustained power from the continuous beam effect rather than the Goa'uld pulses.

Hyperdrive on the crashed Hatak had been identified by a couple of the intransigent Jaffa, but efforts to repair the considerable damage was slow. It seemed that it was the power transfer systems that had been damaged, but although that part of the system was understood, the magnitude of the power being transferred was huge and new types of conduit had to be designed to carry such vast amounts of power. The gravitational propulsion system which allowed it to float suffered damage to several of the propulsor units, but with multiple units they had something to examine to find out how to repair the others and it seemed that might be fixable.

However, the ship remained an oddity. Huge volumes of the ship were wasted on ornamentation and high ceilinged corridors. Cargo sections on the 'warship' were huge (presumably to ship slaves and other horrendous goods) and seen as a waste on such a combat focused ship, and the weapon systems, while powerful, seemed more to show strength and look impressive. Once the technology was examined it was estimated that if the Goa'uld wished to they could probably have fielded missiles with immense warheads, easily capable of annihilating an Hatak with a single blast. There were however no visible missile systems on the ship, or on the few fighter craft in it's holds.

These fighters were mostly left intact. The bay doors had jammed when the ship had crashed and it was difficult to extract any from the vessel. However one was dismantled to examine it's workings and a lab was set up in the hanger bay. The fighter also had plasma weapons similar to the staff or Hatak's own cannons, but while the Hatak's seemed mindbogglingly efficient, and the staffs most certainly were not, the fighters (termed Death Gliders by the Jaffa) were about in the middle as far as efficiency was concerned. Why they were not as powerful, ton for ton of weapon, as the Hatak's guns was a mystery. There was no reason the Goa'uld couldn't have fielded such weapons easily four times the firepower of those on the fighters, even allowing for a larger power system to charge them.

By the end of July though the fighter bay had been jammed open and two gliders had been shipped on trucks off to Teutonia, barely fitting through the gate folded up. They would either study how they worked or put them to use as fighters to defend Teutonia (if they could figure out how to fly them). That would be determined by the Fuhrer.
 
September 1952

In the year after the battle at New Siberia Teutonic society had settled. The Goa'uld bogeyman was always there in the background, but it had become somewhat distant with the perceived improvement in Reich forces, now assured to be able to defend against the false gods. Trade between Heschel and Teutonia was also increasing, with a budding, fairly basic, industry growing up in the Center States as they attempted to compete with the more advanced culture. At first such efforts were almost ignored, but some issues arose when a newspaper broke an article over child slave labor being used in Heschelian Center State factories. The word slave was something that still caught people's attention after the Goa'uld revelations, and there was a severe outcry in the press.

The Nazi government intervened on Heschel directly, and attempted to train them in better construction of machinery to compensate, hoping for a better trade balance, though this was mostly for the public's benefit. Most of the trade was Nazi manufactured goods for food from Heschel. Still, enhancing Heschel's industrial output would give the Reich a considerable boost later on. It was just that the Nazis saw it taking so long to get them anywhere close to Nazi tech it wasn't terribly useful. Time would tell.

With increased interaction, trade and general mixing of populations over the last few years the 'god worship' effect on Heschel was diminishing at last. There were 'Orders' that were set up though that still revered the Nazis as 'Goa'uld Slayers' and other, slightly more practical praises. It was difficult to eradicate such teachings, and honestly the Reich didn't try that hard. They were after all Aryan, and so should be looked up to by the Heschelians. They merely hoped to avoid anything that smacked of Goa'uld-like god worship.

However planning for an upcoming war with the Goa'uld was not going well. No-one knew how many Goa'uld there were, how many ships they had, what areas of the galaxy they worked in. All they could say was that, from the Jaffa converts, that Goa'uld tended to fight among themselves, although their overlord 'Ra' put a stop to anything that got too far out of hand. His purpose more seemed to keep a balance between the main 'System Lords' to make sure no individual became too powerful over the others. From the information they had though they couldn't even be sure how many System Lords there were, let alone how powerful any one was.

How do you plan to fight an enemy you don't understand? One thing came up during a Meeting of the high military minds. The Goa'uld knew less about the Reich than the Reich knew about the Goa'uld, as far as they could tell anyway. That one assault on Naquin would show troop tactics (if the Goa'uld would be interested in such things from a race they defeated handily) and rough technological level at the time, but even that could be put to their own advantage. Work on EM rocket engines was progressing slowly, but already the team on Leere was saying that they wished to expand and build a launch center to fire small probes into orbit of the small world. Eventually they would have a new force of ships. Plus with the captured Hatak (if it could ever be fully repaired) they had a good sized flagship. What kind of vessels should they field?

The Goa'uld seemed to look down on ammunition fed weapons as primitive, favoring instead energy weapons. The Reich fielded both, but if they limited early ships to ballistic cannons and missile launchers would the Goa'uld begin to assume they were primitive? It was a dangerous game to play. Missiles could be made powerful, but it seemed their current heat rays were better at blasting shields down. Cutting such weapons from their proposed loadout would limit the capabilities of the Reich fleet. True, they wished to seem underpowered, but they also needed to defend their worlds successfully! However, assuming they did repair the Hatak it was possible the Goa'uld would assume that the Nazis could only be effective from such captured craft. Goa'uld tech to defeat Goa'uld.

It was tempting, but development work must progress on the other weapon systems. For the moment the Fuhrer was unconvinced. He wanted to be sure they had a defensive force worth building more than attempting to trick the Goa'uld. None of this would be something that would stop an Hatak from assaulting Teutonia just to get some slaves.

Such planning was long term however. It would be a while before any space vehicles would be built, let alone true warships. Time enough to see how things should be done.

December 1952

Over the last few years population growth had slowed. Reasons for the stagnation were argued over, ranging from diet to popular music to excessive work hours in the factories (the latter was generally deemed not to stop people from making babies, so was generally ignored). As trade with Heschel eased of pressure on farming their agriculture started to upgrade to slightly more modern equipment rather than simply expand the number of farms.Quality over quantity. The Reich saw the value in increasing population here on Teutonia as well, even just against the large population growth on Heschel that was blossoming recently with improved healthcare (at least in the Center States). Projects to promote larger families, to improve care of children, to build more schools and other projects were begun with great fanfare. It was hoped the growth rates could at least be brought back up to the levels seen in Germany in the old Third Reich.

However, even with the improvements Mu Fabrication plants could provide in industry, there were many areas that more immediate manpower was still required. Even the Mu Fab plants needed workers as they were a mix of traditional manufacturing machinery and the newer Mu Machine devices. Although some recruitment from Heschel for manual labor was suggested, another suggestion took over after some consideration about literacy.

Promoting women to be more involved in the workplace.

Some women already worked of course, rather than be just housewives, but pushing more 'equality' and stressing the home economic benefits (double paychecks for families) was attempted. In parallel to this efforts were made to promote more people into the new childcare projects, specifically agencies that could hire out nannies for families with two working parents. It was a complex project but slowly the parts began to come together and the policy was begun to be acted on. At first it was just in Volksburg itself, but soon surrounding areas began to be affected, if only by the propaganda.

March 1953

Work on Leere successfully tested a 'Hopper' that could function in vacuum, rocket off the ground and land anywhere within a hundred miles. It was merely a test bed for work on rockets and building structures to work in space, but it would hopefully lead to much more. By now fairly reliable pressure suits were being produced, though dexterity and agility in them was poor. So far assembling something in space was hard, often involving pre-built sections that were then slowly pushed together and welded. Welding in space seemed slightly problematic at first, but after a few years of experience and adjusting materials involved they solved most of the problems, but the act of welding itself tended to leave deposits on structures nearby. Welding was generally done from the outside of constructed buildings, and all windows, vents or other critical systems were covered during welding. There were many oddities to working in vacuum but slowly, over the years, the Reich gained experience.

August 1953

During an overflight of the old island that used to act as a prison for the Jaffa, a Reich plane spotted smoke. When an investigation was made it was found that several Jaffa had managed to hide from the troops evacuating them and had stayed on the island. When troops moved in to collect them their leader insisted he did not wish any trouble. He just wanted his people to live in peace. There were only a handful present, and they seemed peaceful and had no weapons. After some negotiations they were allowed to stay on the island, and were even visited by the few 'converted' Jaffa that worked for the Reich. Suitably escorted of course.

September 1953

The SS Colonel General Richter put forwards a proposal to attack Naquin once more to regain access to the Naquadah mine. The rest of the Military staff decried it as lunacy. They still did not have sufficient weaponry as yet to accomplish the task. That was when the SS man handed out a folder listing the details of a secret project. Apparently he'd 'acquired' one of the heavy plasma weapons that had been removed from the Hatak on New Siberia and managed to get it operational and hooked up to conventional electrical power. With sufficient power it would fire quite well, he promised. How the man had been able to do this without the others being aware was worrying, but the Fuhrer seemed to be more interested in results. He suggested a team look into how much this changed the balance. Could one Goa'uld plasma weapon, along with other Reich guns, be sufficient to bring an Hatak's shield down?

Richter seemed adamant it would, and that such a study was not necessary. He was ready to join the assault now! The Fuhrer dictated patience, but praised his forward thinking. When the others had left, leaving only Schmidt and the Fuhrer, the two shared a private conversation on worries about Richter and his illicit activities, no matter what the aim of them was. Was he stable? Schmidt admitted to not knowing much about the man, him having risen in the ranks of the SS rapidly these last few years, taking over when the previous Colonel General died the previous year during surgery on a severe stomach disorder. Further examination of Richter was called for.

February 1954

The study on Reich preparedness for an assault on Naquin was inconclusive. A lot of the development did increase Reich firepower, and a large stock of improved, NECE warhead, Rapier-5 missiles was ready, but there were a lot of issues. For one the enemy knew they could assault them directly through the gate and would likely not sit calmly in front of it for them this time. The Goa'uld did not seem quite that stupid. For another, there have been repeated attempts to build the 'aerofighter' design the Eurondans had, as it's short winged, vertol platform would easily fit through the gate, unlike current Reich fighters. Launching a fighter strike at an Hatak would be far more effective it was felt. However so far such hovering jet fighters did not yet exist.

In a meeting with the Fuhrer Richter claimed that sufficient firepower and use of terrain around the mine should be able to draw the mothership in front of the gate without resorting to fighters. His cannon would still work. The rest of the military did not agree. They wanted the project put on hold, although not cancelled. If a suitable, gate deployable, fighter could be built then this, with ground support, might be able to take down an Hatak. Richter was not happy with the delays and qualifications.

An alternative option was nuclear weaponry. Heisenberg still claimed he was 'close' to perfecting nuclear fusion, and possibly even a fusion bomb, but so far such efforts had not been successful. Also he had been 'close' to fusion for over three years. NECE warheads were powerful, but used a lot of Naquadah and the mines on Heschel were generating less and less output as time went on, despite modern mining equipment. Richter just insisted this was another reason they needed to take Naquin!

Attempting to diffuse matters the Fuhrer forced the issue, again stating this project was on pause, not cancelled. Frustrated and obviously angry, Richter did manage to cool down and agreed with the Fuhrer.

April 1954

The fifteen year celebrations of the arrival on Teutonia were impressive, galas and parades in evidence everywhere. The Heschelians got in on the act as well, joining in on the celebrations on their planet. During the main ceremony the Fuhrer promised to 'Keep Teutonia safe from the depredations of the Goa'uld' and insisted he would keep improving the military to the point where the Goa'uld menace would no longer be a problem. It was nice rhetoric, but the Fuhrer was privately worried that they still were not ready to deal with the enemy.

December 1954

Over the last year population growth had risen on Teutonia to over 2%, with the population now just over 590,000. Heschel was now well under 1% growth overall, but in the Center States it had risen dramatically to over 8%. It was highly erratic on Heschel based on location, but the growth in the area around the gate was promising, leaving population globally estimated at 750,000, but the Center States were at a high of 590,000. The prosperity there had improved a lot, and now showed a distinct disparity with the outlying regions. Some tensions were beginning to rise once more in the fringe.

March 1955

The first space probe was launched into orbit around Leere. They used conventional rockets at first as the scientists were still working out some bugs with the EM rockets that they'd planned to use for the probe. It circled at over forty kilometers above the airless world, regularly transmitting pulsed 'beep' transmissions on it's internal sensors, proving the device kept functioning. Soon a second and a third probe were launched, then a fourth with the finally completed EM rocket. This last headed up to local geostationary orbit, over twenty thousand kilometers up, far enough away that it was hard to listen to the faint radio transmissions of the probe.

With these initial tests complete work was started on the first manned probe. Most of the problems with surviving in vacuum were already dealt with on the surface, so it was merely a matter scaling up their probes and rockets to the point of carrying a person. At first it was assumed that, compared to the single stage probes, a manned vessel would need at least two sections. One to launch, and one to land. Whereas on a planet with an atmosphere you could get away with using the air to slow you down for landing, on Leere rockets were needed to go down as well as up. However gradual improvements in the EM rocket caused a slight delay in the program. The efficiency of the new rocket might be enough to launch and land on one tank of fuel.

Work was continued to see if this was possible in the near future.

September 1955

A second generation Mu Fabrication plant was constructed as a research project outside Volksburg. The first generation plants had increased Reich industrial might significantly and allowed the expensive efforts on Leere. Now even greater production might be possible. In some areas Reich engineers and scientists were not just attempting to catch up to Eurondan technology, they were exceeding and improving on it!

The new Mu Fabrication plant was a general purpose facility, compared to the more restrictive first generation facilities. These older plants were more limited by software than hardware, but once they had were tooled for one specific purpose they were effective. Now the new plants were arranged to produce a wide variety of products amnd easily switch production runs between them. The shop floor was broken down into many sections for different types of production to ease such shifting of production. Integration of the tiny machines into the factory and the improvements in computers controlling them, allowed the Mu Constructor units to actually repair and maintain the building to some degree. Limitations on where they could work, and what they could work on, were still being refined and all areas using Mu Constructors outside of a sealed 'Construction tank' were verboten to people. The little machines didn't seem to see a problem in using a person as building materials, and there had been a few accidents (none fatal so far) as the 2nd gen plant went on line. Emergency cut offs for the machines, 'killing' them on command, were added, initiated by radio. This seemed to function well as a safety measure and two new plants were planned over the next year.

October 1955

In early October the first color television broadcasts began. Although television sets had been sold (mostly to the wealthy) and some central agency to broadcast stirring propaganda and some movies had been made, little government effort had been put into the project. Now, with industrial efforts getting more intense, such television sets were becoming cheaper and cheaper, and more varied shows were being produced and aired. At present the government kept a veto on programs, stating what could and what could not be aired, listing it as a moral duty to keep such things 'correct'.
 
January 1956

Although a working fusion reactor still seemed a ways off technologically, Heisenberg's team had managed to get a stable Naquadah Chemical Generator. Using chemical reactions between hydrogen and oxygen, enhanced with traces of liquid Naquadah, and converted into electricity by Thermo-electric converters, a powerful generator was constructed. It was only feasible recently when Heisenberg had successfully processed raw Naquadah ore into Liquid Naquadah. The power output was not quite at the levels of the power cells on Staff weapons, despite the new generators fairly large size, and the fuel did not last longer than about a day on the prototype. Despite this it was a huge advantage over gasoline generators and did not require an atmosphere to operate. Such devices could power electrical systems and make a practical EM rocket more workable. Such rockets required a lot of energy to function, and until now relied on stored energy in Naquadah Superconductive Energy Cells. Recharging these via, for example, solar power had taken ages, and recharging a ship in orbit so it could land was a considerable problem in recent designs.

The new generators unfortunately required usage of Naquadah which is still in short supply. Only a few were built and were used for special purposes. They would't be replacing power plants for the foreseeable future unless a new Naquadah mine could be found.

May 1956

After a very disquieting dry spell a cold dial code was successful. Unfortunately it was a desolate planet with barely any life and desert like conditions. Raw materials were in evidence, though no Trinium or Naquadah, at least near the gate. Although disappointing the abundance of materials that are used in conventional manufacture convinces some engineers to put forward a proposal to build the third generation of Mu Fabricators on this world. They suggest it may become a mass production planet in the future. Little scouting is done as yet and it's possible that other areas of the planet are more habitable, so the proposal is not resolved yet. Once it is sure not to be habitable globally they will consider heavy industrialization. The Eurondans have already proven they can poison an entire planet on purpose, and the Reich do not want to ruin a good world by accident via similar means!

February 1957

Finally after extensive aerial surveys show little life (or water) on the whole planet, the team was given the go-ahead to begin construction of the 3rd gen Mu Fab plant, and the planet was named 'Mumaker' by one of the team as a joke. Despite no official approval for the name, it stuck unofficially and soon was the accepted term. More extensive fabrication, better control of the Mu Constructors, and heavier use of them outside the Fabrication Tanks was the watchword, but development of the 3rd generation would likely take time to get right. At first just a single small facility and a gate complex was built, all interconnected to seal the desert winds out.

March 1957

The first unmanned probe with an EM rocket, powered by the new NC (Naquadah/Chemical) generators was launched to test the capabilities of the engine. It seemed to work well, giving both high thrust and good efficiency on the engine, and the power plant supplied continuous power to the engine, the small fuel tank was good for over thirty hours of maximum output on the generator. Since it was only needed to be at max output while the EM Rocket was active this was way more than sufficient for such a probe.

Work was started on building the first manned orbital explorer using the technology, while two more probes were built to refine the techniques of operating the system.

November 1957

Yet another cold dial was successful, and this time trouble irrupts. Upon exploration they find what they first believe to be a medieval society similar to Heschel on the planet. However the natives used muskets against the first few soldiers to explore the planet showing they were a little more advanced than thought. Two casualties occurred, before over-zealous retaliation almost exterminated the attackers with machine gun fire. With some difficulty the teams made somewhat peaceful contact with a local town and found they called this planet 'Thent' and it had been colonized for a long time and has a huge population. The locals had no idea exactly how large, but given that they knew of colonies all over the planet and even the island the gate was on had a population exceeding Teutonia, suggested it must measure in multiple millions.

Negotiating teams set out to contact the local leaders, finding that two conflicting states border the area the gate is on, complicating matters further. Roughly in the Renaissance period as far as they could tell, the locals were developing technology apace, and have little knowledge of the Goa'uld. If they were transported here it was a very long time ago and any information on them had dissolved into myths and legends.

January 1958

The first manned vessel, named Arminius after an ancient Germanic leader, was carefully prepared and checked, launched from Leere and orbited a hundred kilometers above the world. They stay in orbit for over three days, keeping the NC generators on trickle power to conserve power, communicating to the base, and reporting on the zero gravity conditions. The stay was cut short when the crew became tired of 'space sickness' (although only one of the two crew suffered from it), and what they called the 'jury rigged' waste disposal system on the ship and requested a landing path be plotted. Despite one or two problems with restarting the rocket after such a long period of dormancy, on the third attempt the engine fired and the ship descended to the surface once more. The landing was a little bumpier than predicted, and they did veer a few kilometers off course, but in the end they came down safely. Retrieved by Hopper they headed home to a heroes welcome, hoping it would be possible to refuel their craft and bring it back to base for further missions.

Right now further flights were proposed using later models of the same design of craft, as well as plans for a larger, more efficient system that might be able to launch from Teutonia. The difficulties in slowing down such an orbital craft by simply hitting the atmosphere might cause problems, so current schemes plan to use engines to slow down at least partially before hitting the air.

February 1958

Arminius was safely refueled and performed a 'hop' back to base to be studied towards later vehicles. It seemed to have held up well and likely could be flown again after some servicing.

May 1958

After much cajoling and talking behind the scenes, Richter manages to persuade the Luftwaffe Air Marshal to go along with his scheme for an assault on Naquin. He spends considerable effort preparing his case to persuade the Fuhrer, only to find that the reason the Air Marshal agreed was because his teams had finally begun testing of the new Falke hoverjet fighters. Instead of the dual propulsion system the Eurondans initially wanted to do, one propelling the craft forwards and one lifting it off the ground, the Reich came up with a tiltable jet nozzle design, using tiny plasma rockets arranged on the hull to maneuver the vehicle around. This was a variant of the system currently being tested for space craft maneuvering and proved to be a good testbed for it.

Ten prototype Falke-100 had been outfitted with two rapid fire heat ray beams, and one of the new plasma beam weapons, constructed from dismantled staff weapons, and proved effective in trials. These craft at present can mount two Rapier-5 missiles, though consideration is being made to extend the stub wings and mount multiple missiles under them, rather than just on the wing tips. Use of heat ray and plasma weapons seems to go against the idea of focusing entirely on ballistic technology and it seems as if the concept is being dropped by the military. They'd rather develop better weapons than attempt to try the Goa'uld into underestimating them.

However, the tactic employed did not use the captured weapon Richter's engineers had made functional. It would be there as a backup, just in case the ship could be maneuvered in front of the gate, but this would not be relied upon. Missiles sent through the gate could home in on the mothership as long as it was present at all nearby, and didn't rely on it being in front of the gate.

On May 8th the gate was dialed once more to Naquin, and a rapid, armored probe drove through to reveal that the enemy had replaced the pedestal destroyed in the previous assault. A volley of Ma'Tok weapon fire struck the probe, but it survived long enough to triangulate positions of Jaffa behind several stone embankments nearby. Missiles were programmed and sent through, travelling up and over, striking behind their defenses. When another probe was sent no return fire was received... but similarly no mothership was found either.

Falke fighters zoomed through from Teutonia and spread out, scouting the area. A series of tall towers, topped by some larger version of the Ma'Tok staff weapons, were seen around the mine, and a shield seemed to have been erected around the mine along with some structures nearby. The mine was again in full swing, human slaves filling the pits. From long range the towers around the mine attacked, but were inaccurate, and failed to come close to the fighters. Unwilling to waste their missile barrage on the mine shield, the attack commander back on Teutonia started to pull together every heat ray armed tank they could find to head through and strike it from long range. Artillery was brought in to target the towers after the shield was brought down. Unfortunately there was a hill in the way of using Richter's plasma cannon against the mine, and although he suggested blasting the hill away first, it was decided to rely mainly on tanks at first.

Before the tanks had been brought in to the gate on Teutonia, the Falke squadrons reported enemy fighters, and some kind of larger attack craft. The larger attack craft proved particularly deadly, with an accurate twin turret on the bottom as well as forward facing guns, and seemed equipped with shields. Luckily the Falke's weapons seemed able to batter those shields down after some aerial dog-fighting, and one was destroyed in a bright fireball, and the remaining Goa'uld gunship was shot down near the mine a few minutes later. The enemy fighters seemed not terribly effective against the Falke. They have shorter ranged, if more powerful, weapons, were less maneuverable. They also seemed to have difficulty finding the Falkes. Since studies of the fighters from the crashed Hatak proved they do have rather impressive sensors, it was more likely that the Jaffa were not very good at using them.

The aerial battle ended with twenty Death Gliders downed, Two 'Al'Kesh' (As their converted Jaffa informed them the vessels were called) gunships gone, and only three of the Falke Squadron lost, and one of those that crashed may yet be salvageable. With still no sign of a mothership the Wehrmacht forces got into position and opened fire on the mine, the Falkes adding their heat ray fire to help bring the shield down. It took some considerable time to do so, as it appeared this barrier was very tough, but after twenty minutes of concentrated fire, and run ins with patrols sent out to hinder the Nazis, the shield collapsed and rapid artillery strikes hit the base of the plasma cannon towers, collapsing them. A pitched battle ensued with a battalion of Reich troops and half an armored battalion, facing off against over a thousand Jaffa. This seemed very high to guard such a mine, and the team realized it seemed to be most of the squad on a mothership. The vessel must have dropped almost it's entire troop strength to guard the mine. Given that it had been eleven years since the last assault by Reich forces, likely it was some other threat that had sparked such a troop movement, and the Wehrmacht begin to be a little nervous about the situation.

However, the battle, while long winded, was not really in doubt. Range and skill won out, with armor coming a close second now that the tanks the Reich field could withstand the blasts from Staff weapons (for the most part). One or two were taken out by either concerted fire, or in one case, a bright Jaffa that unearthed one of the cannons from a collapsed tower and used it on a tank, but in general the tanks proved themselves well under fire. Investigation of the new base near the mine showed it was mostly a storage area and some kind of throne room. It had a few barracks on the outskirts of the building as well and as usual for Goa'uld facilities was rather ornate. The shield generator took some time to be located, buried in a sealed bunker near the base. With cranes and powered shovels they were able to dig the unit up completely and cart it back through the gate, although the passage was tricky. There was barely half a meter spare on any side as it traveled through the gate! It seemed to have it's own built in power source as no other generators were located nearby.

Prisoners and freed slaves were taken through the gate back to Teutonia. The Jaffa were given the choice of joining Reich forces willingly or heading to New Siberia in the prison outpost. Some of the Turncoat Jaffa (Actually beginning to take the name 'Nazi Jaffa' to heart of late, curiously) helped persuade some of the new comers to join, but most stayed loyal to their old 'god'.

In the end the Reich now had a force of about a hundred 'loyal' Jaffa, though how much they would trust them is under question. Some had been cooped up on Teutonia for a long time and wished for glory in combat, hoping to strike back at the 'False Gods'. Their enthusiasm seemed to spread to the newcomers and there was considerable push for them to be given some kind of mission... not that one was really evident right now.

However training seemed a limiting factor. At present the Jaffa are poorly coordinated for long range assault. When tested with modern assault rifles loaded with paint munitions the results are mixed. Their solidity under fire was unquestioned, but taking cover did not seem to be normal tactics for them and, while occasionally employed, such techniques were not considered 'honorable' for the most part. When they attempted to use fully automatic weapons the results were usually pretty dire, the force emptying their weapons outside effective range and then attempting to close to hand to hand combat.

The results of this were a training program put forwards by the Wehrmacht for a new 'Jaffa Elite Force' (more to assuage the Jaffa in question than any expectations of any excelling among it's members), trained in modern weapons and tactics. A few were also found to have training on Death Gliders and it was also suggested they train for the Luftwaffe. However it seemed Goa'uld spacecraft were rather easy to learn to fly, although mastering them might be another matter. Employing a mix of normal controls and some kind of telepathy the Jaffa mostly need to think of targets to find them, and they do not understand how all the systems on their craft work. This explains the blind spots the battle exposed when engaging Death Gliders.

After this information came out efforts to put them into the Luftwaffe met with luke warm reception by the Air Marshal. Perhaps later, after some EXTENSIVE training.

Now that the mine on Naquin was secure all Naquadah that was already mined was shipped back to Teutonia. Modern mining tools were shipped to the planet with workers. Then new bore holes were dug to begin finding the limits of the local deposit. Slowly an observatory was assembled to watch for craft in orbit, then a radar system with as long range as they are able to build was installed. This all took time but by the end of May they had at least some tracking systems up and running to watch for Goa'uld. It was hoped they would notice if an Hatak shows up.

An 'old school' system of a down swinging arm was fitted to the gate, to block it's activation. Regular activation times are allowed, scheduled for transits to and from Teutonia, but at other times the gate would be useless. Consideration is given to building a second shield system for the Naquin gate, but that would be a huge undertaking. Even with the advances since the Teutonia gate shield was built the generators would be large and a non-Naquadah using power system would be extensive. True, now the Naquadah mine was running they had a decent supply, but so far Reich policy was to not use the rare material for long term projects or power systems. Weapon systems, or something that will only be used for short duration, yes. Otherwise they were to be limited to conventional systems.

For the moment the gate block system is maintained instead.

April 1958

An experimental, large EM Rocket drone was assembled on Naquin with a radio guided satellite for orbital observation. The launch had some issues with rain damaging some systems during launch, but the guidance crew managed to keep it functional until it achieved a low orbit over the world. As rushed and desperate as it was, it is still quite an achievement. The first space launch on a habitable planet! In a few weeks two more orbital drones were launched, keeping watch as well as they could for any approaching Hataks. It is not known how effective such systems would be in detecting these vessels in time.

Efforts were also begun on dissembling the Al'Kesh gunship that crashed, hoping to bring the components back through the gate. Experience in Goa'uld systems on the Hatak suggested they might be able to do it, but it was still quite a challenge as the ship was never meant to be dissembled like that.

Work was started on the first, experimental, bubble shield generator. The first model actually generated a dome, not a sphere, and was designed to replace the one dug up on the mine on Naquin. It would require twelve 'field columns' around the perimeter to generate the energy field, unlike the Goa'uld designed model, and the primary generator would be huge, housed in a three story building. That did not include power generation! Initial tests suggest they may be able to reproduce, at most, half the strength of the shield they were replacing.

Reich science had quite a way to go before it could match Goa'uld technology.
 
September 1958

Al'dar stood at 'Parade Rest', the position he had learned from long experience with his new masters meant 'Awaiting Orders'. He was not alone in this chamber. After so long with only Il'kar as a companion, he'd recently met other of his kind once more. There had of course been that ill fated meeting eight years ago when other Prisoner Jaffa were brought in. Some had joined the Reich, but even those had been... problematic. Al'dar was of Cronus. The survivors of that battle had been Jaffa of Camulus. Tensions had arisen immediately, but their new masters would have none of it. After two 'altercations' that resulted in broken bones the two groups were separated.

As he watched the far doors opened and men strode in. It seemed more Jaffa were joining their ranks, and this time it appeared these were from the those once serving Horus. Thankfully the two spheres of influence of their respective false gods were not close. There had been some clashes, but not many, Al'dar did not believe there would be too much trouble. At least if nothing had happened since he fell from the grace of Cronus.

"All troops fall in! Line up, that means all of you! Stand straight!"

Al'dar had to suppress a smirk at the annoyance the newcomers gave to their Nazi 'commander'. They would get used to it, and these 'Wehrmacht officers' were far more reasonable than false gods. Less likely to kill an underling due to a hapless mistake. Though, as he looked down the ranks of the fifteen Jaffa present, he saw quite a few expressions he recognized. Ah, some of these would need to be disabused of the belief that the Nazis were gods. They'd best pray that they not utter comments on that with any of the SS nearby! Those men did not take kindly to comparisons with the Goa'uld.

From the other side of the room a familiar face entered, the Wehrmacht leader, General Schmidt, along with the familiar aids and guards. Walking in front of the newcomers he came up and sopped in front of Al'dar. A lot of the new Jaffa gave his grey green uniform an odd look. Perhaps merely from having faced similar such uniforms on the field of battle not long ago?

"Welcome, new soldiers of the Fourth Reich." The General said, turning to the collected Jaffa. Al'dar was always impressed with the man's mastery of Goa'uld. He'd improved greatly over the years. "I am sure you are all wanting to know what your place is. You have all volunteered to join us, but know very little of our ways. You will learn. These," Schmidt said, waving to Al'dar and Il'kar, "people will be your direct superiors, and over them will be Captain Engel. Obey them."

Schmidt began to slowly pace in front of the collected Jaffa.

"You will face many problems in the coming months, none more so than adapting to our way of war. Do so. I cannot stress this enough, but the Goa'uld ways will not be tolerated here. You will look after your fellow soldiers. You will organize in teams. You will learn new weapons and new tactics. Do not shirk your duties. The Jaffa are an honorable people, and we have experience in your ways. However, you do not have experience in ours. Do not judge those around you before checking with those that have experience. You may be surprised at what you learn."

Stopping before the center of the group he turned to face them.

"As of now you are all Privates in the Wehrmacht of the Fourth Reich. Soon we shall see who among you are suitable as group leaders and promotions shall be handed out. Do not assume you already know who those will be. Criteria here are different than you have been aware of up till now. Finally. We are not as... homogeneous, people as the Goa'uld. You will find those among us who will greet you with open arms. You will find people who fear you. You will find people who hate you for the Goa'uld you served. Rise above such feelings and deal with your superiors. Let them worry about how others treat you. For now, celebrate. Your days suffering under false gods is over. You now serve the Nazi cause. Long live the Fourth Reich, Heil Himmler!" He said, giving the familiar salute, which Al'dar and Il'kar automatically copied, clicking heels together in unison.

The newcomers were somewhat surprised at the gesture, some even attempting to emulate it halfheartedly. Al'dar grimaced at the poor attempts. They would have a lot to learn!

Nodding with satisfaction (and presumably ignoring the bad salutes given by some) Schmidt turned and strode back to Al'dar.

"Sergeant Al'dar?" Schmidt said, and Al'dar widened his eyes. It seems he'd been promoted. "How are you faring? Eel giving you any bother?" Schmidt nodded down to Al'dar's abdomen.

Al'dar grimaced at the reminder of his false god's heritage. The SS would have nothing to do with the Jaffa because of their need of symbiotes to survive. Frankly the feeling was mutual. Some of the SS seemed far too close to the behavior he'd seen only in his false gods... not that he'd ever dare mention such a thing out loud.

"No General. I am healthy and so is 'das Kind'. If you had not secured me a replacement back then..."

The General waved the comment off idly.

"Do not think of it. I think the troops were far too eager to collect their 'samples'. Sometimes a little too zealous perhaps. We might have more replacements for you otherwise. Anyway, I wish to impress upon you the severity of the duty you will do for the Reich. We need to ensure they learn well. I have trust in your ability Sergeant. Make sure it is not misplaced."

Schmidt's smile belied the severe statement, and Al'dar risked a slight smile in return and nodded agreement.

"Good. We need to prove your people can be a valuable addition to the Reich. Otherwise I think things could go badly with them in the future. I have heard of the SS suggesting annihilating them to stop the Goa'uld from possessing a soldier class."

Not a pleasant thought, but given what he knew of the SS not surprising either. It was more surprising, and telling of his relationship with the SS, that Schmidt would tell Al'dar this.

"I will do the Reich proud General."

"I know you will Al'dar." He said, then gave another salute, which Al'dar replied sharply, then strode off, adjutants and guards in tow.

Now he merely had to begin training this rabble into a coherent force. They were not going to enjoy giving up their Ma'Toks!
 
October 1958

While Jaffa trained under their Wehrmacht betters, new battalions of 'normal' troops began to see larger influx of recruits from Heschel, and even a few from Thent. Conditions there were still tense, and while the Reich considered whether it was worthwhile to invade the barbarian nation or attempt to deal with the crude governments as they had on Heschel, some individuals from Thent asked to join the Reich, giving up the citizenship of their old nations. Not many at present, and given the size of the population (of those that even knew the Nazis existed. Communication was slow on that world) it wasn't a high percentage, but still enough to see an expansion of the military to eight infantry battalions. They were even considering a second armored battalion, but at present there were not enough tanks to field. So far Heschelians (let alone Thendans) hadn't been proven very successful in the artillery battalions. Literacy was more required there.

It was difficult even in the normal infantry, and schooling the new recruits became an additional chore, however some of the new troops from Heschel had been to the new schools built on Heschel itself. They were hardly experts, but at least literate in German to some degree. The Germanic tongue was standard in such schools and the loyal Heschelians seemed to accept this as given. Thendans probably would not, though no such projects had been attempted there yet anyway.

Things were still amazingly quiet on Naquin, though in late September there was a dial in attempted. With the early, crude, blocking arm, all they saw was the first chevron flicker a few times, but it proved someone was attempting to dial the planet. Efforts to get the shield system around the mine up and running were sped up. It was experimental, and although the actual systems had been brought in and mounted in a few days, getting the power system rigged up and getting the field emitters aligned, proved challenging. So far only a weak field could be generated due to inconsistencies in the pylons' positions. Heisenberg had come in to manage the system directly at one point, hoping to use computer adaptations to adjust to the pylon positions rather than the other way around. So far it had not improved matters much and they were about to dig up two of the pylons for re-mounting for the third time.

Defences were progressing, despite one space launch failure they had successfully put three scanners into medium orbit around Naquin and had sensor and radar readings from them. The ranges were not ideal, especially knowing the poor power supplies due to small mass of the satellites. Even with advanced solar power systems there was only so much you could do. They couldn't rely on the new NC generators as they would run out of fuel in a short time. Refueling satellites in orbit was not something they wanted to attempt just yet.

Ground based units were another matter, and large facilities were there now, radar stations, observatories, EM sensor towers, all sending their data to the gradually growing missile batteries. These did not mount Rapier-5s, or even the new Rapier-6 that was undergoing trials. This was the first attempt at an orbital interceptor missile. It used a modified EM rocket with very high thrust (and, unfortunately, reductions in efficiency) that it was believed could manage a sub orbital hop, intercepting and striking anything in the skies above, at least in a low orbit. They were armed with the largest NECE warheads yet built, with high ratios of Naquadah to the explosive yielding a blast of 50kt of TNT each, more than six times the blast of a Rapier-5. At present four batteries were built, each with racks of sixteen missiles.

Richter's Plasma cannon had, reluctantly, been installed as well, an experimental 'umbrella' shield generator fitted to protect it, generating a simple disk of energy above it. It probably wouldn't stop a single blast from the main weapons of a Goa'uld mothership, but would limit the blast of such a strike, maybe allowing the weapon to fire again after being hit. It did nothing to protect from nearby strikes and heavy embankments were being built up around it to protect against shockwaves and concussion from near misses. Power for the gun was coming from a buried Naquadah energy battery, recharged at the moment by the power plant that would run the base's shield, but they were starting to build a hydroelectric power station in a valley nearby and that should provide all they need for this weapon and the proposed heat ray turrets that were going to be added.

December 1958

The attack when it came was somewhat disappointing. With typical Goa'uld arrogance an Hatak materialized in orbit (the satellites being no use in predicting it) and launched waves of gliders to attack the base while it descended ponderously towards the surface. Perhaps they saw troops on the ground, connected this with the previous assault in 1947, and 'knew' the Nazi weapons were no match for Goa'uld shields.

They were wrong.

Only one of the new heavy heat ray batteries was complete, but that and the plasma cannon opened up on the Hatak as it descended into the upper atmosphere to the east. While Falkes intercepted the Death Gliders and showed them what the Luftwaffe could do, the Hatak shook from violent strikes, it's shields weakening. It retaliated, giant blasts of energy striking down on the weapons, but so far defenses held and fire kept heading back up at them. Not only that, but the missiles had been launched before their strike and for some reason they didn't even bother attempting to shoot them down.

The blast in the skies was immense. Scientists later worked out that, in general, shields are less powerful in atmosphere, that these weapons would not be quite this effective against a ship in orbit, but that day it didn't matter. The Hatak, the pride of the Goa'uld, was blasted into dust by the Reich forces, the ear shattering explosion carrying half way across the continent. The cheers of the Wehrmacht troops was almost as loud. The remaining Gliders did not last much longer, and ironically only the plasma cannon had taken serious damage in the attack, from glider fire and Hatak blasts that managed to sneak past the umbrella shield's edges. Engineers thought it might be repairable.

With the success of the battle on Naquin several people in the armored divisions asked why such shields used in that defense couldn't be used for tanks. The answer wasn't easy. Any shield generator that fit inside a tank would give very little protection. Those used in the defense on Naquin had been huge emplacements, mostly buried underground for the Plasma gun defense, and taking up a lot of the room inside the shield as well as having it's power plant underground in the case of the base shield. Although Reich tech could field shields now, they were not very practical yet. The Wehrmacht would have to be disappointed for the moment. No Shield Tanks would be attacking just yet.

Armor was meanwhile progressing fairly well. A mix of Trinium, steel and carbon was used as a base plate, then layered Trinium and then ceramic in many thin plates atop this to ablate plasma fire away in sections. Body armor was still being designed using this (and the decision to 'waste' such armor on ordinary troops or not), but tanks and troop carriers were going into production. In a few months the new Armor battalion would have some very tough customers to dish out hurt against the Goa'uld.. assuming they found any of the 'gods' to fight.

March 1959

Now the Jaffa were present in more numbers the people were starting to react to them, and not all well either. Their distinctive plate & chainmail armor was enough to make them stand out, even aside their tattoos on their foreheads, and hatred of the Goa'uld transferred to their old servants. It was possible that the SS was stirring up emotion, but frankly, Schmidt didn't think it needed their hand. The public was doing well enough as it was on it's own. Several incidents in taverns and restaurants were beginning to get on Schmidt's nerves. He felt a lot of it was the perceived appearance of the warriors and had spoken to them about it.

A few of the Jaffa were amenable to wearing Germanic clothes and blending in. Most were not. They considered it a slight on their honor somehow to strip away their heritage. These were proud warriors, unwilling to give up that which they'd always used, despite them being given to them by the hated Goa'uld.

Schmidt found a compromise. With the new armor material he had two suits of armor fashioned in the style of the Jaffa's existing plates, laid on their old chain mail. However this new suit of armor was tweaked with Nazi accents and symbols. It was true, Al'dar and Il'kar still looked different, but they looked Reich. Except the tattoo, and that too could be dealt with. After talking with them about it they agreed that the Jaffa would likely agree to changing their tattoos to something more Nazi if helped them feel more part of the structure. It was what they were used to after all. When a Jaffa switched masters under the Goa'uld simply scoring the old mark away, going in a sarcophagus, then having a new mark burned in was enough. The Nazis did not have access to a sarcophagus, but their other medical techniques were sufficient.

Soon both the Jaffa leaders were sporting Swastikas on their foreheads, demanding that the other Jaffa uphold their honor and take up the symbol of the masters they had sworn themselves to protect. They readily agreed.

The armor was a little more tricky. It was expensive to make, but Schmidt managed to push it through for his small number of 'Elite' Jaffa (17 enlisted at present, others undecided as to weather to join or not) and more were constructed. It wasn't quite as tough as their old Goa'uld made armor, but actually closer than the Reich suspected. The Goa'uld did not want their subjects to be too powerful, so weapons and armor were limited in technology to their troops.

The effects when the new troops swaggered (as much as any Jaffa swagger) around in their new armors was marked, but did not dispel the feelings over night. However, it did help and with careful tuition in how to handle awkward situations the appearance of the 'Nazi Jaffa' in public no longer was the instant makings of a fight.

May 1959

A modified Arminius space explorer was launched successfully from Teutonia and made orbit, the two crew gazing down upon the green and blues of the Aryan homewold. The on-board fuel had to be pumped around to shift the center of mass of the craft so the heatshield on the forwards hull would take the brunt of re-entry, then pumped back down to shift the center of mass again for landing. It was complicated, but this time works flawlessly. Mainly this was due to over a month of training and planning on just this one mission. Not counting over a year of training the crew had on the Arminius craft itself in it's various forms.

Design work had been progressing on a more adaptable system to carry small amounts of cargo and four people (including a pilot) to orbit, but the testing and re-design was proving difficult. There were some issues with the design that used multiple, smaller EM rockets side by side. Some electrical field bleed through affected the other rockets. They believed they would get it working soon.

August 1959

The Mu Fabricator on Mumaker finished building all the components for a second complete 3rd gen fabricator. It would take a little while for the workers to assemble it correctly in the building, but it proved the principle, and soon efforts were made to expand yet again what the little machines can do.

Some tentative efforts use ground vibrations to communicate with Mu Constructor units when they were outside of tanks and actually in the soil were made. The machines could be used to extract raw materials directly then and siphon it up to the fabrication plant. So far the process was theoretical mostly, the odd bits of material they got outweighed by the many failures in the system. However they persisted and continued to refine the control system. At present conventional mining facilities were nearby and supplied the facilities with the raw materials they required.

September 1959

In September one of the Thent states signed an alliance with the Reich, and almost a day later invaded a neighbor, assuming the Nazis would aid them. Things devolved into a shouting match between diplomats while musket wielding armies clashed. Reich forces were strongly tempted to just take over the whole region to stabilize it. Through repeated (and fierce) negotiations tempers calmed and the Reich military manage to force the two sides to stand down. The truce was tenuous at best and the Fuhrer was torn over what to do about the situation. It was very tempting to simply step in and take charge, but also dangerous precedent to take, however things were leaning that way.

October 1959

In early October a previously unheard of alliance of Thent states, well outside the influence of those contacted surrounding the gate, send a delegation to the Reich and ask that they be involved in negotiations. Things gradually calm down a little and the Reich see a local force that may actually stabilize the region. They appear well armed, but mainly were a trading partnership between four maritime powers called the Western Accord. Most of their 'reach' was via their navy rather than huge armies as the states around gate were, and it seemed a much more stable region.

The alliance with the Thent state near the gate was cancelled, stating that they had purposely mislead the Nazis. In a bold move most equipment was retreated through the gate, then numerous heavy lift helicopters were assembled and formed a frame to carry the gate, guarded by Felke fighters and a few troops. The terrain could be crossed by truck and ship, but with few friendly territories nearby this was not deemed to be safe. While Thendan musketeers stood by, unable to stop the Nazis, both gate and pedestal were flown off, over a thousand kilometers away, to a small island near all four Maritime states. Western Accord negotiators meet to decide where the gate would be mounted. Eventually the Fidarn State was chosen, a trade hub and rough center of the alliance. The gate was flown to the new site and was mounted across a plaza from the building that houses one of the main Western Accord meeting hall.

Negotiations between Nazi and Accord people went well, and soon an official trade deal was struck, food from the Accord provinces in exchange for manufactured goods (fairly basic at first) from the Nazi factories.
 
February 1960

Indus One, the next generation of manned space launch vehicle, was tested on Leere. So far ground testing only. There were still issues with the multiple engines but they appeared to be mostly ironed out. The engineers believed a month or two would be sufficient to get the reliability issues down to the point they could trust a flight.

Mumaker's main fabrication plant started producing space probe launchers, slightly modified from the original EM rocket probes built three years previously. The facilities there could manufacture the entire rocket in one month, and plans were laid to use multiple such rockets as boosters strapped together to heft a larger payload to orbit. The same issues between multiple EM engines in proximity cropped up during the first testing, but with bracing struts spacing them a meter apart it seemed to be minimized. Efforts to launch some kind of space station over Teutonia were planned, with crew launched separately on an Arminius later. It is hoped that such a station could test longer-ranged scanners that might prove more successful in detecting Goa'uld Hatak's further away.

Final repairs to the Goa'uld plasma cannon on Naquin were completed and it was brought back into an operational condition. It operated alongside twelve heavy heat ray cannons ringed around the mine. This however stressed power generation a lot. Currently the system did not, even with a second power plant built nearby, have sufficient power to fire continuously. Still they operated on stored energy from banks of Naquadah power cells. At most the system could sustain full fire for only a minute for all weapons before rate of fire was reduced to a tenth of normal operation.

Missile batteries were extended to over a hundred orbit capable missiles, though it was unsure whether such weapons could accurately hit a target in orbit. Tests on the supposedly space capable missiles have proved it has difficulty maneuvering sharply enough at high speeds to strike targets at orbital heights, let alone strike a target that moves at an orbital velocity. At high altitudes in the atmosphere they have no doubt they could defeat another Hatak, but if it hung up in orbit and pounded them they might have severe issues.

March 1960

The first space station, the Raumstutzpunkt Bifrost, was launched. Although some issues with mixed fields between the rockets were detected, it seemed the bracing separation solves most of these issues, and it arrived in an almost perfect orbit. After checking remotely for a few days a two man crew was launched on an Arminius and man the station. Unfortunately the station was determined to have suffered damage from atmospheric turbulence during launch. Numerous external systems were damaged and rendered inoperable. Repair work commenced, but working in the current, early generation, space suits was hard. Some kind of external cowling is suggested to protect components during launch in future to avoid the need for such repairs.

The second Fabricator plant on Mumaker began to manufacture the latest version of the heavy heat ray cannons in a ground based turret mount to be sent to Naquin. Attempts to build new variants of Eurondan based plasma cannons were still experimental, and the few prototypes seemed too advanced for the Mu Constructors to build reliably. If they became a practical design they could be built in conventional factories on Teutonia instead.

Some work was done on using Mu machines to assemble components from Staff weapons quickly and easily into the redesigned plasma beam cannons. However such weapons currently seem to be easier to assemble by hand and are kept to defend Teutonia. They seem more accurate and more powerful, if shorter ranged than the heat ray weapons. Some of this might be rectified as heat ray weapons in theory should be much more accurate. While work attempted to correct this some worries over whether such weapons could do significant damage to a ship in orbit are raised, as the beam of heat rays is attenuated significantly in atmosphere. The system was far too large at present to lift to orbit yet, but some efforts were put into designing a multiple booster rocket that could lift the weapon into space in the future.

April 1960

Work on the crashed Hatak had brought some interesting theories as they test the FTL drive systems. At first they had thought the means the Goa'uld used to travel between the stars was a warp drive of some kind, and previous theories showed they should be detectable during the long, slow deceleration period. Now scientists were saying the generators on the ship seemed designed to open some kind of window into another realm of space into which the vessel then crosses. It seemed no form of conventional radar or sensor would detect such a ship in this alternate space prior to it's re-emergence into our universe at the end of it's voyage.

The Fuhrer was not pleased, especially as the Bifrost station was designed to be a test bed for future scanners to warn of approaching Hataks. Plans were changed to hopefully expand or send up a larger station to act as a defense post, rather than a sensor system. Such scanners would still be needed to pinpoint ships in orbit, they just couldn't detect ships in this new 'Hyperspace' the scientists have theorized.

Perhaps the new plasma beam weapons (once they could be launched) could be mounted on the station, or perhaps just nearby? The station as it stood was far too small to mount any heavy weapons, but upgrading it into a larger facility was possible.

June 1960

After far longer in testing than planned the Indus One, their new space vessel, was launched... and failed dramatically. Two Reich Weltraumfahrers (astronauts) died in the explosion, a kilometer off the surface of Leere. It was found that the engines developed a vibration that got worse during launch, eventually sheering one drive column free of the ship, which careened away, then back into the vessel. Unfortunately the design used separate power systems in each column, so even sheered off the drive had power to keep thrust while separated. Even if it hadn't been designed like that the crew would have been doomed, their ship imbalanced from the missing drive would not have been able to land and would have struck the ground at several kilometers a second at the end of their flight path.

Rework suggests completely redesigning the Indus Two to utilize the separated bracing method used to launch the Bifrost. This will take some time to accomplish.

July 1960

Through recruitment from survivors of the Naquin attack the force of Jaffa had risen to a Platoon strength of about 50. From reactions among the remainder of the Jaffa it was likely this will be all that convert at present, and the rest all saw shipment to the distant outpost on New Siberia. Survival rates there were higher than expected, but still at present the prison outpost housed only a hundred and fifty Jaffa, and the number was slowly dropping as lack of replacement symbiotes and the harsh conditions took their toll.

The Nazi Jaffa had slowly progressed in their training, despite having issues with concepts such as 'strategic withdrawal' and numerous techniques of assault the Nazis developed. They had taken fairly well to the standard Reich assault rifle, though a squad of the 'Elite force' had managed to procure converted Plasma Beamers, constructed from Ma'Tok staff components. They even managed to get the engineers to redesign the weapons with an extended stock and increased rigidity to make them useful as hand to hand weapons in a pinch. The weapon was bulky and boxy looking, but rather powerful, and only the end of the weapon retained any of the original Staff, still using the cover that snapped open with an electric sounding sizzle. Jaffa wield the gun rather effectively, despite it's bulk, and begin to take it as a symbol of their new affiliation. They soon take to calling them 'Beamer Rifles' (or occasionally just Beamers), the bright sizzling streams of energy being very distinct from the old Ma'Toks.

Still, there were not enough of the new weapons to equip the entire platoon (and the other armed forces would not appreciate the Jaffa getting all the advanced weapons anyway) so most still use assault rifles.

September 1960

Efforts on Naquin were in full swing, modern mining techniques producing large quantities of Naquadah to be shipped back to the factories on Teutonia. Mumaker's fabricators still had difficulty working with Naquadah and so limited themselves to more conventional based technology.

The mines on Naquin employed a mix of Aryan and Heschellian crew, though this was tending towards the latter recently as fewer Aryans wished to apply to such jobs. Even with advanced Reich technology mining was still an awkward, dirty job and not exactly one that inspired enthusiasm.

With the larger amounts of Naquadah present a new series of warheads for the Rapier-6 missiles was developed with a very high yield, estimated at 80kt each. This seemed to be at the upper limit for NECE warheads of this size and the Reich still hoped for a true nuclear warhead, or some kind of direct Naquadah explosive to be developed.

December 1960

Although bombs seem still a ways off, Heisenberg finally managed to build a working fusion plant. It was large and finicky, requiring a large staff of technicians to keep it functioning, but it worked. Not only that it used no Naquadah in it's manufacture, maintenance or in it's fuel so can be used in long term power systems where the rare mineral was not available.

At present the system was a prototype and would likely take a few years to be made into something more standard in design, but hopes were that remote fusion plants could power gun batteries and shield emplacements in the future, greatly helping defensive measures. Although fuel requirements were tiny, this prototype actually had lower power to weight ratios than the Naquadah Chemical Generators. Hopefully this could be improved in future models of the fusion plant.

January 1961

After much redesign the Indus Two was successfully launched, carrying the four Weltraumfahrers into Leere orbit. The system was very efficient, if a little tricky to maneuver. As it stood it could already launch from Teutonia without need of a booster rocket, though the current system had no atmospheric braking and landing system (such as parachutes) on it as yet. It almost had the fuel on board to do such a landing using the engines to brake rather than the atmosphere.

Work on refining the design into a more standard orbital transport progresses, hoping to use it to ferry cargo to Bifrost in future. Such re-usable vessels seemed the way forward in space transport and funding on the Leere project was increased on orders from the Fuhrer. He wanted some kind of orbital defense of Teutonia as soon as possible.
 
March 1961

A report was put before the Fuhrer that had, over the last year, examined the Reich's military capabilities in detail. Comparing the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to their Goa'uld counterparts so far had proven that, over all, they were a match or even superior in a lot of ways. However, verses spacecraft a lot of issues remain. At present it required incredible amounts of firepower to down an Hatak craft, and that was inside an atmosphere, which limited the Goa'uld defenses. Even Al'kesh with their shields would be a problem in a battle in orbit. Range was also an issue. Although the newer, heavy heat ray cannons had comparable range to Goa'uld plasma cannons, they did far less damage, and diminished in damage dramatically at range. This compared poorly to the plasma bolts of the enemy's weapons which seemed to hold themselves together right up till the bolt's cohesion failed, either from striking a ship or due to failure at maximum range, leaving them doing constant damage at any range.

Reich missiles did appear effective, and work progressed on better targeting systems for orbital use, but the warheads were still not powerful enough. Rapier-6 missiles could make a suborbital path, enabling them to intercept a ship in low orbit. They had high terminal speeds that could hit Hataks, and the targeting system (while still needing some work) was able to hit these targets pretty reliably. Unfortunately with current warheads it was estimated that if an Hatak was fired upon in orbit with only missiles a flight of over a thousand would be needed to defeat it, all hitting the target more or less simultaneously. Current stocks only had approximately two hundred Rapier-6 missiles in the whole Reich.

This was unacceptable, and more funding was tasked to find an effective weapon against shielding, whether a better energy weapon or more advanced missile warhead. A separate base on the airless planet Leere began testing of weapons and shields in vacuum environment, hoping to find a better weapon that could be mass produced to take down shields.

Work on Reich shielding though had hit an impasse. Although some successful improvements had been made on the model that was used to defend Naquin, further improvements seem to overload the systems. Work was progressing, but the technology was at the cutting edge of Reich science and it was hard to develop it much further at present. It had already far outstripped the work Adarian had done for the Eurondan people.

The crashed Al'kesh gunship had now been (finally) disassembled, transferred through the gate, and given to the team on Teutonia to examine. Researchers were excited to examine the alien technology on a scale that they could understand rather than the massive systems on the Hatak.

May 1961

After years of effort the engineers working on the Hatak crashed on New Siberia finally were able to restore it's gravity drives to operational condition. The rest of the systems were still somewhat jury rigged, but it was enough to get the vessel to perform a test flight into orbit. However this was somewhat delayed as, while the base built around the base of the huge ship was supposed to release it to allow it to take off, during the long work since it was built the motors for the housing had been damaged by the intense cold. Over two weeks of effort by the technicians were needed before the plates could retract, allowing the vessel to launch.

The ship performed well with the entirely Reich designed bridge controlling the ship. Tests of various other, half repaired, systems were done in orbit for the first flight, then the ship landed once more. Several more flights were planned, with some hope that Reich scientists could test systems on the hyperdrive to determine how it functioned. Some significant work would be needed to get it operational, and the scientists didn't have a solid theory on how it worked yet. Empirical data during various stages of the device's operation was needed, and it seemed to only function while in a vacuum.

Although the science was not there, the technicians at Leere began attempting to duplicate the physical systems of the Hatak's hyperdrive with Reich equipment. At present they had little success, and hoped the upcoming tests of the Hatak's drive in orbit on future test flights would give them more information to work with. In late May the Eurondan head scientist Felar was assigned to the team, hoping his skills would improve the chances that they could duplicate the technology. It soon became obvious that the energy levels the system required were huge, the Goa'uld managing to accomplish this using Naquadah in most parts of the engine. So far attempts to use Naquadah in their prototype assemblies had been less than successful, and efforts to build a system that does not employ the volatile material are attempted.

December 1961

An Heschelian scientist named Chou, someone who had worked their way up from an apprentice technician with the Reich teams over the years, had been studying Goa'uld systems and had proven to have an instinct for seeing how they do what they do. Still, Reich tech seemed unable to master a lot of their systems and he had been frustrated in his efforts to duplicate technological devices of theirs.

Recently he attempted to shift to different concepts, rather than attempting direct copies of Goa'uld hardware, and in December he was partially successful. Though a full grav drive that the Goa'uld seem to use seemed to be beyond the Reich at present, Chou instead came up with an innovative alternative. Instead of generating gravity waves, it bent existing ones. He came up with a crude mechanism to twist the gravity of a planet around and literally 'ride' the wake. The system employed two huge counter rotating rings of Naquadah, producing thrust vertically up between the axes of the rings.

The team was amazed as his test prototype hovered above the lab floor. It seemed the Reich finally had some kind of drive system that could rival the hovering Goa'uld systems. Rockets would still be needed a long way from a planet, and also some kind of conventional propulsion for large amounts of lateral motion. The 'gravrider' system could not provide much thrust to the sides, away from the direction of gravity.

It would take many years before practical systems based on this system could be built, but eventually Chou hoped to replace rockets with such 'flying disks'.

January 1962

Another cold dial contact was reached and the Reich team discovered a thriving civilization on the planet Spelk, at a roughly Victorian level in technology. While the population seemed small at an estimated million world wide, the culture seemed well developed. Whereas Eurondans seemed based on Celtic roots, and Heschelians and Thendan on Asian ones, these 'Spelkans' seemed closer to the Germanic and Aryan appearance, with a language that seemed partially Nordic in origin.

Although the initial meeting between the locals and the platoon sent through the gate was tense, the two groups seemed to make peace fairly quickly and negotiations between the two peoples progress apace. The Reich certainly was eager to make friends with a fellow Aryan race.

It was guessed that the Spelkans were derived from a Goa'uld dominated slave culture that was started on this world fairly recently, or the population would be much higher. However initial tests found no trace of Naquadah near the gate and the locals had not heard of the mineral. It was possible this was another kind of slave holding planet, or perhaps mining some other material, but it was difficult to say. Native legends on the world stopped during a reform that occurred approximately a hundred and fifty years ago when most of the historical books were destroyed in a religious revolution. Although some records were re-written afterwards by the survivors a lot was lost and there was little clue as yet about the situation under whichever Goa'uld lorded there.

The people did however retain a fear of mythical demons that resembled the Goa'uld and after information on the System Lords was given to the Head Council of the Spelkan people they seemed very eager to learn more, fearful of possible future invasion. It seemed the Spelkans would be very open to trade and diplomatic deals with the Reich in future.

March 1962

An enhanced version of the heat ray weapon, relying on much higher frequencies high into the ultraviolet spectrum, was finally put into production. At first this was only on mid range cannons, suitable for aircraft or heavy, squad portable weapons, but it seemed to do very well. It had a form of adaptive, flexible mirror that used computer sensors to detect distortions in the air in the beam and adapt the focus to compensate very quickly. The enhanced damage potential and the better range and accuracy made this a fearsome new weapon.

The team label this kind of weapon a 'Death Ray' as opposed to the visible light 'Heat Rays' used already. The prototypes could not be built at Mumaker as yet, but work on using some alternate components in the Crystronics (Crystal Electronics) systems might allow it to be mass produced by the factory planet in the future. Mumaker was already up to fifteen fabrication plants, with a workforce of over nine thousand, outstripping the entire Teutonia production capability.

For now further work on these new weapons was handed over to the latest weapons lab on Leere, testing the weapon's capabilities in vacuum against shield systems. The initial results were good and plans for a larger weapon to be mounted in a space station were planned.
 
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May 1962

After over a decade in a cell, under awful conditions, the Goa'uld Kel'Kesh had been no help, and had slowly slipped into ill health. Eventually he was left to rot, the occasional efforts to interrogate him left to the few SS that saw any point to the endeavor. They seemed to savor torturing the 'god' however, and this might have been a mistake.

On May 2nd SS Captain Baumgaertner was caught attempting to dial the gate for himself and four SS soldiers. At first the guards on gate duty seemed mollified as he had relevant papers for himself, but when one of the officers noticed that the dial was not for any world he recognized an argument, then shortly a fight, broke out, Baumgaertner soon hit by a Zat'Nik'Tel blast and brought down, along with two of his guards. After the other two put down their weapons the unconscious Baumgaertner was taken to isolation to find out what he was up to. Several chemical markers in his blood however caused the staff to wonder if he had been ill. Then they noticed trace elements of Naquadah in his blood, a condition so far only noticed in the Goa'uld Kel'Kesh!

When Kel'Kesh's cell was investigated his body was found, as well as a dead SS soldier tucked under the bed. Upon examination Kel'Kesh's body held no Symbiote, and it was obvious what had happened. Baumgaertner had become careless and the Goa'uld managed to take him as a host.

'Baumgaertner' was kept under heavy sedation while it was decided what to do. They had no experience with such things and weren't sure how easy it would be to remove the symbiote from the SS man. Tentative surgery was attempted, but it seemed that, even with complex sedatives keeping the symbiote unconscious, it's biology reacted automatically to attempts to remove it. Surgery was canceled when Baumgaertner started to go into convulsions.

After this attempts to keep the symbiote sedated proved tricky. A gradually increasing dose was required and they were worried how this might affect the host. The Reich scientists did not want it to awaken and realize what was happening to it. It was possible it had some means to kill itself, and perhaps the host too. Their understanding of it's biology was fairly basic.

With the situation with Baumgaertner stable (if not satisfactory) the other problem came up. Where had he been dialing? 'Baumgaertner' had dialed five of the seven codes for the destination address, and of course they knew what the last one would be. The point of origin. That still left 39 possible sixth symbols to dial. A Battalion of Wehrmacht, and two squads of Nazi Jaffa, were prepared and the sequences were started. The second attempt produced a lock, and, after a probe showed no obvious threat nearby, troops were fanning out onto a jungle world. However no traces of Goa'uld or Jaffa were found in the vicinity. Some remote helicopter drones were launched to survey further afield, but little evidence of anything was found. Some smoke in the distance might suggest a human presence, but it was too far away to check immediately.

The teams returned Teutonia and the remaining symbols were tried. The second to last attempt produced another result. This time when the probe went through it was attacked by Jaffa immediately, barely having long enough to recognize the defenders before it was destroyed. Immediately a mortar barrage was launched through the gate, followed by the Reich forces, led by the Nazi Jaffa squads.

This was the first time these Jaffa loyal to the Reich had gone into combat since their training, and it showed. The Wehrmacht was willing to leave Al'dar in charge of his units, but the Battalion of Wehrmacht troops had their own commander, and he was in overall charge of the mission.

As it turned out the area was built as some kind of minor outpost, with about a hundred Jaffa, two Gliders and a few religious zealot humans. The battles were fierce, and spaced out over a day heading to the three settlements established nearby, but the results were not truly in doubt. Reich forces not only outclassed them in firepower, but in numbers as well, and soon the last settlement was taken.

The look of the Reich's Jaffa in their Nazi styled armor managed to persuade the leader of the last group to surrender, expecting to be taken by another of his Goa'uld masters. These thirty new 'volunteers' were divided when they found out their new masters were not Goa'uld. However, eventually ten of them also joined the ranks of the Nazi Jaffa, including the groups leader; Lomar.

No Naquadah or Trinium was found in the vicinity of the gate, and the local Jaffa knew of no mines elsewhere on the planet, so it was assumed to not be present. It certainly wasn't worth the bother of setting up gate defenses on an otherwise uninhabited world just to go scouting. Later this world could be a useful planet to expand onto and colonize, but for now they would simply take everything they could and withrdraw. Including baby symbiotes from the fallen Jaffa (those where the symbiotes lived long enough to be collected at least)

It was touted as another great victory back home, though perhaps it was a little one sided in the Reich's favor. However the benefit to the Nazi Jaffa was great. They had seen how their training worked in battle, and for the most part had been impressed. One weapon had broken (a rarity with Goa'uld equipment) but other than that they had been very pleased with themselves and their equipment.

June 1962

After the battle off world and the obvious need to supply symbiotes to their Jaffa in the future, the effort to study these creatures was intensified. Also an effort to replace the creature within Jaffa, helping their Immune system. One possibility considered was to study the symbiotes in situ and see what they did, and attempt to make a drug that could do the same. However the biology involved was intricate and so far attempts to reproduce it were unsuccessful.

Another solution was considered however, using mechanical systems to filter the blood of Jaffa and perform various treatments on it remotely to replace their immune system. Some early trials had some minor successes with volunteer Jaffa, but the machines involved were too large to carry with them, and they also would have not been perfect at restoring the Jaffa immune system, let alone the other effects the symbiotes had that gave the Jaffa their enhance strength, endurance and healing properties. It seemed this problem would not be solved quickly so continued efforts to recover symbiotes would be needed for the foreseeable future.

August 1962

Finally the repaired hyperdrive was successfully tested on the captured Hatak, operating below par as far as they could tell, but steadily. The ship catapulted itself to the edge of the solar system, then back to New Siberia for another landing before further tests on the drive could be done. Soon the ship would be fully operational, or as fully operational as Reich science could manage. At this point a naming ceremony was given with great fanfare in the sealed-in facility around the base of the ship, Colonel Gehlen naming the ship 'Reichstern' (Reichstar). Imagery of the ceremony and earlier footage of a launch of the ship was broadcast across Teutonia as proof of what the Reich could accomplish.

The ship was not as efficient as it had been. Most of the control systems had to be replaced with something the Reich could repair and use and this had limited things a bit. However about three quarters of the existing Goa'uld weapons were operable, the shield seemed to be fully operational, and there was a lot of room on board to upgrade. Efforts were begun on adding Reich weapons and armor to the ship, improving it's military capabilities at the expense of it's transportation function. It was planned for this to be completed on New Siberia and then the ship to travel through hyperspace to Teutonia to defend the homeworld if needed. However it was soon realized that the awkward nature of the facilities on New Siberia limited working on the outside of the ship. The armor and weapons upgrades would likely be left till later, except a few that could be installed from inside. Two of the new Death Rays were mounted to replace plasma cannons that had been destroyed, easily powered by the large Naquadah power plant the ship used.

September 1962

Negotiations with Spelk were going very well, and already a political alliance had been arranged. However now the locals were offering to expand their industry to assist in Reich endeavors in fighting the Goa'uld. This was first almost seen as a joke, but even though the Spelkans were relatively primitive compared to Reich tech, they were not so far behind as other worlds. After further investigation it was suspected that it would not take too long to integrate existing Spelkan manufacturing practices with a few mobile Mu Fabrication plants to build most of what the Reich could do. A cooperative venture would take the strain of ship and missile production from Teutonia, although it was doubtful such facilities would be able to produce advanced tech. However Mumaker suffered from a similar problem so this was hardly something new.

In the end the deal was made, the Spelkans getting access to advanced technology and improving their tech base, and in return they would supply heavy industry to a new site situated outside of the main inhabited area, about four hundred miles east of the gate. The first joint factory was planned to build the bodies for Rapier-6 missiles and the the airframes of the new Falke-180 hover jet. Eventually it was hoped their production could expand in ability to produce all of the components for these and that would free Reich construction plants for other duties. At first only one plant was built, the Spelkans having to fork out a large amount of money to build their side of it, but they certainly considered it worth it. By the end of the month they had already absorbed the concept of mass production, and several new sets of scientific understanding. The latter would take while to truly grasp, and before then more revelations would unfurl, but things were progressing nicely.

October 1962

Efforts to understand Goa'uld tech were not of course just on the Hatak. Work on the crashed Al'kesh also continued. At first they hoped that, once they understood the tech, they could rebuild and fly it. This soon turned out to be hopeless, as too many of the ship's systems were beyond repair. The grav propulsion system especially seemed to have been severely damaged, then had been broken up into sections to be taken through the gate which hadn't helped. The result was not something any sane engineer would want to look at, let alone to attempt to repair. One cannon was functional, the shields seemed as though they might be repairable, but the real boon was the hyperdrive. Much smaller than those on the Hatak the drive on the Al'kesh was compared to it's larger sibling, and to the experimental rigs they were building on Leere. It was guessed that it could be mounted in a small ship and function, but would likely need a full fusion plant to operate. The Naquadah plant on the Al'kesh was unfortunately wrecked, and a replacement would be difficult.

Heisenberg did say he was close to a smaller fusion plant that would be something the Reich could mass produce, but even that was a comparatively large system and the Al'kesh's hyperdrive would not be able to haul such a large powerplant. However some thought was given to attempting to upgrade the drive with Reich equipment, possibly enabling it to be used on a larger ship. So far the Reich could not build such a huge vessel, but Chou's work on gravrider technology suggested such a craft might be buildable. Work was set on designing the first ship, designated a 'Disk Destroyer' to employ both EM rockets and Gravrider rings as propulsion, and using the Al'kesh's hyperdrive, all built around a large fusion plant.

The prospects were enticing, even if the system was partially based on captured Goa'uld systems, and Schmidt wanted badly to have a working, battle capable vessel that the Reich had built themselves.
 
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December 1962

Last minute work progressed on the Hatak at New Siberia before it returned home, some work on the new Disk Destroyer began on Leere (what could be done with no reactor to base the ship around just yet), and some effort was being made for a form of space fighter, loosely based on the Arminius design with less cargo and more advanced engines. However at present the Reich still did not possess any legitimate space forces that could present a threat to any enemy fleet on any of it's worlds.

Despite this the Fuhrer could see the way the wind was blowing and decided to form a new wing of the military aimed for the time when such vessels were available. The new Raumflotte would join the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe as the primary military forces of the Reich and as such for the moment they acquired missile systems that could reach orbit and the few Arminius and Indus space vessels they had to give it some kind of legitimacy. Some considerable debate was made over what kind of traditions, and more importantly tactics and strategy, the new Raumflotte would employ. However without even knowing what kind of fleet would exist this was deemed pure speculation at this point and kept as such.

At the moment the Raumflotte consisted of less than a hundred personnel, but growing already to include the ground staff to service the newly acquired crude space vessels. None of these craft could realistically pose a threat to a Goa'uld ship, and the Reich saw no way to credibly mount a weapon on an Arminius, though the Indus had enough cargo to perhaps mount a couple of Rapier-6 missiles if they adapted it's internal space and cut it's crew complement to two. However for now they waited for the proposed weapons and ships to be developed. Soon the Raumflotte would be more than just a name.

February 1963

The embassy on Thent had been relatively quiet of late, and truth be told the Reich was hardly thrilled with attempting to make diplomatic entreaties with the rest of the Thent nations given their past experience. The Western Accord seemed amenable but the Nazis were hardly enamored with them either. Though a large workforce was certainly available on Thent, they were not exactly eager and it was not considered worth the trouble either militarily or diplomatically to attempt to 'use' them. The leaders in the Western Accord were beginning to realize this and seemed to be attempting to find ways to expand trade with the Reich, so far mostly food and other easily tradeable items hoping for technology in return. This was going slowly with the Reich who were wary of handing tech to such a backward seeming race. An oddity since they were more advanced than Heschel had been at contact, but already the Heschelian Center States had been advanced by Reich interaction beyond Thent's level. However there the Reich perceived less trouble from the people. Thent was seen as an annoying barbarian world, even if the Western Accord was aiding them faithfully.

However, as 1963 dawned some trade was agreed with the maritime nations around the re-positioned gate and the Western Accord saw their capabilities and knowledge rise as a result. The Reich, begrudgingly, saw the locals holding up their end of the bargain and admitted that the Western Accord might be trustworthy compared to other Thendan nations. However such changes in attitudes were slow going, and the tech introductions were simple at first. Better metallurgical recipes. Introduction of a more refined printing press. Some basic information on simple Chemistry. So far nothing earthshaking, but helpful and generally aided the locals in improving their economy and technology slightly.

March 1963

The factory complex on Spelk was now fully operational, churning out missile bodies and airframes for fighters. This was soon expanded to a small number of hulls for the newer Indus spacecraft. Severe checks were made on these latter after they arrived at Teutonia before assembly (they would not fit through the gate as one unit) as the tolerances required were considerably higher and the Reich did not yet fully trust the Spelkan part of the construction. However the first batch of four hulls delivered in March '63 seemed functional and crystronics, power and engine systems were installed, giving the first 'fleet' for the new Raumflotte that actually could do anything. These ships were still configured for civilian work, and their cargo bay could only hold a single missile, but they could in a pinch add to the defense of Teutonia.

May 1963

Finally the Reichstern was deemed 'hyperspace worthy' and a crew boarded her for the voyage back to Teutonia. If it came to a battle with any enemy Hataks they were woefully under-armed, but at least they could fight.

The voyage home took a little over five days, though the engineers were being somewhat cautious. It was possible they could have made it in four days if they'd pushed the engines. The Reich repairs to the hyperdrive held up and the ship arrived at Teutonia to great celebrations. The crew on New Siberia had gone to great efforts (and some frostbite) to ensure a large swastika was painted on the outside, to be very visible as the ship landed outside Volksburg, a fine sight for the television cameras to record for posterity.

Finally Teutonia had some kind of credible defense if attacked, and soon work began on the upgrades on armor and weaponry that the Reich had planned for the ship. The awkward shape of the lower hull proved tricky to add armor to, but with some modifications to the hull structure the Trinium armoring continued apace. Adding such structure to the ship took a large percentage of the reserve Trinium they had left from what was mined from New Siberia over the years, but it was worth it. Besides, already new techniques of mining were expanding the mines there, despite the conditions, and it was hoped that large amounts of the light weight metal would be shipped home soon.

By now Reich schools teach Goa'uld as an optional language at most levels, as information from both Jaffa, and the Goa'uld systems they've captured (what little information remains in working systems) have taught them a good base for the language, both spoken and written. Most do not learn it at present, but it was often seen as helpful in any technical vocation as anyone working on the alien equipment found such knowledge very useful. Heschelian also was progressing in the curriculum as the numbers of people moving back and forth between the two worlds increased. So far Spelk and Thent (though the latter had many languages and dialects among it's wide spread peoples) had not seen such wide spread acceptance, though Spelkan was beginning to be accepted in schools as a possible option for future use as contacts with that world became more open.

This educational background, and a push towards Goa'uld in certain circles, meant that a lot of the newer recruits to the military had Goa'uld as a second language, even if only in passing. Mostly this was still in the technical disciplines but it was spreading.

June 1963

Exploration of the two worlds found after the 'Baumgaertner Incident' had now been tentatively explored, though the second, originally Goa'uld held, planet (named Sina'lek by the Jaffa) only for short duration visits. No-one wanted to be caught on the planet when an enemy Jaffa force came through the gate. The other planet, called unoriginally Urwald (jungle) by the explorers, was more thoroughly explored, and though no Naquadah was found, one of the helicopter scouting missions found traces of Trinium in the mountains far to the north of the gate. An expedition was mounted, connected via aircraft to the gate at present, to see if it was in sufficient quantity to be minable.

September 1963

Reich scientists managed to assemble a rough frame on Leere with a fusion plant and an experimental, completely Reich manufactured, hyperdrive. This first generation test bed though was very slow, seemingly only able to make twice light speed. However it meant contact between the Reich worlds was no longer entirely based on the gate or captured craft and efforts to build a transport vessel around such a drive were begun. With the lighter gravity on Leere it first was planned to build it on the ground then launch it, but soon that idea was given up. Such a large structure would be difficult to lift to orbit like that, even on Leere, so it was planned instead to be built in sections then lofted on special boost cages, simple large boosters with a cargo attached, that could get the cargo to an orbital location for assembly. Perhaps later when these 'gravrider' systems become available such large vessels could lift from the surface unaided, but right now it was awkward to build such a large vessel to do that.

All this planning was halted a mere week after starting as a minor technician suggests the obvious. If the hyperdrive system only functions in a vacuum, why not engage it on the surface of Leere and draw the ship to high orbit that way? Soon the launch cages were forgotten and a disposable 'launch frame' was built to mount the ship to on the ground. When the hyperdrive activates the ship would be catapulted into the window, likely destroying the frame in the process, but it should be successful. Once in orbit the hyper transport should allow goods to be ferried between worlds (if terribly slowly) that would not fit through the gate. It wasn't seen as needed to build more than one ship at present so no mass production was considered at first, sticking with just the prototype, with a second one tentatively planned for later. It was good experience for the crews before true transports or warships were available to train on.

December 1963

The expanded Bifrost station was considered 'complete' for now, partially still with it's original purpose of orbital scanner, but now also heavily armed. Indus and Arminius vessels, along with cargo boosters similar to that which got the Bifrost up in the first place, had shipped up crew and components over the last three years and the station now comprised four linked sections. Although still small the station had a considerable armament, unfortunately it had proven impossible to build and transport a fusion reactor up in the vessels available, so a fuel intensive NCG power plant was mounted that could supply power in an emergency, but normally solar panels recharged the Naquadah energy cells. These cells could supply enough juice for test firing the four Death rays and single plasma beam cannon a handful of times, but the NCG system can recharge the cells enough for almost maximum rate of fire on all weapons... for about twenty minutes on the fuel reserves before the plant runs dry. The hydrogen, oxygen and liquid Naquadah fuel (Commonly termed HON) was burned through very quickly on the recent, advanced models of the NCG systems, but the power output per ton of reactor was considerable, nearly on a par with Goa'uld Naquadah power plants seen on their Hataks. The system however was somewhat temperamental and required considerable servicing to keep in operation.

The surface batteries on Teutonia were mostly heavy heat rays with a few plasma beam cannons. The newer Death rays were still tricky to build very large, and the systems so far built would not project much damage up out of the atmosphere to an attacking vessel. Some surface installations did employ Death rays for anti aircraft fire, but not anti spacecraft yet.

February 1964

A prototype remote piloted disk craft was flown to orbit from a lab on Leere, proving the basic design works. Efforts for an interim design of craft, basically a heavy scout vessel, was begun to test practices of constructing such vessels. However work on the first Disk Destroyer continues, albeit slowly while they test the new technology. It was suspected that most of the systems except the huge rings of Naquadah could be built using Mumaker technology, or even on the new Spelkan Construction facilities. There was some argument over where such vessels should be constructed in future, but eventually it was decided that, although Mumaker would built such ships faster, it was better suited towards mass production of missiles and weaponry for ships rather than ships themselves, so tentatively a contract was established for the Spelkan facility to assemble the first Disk destroyer once the components are tested, and possibly more later. The large rings are constructed of a grid of Naquadah and can be sent in small sections from Teutonia to be assembled locally, though the engineers on Spelk look for ways that their somewhat primitive systems might be able to manufacture the rings as well in future.

March 1964

Settlements on Teutonia had expanded slowly, and, with influx of people from other worlds, two could be classed as smaller Cities, called Neudresden and Wilhermsdorf. After extensive development newer cargo and passenger zeppelins were now plying the routes between them and expansion of the Reich into more towns further afield was planned to exploit more of Teutonia's natural resources.

Similarly, since the population on Heschel was so focused around the gate a new colony was founded on a nearby continent when a small deposit of Naquadah was discovered there. It was not expected to produce a large mine or likely the Goa'uld would have mined it a long time ago, but it formed a useful reason to start a settlement there. The population was a mix of Aryan, Heschelian and a few Spelkans and it soon got a reputation as a rather cosmopolitan culture, if a little 'frontierish' in feel.

Initially some individual conflict does arise from the mix of population, primarily between the Aryan/Spelkians and the visibly different Heschelians, but so far it seems minor.
 
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April 1964

The Quadranscentennial celebrations on Teutonia were extensive, with lavish street parties and fairs organised as well as official ceremonies celebrating the first 25 years of the Fourth Reich. Over-flights by Felke fighters, civilian aircraft, and a single pass by an Indus were all dwarfed when the Prototype flying disk (having to be disassembled, taken through the gate, then reassembled on Teutonia) performed a slow sweep around Volksburg. Trailing banners from a mount between the two spinning drive plates the ship performed well, circling the city for over half an hour on it's NCG fuel supply before having to land to refuel. Minor celebrations continue for a week until it finally died down.

There were incidents during the celebrations where the Goa'uld prisoner partially regained consciousness, but so far things still seem to have been under control with Kel'Kesh. All the while he had been 'imprisoned' in his new body tests on the symbiote and how it was affecting the SS Captain it inhabited have helped Reich science to understand the Goa'uld physiology better. The Captain's condition had deteriorated under the Goa'uld inhibiting medication, but seemed stable. Now, after significant research from this symbiote, a crude device was invented which fitted into the pouch on a Jaffa. This device could, at least partially, replace a Symbiote. At present the mechanism needed a fair amount of maintenance every day and the Jaffa still needed to return to a hospital every week for a full dialysis on a larger, more efficient mechanism, but it was possible to do away with their symbiotes, at least in theory.

However, the results were not well received by the Nazi Jaffa. Although one or two did take up the offer to be rid of any connection their false gods, the results diminish what they believe True Jaffa were, losing their enhanced strength, endurance and healing abilities, and the limitations of the device itself were not helping. There was some pressure from the SS to force the issue, to destroy all the hated Goa'uld symbiotes and make the Jaffa take the new devices. However Schmidt asked the Fuhrer to personally intercede to avoid this. The technology was too new and far too experimental to rely upon. The Nazi Jaffa had proven themselves capable in battle and an excellent elite unit. These devices, as they stand now, could end their effectiveness. The SS back down but demanded that more funding was given to the project, hoping to destroy all traces of the vile creatures within their ranks. They hated that one of their own had been subverted like this, and constantly pushed for continued efforts to free Baumgaertner from the Goa'uld's clutches. So far efforts to remove the symbiote remained very risky, and every attempt to begin surgery had started a severe reaction in the host. Some poisons released by the Goa'uld had been identified that may be the cause of the reaction, but so far no way to stop or counter the poison had yet been found.

June 1964

Hidden cameras on Sina'lek were regularly picked up by troops that check the area around the gate on the Goa'uld outpost world, and in June these cameras showed Jaffa had recently scouted the area. However these were not those of Yu as the outpost had been, but from the system lord Baal. These Jaffa explored the region beyond the reach of the cameras, and then returned through the gate a day later. The cameras were of course placed in positions to watch the pedestal and the gate code was recorded. They now had the code for what they assume to be one of Baal's worlds!

Suggestions to scout the world were put forwards, but given that it was almost certain to be a well defended facility this is a somewhat difficult decision. Did the Goa'uld have a way to trace where a gate link came from? If so even success in such a mission could mean a return assault on where ever the mission was launched from. So far it was suspected the Goa'uld did not have a way to trace incoming gate links, going by Jaffa experience, but Reich scientists were not certain as yet. From the dial code symbols that these Jaffa used the Reich scientists believe they could track where the star that planet orbits must be in the universe (Rimward and counterspinward from their position... equating to a 'SE' direction galactically speaking), and another suggestion was that the Reichstern visit the system and scan it at extreme range. However, given that the Reichstern was not completely upgraded, and it's drive was slower than Goa'uld ships, this may not have been an ideal solution.

For the moment no contact was made with the new world the code leads to and it was left for a later date to decide what to do about it.

August 1964

Werner Heisenberg, now in his sixties, was still organizing the project for fusion research, often utilizing his friendship with the Fuhrer to keep him head of the team. His expertise and intelligence was unquestioned, but his health had been failing recently and there were some questions as to whether he should remain head of the Reich Science Institute. However, with Heisenberg still in the lead he helped put the finishing touches to the first fusion reactor designed for a ship on Spelk. Soon the rest of the ship would be built around the system and the first practical destroyer would be ready. Most of the other systems had already been built, either here on Spelk or on Leere, and most of the work would be in the construction of the superstructure and assembly of the twin drive rings.

Late in the month Heisenberg was diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys, possibly exacerbated by his work on atomic energy over the years. Modern Reich medicine can alleviate the symptoms and might be able to knock the cancer out, but it was still terribly risky and not a lot of hope was held out for Werner. The Fuhrer personally stated that anything that can help him should be tried. Several staff nervously consider, and then reject, telling the Fuhrer that implantation of a symbiote would cure him, even if the Reich do not possess the ability to remove it as yet. So far no one wants to purposefully implant such an abomination in one of their own! Let along a national figure such as Heisenberg!

September 1964

Attempts to remove Heisenberg's cancer with heat ray surgery and numerous drugs seemed successful. He was kept in isolation as his immune system was severely impeded, though the new system designed for the Jaffa helped immensely with this. It was hoped he would make a complete recovery.

December 1964

A flight of Goa'uld Al'kesh gunships were spotted streaking into the upper atmosphere of Spelk and the engineers rushed to get the incomplete destroyer ready for launch. A flight of Felke fighters engaged the Al'kesh, and while capable were outgunned by the wing of shielded Goa'uld craft. Then the shields, and finally the weapons, on the destroyer were brought online and it's drive disks were set spinning. Although lacking armor, a lot of crew quarters and it's hyperdrive, the craft was able to fly and engaged the enemy. With fighter support they were able to drive the Goa'uld off the planet. The unfinished destroyer was in no shape to follow so two survivors of the eight Al'kesh flee into hyperspace.

Panic ensues on Spelk, the fear of what they have learned of the Goa'uld grips the populace, dreading being enslaved when the Al'kesh return... or a larger force. It was obvious that, even completed, the destroyer would be no match for an Hatak mothership. More fighters and missile batteries were shipped in and stationed on the planet along with a few Indus and, reluctantly, the Fuhrer orders the nearly completed Reichstern to launch immediately, it's remaining upgrades and repairs to be conducted during the seven day journey, or at Spelk if time allowed. The dull grey and black finish of the armored Hatak lifted from Teutonia and headed into space once more, this time for it's first expected battle since capture by the Reich.

While the Reichstern was still over a day from Spelk ground based detectors spot a hyperspace signature (which they are still learning to detect) in the outer system of Spelk and several Indus craft were launched to provide better detection of the unknown craft as it closed in. With no way to communicate with the Reichstern (Reich still had no clue how to duplicate Goa'uld subspace communicators yet) they couldn't let the Reich ship know they needed to hurry, so Spelk planned a last ditch effort to defend the planet.

It was doubtful that the enemy would come into the atmosphere to make things easy, especially if this ship was from the same Goa'uld as those Al'kesh, and so presumably had reports on the destroyer being built. They had not had enough time to complete the construction, but hasty work had been made to prepare the ship for battle and most of the outer hull had been finished, if a little bit jury rigged for such a fast construction. Luckily no vibration issues arose as the ship wound up the drive disks and floated off the ground. Shields engaged successfully and the ship skipped up to hover above the atmosphere to avoid the limitations of such systems within the air. Many fighters carried the Rapier-5, the largest fighter launched missile the Reich produced, that can, from a high altitude launch, intercept an orbital craft. However these, even combined with ground missile batteries, will not be sufficient to bring the Goa'uld's shield down (assuming it is an Hatak). Hopefully the destroyer, in co-operation with the missiles, might be sufficient in penetrating the shields, and after that the missiles will prove far more effective against an unshielded hull.

As the enemy cruised, seemingly rather cautiously, in-system visual detectors aboard the Destroyer, which was currently merely designated RD-001, along with the sensors on the group of Indus in orbit, determine that the incoming enemy comprises of TWO Hataks, not one. The Reich forces were completely outgunned in this and were not sure what they could accomplish. Perhaps they could at least damage one of the craft to the point the Reichstern can defeat them and a last ditch plan to ram one of the ships with the destroyer is readied.

EM rockets engaged and pushed the Destroyer into a more stable orbit, allowing more power to redirected from the drive disks to the shields. From over a million kilometers out a broadcast was heard on many radio bands from 'Your god Horus' in which he demanded that all forces in the system surrender and bow down to him immediately. The Raumflotte commander declined the invitation to surrender and asked what brought him into their territory. Further attempts to stretch the conversation out and delay matters fail, and Horus' Hatak deployed towards the planet. RD-001 swung around in it's orbit, passing on the other side of the planet. Their hope was that this would either lure the Hataks into a ground assault while the destroyer is elsewhere, or for the Hataks to swing close to the planet in an effort to reach the destroyer quickly. The latter proves evident as the overconfident 'god' swings by. Unfortunately he does not enter into the atmosphere but orbits close as the ships attempt to get a lock on the destroyer.

They were thus very surprised when numerous aircraft launched missiles along with a large battery of ground launched missiles. Distracted for a moment, he was unprepared as the destroyer, ignoring gravity with it's disks running, swept back around the planet, using most of it's reaction mass to bring it to engagement range in a retro-grade passing orbit. The battle was fierce, and the plasma beams seem able to damage the Goa'uld shields better than previously thought, however Goa'uld weapons, even when spread between the ground targets and the destroyer, are easily sufficient to batter the destroyers crude shields down and the vessel takes heavy damage. Unable to ram with it's navigation damaged it flew past the Hataks at high speed. The ship appeared to still be functional as it swung past, then out of range of the Hataks, but she had been severely damaged. Over half the crew were dead from lack of bulkheads and blast doors that had not yet been installed, it's power systems were on twenty percent, not able to power weapons, shields and armor simultaneously. They could power one of the three in a low power setting only. With these problems and with most of it's weapons disabled it was effectively out of the fight. However the commander dodged around the planet, holding the Hatak's attention while ground forces still engaged it. Beleagered from two directions the Hataks actually pull back to high orbit, despite only one of the motherships suffering any damage at all (and only slight damage at that).

It was thought to be a victory, that maybe they could delay him until the Reichstern arrives, but soon Horus returned, stationing himself in a medium orbit, at extreme range for his guns, and began to pound the surface installations. The destroyer had taken the opportunity to splash down on the ocean on the far side of the planet, making rudimentary repairs, healing their wounded, and restock it's fuel reserve during the slight reprieve. When the Hataks returned to Spelk orbit they hastily launched and arced around the planet, yet again throwing death in the face of the enemy. Combined fire from them and the surface actually drops the shields of the damaged Hatak, but the destroyer was mortally wounded before it could follow up on the assault, and span away from the planet, a tumbling wreck. With no opposition Horus again demanded the people's surrender and he saw the fighters streak down, fleeing through the gate, the gate codes blocked by an awning raised over it. With the missile batteries dry and the only ground based Death ray batteries destroyed from orbital bombardment, the Spelkans surrender, and Goa'uld heavy transports began to land troops on the planet outside the central city, and another force by the gate.

Finally, after all seemed lost, the Reichstern did arrive, dropping out of hyperdrive very close to Spelk, and turning towards the Hataks. Seeing the friendly ship arrive a company of Reich troops assaulted the force near the gate, though they were heavily outnumbered. They managed, through surprise and use of mortar fire, to get a squad up to the gate and dial Teutonia, popping smoke grenades before they do so to hide the pedestal and the gate. Giving a brief details of the situation they then shut the gate down, letting Teutonia dial in. Although their company took heavy losses from the near five hundred Jaffa dropped near the gate, a few survived to be reinforced by the two infantry battalions, including the full Nazi Jaffa company. There wasn't time to organize the armor battalion, but fighters, re-armed and re-equipped, poured back once the gate was clear, swarming into the skies of Spelk.

Meanwhile, in orbit the Reichstern pounded the enemy Hatak with plasma and Deathray fire, holding it's missiles back. With it's shields already weakened from the earlier attack they did not last long under fire and collapsed abruptly. Then the Reichstern fired it's missiles. Together with a few from atmospheric fighters the enemy ship took heavy damage, but it was obvious the missiles perform even more poorly in the vacuum of space than anticipated. Without air to create shockwaves and concussion their damage is much less area effect and more focused on the heat generated at the blast point. Still, the Hatak was severely damaged and was left a wreck in orbit. As more missiles streaked upwards from the planet, and the Reichstern brought it's weapons to bear, Horus decided it was time to leave and his other Hatak vanished into hyperspace.

The Reichstern took surprisingly little damage, but although it rendezvoused with the remains of the destroyer barely five of the fifty strong crew are left alive, and it would take a lot of work to repair. Meanwhile a severely damaged Hatak was sitting in orbit, and once the remaining Jaffas were dealt with by troops pouring in from Teutonia they also had one fully functional heavy troop transport, the other having been hit by fire from a flight of Felkes when it attempted to launch. The heavy transport, twice as large as an Al'kesh, carried vast numbers of troops to a planets surface. It was uncertain why they needed such vessels, the Reich are aware the Goa'uld have a working method to ferry troops to the surface via a form of teleportation. Perhaps the Goa'uld had ways of blocking this teleporting and such large transports became normal usage?

Beyond that, and the sporadic battles around the city with the few squads of Jaffa that were discovered over the next few days, things went well, and the Reich declared another glorious victory, although this time at heavy cost. Not only the destroyer and it's crew but the heavy casualties in the defenses from bombardment. Thankfully little fire fell on the city, but there was some damage there too, and repairs will continue for some time.
 
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January 1965

Recovery efforts on Spelk required considerable construction and rescue equipment shipped in from Teutonia, and took over a week to clean up the mess that the Goa'uld had made. Since ground based energy weapons lose too much damage reaching orbital targets and ground based missiles take too long to reach them, more effort was spent on building satellites in orbit with such weapons. At present lofting a cannon and reactor the size currently used on ground installations had not been feasible, but a new, prototype transporter vessel based on the gravrider propulsion system was put into production for carrying heavier loads to orbit, and more importantly the captured Troop transport could launch such cargo right now.

Mumaker systems were already churning out missiles and the medium death ray cannons (similar to those on fighters), and now began to switch production to focus more on the latter. If placed in orbit in sufficient numbers satellites with such medium damage weapons were estimated to provide a serious threat to enemy Hataks. The deathray cannon's range was comparable to the larger plasma cannons of the Goa'uld, and while their damage was not, and they required more power, the systems were relatively simple to build. Mass production of such cannons should not be an issue.

The problem was power. Solar powered Naquadah power cells were a possibility, but this would only give a minute's worth of weapon's fire before requiring a long time (perhaps five or six hours!) to recharge. This was not acceptable and the new design of defense satellite instead used the latest NCG (Naquadah Chemical Generator) systems. While such power plants burned through their fuel rapidly this could be resupplied fairly easily, and the satellites could be mounted with fuel tanks that had a tank large enough to fire for about fifteen minutes before running dry. They would have solar panels to supply normal standby usage, and only use NCGs when they attack.

Also, larger stations could be built with fusion reactors to power them, and mount multiple weapon systems. These could be shielded, but would also represent a larger target. Easier to hit. However, the fusion reactors, while complex, only used a small amount of the rare Trinium in construction and no Naquadah, and their Deuterium fuel supply would last years. Some effort was also being made on both Spelk and Mumaker to get their production runs to build a standardized fusion reactors to install on vessels rather than the current custom built ones that Heisenburg has made. So far the technology was a little too new for this to be practical, but the main factories on Teutonia could handle producing the parts and shipping them to where they were needed for each individual assembly by specialists.

At first only a handful of defense satellites were launched, each with four Medium Deathrays and an external rack of four Rapier-6 missiles. However more were planned and already one of the larger stations with twenty of the medium deathrays and two heavy heatrays for long range attack was under construction.

Back on Teutonia efforts to begin to mass produce the larger crystals for Heavy Deathrays is proving effective. Not many lines were active, but slowly the huge weapons were constructed. The central crystal was the largest section, and it's upper size was limited by what can fit through the gate. If any larger weapons were made hyperdrive ships will have to ferry them off world rather than use the gate or the crystals would need to be grown locally.

February 1965

On the 2nd of February Spelk formally applied to join the Reich as a satellite state. The move was not unexpected given the current situation and the desperation of their people, so the Reich have a diplomatic team ready to deploy to begin negotiations. However soon after they begin the Fuhrer joins in personally, actually flying, via the gate, to the capital city of Phandor, about fifty miles from the gate where the negotiations were taking place.

The talks went well, and within the week Spelk formally joined the Reich as a member state. Immediately an increased input of industrial and economic aid flowed through the gate, prepared ahead of time as an incentive. While products shipped in slightly destabilize the local economy, monetary aid to local companies to boost their adaption to new ways (and strict new guidelines to follow the party line) ameliorate this. So far all this aid was for the two major cities, Yentor where the gate was, and the capital of Phandor. Expansion of this aid to the other three smaller cities in the Spelk civilization would be 'soon', though privately the Reich believes this initial aid will increase competition among other companies to attempt to outdo those aided. It was unsure if this would follow through, but it should overall help the economy of the planet.

It was estimated that the average technological level in Phandor and Yentor was in the early twentieth century before the aid program. The aid saw an influx of new ideas and machines, but currently was a little disorganized. It would take some time before things stabilize and they see how much they had gained. However, several industrial plants already had experience in working in tandem to more advanced technologies with the joint fabrication project. The new aid helped boost those industries quite considerably and the construction of the new disk orbital transporter goes fairly well after their experience with the destroyer.

Work repairing the destroyer, which had been towed back to a medium orbit by the Reichstern, continued, with some time also spent using the Goa'uld heavy troop transport to ship materials and people up to work on it. The plan was to repair the drive disks and then bring it down to the surface where the rest of the vessel could be repaired more easily. Although work on Leere had made repairing in the vacuum of space possible it was still far easier to do the work in an atmosphere.

Examination of the Hatak that was disabled in orbit show it to have been severely damaged. It's reactor was totally destroyed, though some significant quantity of Naquadah was recovered from the debris in the reactor room. The shield system was badly damaged, but might have been possible to repair. The hyperdrive generator had taken severe damage, but some of it may be salvageable. It was possible it may be repairable to the level the Reichstern was at currently. The sublight drives unfortunately had been severely damaged and will likely only prove useful to Reich scientists for study. A large number of the weapon systems were damaged, but a few could be re-installed on the Riechstern to replace the Deathrays they currently have filling those spots. The team however believe that, with an auxiliary reactor on the Reichstern it could support more weapons. The deathrays, plus more, could be mounted on Reich designed turrets externally to add to the vessel's firepower.

Cargo on the ship was also interesting. Horus was apparently transporting goods on this vessel, and there were several tablets that record data about the cargo. Included in a few of these are relay gate addresses for worlds that the cargo was to be sent on to when the ship arrived at it's planned destination. These worlds were obviously part of Horus' empire and the Reich military wonder if some kind of strike against these worlds would be possible through the gate.

By the end of the month numerous crates in the cargo hold had been opened and interesting equipment found. About half was destroyed or damaged beyond repair when several containers were thrown around during the final few minutes of the craft's battle against the Reich. It was believed the ship swung around abruptly, and anything near the outer sections experienced heavy centripetal acceleration. Those crates in the center however are more or less intact. Items recovered range from the obvious Ma'Tok staff weapons and Zat'Nik'Tel pistols, to some curious containers of a viscous substance that scientists are loath to study without more strict isolation conditions. A few contained devices that Goa'uld have been seen to use personally (the Goa'uld in control of this ship was killed when it was disabled, and very little remains of his body or personal possessions), though Reich scientists had not been able figure out how the Goa'uld control them, and what their cutouts were to stop others from using them. Sets of Jaffa armor were also found, curiously of two separate types. One with a birdlike headpiece and another with some kind of jackal looking headgear, all with the intricate foldaway mechanism that had been seen previously.

Another item was found that was far more interesting. At first the team thought little of it, but some of the guards assisting the engineers (just in case there were any Jaffa left, or booby traps etc) were from the Nazi Jaffa company and Al'dar immediately recognized a god's sarcophagus. After the engineers realized that this was what was used to heal the Goa'uld and keep them young they carefully had it shipped down to the planet, then on to Teutonia for study.

March 1965

While the Fuhrer was at the inauguration ceremony welcoming Spelk into the Fourth Reich, a shot rang out and the Fuhrer falls. Horrified SS forces fanned out to capture the culprits, but there was some confusion. Two sets of people were recovered and there was arguing among the SS over the details of the event. Schmidt, who was present at the scene for the final details of the ceremony, realized something was wrong with the SS, or to be more precise some of the SS. As the Fuhrer's body was carried away he contacted a friend high up in the organization and managed to have the body rerouted for study... only to have Al'dar pull him to one side and whisper to him.

A couple of days later Colonel General of the SS Tobias Richter was very surprised to see a healthy and slightly younger looking Fuhrer enter his office. Richter's plot to assassinate the Fuhrer and blame Spelkan rebels had fallen through. Himmler did die, but Al'dar was aware that the sarcophagus could heal those recently dead and bring them back to life. Richter had planned to seize control after the Fuhrer's death, but hadn't finished his preparations within the SS hierarchy. He had heard rumors of the healing sarcophagi could do, and his original plan to poison the Fuhrer slowly were discarded when he thought the alien device would make any such attack useless. Instead he used the direct approach and had felt rushed enough to attempt it before he was quite ready.

Richter, three other officers and several lower ranking SS were arrested immediately and taken off without trial. The SS was very happy to see the traitors off and several high ranking SS demanded to be on the firing squad in person. Very little got out about the plot. Publicly the Fuhrer claimed that a rogue Spelkan, not affiliated with any organization, shot him, but only wounded him. The individual was shot by SS staff in the chaos after the shooting and they consider the matter closed. No censure against the Spelkan people would be made for this attempt on his life.

After this was all over the Fuhrer learned that the scientists wanted to tear the sarcophagus apart to learn how it worked. Quite likely it would never function in it's original purpose again. Before that happened Himmler managed to persuade his friend Werner Heisenberg to go through the procedure. Although his cancer seemed gone he had not been in good health since his stay in the hospital, and it was always possible his cancer could return. After the treatment in the sarcophagus Werner was a new, younger man and vowed to increase his efforts to stretch the Reich's scientific knowledge to the horizon of the possible with all his ability.

Again the Reich have access to large numbers of new Jaffa troops, and again the option was given for them to join the Reich forces. This time quite a few faced Nazi Jaffa in battle, and even though survivors of the vicious battle on the surface left only six hundred of the several thousand Jaffa alive (a lot killed by long range missile, artillery, and mortar fire), quite a few opted this time to join the Nazi Jaffa ranks, which now swelled to over three hundred strong in total. The remainder were once again to be shipped off to New Siberia.

Contact with the barren colony north of the gate on New Siberia was sporadic, with supplies of food (minimal at best) shipped out on aircraft across the several hundred mile distance from the gate to the prisoner colony only sporadically. This time when vehicles headed out they found the outpost almost deserted. The few left behind told of a revolt within the ranks of the captured Jaffa there about a month ago. The 'winners' decided to seek out a better climate and had trekked out into the far north, determining that they were south of the equator where they were.

Aerial searches located the Jaffa, having settled on the edge of a tundra/plains region with barely habitable conditions where they actually had found some plant life breaking through the snow near a river. They were attempting to find crops that would grow in the harsh, near frozen soil and still provide them with nourishment.

Things were tense when the ships circled the prisoners and communications were sent back and forth through the gate over what to do. However the new location might allow the Jaffa to look after themselves without the need to ship food to them. Given that the Jaffa had none of their master's tools or weapons with them the Reich did not believe them to be a credible threat. However the SS still suggested annihilating them for their transgressions. A bombing run would have been a fairly simple way to eliminate them.

Others see things differently. The Jaffa were originally to be simply sent to the outpost and forgotten about apart from food shipments. They, after all, couldn't survive without symbiotes indefinitely, and eventually their children couldn't have been indoctrinated with new ones either and would grow without a Goa'uld required to live. Perhaps descendants of more 'human' Jaffa would be more open to negotiating with the Reich? With this background their current habitat actually improved the likelihood of such things happening. Many felt the Reich should help them. But... they did go against the orders of the Reich who'd imprisoned them in the camps.

For the moment no decision was reached, though there is a leaning towards an aerial strike as a 'warning' to them to not attempt such wanderings again, and then leave them be. They still needed to decide where to send the newest Jaffa prisoners, to the old site or the new one?

After much deliberation the Fuhrer, while understanding that the new settlement is useful, stated that disobedience cannot be tolerated from a defeated enemy like this and ordered the strike, but to otherwise allow them to reside in their new home, and for the new Jaffa prisoners to be sent to the Northern camp.

Felke fighters used heat rays to strafe the population, but were careful not to damage the buildings or any of the crops. They want the people to remain self sufficient. Hovering fighters with loudspeakers inform the 'prisoners' that given their blatant disregard of their orders no further food shipments would be given. They would need to completely fend for themselves... and newcomers! Shortly afterwards transport aircraft landed nearby and new Jaffa were herded towards the camp, the Wehrmacht troops careful not to get too close to the base before withdrawing back to their aircraft.

Although the Jaffa hated the treatment, it was accepted. Their Goa'uld masters handed out far worse punishment over the years to them, and often for reasons they either did not understand or were minor compared to the punishments handed out.

April 1965

With components from the Al'kesh and the Hatak being salvaged in Spelk orbit, a new vessel is designed using a mix of Reich and Goa'uld hardware. A larger disk framework, still with the existing 1st generation gravrider tech, formed the basis for the cruiser which is planned to be about the same diameter as an Hatak, though not as high as the Goa'uld vessel. The cruiser would mass perhaps a little over half that of an Hatak overall. Using the shield generator from the Hatak, the repaired hyperdrive, the sublight propulsion system from the Al'kesh (underpowered on such a large ship) as well as weapons from both Goa'uld ships, the resultant vessel was an odd mix. It resembled a scaled up destroyer, but was much more powerful. Focusing more on defense than the destroyer did, it still possessed a lot of offensive weapons.

It mounted only one, re-loadable, forward firing missile mount. Four additional weapons pods were mounted between the drive disks with the Goa'uld plasma cannons fixed in turrets, four to a mount. Also components from both the larger Hatak, and the smaller Glider mounted, plasma cannons are disassembled to make two very large Plasma beam cannons on the front of the ship. With these and 18 medium deathray cannons the ship has quite an armament.

Overall the ship had unlimited mobility range thanks to the Al'kesh engines, though these did not provide enough thrust to escape a planet's gravity. The disk drive did however. Armor was the best the Reich could supply, advanced composite Trinium carbon steel armor with the repaired Go'uld shield system as primary defense. With mainly a mixed energy weapon armament rather than the deathray/missile armament of the destroyer it was proposed as a more all-rounder vessel.

One problem was that the components used in it's construction are pretty much all that is available, and all that would likely be available for some time. It was doubtful that the Reich would build another such cruiser for a while. Even this one would take a while to finish construction, but the keel was laid down on Spelk at a new construction site near the end of April. While this was attempted the repair work on RD-001 as well as construction efforts on two new destroyers RD-002 and 003 were begun. The resources needed for this effort were however significant. While the cruiser relies on a lot of already built components from the various salvaged craft, the destroyers are almost entirely Reich built.

The forward plasma beam weapons on the new destroyers (one per craft) were still based on those that employed components from several hundred Ma'Tok staff weapons, and were not as large or as effective as those on the cruiser. However they still packed a punch at short range, were more accurate and provide continuous fire compared to the pulses of Goa'uld plasma weapons. They were about the only multi-purpose weapon system the Reich built at present, as opposed to the mainly shield damaging Deathrays and mainly armor piercing missiles. And even these plasma weapons relied on some Goa'uld tech. By now some of the components used in Plasma beams are produced from purely Reich tech, but most is still from the staff weapons. They eventually hoped to design a pure Reich version, but that was still a way off yet.
 
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June 1965

Plans to attack the single world of Baal, or the twelve worlds of Horus that were known from gate codes acquired by various means, were currently underway. Since no scouting had been made on these worlds it was difficult to plan, but some information on the worlds of Horus was known from the tablets found in the disabled Hatak where the codes were discovered. These planets seem mostly to be farming and mining worlds, but two of them were military outposts and staging posts, while one appeared to be Horus' throne world! The thought of taking the core world of a Goa'uld and all his technological might entices the Reich. However the risks were great.

The four military leaders, SS, Wehrmacht, Raumflotte and Luftwaffe discuss this with the Fuhrer at length, but currently few decisions are made regarding it. It was deemed risky even to scout such worlds, even though current Reich scientists insist that is VERY unlikely the Goa'uld have a way of backtracking the path of an incoming gate link from one of their planets to it's origin. They didn't want Horus to find out the gate code of any of their worlds from an attack!

Just in case some plans are made to build an outpost on Urwald to launch attacks from as a safe guard. That way if anyone did trace the source of a gate connection they would find merely this base, not one of the main planets of the Reich. The conditions in the jungle on Urwald were not ideal, but soon a series of shelters was established around the gate. The rest would be built later.

July 1965

The new 'cosmopolitan' settlement of 'Akelsbarg' on Heschel had swelled with immigrants to over 50,000 Aryans and Heschelians. Mostly it was a trade hub with farming on the periphery, but some industry was growing in certain areas. A company of Wehrmacht and a flight of Luftwaffe Felkes were stationed there to defend it just in case.

The hyperdrive on the damaged disk destroyer (originally upgraded from the wrecked unit on the crashed Al'kesh) was found to be beyond repair and unfortunately must be replaced with a Reich version. This limited speed drastically. Although the old version was never tested it was suspected it may have achieved ten or fifteen light years a day. Current Reich tech meant speeds were limited to perhaps a few light years a YEAR. It was however found that ships can follow in another vessels 'hyper wake' if they enter the same hyper portal, to allow them all to travel at the same speed. Thus a fleet of destroyers could follow the Reichstern at it's speed of 15ltyrs/day.

September 1965

Keels were laid for three new 1st gen destroyers on Spelk, along with the repairs on the original one. Attempts to begin on the proposed cruiser are delayed due to technical difficulties. It was possible such a ship cannot be built on Spelk with it's overall lower tech base, but may have to be constructed on Teutonia. The engineers were unsure. Further tests were ongoing.

A minor war broke out on Thent, and although the Western Accord was not directly involved they did send several armed galleons to oversee their trade routes in the region. As a show of good faith the Reich assigned a few light helicopter gunships to the largest of these vessels, where there was room for the small aircraft to land. The unstable ships were hardly ideal landing sites, and there was worry over the decks holding the flying machines safely, but so far things seemed to be working. A few overflights of Felkes helped matters and lessened the chance that any other nation would risk attacking the 'peacekeeper' forces.

Again the Western Accord leaders asked the Reich for assistance, claiming they needed defense against the barbarians outside. After considerable talks the Reich engineers offered to help the Accord design their first steamship to improve their border defenses.

January 1966

After much deliberation it was decided that Spelk did have the capability to construct the new hybrid Cruiser and the Keel was laid in a new site. It was expected that the Cruiser might be completed before the destroyers were built, mainly due to the large number of components in the cruiser already 'built' from Goa'uld salvaging.

Some recent work by Heisenberg had increased Reich shield efficiency, the generators now needing significantly less power and gaining slight increases in strength. The new shields were about two thirds the equivalent Goa'uld strength, still needing more power than the alien systems, and were slower to regenerate damage. It was still a huge advantage compared to just armor as a defense. The new destroyers and the Cruiser would be equipped with these 2nd gen shields and there was some talk of installing 'emergency backup shields' on the Reichstern in addition to Goa'uld shielding. This would take up the last of the cargo space on the vessel, and the ship would not have the power for both systems to function at the same time. However some testing was begun on shields from the crashed, second Heavy Troop transport to see if the two systems can operate together at all. Initial tests were not promising as the generators seemed to create harmonic resonance between themselves, almost destroying the test setup! It seemed that such generators could not both be active simultaneously with current generators.

March 1966

Private talks among the Nazi party (who had recently learned the power of the Goa'uld sarcophagus and what it did for the Fuhrer) had shown there was concern over the 'lifetime career' the Fuhrer had. Discussions were worded carefully, the Fuhrer did after all have the power to order even these people executed if he wished, but the talks were considerably less tense than expected. It seemed the Fuhrer expected something like this and had been thinking on the subject for some time.

He suggested that every fifty years the Party votes among it's highest ranking members whether to keep the current Fuhrer as leader. However, if he was voted out some other body (perhaps even the people? Shocking thought!) should chose who replaces him. Not the same body that voted the leader out.

No decision was made on this at present, but there was no immediate dissent on the issue. Talks continued sporadically for some time.

August 1966

The first purely Reich tech plasma beam weapon, a hand held version, was completed in Reich factories. It was at present a prototype and underpowered compared to those built partly from staff components, but workable. Hopefully in a few years they would get the tech to the point where Reich built versions were similar in power to their current hybrid systems.

Already plasma pistols and carbines, similar to those the Eurondans designed decades ago, could be built quite easily in the Reich. However they would not be quite as capable as hybrid plasma weapons in general. In other weapons development some general advancements in the field did suggest a method that might be able to trigger a direct Naquadah reaction, creating an incredibly powerful Naquadah bomb, greater than any atomic device. So far these were just theoretical as the device would need a focused plasma beam to trigger a reaction in a larger store of Naquadah while a series of explosives simultaneously detonates, collapsing the material into an ultra dense mass while under the plasma beams effect. They did not currently have plasma beams powerful enough to do this. Work on the Naquadah bomb (however speculative at present) did continue with significant budgets assigned. Even if such a bomb was never built the research did produce results in other areas, finally bringing the prospect of more conventional Reich atomic weapons closer to reality. One design considered as a potential fusion bomb used Naquadah energy cells and a small plasma device to trigger a fusion reaction in a tank of Deuterium sufficient to create a nuclear detonation. Work commenced on the project, but it is not known how long such a fusion bomb will take to build. It was certainly deemed more likely than the more theoretical Naquadah bomb project to produce results.

October 1966

Initial results from the study of the disassembled Sarcophagus suggested that some components could be duplicated. Some prototype devices derived from sarcophagus technology had been tested that seemed to accelerate cellular healing, though this was a long way from something that could be used outside the lab yet. It was hoped that advanced healing techniques such as this could lengthen a Reich citizen's lifespans considerably in future.

January 1967

The first three destroyers were finished and repairs on the original one were also completed. Unfortunately work on the hybrid cruiser had hit several snags and was still ongoing. It was hoped it might be completed later this year. Now that the Reich had a fleet (albeit a rather slow moving one) of destroyers that could, it was believed, take on a single Hatak and win they sent the Reichstern home to Teutonia to defend the homeworld, leaving the new destroyers to defend Spelk. Also one of the three sites used to build the destroyers was converted to build a new heavy, hyperspace transport vessel. The somewhat simpler craft should take about seven months to build it was estimated and that site would be dedicated to civilian construction from now on. The other two pads were set up to build two more destroyers while work on the Cruiser continued. There was no plan to extend the construction facility to more sites for ships here, but a new site was built on Teutonia to build destroyers there. Up till now they were merely making components for ships assembled on Spelk. Although so far there was no indication the Goa'uld knew the location of Teutonia, unlike Spelk, there was still a strong push to begin expanding construction of such ships back to the homeworld.

One destroyer and the captured troop transport were used to begin to explore the Spelkan solar system. There were apparently seven worlds here (unless more were undetected so far), four inner terrestrial planets and three outer gas giants. The innermost of the gas giants also had a large number of moons. Spelk is the third planet from the star and some interest in the second planet is shown. It had a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with various acidic compounds but nowhere near as hot or dense as Venus. It might be possible, with care, to colonize the world, but there would need to be some method to 'wash out' the acidic compounds out of the atmosphere at very least. The compounds also seemed to be re-seeded into the air from heating on the surface, liberating more acids. Thus the temperature might also need cooling to stop this. The project would be huge and currently the Reich is unable to mount such an endeavor. It might well be over a century before they have enough resources to do so.

There was no asteroid belt in the system, but the rings and debris in orbit around the fifth, huge gas giant were extensive. The possibility of mining orbiting rocks around the world, let alone mining it's moons, was an interesting prospect. Close in there were some issues with radiation, but only with the inner-most rings of the world.

February 1967

The fusion team, after some initial delays, were surprised how easy it was to build a fusion device with the new techniques, and needed very little Naquadah to store the energy necessary to trigger the reaction. The bombs were fairly large and the current Rapier-6 was too small to carry one to orbit. Development was started on a larger Rapier-7, specifically designed to carry the new fusion warhead. Estimated yield is on the order of four thousand kilotons of TNT. A vast improvement over NECE warheads rated at a tenth of a kiloton or so.

Curiously, shortly after building their first device a report comes back from the scouting ships in the Spelk system that they have discovered a moon with Uranium deposits. Just too late to begin work on a fission bomb. Although work may continue later just to get smaller devices for use in Rapier-6 or Rapier-5 warheads, at present there is no rush to mine the material yet. With current Reich tech the fusion devices are simple enough to mass produce and use less rare materials.

May 1967

Work on Leere had recently developed a more efficient version of the EM rocket engine. Using large accelerator coils similar to those used in plasma beam equipment they had been able to increase the exhaust velocity to a high degree, though at the cost of slight reduction in thrust. A ship with such a drive might have half a gravity or less of acceleration, but with even half it's mass dedicated to fuel the rocket would run for well over an hour! It's unlikely most ships would have quite this much fuel, but they still would be very effective drives for interplanetary hops. The current design of destroyer for example had about a fifth their mass dedicated to reaction mass (rocket fuel). The construction slip at Spelk used for the original destroyer is temporarily put to one side to upgrade the current destroyers with the new drive, one by one.

In tangent to this the first model of the EM rocket with upgraded thrust has been developed in the last few years, and the real possibility of a 'space fighter' is taking shape. Designing a winged craft for hypersonic flight up into space was no small feat, let alone one designed for combat both in air and in a vacuum, so it would take time, but the project looked promising. The high thrust drives had been re-labelled 'Plasma rockets' to differentiate them from the lower thrust, more efficient EM rockets used on other vessels. On destroyers the high efficiency EM rockets are often nicknamed 'Cruise drives' for their long duration thrust capabilities.

June 1967

An incident occurs on Heschel, where the king of Irent (a nation within the Center States) curtails several privileges of the nobility overnight, seemingly without telling anyone before hand. The nobles in nearby nations were not pleased at the precedent, although in that state the government had almost equal footing between nobles and a 'peoples' council. Normally the Nobles still had the edge, but with the King on the other side of the debate the articles passed through government circles rapidly. Things that had cropped up in the past about duration of fiefdom, how long a tenant must tend a nobles land before he can be permitted to apply to purchase it, and other matters like this, all went through quickly. Very quickly compared to the normal slow pace of government here. It was of course tremendously popular with the lower classes of the state, but not with the Nobles or the other wealthy classes. Similarly other states nearby were very worried. It set a nasty precedent!

So far these new articles did not automatically allow Peons to own land. They still had to get permission from various people (all nobles... or the King) to be allowed to purchase their land, but still it was a strong move in their favor. Suspicions fall on the Reich forcing the King to do this, but in reality they had no knowledge of what he was planning. Although trade still continued with the Reich diplomatic relations have suddenly become rather frosty and the Reich were considering alternatives, as well as starting emergency meetings with the King of Irent to ask him what the hell he was thinking... no matter how bad it looked for them to have 'secret meetings' with him.

July 1967

The Reich formally asked both the Heschelian Center States and The Spelkan government to send embassies to Thent to promote free trade. As stated they seemed to imply they feel such implementations are necessary due to the tenuous position on Thent at the moment. More emphasis on trade and less on war was felt might reduce tensions on the planet.

Spelk was happy to do so, the Hesechelian states less so, but they did send emissaries, improving relations with the 'backward' nation, (even though Heschel had, in reality, only just caught up to Thendan technology and The Western Accord already seems to be advancing past them).

The Reich negotiators seemed adamant to insert themselves into a lot of the talks, pushing for open trade, improvements in the passage of goods through the gate, even going so far as to offering transferring goods on Reich vehicles free of charge, as long as they were still driven by Reich staff.

About a week after the embassies get into the swing of the negotiations there was an incident over on the coast of the mainland. One of the Accord's ships was attacked by one of the continental states (Called Ivanri) involved in the 'little war' and things escalated rather rapidly. Soon an armada of sailing vessels was bearing down on the islands of the Western Accord and they were desperate to finish their steamship. Obviously it was not going to be ready in time. Not by a long shot.

While the first small outlying islands were struck the Nazis made great claims on 'defending their brothers' and send a helicopter over to drop message leaflets on the Ivanri ships, demanding they cease all hostile actions and return to the mainland or the Reich will declare war on them. The translation was a little off (on purpose) and the statement seemed rather vague, as if they were being warned off lightly. Given that no-one has seen anything more than a squad of Reich troops in battle once, and that was many many years ago, the enemy did not pay much heed. Very few troops had been seen of the Reich overall, though they were very impressed with what they had seen of the Reich airpower.

The Reich did not give the Ivanri a second chance. Felke fighters strafed the ships, destroying the armada in less than an hour. They then go on to clear an area on the coast of the mainland of any armed forces that they could see, and heavy transport helicopters began to ferry troops over in large numbers. The Reich had nine Battalions of infantry and three of armor. One infantry battalion landed on the mainland and began to blitz across the countryside in light vehicles, securing the area for a wide swathe of land in towards Ivanri. Then the choppers return and bring the gate across to the secured location.

Once the gate was set up on the continent troops pour out and charge into Ivanri territory through the gate and blitzed into town after town, city after city, Ivanri forces either being blasted away or fleeing before them. As tales spread of the battles it was far more of the latter. The Reich forces had troops stationed in about a quarter of the population centers of Ivanri when their jets and choppers besieged the capital. A company of troops was dropped near the capital building and demanded the government's surrender. Chaos irrupted in the city (and elsewhere) and the conquest was delayed somewhat, but after a couple of hours the government surrendered to the Reich.

The entire invasion took slightly over four days. True, Ivanri territory wasn't very large compared to Earth nations, but it was lightning quick compared to anything their people had ever encountered before.

After this 'show of force' the Reich again opened up a debate on the other state, Lechar, that was initially at war with Ivanri. With such a shocking turn around in tactics, from placidly debating to violent assaults, Lechar readily agreed to peace and on rather favorable terms.

The Reich had been very frustrated by the sluggishness of any of the Thent civilizations to deal with them peacefully. Any hope of using the manpower of Thent, estimated at over seven million currently, seemed to be forever on the distant horizon. The Reich really did not want to be involved in pacifying the entire planet, though they could have managed it eventually, so they organised a 'Demonstration' of one nation. They used a large portion of their total army, but it was involved for a fairly short duration. At the same time, letting the Heschelians watch as the news reports came in from the front was enough to disabuse them of the notion that they could cancel their agreements with the Reich (as they had been considering after the whole deal with Irent and the King's idiocy)

Still, patience rules and the Reich did not force the others on Thent to join them. Instead it set about improving the territory they'd captured, re-organizing it into their image of the perfect society. This did not go terribly well at first, Guilds, nobles and merchant houses riling against the new industries and expansion of schooling. The new government was insistent however and slowly Ivanri changed. Hopefully it wouldn't fall into revolt before it could be shown off as the epitome of Reich perfection that they planned for it to become. This whole scheme was rather risky in it's way, but they hoped to bully and cajole the other states nearby to join in the advantages of becoming part of the Reich voluntarily.
 
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September 1967

Defense positions around Spelk now number ten small satellites and one larger station. Only Teutonia has more defense sats, and the Bifrost station has also been expanded to a five pod system, more recent advancements allowing a fusion plant pod to be lofted to power more advanced weaponry and a shield system. It looks unwieldy compared to the Spelkan, single hulled facility, but is considerably more capable. It's durability is in question and it is a larger target though.

Three destroyers maintain watch at any given time around Spelk while the other is either with the troop transport exploring, or down on the planet under maintenance. At present it is difficult to manage EVA maintenance on the ships, both due to the design not really allowing for it, and in the Reich suits still being somewhat clumsy to use in vacuum. Internal work is fine, but external stuff... less so. A forth generation spacesuit with a hard shell and fine control waldo gloves is currently being developed on Leere, but may take some time to become a standard suit for the Reich.

October-November 1967

The hybrid Cruiser, named Ullr (Norse god of the hunt) is finally completed. It undergoes a month long testing regime, on the ground and in orbit when it's drives are activated. No major problems are found and things progress well. Once fully tested a short range test using a transport disk on autopilot following the Ullr into a hyperwindow proves that ships can follow on at the lead ship's speed, though the following vessel needs a hyperdrive of some sort to keep itself in hyperspace.

January 1968

The first prototype of a space fighter, called the Jaeger-850, is produced. Attempts to get Mumaker to mass produce it begin, though some aspects of the drive need to be made elsewhere. As standard it is equipped with two standard medium Deathrays and five missile hardpoints. The main engine can alter it's direction of thrust so if a single, large Rapier-6 missile is mounted on the underside the engine can still fire through the center of mass, however normally four lighter Rapier-5b missile mounts are on the upper and lower surfaces of the wings to even the mass distribution.

A modified disk transport is commissioned to carry ten Jaegers to orbit for ready launch, thus saving fuel for them. The rough 'carrier' is hardly a combat vessel but saves fuel for the Jaegers they can instead use for combat. However the carrier takes a minimum of half an hour to reach orbit, compared to barely fifteen minutes for Jaegers. Work is started on a booster launcher (basically a Naquadah enhanced conventional rocket) that can shunt a Jaeger much faster to orbit without wasting it's on board fuel supply, estimated at putting it into a low orbit around Teutonia in less than ten minutes. However the problem is going to be quickly mounting a Jaeger to such a booster. Most likely there would have to be vertical launch bays with Jaegers already mounted and ready atop such boosters for them to be practical.

March 1968

Worries over an attack at Spelk induce the party leadership there to push strongly for more defense satellites to be built. The smaller variety at least can be assembled off world and shipped through the gate, but time taken to build these is excessive. Teutonia still builds it's own defense, but Mumaker has about a third it's output dedicated to Spelk defense sats. Given that everyone expects Horus to return, and probably with heavier firepower, this does get permission.

However, a lot of effort is being spent on preparations for an invasion of the Horus' worlds, after finding the gate codes from his ship. Given that it's been four years since Horus attacked Spelk there are some in power that believe he isn't coming back. It's known that Goa'uld fight among themselves, though Ra frowns on such things, and one theory is that Horus is involved in another conflict and cannot afford to engage the Reich just now. If so it is the perfect time to strike. However the majority of the Reich military do not want to attack unknown targets (and there is very little information on his Throne world or military bases) of a 'god' with unknown strengths. In the end it is suggested that they strike at a known target, one of the mining worlds they have some data for and some information from some of their captured Jaffa that have been there previously. Hopefully they can capture more information on Horus' empire and current situation from this world.

With thirty defense satellites and two defense stations in orbit around Spelk it is considered 'safe' to pull three of the destroyers and the hybrid cruiser Ullr, away from it's defense to position for an attack on Rengar, a Naquadah mine of Horus. There are better, easier targets, but none close to Reich territory for physical strikes. They are counting on using a gate based attack only, but do not want to have their troops vulnerable to orbital strikes. If there seem to be ships present whent the troops arrive they will call for help through the gate back to Teutonia, (not Urwald for this attack, from necessity) then use the Reichstern's subspace communicator to link to Ullr's subspace comms. These are the only two ships the Reich have with these comms, and the Reichstern is staying to guard Teutonia at present until it's defense satellites are increased sufficiently. The Reich fleet will then jump in from just outside the Rengar system, dropping out of hyperspace on top of any orbital ships and engage.

Reich stormtroopers line up at the gate in Teutonia, with heavy backup both fixed and mobile forces in case the Goa'uld somehow do dial back here, and the gate connects to Rengar. This time an artillery barrage is fired first then a drone is sent into the aftermath, sending back pictures of blacked soil and cratered landscape beyond the gate with a hand ful of broken Jaffa bodies. Stormtroopers first head through on foot, taking the 'beachhead' on the other side and getting in position, then a few light tanks and scanning vehicles roar through and begin to do sweeps of the sky, looking for Goa'uld ships as much as they can with their limited gear. After that the troop vehicles drive through along with the main force of tanks.

Four battalions storm through onto Rengar... and totally over match any opposition. No aircraft or spacecraft are found, Jaffa number less than a hundred, and quite a few of those surrender. Care is taken however to take as many prisoners as possible, Zat'Nik'Tels used by the forward troops. The operation is an overwhelming success, but the troops somehow feel cheated. They had expected at least some defense.

All Jaffa are carted out. Any Goa'uld equipment also is shipped off world, and attempts are made to remove any hard evidence the troops were here, at least anything that could pinpoint who was here. Thankfully, with most weapons fire being from Zat'Nik'Tels there is little need to find shell casings or go hunting for bullets, and attacks from Ma'Tok staff weapons on Reich troops don't splatter blood. They burn and cauterize more than anything.

After a day of searching to be sure they leave and if Horus does check his world he will (they hope) find just a mystery.

April 1968

Debriefing and analyzing the reports takes some considerable time. There is a lot of data to compile from the captured Jaffa, and to correlate to make sure they are telling the truth. After a couple of weeks of pouring over the information the Reich have considerably more understanding of Horus' territory.

The Twelve world of Horus they had data on were concentrated in a fairly small volume of space, and conveniently close to Reich territory, though some of their own worlds they'd got access to via the gate were quite far off physically, especially Heschel which was over five hundred light years distant. To get there via normal means would likely take a month for the Reichstern.

These worlds of Horus were fairly low in population as far as they could judge, except for the two military outposts. They seemed to store homes for Horus' Jaffa armies as well as training camps. The other planets were a mix of farming worlds and mining planets, but all slave operated. It was a dismal thought.

The Throne world was another matter. It may not be the boon that the Reich had thought, despite it's importance to Horus. They had imagined it to be the seat of his industry and might, only using the idiotic method of 'slave mining' on far flung worlds. It seems this was not the case. The Throne world of Isseum did have some construction capabilities... Two huge, pyramidal platforms where the God Horus turns up and magically causes ships to 'grow' on them. The Jaffa must follow strict rituals as they supply mined materials to the growing ships, and occasionally the god shows up to keep the magic going. Other than that there IS no discernible industry on the planet. It's still a mystery how he produces staffs and armor for the Jaffa. Perhaps there is a ship somewhere that does it? Or a building on this Throne world that is hidden, or otherwise not known of by these Jaffa?

Other than that, the world mainly acts as a base of operations for his army and religious followers. The Goa'uld love to be worshiped and the Throne world has a large population of humans whose sole purpose seems to be to deify their leader. The whole affair sickens the Reich, and as they learn more they simply get more disgusted. At one meeting, when it is learned that occasional 'human sacrifice' is done, more as a warning to others who defy their gods... but in very grisly ways in full view of the public, the Fuhrer makes his famous statement.

“These monsters must be stopped. Outnumbered by them we may be, outgunned perhaps, but the spirit of the Aryan people will not be stopped. We will triumph over these abominations, no matter how long it takes.”

It was known that direct confrontation was pretty much inevitable at that time, but still some thought to strike some kind of deal or treaty with the Goa'uld when the Reich was powerful enough. The Fuhrer might, reluctantly, agree to such a treaty, but always had his sights set on their ultimate destruction, assuming theirs was set equally on his own. Any treaty made would never be accepted permanently by either side. That was obvious. No Goa'uld wanted to 'deal' with ordinary humans.

So, the Goa'uld thought they were gods? Well the Reich planned on disabusing them of that illusion. It just might take some time.
 
June 1968

Planning for the attack on Horus' territory begins in earnest now, at first plans for a massive gate led attack on all twelve worlds is proposed, but this is soon shot down. There is no way to hold that many worlds with the ships the Reich as at present. Indeed, as the preparations continue it is certain, that even for a limited strike far more ships will be needed to garrison these planets. Although the Reich desperately wants to strike back at these false gods so far it looks like they may need to delay such an attack until they are ready... though it is hard. The worlds seem so under-defended mostly. It would be just too easy to send the troops in and seize them.

August 1968

On Spelk the second batch of two destroyers is finished and a third batch is started. Back on Teutonia a single destroyer has been completed and a second construction slip is being built. Construction times are still a little variable with some aspects of construction slipping on occasion, but it's estimated that they can produce one destroyer on a slip in about six to nine months. Finally with ships free to do more than defend the homeworld a destroyer and a disk transport ship head out into Teutonia's star system and begin to map the planets there. Here at least there appears to be a significant asteroid belt as well as one 'Mars like' planet, the fifth from the star, one step beyond Teutonia. The atmosphere is thin, though unlike Mars was thought to be it is not breathable, consisting of almost entirely carbon dioxide. The temperature is low, but tolerable. With careful decompression, and the use of breathing masks, humans could live on that world, but they'd need cold weather clothing to be comfortable.

Estimates for how many ships they'd need to assault Horus' worlds vary. But a revelation comes in late August, when a particularly recalcitrant Jaffa admits to knowing that Horus does not have a large fleet. He is not a major System Lord at present, though he is one of Ra's siblings. At best guess he has only five Hataks in this area of space, if the Jaffa is telling the truth. Plus, most of these would be defending Isseum. If they can find out where his ships are, strike them down first, then they CAN merely launch a gate attack on his territory!

However they do need to ensure they get all of his ships. They need up to date information on his vessels' locations. Reich scientists have been working on their hyperspace sensors for a while now, attempting to be able to detect the vessels entering and leaving hyperspace. Current prototype models are becoming practical for use in the field. It is suggested that satellites with such sensors are placed near Horus' worlds and they notify the Reich when they detect a hyperwindow. There is a problem with this plan. It assumes these satellites can send their information back home to the Reich. Currently the Reich cannot build subspace communicators, and indeed don't understand the principles yet.

There is another option. They know some of the times that most of the worlds have for regular gate activations. They could set the satellites to beam their information towards the gate at a time when the Reich believe it would not be in use. Then the Reich dials in just before the transmission and collects it. However this would give warning. If attempted any attack should be ready to strike immediately after they get the data and work out where his ships are.

If his ships are in two locations relatively nearby this could work. With the Reichstern and the Ullr both capable of fairly fast travel and their ability to drag destroyers along with them they can strike fairly quickly at two targets in Horus' territory.

Depositing the satellites close to Horus' worlds will be difficult without being detected however. They have access to the sensors on the Reichstern and can test materials against them to see what the least visible materials would be. It's doubtful they can be invisible, but at long range they could be effectively invisible. That would have to do.

Slowly plans begin to form.

November 1968

The first production runs of the new Rapier-7 missile with fusion warheads is started. The system is entirely non-Naquadah based, using basic Plasma drives similar to those used on fighters (with less fuel and more thrust) and even using bulky capacitors to store energy in the system instead of Naquadah power cells. This way they can be mass produced easily on Mumaker whose machinery has difficulty with the material. A variation using a Naquadah enhanced warhead with ten times the yield is worked on, but will be constructed from spare industrial output on Teutonia.

The Reichstern and the Ullr are both upgraded to house the Rapier-7 missiles, though the Ullr does not have much capacity to store many. Instead it uses fewer, Naquadah enhanced versions the Rapier-7N. The Ullr instead focuses more on plasma weaponry from Goa'uld ships anyway.

Early tests of the Hyper-detection satellites are made. The systems seem to function well enough and an initial production run of ten is started. Each of Horus' star systems will need at least thirty satellites to make it likely to detect such hyper-translations nearby.

March 1969

The next batch of destroyers is completed on Spelk, bringing the total to eight there (One slip is still dedicated to civilian work, and not at quite the breakneck speed of production at the military slips). Teutonia has three as well as the Reichstern. The Reich's fleet is starting to take shape.

Production of the new Jaeger fighters is beginning to get going, with a supply of twenty on Teutonia. So far Mumaker's construction lines are a little sluggish, but it looks like most of the problems have been ironed out, and the craft's wings fold up easily for shipment through the gate. There are plans for the next type of Jaeger fighter to have hoverjet systems as well as the EM rockets and fly through the gate. Without the wings it easily fits through the aperture.

May 1969

The first medical device developed from the sarcophagus goes into mass production. A wand that emits complex energy fields that interact with cell functions, somehow supplying energy to them and enhancing cellular growth and repair. The current model uses a small Naquadah energy cell that can be recharged by simply plugging it into a wall socket.

At the moment you have to be careful using them, as early trials show they have, in some cases, started cancers, but the engineers are working on the problem. At present this only seems to happen with excessive use in one spot, so limited to short intervals it so far seems very safe.

June 1969

As a forth and fifth destroyers roll of the slips at Teutonia, bringing the total fleet to thirteen destroyers, one cruiser and one mothership, the Reich decide it is time to begin. They have (barely) enough sensor satellites to cover seven worlds and plan for attacking that many. The Throne world, the two military outposts, two Trinium mines, one Naquadah mine and a farming world. They have to get in position to attack before seeding the satellites. Dropping them at the edges of the solar system, slow drives push them into position over about a week, then brake them into their respective orbits. The Reichstern has to perform the drops itself, jumping quickly from star to star. As it arrives at one of the military outposts there is a hail, as someone there obviously notices them, but they leave before a ship can head out to meet them, having dropped their cargo of satellites. Soon they have deposited satellites around all but two of the target systems.

The Throne world is not visited, but the fleet congregates nearby, in a star system containing a farming world of Horus. There is little defense here (as suspected) and they can sit close enough to the world to hear beamed transmissions through the gate when it is activated remotely.

First they wait, for over a week, until the satellites have collected their data. Then the base on Urwald dials the various planets one after the other, carefully on schedule, receiving the radio transmissions from the satellites. Then it dials the farming world and beams the resultant data to the fleet nearby. It takes nearly fifteen minutes for the signal to reach the fleet, but they are in the right position to intercept it and are soon pouring over the data. It seems from hyper translations, and knowing how many ships Horus has, that Horus' fleet is in three groups unfortunately. One Hatak is detected over one of his Trinium mines, one over one of the military bases, the other three are at Isseum, and one of these is landed on the planet.

This is a problem. They only have two fast ships, so can only guide the fleet to strike at two targets. Jaegers cannot as yet fly through a gate to attack, and missiles alone might not work, even the new Rapier-7s. They certainly don't want to waste them attempting it unsupported. It would waste missiles that could help defend Teutonia if there is an attack while the fleet is gone. So it seems that one Hatak is going to get away no matter what. The Throne world must be attacked, and the Military base is also made a prime target.

Unless the Hatak on the Trinium mine obliguingly comes down into the atmosphere jetfighters attacks through the gate would not work either, so this planet is decided to be crossed off the list. Sending troops onto a world with orbital bombardment ability would be suicide. Thus only six worlds will be struck.

The military outpost world with an Hatak in orbit is about a day's journey away at top speed and the Cruiser and five destroyers sets off immediately. Before the gate closes on the farming world they signal that they are going with the second plan, the message just getting through before the 38 minute cutoff on the gate. It's obvious that Horus will suspect something is up the moment he starts getting messages from his Jaffa of multiple gate activations on numerous worlds of his. There isn't much they can do about it, except perform the operation as fast as they can. This was arranged before hand, hoping things would turn out something like this

The attack on Isseum is begun about an hour before the cruiser can reach it's destination, the short hop from the farming world to Isseum taking less than two hours in hyperspace. They don't want to wait too long before beginning, but also don't want to spread the attacks out too much either. The plan calls for stormtroopers to begin their gate assaults in about half an hours time to all the listed worlds except the second military outpost.

On June 26th 1969 at 10PM Teutonic time the Reichstern and eight destroyers make a short hyperjump into Isseum orbit and the awaiting Goa'uld forces.

Time would tell if it was the right decision.
 
June 1969

With a flash of blue energy the Reichstern catapulted back into normal space in a low orbit around Isseum. They were startled to see an Hatak dead in front of them, less than ten miles distant. This was pure chance, but the fleet was prepared, and with barely a hesitation they opened fire, the destroyers swinging around the Reichstern and diving towards the ship for a strafing pass.

The Hatak never knew what hit it. It's shields were not up, and in the fifteen seconds it had before the beams and bolts began to strike it's unprotected hull, the Head Jaffa who was at the controls just had time to notice a ship had arrived and was about to notify his master, a minor Goa'uld, to come to the Pel'tak. He did not finish the call, and a short time later a violent explosion wracked the skies over Isseum.

The Reich took this to be a good sign, a perfect target lined up just as they arrived, thus were rather surprised that their scans showed three other Hataks in orbit! There were only supposed to be three in the system and they just destroyed one!

Nevertheless they turned towards the other vessels, the destroyers diving in towards the planet, then arcing up, using their gravrider engines to accelerate quickly up to the waiting Hataks, while the Reichstern came in a straight line. The faster Reichstern got into firing range first, but slowed to maintain fire, it's heavier shields and tough armor estimated to hold it's own against such an enemy fleet for several minutes. The Reichstern's shields flared, as it concentrated fire on one ship. It's captain, Commodore Grunwald, ordered the destroyers to strafe the same ship they were striking, hoping to take it out.

A minute later the destroyers swept past at high speed, plasma beams, deathrays and heatrays striking the ship, and it's shields collapsed in a sputter of energy. While the destroyers were still in range their Rapier-6 missiles shot out, NECE warheads pulverizing the Hatak's hull while the Reichstern, and the destroyers while they sped away, started on the second Hatak.

The damaged Hatak drifted from the battle, bleeding air and debris, no longer in the fight, but the tactic was costly. Two destroyers were destroyed in the pass maneuver, and a third had it's shields collapsed and took significant damage. The other five pulled high thrust turns, slowly arcing back towards the enemy, while the Reichstern continued the attack. Extra energy from it's secondary fusion reactor attempted to over charge the shields, a risky effort that could have overloaded and collapsed them, but this time worked, and the second Hatak's shields fell as the five destroyers came back into range, slower this time. The Hataks began maneuvering and focused fire on the smaller Reich ships. Two more disk destroyers were turned into scattered debris, but one of the two Hatak's shields collapsed too, and Commodore Grunwald saw the battle turning his way.

Then the energy signature on the planet was detected. A fifth Hatak launching. Desperately Grunwald ordered the limited supply of Rapier-7's launched, despite a severe lack of testing of the new weapon. Explosions blossomed on the ship, and combined with beam fire from the destroyers and Reichstern it crumbled, reduced to wreckage with only light damage to one of the remaining three destroyers.

Turning their attention to the ship rising from the surface they were surprised when it vanished into hyperspace as soon as it cleared the atmosphere! Suddenly the fleet found it had succeeded! The one damaged destroyer returned, leaving them four to aid in the ground attack. A few minutes later, on time, the Urwald base dialed Isseum. But the fleet sensors detected some kind of shielding on the gate. The two fully functional destroyers dove down to the planet to find and destroy the shield generators. Gliders rose to meet them, screaming death at them as the closed, destroyer light anti-fighter heatrays striking back from the numerous turrets on their edge. A few Rapier-6 missiles also struck down at the fighters, and the defense worked. Few of the Goa'uld fighters remained, and the destroyers only took light damage.

However there was a problem. No shield generators could be found near the gate. Energy signatures were evident of a shield system, but it seemed built into the gate itself. How such a compact system could hope to stop any realistic invasion was not known. Perhaps the Goa'uld knew more about how shields and gates interacted that the Reich did?

In the end bombarding the gate with plasma beams set to diffuse spread, brought the shields down, then melted the tiny generators, without significantly damaging the tough gate, and being accurate enough to not affect the pedestal. Troops poured through as soon as the Reichstern signaled that it was safe, then tanks, then aircraft. The numbers of Jaffa on the planet were large, but over nine thousand infantry, two tank battalions, two artillery battalions, and forty Falke fighters swept the area, and soon the Jaffa forces began to fall. The battle for the citadel near the gate where most of the Jaffa troops were took most of the day and the Reich forces did take significant casualties. When the toll was taken at the end though, over forty thousand Jaffa were dead, their loyalty to their god meaning very few surrendered. At the end a few groups did, and a little over seven hundred Jaffa were taken back to Urwald for processing.

The Reich had taken Isseum, Horus' throne world. They even had the two ship construction pads which had two Hatak's growing on them currently, with stores of material kept nearby, ranging from steel copper and tin, to Naquadah gold and Trinium, to large stashes of odd minerals and gases in sealed containers. One or two of those Jaffa captured might know the procedures for supplying the material to keep the 'growth' going safely. The ships seemed mostly complete so hopefully little was left to add.

Not all the battles that day went well. The Reich had badly underestimated the fleet strength and one of the ground assaults came under fire when an Hatak lifted from the planet's surface and began to bombard the troops at Wo'kem. However Falke fighters and missiles brought it down before it could escape to orbit. Troop losses there were significant, but they did take the planet. Another planet had much more Jaffa than expected, over ten thousand, and the single battalion of infantry with air support struggled to hold the gate while more troops were brought back from Isseum to aid them.

The orbital assault at the first military outpost went well though, only one Hatak in orbit as expected. The cruiser and destroyers took only one casualty, and that destroyer was thought repairable, after taking it out, and the troops moved onto the planet from Isseum, sweeping the large Jaffa force aside with aid from orbital support from their ships.

When the data was collected from all six worlds they had attacked the results were fairly good. All worlds were taken, though two battalions worth of infantry, half battalion of tanks and several aircraft had been lost. This even with Horus' fleet badly underestimated. Several in the Reich began to see them as being a match for the Goa'uld now, and wondered if the other worlds of Horus might be assaulted. Right now more ships were needed, and indeed, even with the fairly close proximity of the planets to each other it would take several days to travel from Isseum to the other worlds if they were attacked, and that using either the Cruiser Ullr or the Reichstern to carry the rest of the fleet.

The Fuhrer (and Schmidt) demanded that defenses be laid on the worlds they had taken first. More destroyers were under construction at Teutonia and Spelk, but they would take time to complete and they would need the Cruiser or Reichstern to ferry them to the area. Right now large numbers of Jaeger and Falke fighters were sent to Isseum and the other captured worlds. If the cargo and flight decks of the Reichstern had not been ripped out and the space used for extra power and equipment they could have fielded the Jaeger fighters directly to orbit from there, but as it stood they had to be set up on booster launchers sited in quickly dug pits so the crew could get to the fighters easily. This along with missile batteries were the first line of defense. But soon equipment to launch defense satellites was being shipped through the gates, mostly to Isseum.

Hopefully they would be in time to counter whatever retaliation Horus could muster.
 
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