Stellar Reich (AU Stargate TL)

[Patupi]

September 1997

His name was Riss'ka and it was obvious he wasn't well. The medical technicians suspected the problems were not all age related, but might also be due to torture techniques. Never-the-less they got to work and took him to the lab where the equipment was laid out. To mollify him Peliar was brought in, 'proving' that Reich healing tech worked. After all, Peliar had survived OK, right?

It didn't really sooth the Goa'uld, but he had been ordered by Yu to go through with this. If he balked Yu would likely kill him on the spot. Slowly the process was begun, the techs surprised that Yu hadn't sent someone in to watch the procedure. First a mild version of the individual components that made up the Enhanced Bio-Repair pod were attempted separately to see how they affected the bonds. The results were not promising. Work continued slowly.

Meanwhile there had been some success on the ring transporter front. Indeed with an influx of loot from the last invasion they had a surplus of rings and gates to work on. Comparisons between the two systems were made and quite a few similarities were found. Also the gate architecture was similar in some ways, but built in a different fashion. In the gate solid Naquadah was layered with insulating materials to make a solid, durable structure that performed similar functions to the individual components in the rings, which were far easier to understand. This work did accelerate the 'filtration' system, that let one ring feed to two rings, with all of one element ending in one ring, and everything else in the other, untouched.

It also led the Reich to finall begin to understand the 'disintegration' wave the gate produced. As of yet no Reich built systems could accomplish this, or the matter conversion that both rings and gate performed. But they could use existing systems and rebuild them in new ways. Seeing similarities between the two systems and having more ring components to hand, one set of adventurous engineers attempted to build themselves a pair of stargates from a mix of Reich components and ring components. The first few efforts failed miserably, but slowly more was being learned about how the gates worked and another concept was broached. Using six of the existing Stargates salvaged from Horus' worlds that had been disassembled to grasp their inner workings, they began to assemble a huge, two gate system. As far as they could tell there would be no way to tie in a gate of differing size to the network, and most of the software would not function correctly. Thus the entire connection algorithms would have to be re-written from scratch. This would leave them with a gate pair that was not part of the network, but could connect between each other only.

And was over fifty meters in diameter!

Initial tests looked promising, and they managed to piece the components together with Reich engineered sections to get the disintegration effect to work, but so far connection between the two gates, no matter where the gates were located, was not successful. Several engineers on the project were seriously asking if the Asgard could be asked for assistance with this. Most people assumed the recalcitrant race would not assist them. They certainly needed more data on the wormhole connections.

The smaller, ring component gates actually looked more doable. There were several engineers who thought a scaled down gate, just to transfer energy and small items across interstellar distances was possible. Perhaps even by installing one end on a starship. Again, software was the problem, how to target and lock on the gate from across interstellar distances, but with a smaller system the problems were less involved.


October 1997

Several hyper traces were detected heading into Reich territory in early October, seemingly of small craft. Small strike groups of destroyers met at the estimated departure points in key systems. Goa'uld transports materialized in Teutonia, Spelk and Isseum, and all but the several that had been deployed to Teutonia were destroyed. In Teutonia three separate ships arrived in different parts of the system, but only three were correctly predicted and destroyed. The third came out almost a million miles further in system than estimated and jumped back into hyperspace before the destroyers could catch it. Someone had intel on Teutonia at least. They couldn't tell from the scans whether it was Horus, Sengu or Bastet, but probably one of those given the direction they came from. Of course that could be a trick in of itself, and the ships came from Baal. They weren't sure.

None-the-less the Reich attempted to beef up defenses and managed to get a new software set installed on the defense sats, enabling a crude clustering of relay commands from communications. If one key broadcast system was taken out the system should relay through other satellites in the region, still getting C&C. This didn't solve the issue with the C&C stations themselves, but those had been increased in number and the shields toughened with the latest technology. The Newer large defense stations were built with Naquadah Fusion plants rather than the older pure fusion systems to increase power to shields and weapons. Hopefully these wouldn't be as easy to thwart as the ones at Isseum had been. Also they had four orbital fighter stations, basically immobile carriers, capable of launching over 400 of the Jaeger-1250VTs, not to mention the large supply of other fighters on the planet.

It was possible these transport 'scouts' were just to make the Reich beef up defenses rather than go on the offensive, but they did not assume so. Defenses were bolstered at all main worlds, not just those scouted.

In the end it turned out not to be a complex ruse, and on Oct 16th a fleet of Hataks jumped in system at Teutonia. They were attacking after all. Tracking held them on scopes all the way in till they exited hyperspace, but given the unknowns they did not deploy a fleet to intercept. It was a good thing too as they dropped out of hyperspace a long way out system and the expected nearest approach of their vector wouldn't have been right. However the numbers seemed smaller than the hyper track they'd had. The fleet of ten warships (mostly the slightly inferior pyramidal ships encountered last time with Horus, but 3 Hataks were in the mix.) that emerged was not terribly impressive to the Reich by now, especially given the firepower they had to hand, even while a good number were being upgraded. 1 battleship, 3 cruisers, 7 battlecruisers, 20 destroyers, 2 4th gen carriers and several lower rated carriers. That didn't count the large fighter groups they had.

Several of the battlecruisers were 3rd gen, but still, combined with the defense systems it would be a pushover, and they could even defeat them without the defense forces.

It was too easy, and the enemy just hung there, waiting in the outer system. As time wore on it was obviously a trap to lure them away from the defensive position, but they couldn't simply leave them there unchallenged. Instead of the main fleet the four Zyklon B stealth ships headed out, got near the enemy, charged their hyperdrive engines, then launched all their missiles in one salvo against one of the pyramidal ships before jumping clear back to Teutonia orbit. The assault seemed to come as a shock, but unfortunately the ship was able to raise it's shields in time before the missiles struck. However they were battered down and a few light strikes on the outer hull were felt. It was light damage, but it was enough to goad them into heading in system. The enemy fleet moved in.

The Reich Fleet, designated First Home Fleet, moved to position, within the defense satellites, waiting for the ships to strike. However, they then had a hyperspace window warning, followed by a hypertrack again and the fleet turned abruptly as twenty new contacts bore down on them, heading straight for Teutonia. The existing enemy fleet paused when they saw the Reich fleet do an abrupt about face and shift back deeper within the defense net and more fighters start to launch from the planet. When the 2nd enemy fleet emerged from hyperspace Home Fleet was ready, and engaged before some had even raised their shields.

These were all Hataks, and by the large number of launches were loaded with Al'kesh rather than gliders. Two ships were destroyed outright before they even had a chance to do anything, but the rest launched their ships and began their strike, hitting the defense net hard. However they focused fire on the large C&C satellite control stations and the enhanced shields did their job, holding the fire while the fleet and satellites pounded the enemy with weapons fire. The 1st enemy mixed fleet kept heading in for a short time, but when it was obvious the 2nd fleet was not doing it's job they jumped into hyperspace and left, while the 2nd fleet switched targets from satellites to bombardment. A few shots got through before destroyers began imposing themselves between the Hataks and Volksburg. Impacts were heavy on the surface, especially as Teutonia had never seen a bombardment before, but preparations had been there and though the city took three impacts in the outer regions and one near the center, the people were not adversely affected. The bunkers did their job, mainly because the shots came no-where close to the bunker's positions.

Meanwhile the destroyers were desperately attempting to hold position, blocking fire on the city from the Hataks. Five enemy had been destroyed, but now the Al'kesh began to sweep down towards the planet... and were met by a force of over 400 Jaeger fighters A couple of Al'kesh did manage to break through to bomb the planet, but they didn't get far, Raubvogel fighters and Falke atmospheric fighters swatted the remainder from the skies.

With a third of their number lost, very little to show for it other than a few satellites and a couple of destroyers, the 2nd enemy fleet engaged their drives and headed out while they prepared for hyperspace. By the time they made it there were only 12 left.

The Reich had been hit hard, but the defenses had held well. Down in Volksburg the sirens still blared as fires burned, but it was getting under control and hovering fire engines snapped shields over the affected buildings to starve the fires of oxygen. So far that was all that was necessary as no people had been found in the affected buildings, but there were a few dead or missing during the bombardment that hadn't gotten to the shelters in time.

Given the direct evidence of bombing it was hard for the propaganda engine to turn this into a complete victory for the masses, but it was seen as a victory none-the-less. Plus even more of Horus' forces were beaten and the defense improvements seemed to be working. Less effort in smaller relay C&C stations and more in larger, heavily shielded C&C stations, with some of the load being suborned to the individual satellites in a relay fashion. It was hard to connect the ground and orbit based scanner feeds into the mix but it seemed to work so far.

 

[Patupi]

October 1997

Several in the Admiralty wanted to do a strike back against Horus immediately, but calmer heads prevailed. They waited till the remaining ships had been upgraded and a full fleet could be assembled.

Meanwhile some considerable results were showing in the Enhanced Bio-Repair project. Riss'ka had co-operated well, albeit grudingly, and the system was registering quite a few key points in the human/Goa'uld linkages that could be repaired and some methods of stimulating repair. So far the process only had minimal results that were evident, but it was something... and they hadn't killed him yet, which was always a plus.

While this was ongoing the researchers had left the standard brain chemistry adjustments in place, so Riss'ka was being adjust while the work went on. Hopefully this would make him more tractible, though there was no sign of it yet. Work continued, and a report to Yu was made stating that while the initial results were not quite as marked as hoped, they were working and they hoped to perfect the treatment in due course.

Several of the civilian ships in the Teutonia and Spelk systems now sported the new ring mining system and it seemed to be working well. Some of the debris from the First Battle of Teutonia (and wasn't it ominous that everyone was calling it the 'First' battle?) had rings or ring component in among the ruined ships and some of this went to constructing new ring mining systems for later vessels. So far it was very much a 'hands on' construction process, but the rings they produced worked well. Already over half the components in a standrad ring transporter could be Reich made and still function fine, though there was some suspicians that the long term durability was shortened. The continued work on the gates still attempted to duplicate the matter conversion systems in the gates, but there were problems with tolerances and some very complex computer routines needed to stabilize gate matrices. As of yet it was not expected that the Reich would be able to complete construction of any of the Reich gates any time soon.

November 1997

Thor shows up in early November, one of his many, not so regular check ups on the PPT transfered populations. This time he seems far less removed and distant, actually asking about specifics of the orbital defense of the planets. He isn't friendly exactly but seems to be accepting the Reich have been keeping their word. Towards the end of the check up he does state that he has informed the Goa'uld System Lords that the Reich is no longer beholden to the Treaty, however also has warned them that the Asgard would 'strongly disapprove' of any conflict between them. No strict matters were defined on this, and Thor is not very happy about it. He considers it a wasted opportunity. The Goa'uld regularly spurn any deal they think they can realistically get away with. Thor does not believe such a weakly worded threat would hold any water with the System Lords.

However, as far as he can tell the System Lords are far more fractured than they expected. The likihood of any one Goa'uld taking out the Reich is slim, but an alliance between one or two System Lords would likely hurt. Anything that reduces the chances of such an alliance is good.

The Cruiser in Heschel from the new slip was slightly delayed in construction and is only now launching in the middle of November. Some limitations with the local conditions and the relative crudity of the construction methods suggest it will only be able to build a cruiser every 16 to 18 months in future, where other slips can manage one every 12 months. Some efforts are made to improve matters, but for the moment since these ships are staying in Heschel orbit for defense and scouting it is not considered a big problem. The first ship, the Schlangentrager (Ophiuchus) undergoes a stringent testing regimine to ensure the construction was up to quality. If so they'll put up with a reduced construction time.

A scouting SES mission goes badly when a primitive people are encountered. The SES Goa'uld mimiking armor causes the locals to assault them, and they apparently have developed some kind of poison from local fauna that can affect Goa'uld and is loaded onto heavy crossbow bolts. The locals seem adept at finding the few weak points in armor and piercing them (though they also seem to rely on sheer numbers laid in ambush a lot as well). The Nazi Jaffa's FFGs (the nick name for the mechanical Symbiote) seem to be able to cope with the poison, but several members are laid up in hospital. A second strike on that world is made, and several samples of the poison are aquired. It doesn't kill Goa'uld, but somehow forces the symbiotes to do nothing but heal for a while, shutting them down temporarily. It also does not appear to affect symbiotes equally. Some it barely affects at all. With some adaptation this might be a useful method of immobilizing Goa'uld, or diminishing Jaffa capabilities for short periods. It might also help with the removal of symbiotes from blended Goa'uld/Humans. Perhaps such techniques might work with the Symbiote alive sometime? Might be useful to capture such creatures alive for a change.

Since the poison would likely be seen as a severe threat to the Goa'uld another team goes to the planet, plants a plasma charge at the gate sight, and leaves. This should melt the ground and bury the gate, stopping any casual Jaffa from visiting the world. Hopefully no ships will pass by, get annoyed at the primitives, and build some kind of counter agent to the poison. That would be unfortunate.

***
Control Room, SGC:

General Hammond and Colonel Maybourne run down the stairs into the gate control room, where Major Davis, Sam and Jack already are. The blast door is firmly shut.

HAMMOND: What the hell's going on?

DAVIS: The mainframe's having a nervous breakdown. Now the iris is failing.

HAMMOND: Why is the blast door down? Get it up.

With a loud metallic clung and the whir of motors the blast door slowly rises and reveals the Tollen in the gateroom, along with Teal'c and Daniel off to one side.

MAYBOURNE: What are they doing. How did they get here?

DAVIS: Gate's dialling. Chevron six engaged.

Maybourne leans to the microphone and activates the speakers in the gateroom.

MAYBOURNE: Doctor Jackson, this is Colonel Maybourne. What you're doing is a court martialable offence.

Daniel shakes his head and puts his hand up to his ear comically.

O'NEILL: He's not in the military, Colonel, and I think it'll be kind of tough to find a civilian law to cover this.

MAYBOURNE: I'll have you removed from this program forever if you do this!

DAVIS: Chevron seven is locked.

With the familiar 'Kawoosh' the gate opens and stablizes.

MAYBOURNE: Wherever you send them, we'll hunt them down.

CARTER: We're not sending them anywhere, Sir. The gate was activated off world. Someone is sending for them.

MAYBOURNE: Who?

The familiar form of Lya, the Nox, materializes as she walks through the gate. With a cheeky grin Sam looks up at Jack. Lya smiles as the gate shuts down.

LYA: Hello.

Daniel runs up to Lya smiling.

JACKSON: Hello, Lya.

The tinny voice of Maybourne comes over the tannoy.

MAYBOURNE: All personnel in the gate room. This is Colonel Maybourne. I have a Presidential order to take the aliens with me. Do not let them pass. Use force if necessary.

All the soldiers in the room raise their weapons. The Tollen seem indifferent to the act. Lya sighs and turns to Daniel.

LYA: Your race has learned nothing. But you have. The Tollans are most welcome to join the Nox. Please come.

Omoc steps up to Daniel and stops breifly.

OMOC: Narim was right about you. Perhaps in time we'll meet again.

He pats Daniel's shoulder with at least some affection, though still no smile. Shrodinger meows as Narim looks back at Sam.

MAYBOURNE: Stop! Take one more step and I'll be forced to have them open fire.

The soldier aim their guns. Lya shakes her head. She raises her hands, and the gate opens without any preamble or even an energy flush.

LYA: Come.

The Tollen seemingly vanish into thin air, leaving the soldiers looking confused.

MAYBOURNE: Fire! Fire!

The soldiers guns now vanish, just before a sad looking Lya steps back through the gate
O'NEILL: God, I love those people.

Colonel Maybourne shakes his head, infuriated, and storms out of the control room, the rest filtering down into the gateroom with SG1.

O'NEILL: You did good, Daniel.

TEAL'C: What of Maybourne?

CARTER: Oohh, he's not a happy camper.

HAMMOND: There'll be hell to pay when he gets back to Washington.

Daniel looks at Jack with a smile.

O'NEILL: What?

JACKSON: Oh, just thinking what the little guy with funny hair once told us.

O'NEILL: The very young do not always do as they're told.

JACKSON: Yeah.

 

[Patupi]

December 1997

On the 3rd of December a call is put to Yu and a meeting arranged. The Reich are ready to plan an assault on Horus. This is tricky. Firstly they haven't finished the Enhanced Bio-Repair pod and Yu is wary of any such deals, but also there is the point that both he and Horus are System Lords. The council is attempting to stop such conflicts and if Yu openly attacks Horus he might find allies to attack Yu back. The Reich think this is merely a ploy, that Yu really doesn't care about the others and just wants to reinforce his position for bargaining. After all from what Yu and Thor have said the System Lord's Council is pretty fragmented right now. Perhaps the System Lords themselves have resisted directly attacking one another (other than raids they could get away with) but the Fuhrer doubts that will last.

The discussions take a couple of days, sometimes with some rather loud raised voices, and the negotiators are beginning to believe that Yu really doesn't want to risk a direct assault.

Then the word comes from the research lab. The Bio-Repair pod works! They haven't tested Riss'ka fully yet, but to all intents and purposes he appears to be healthy once more. As soon as Yu hears the news he demands to see his minion immediately. The Fuhrer acquiesces. After a thorough interrogation with Riss'ka, Peliar, and the medical technicians, Yu seems much improved in manner. He insists he needs to take Riss'ka back to examine him in detail to be sure this is working. If it does what they claim it does... he will join them in an assault on Horus.

When Yu leaves celebrations ensue, the Fuhrer ecstatic over the chance to finally deal with Horus. The Fleet is organized in anticipation of a joint venture.

Then Yu calls back and says simply, over the radio:

"The deal is off. I am nobody's fool!"

The Fuhrer is almost apoplectic, and with the scarcity of info over why Yu has done this no-one can say whether he was playing them the whole time or whether there was something specific that changed his mind. Repeated attempts to dial Yu succeed, but a warning by Jaffa by radio warns that no-one who steps through will survive. The Reich is not welcome on Yu's throne world.

The Fleet still gathers, but they know that alone attacking Horus head on would be tricky if they intend to leave enough ships behind to defend Reich territory. One battleship and two cruisers are pared off into a small fleet however and, against the wishes of the Military and the party, the Fuhrer boards the Battleship Teutonia and heads out on the twenty day trip to Yu's homeworld.

Various study groups connected with the gate project have been examining the matter conversion technology that the gates employs and think that they understand the basic principle at least. So far they know of no way any Reich built component could generate the effect, but using components from a gate they suggest building a disintegration bomb, which literally would eradicate all matter within a region when activated. The bomb would not survive, and having to tear a gate apart to build such a device (if it is even possible to do!) means that this would not be something that could normally be deployed. There is also the fact that any shield, even a weak one, blocks the effect completely. Against matter though it is almost unrivalled, and if the scientists achieve what they hope the single bomb could likely vaporize any size of ship they are likely to encounter with one device. There is the minor point however that the bomb will be fairly large and could be shot down before striking the target. With the difficulty involved in the project, certain lack of mass production when it does work, and difficulty in tactically using it this doesn't get high priority, but a research team is assigned to work on it and see if it is feasible.

When Himmler arrives at Yu's throne world two Hataks immediately intercept, with signs of three more moving in from the outer system, but hails from Himmler personally manage to dissuade them from the unwise course of attacking the Reich vessels. Yu hasn't seen a battleship yet but must have heard rumors after their use against Horus before. However it is over an hour before Yu deigns to make contact with him.

Himmler demands to know why Yu cancelled their arrangements. Yu counters by saying he has cancelled nothing, he merely said the proposed deal they were going to agree to is no more. When asked why Yu pauses then finally responds with a repeat of what he said before 'I am nobody's fool!'. After some more, somewhat drawn out, discussion it turns out Yu found out that Riss'ka's mental state had been messed with. Himmler asks to talk to Riss'ka and is informed that he did not survive the examination process. It seems that Yu dissected Riss'ka to find out what was done to him.

Himmler is undaunted and demands to speak to Yu face to face, insisting he does not have all the information. This was not an attempt to control Yu, quite the opposite. Yu only agrees if Himmler and Schmidt come down to his palace for the meeting. With some reservations the Fuhrer agrees and the two ring down. It seems though it is not a trap, and Yu was being serious. A meeting was arranged in a palatial meeting chamber, servants bringing a sumptuous dinner for the group.

Over dinner Himmler and Yu talk, the Fuhrer saying he knows that Goa'uld have been altered, shifted mentally for millenia by the Sarcophagus' imperfect mechanisms. He intends to undo this. If Yu is as old he says they he existed before the sarcophagi were invented and surely he would relish returning to how he used to be?

The talks last for four hours and at the end, though Yu seems mollified, he doesn't agree. However he says to stay and he will continue the discussion tomorrow.

The Fuhrer is woken at midnight ship time when three of the five Hataks here left without warning. He immediately hails Yu and asks what is wrong. Yu seems infuriated, but not at them. It seems someone is raiding one of his worlds nearby and he just sent the ships to help fight the raiders off.

With a forced humility Himmler asks if Yu would consider aid from the Reich in this matter. There is a significant pause, perhaps while he reviews scans of the Reich's huge ship. Eventually he decides to 'Allow the Reich to prove themselves worthy to join forces with mine.' With some reluctance Himmler states that his ship's top hyperspeed is just over half a Hatak's. It will take him a day to make the journey the hataks will manage in fifteen hours. Yu acknowledges this, but actually seems somewhat impressed. Perhaps he read reports on the Reich's old hyperdrives?

Immediately Himmler orders all ships into hyperspace. Schmidt asks why they didn't ask to follow in the wake of one of Yu's Hatak's. Then they would arrive there just as fast. Himmler states he isn't sure what the Goa'uld know about their own technology and isn't willing to give up that kind of information just yet, besides, it looked like Yu was leaving ships to defend his throne world and he doubted Yu would want to leave only one Hatak here.

A day later they arrive at the planet and find Yu's ships destroyed and four Hataks (and one ruined one) in orbit of the planet. The ship's systems identify Horus' craft from previous conflicts and Himmler orders the fleet to engage the subspace static generator and then attack the Hataks. 'Let none escape!'

The Fleet makes a short hyperjump to orbit, coming out in close range to the Hataks which seem to still be bunched together, though in an haphazard formation. At a range less than 3km (hideously short range in space combat) the cruisers and Battleship hit one Hatak with Uberbeam fire only, and at that range it proves fatal, cutting the vessel into four misshapen chunks that then explode. Meanwhile secondary deathray turrets were targeting a second ship and that one's shields are dropped, then fire is switched to a third ship. As the Uberbeams cycle and fire again, on a lower setting, they carefully pierce the hull of the second Hatak, destroying the Pel'tac (bridge) and cutting through two power relays from the main power room.

The Hataks meanwhile were caught unawares, but didn't take long to recover, as their second ship was incapacitated they fired back, all targeting one of the cruisers. Himmler had expected them to run but now they seemed more insistent on the Reich ship's destruction and he ordered the fleet to halt attempts to disable them and just take them out. Hataks might not be a match for a battleship, but there were three of them left and they had powerful weapons. Two of the Hataks fell to Uberbeam and Deathray fire, one exploding the other spinning from battle a broken wreck. The last Hatak managed to finally pierce the shields on the cruiser, only to be surprised at getting barely a hit or two against the armor before the shields snapped back up again. It's possible that in previous battles Horus' forces had not noticed the division between the primary shields going down and the backups coming up, as when they saw this the Hatak finally turned and attempted to flee. It did not make it and was soon an expanding debris field.

Himmler sends forces down to the planet to clear out the Jaffa that Horus left there, secured the gate, then dialed Yu's throne world. He says that Yu's forces valiantly fought, but were two against five, and only managed to kill one of Horus' ships before succumbing themselves. He believes one of Yu's ships might be salvageable however, and in the battle the Reich's ships disabled one, and left another a wreck that might be repaired in future. These should recompense Yu for the losses somewhat. Schmidt refrains from comment. He had hoped the Fuhrer would at least keep one for salvage. Even if they didn't repair it, the components alone, installed on Riech ships, would be valuable. However this does seem to please Yu and he seems to, grudgingly, accept that the mental affects are not a 'mind control' method the Reich was trying on him. Although agreeing to the joint assault on Horus, he doesn't, as yet, agree to the proceedure. He probably wants to do further study on the remains of Riss'ka to determine exactly what the effects are and how it would affect him before such an agreement.

Once Jaffa forces arrive in system, shortly followed by a single Hatak of Yu's, the Reich fleet leaves, heading home to Teutonia, though The Fuhrer and a few staff decide to head home via the gate on the planet instead, at Yu's local governor's convenience of course. Once the small fleet gets home preparations will begin for the joint offensive.

Soon Horus will know that he should not toy with the Reich!

 

[Patupi]

Note, since the episodes 'There but for the grace of god', 'Politics', Within the serpent's grasp' and 'Serpent's lair' all seem to happen within a fairly small time frame on the show I kind of jumped a little in the episodes excerpts recently to try and match things up. Thus this story section is happening during pretty much all those four shows I mentioned above.


January 1998

It took Yu almost a week to finally arrange a meeting to plan the attack with Reich Raumflotte admirals. Admiral Grunwald, head of First Home Fleet currently, and was up to be transferred to the assault fleet (whatever number it ended up as), Grand Admiral Neuman, head of the Raumflotte, General Field Marshal Schmidt, titular head of the combined armed forces (as well as Wehrmacht head. Reich military forces had become a little complicated early on) now faced Yu, Ti-Chu, and three Jaffa servants across the table, with the Fuhrer pacing behind the Reich negotiators.

After five hours of organizing they finally had a plan.

"This should suffice to deal with Horus' forces on the Trailing border. This should sever his ties as far as ship support to the territory he seized from Sengu. Without orbital support we can take those worlds later, he has yet to build any vessels there and my sources indicate only a hand full of ships remain there, thanks to you."

Schmidt smiled tightly.

"He was a minor Goa'uld, very different from dealing with the likes of Horus." Schmidt said softly, leaning his elbows on the table, his chin on his fists, staring intently at Yu. Yu was rather cautious with this warrior leader. It seemed he disliked Goa'uld almost on principle, but seemed to be very loyal to his master. If Himmler ordered it he would follow. If only all subordinates were so loyal!

"Timing is crucial. We must force him to concentrate his fleet in these regions between us. If he spreads his forces across his borders to protect other worlds we will not be able to eliminate sufficient of his fleet in a single strike. Later strikes deeper into his territory will then be much harder."

"Understood. We will follow the timetable. Be certain your Jaffa do likewise." Yu squinted, resisting the urge to bite back a demand for an apology. It wasn't himself, just his Jaffa that had been slighted. Still, Schmidt should learn to trust his betters. "I suggest minimal planetary strikes during this period. If he believes we aren't targeting planets he's unlikely to spread his forces for defensive measures. Instead he will aim to intercept us with as large a force as he can."

Yu nodded calmly. If these Reich failed to strike hard enough at the rimward part of Horus empire, when he struck on the coreward side he could end up being overwhelmed. There were rumors that Horus had acquired more than mere planets and 'a few' ships from Ra. However he'd seen the reports from the captured Jaffa on the Hatak that the Reich had recently disabled. Their reports of an Asgard like weapon on the Reich vessels was disturbing. However from what he could tell the Asgard did not hold the Reich in high regard. Had they somehow stolen the plans for such guns?

"Horus will do as he pleases. We must not assume to know his response. We adapt as he does. As long as we keep to the schedule and maintain the pressure while Horus reacts to our incursions we shall break his fleets. Victory will come when we meet above Al'coor. At that world Horus will realize his days as a System Lord are numbered." Yu said, slamming his fist on the table for emphasis. The Reich present did not seem as impressed by his speech as he'd hoped, but they did agree with him at least.

Yu stood without preamble, glancing across the table, then up at the Fuhrer who had stopped in his pacing and stared back, then smiled and gave a slight nod. Himmler at least he understood. A true leader.

"My forces will take a while to assemble without Horus noticing. Prepare your forces and await my signal."

Yu saw Schmidt sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose.

"How long exactly?"

Squinting Yu fixed the man with his gaze and gritted his teeth. Demanding such from him! Again he sighed and pondered. Many times over the millenia he had wondered that his temper seemed more intense, him being more easily brought to anger after he started using the sarcophagus. Perhaps, perhaps he should agree to the treatment the Reich proposed. He had found nothing devious in Riss'ka's brain. It was as they had said, merely reverting things to the way they were. He had still been a powerful Goa'uld before that. He would be again. No matter what transpired!

"Between three and four weeks." Yu bit out, glaring at Schmidt. What did it matter? They said their forces were ready to go. If he said he would notify them when he was ready why was that not enough? He saw the Fuhrer grin and realized he shared Yu's appraisal. Yu resisted the urge to smile back. You did not submit to such urges in front of your inferiors!

Schmidt nodded ascent.

"We will be ready. Our strike will begin, then yours two days later. From there we should destabilize his forces in the pincer movement. We know what to do."

He nodded to Ti-Chu who got up and followed him, his Jaffa tagging on behind. Yu still found it odd to be dealing with humans like this, but these were hardly ordinary humans. That he had been aware of from the start! These 'Nazis' had greatness in them, poise and the feeling of grandeur. Especially the few of the 'SS' he had met. They could almost be Goa'uld themselves, though he got the impression they would not take kindly to such compliments.

As he left the gateroom with it's massive shield generators (why they thought to need something that large he was unsure of. His scans indicated it could withstand several direct strikes from Hatak's main weapons!), it's heavily armored gun installations, it's angular plates to deflect shots, he pondered on the differences and similarities between the himself and these beings and the way they did things. The whole gateroom lacked the typical Goa'uld flair, the elan they needed to maintain to keep their supposed godhood, but it had a great deal of practicality about it. After seeing it the first time he had already decided to employ some of the less obvious aspects to his own gate on his throne world. If he could keep the arrival room with it's plush extant and add in the offensive and defensive systems he would be happy.

He gave one last look back at the Fuhrer, and saw a distinctly predatory look in the man's eye. Oh yes, he was very much ready for this. Yu would not want to be in Horus' shoes right now!

***

Two Cruisers were finished on time at Teutonia, and one from Spelk, and had joined the fleet being prepared at Teutonia high orbit at the end of 1997. With the mining going on in the rings of the fourth gas giant planet in this system as well as on two of the moons there, a lot of conventional resources for the orbital ship yards was being supplied from space, without drawing from planetary supplies. Unfortunately no Naquadah had thus far been found in space, and very little Trinium, but other resources they had in abundance to ship to the Orbital Ship yard. This had meant adding two fabrication pods to the yard, using the more recent artificial grav plates to make fabrication easier (some of the equipment in the outer system still used centrifugal spin to simulate gravity due to various reasons, often just an unwillingness to rely on a powered system) to build the components from the resources that normally were built on the surface. This in turn freed up more construction for other matters on the planet, both civilian and military. This helped a lot in rebuilding after the First Battle of Teutonia, along with supplying a large amount to the military for beefing up defensive weapons around the city.

Mostly these weapons had been traditional bunkers and AA batteries. Over the years these had been upgraded to Deathray from ballistic weapons, but after the failure of ground based weapons to strike orbital targets reliably (other than missiles) these had not been given a very high priority. Enough were there to withstand a deathglider assault of large size, or a smallish Al'kesh strike, but little more than that. Now that it had been brought home how nasty an air strike would be to Volksburg the city was demanding an expansion of the air and ground defenses. No matter that the defenses they'd had in place had been perfectly adequate to deal with the Al'kesh, and it had been Hataks that had dealt the damage, and those couldn't be dealt with by ground energy weapons at present. Heatrays and deathrays were absorbed too much at range in atmosphere. Plasma beams and Uberbeams attenuated too much over distance and their confinement tended to spread a bit in atmosphere so they couldn't hit much beyond very low orbit. It would take a new weapon system to do that. Missiles however could, but there already were underground launchers for those, even though it would take time for them to hit orbital targets.

In the last battle it had all been over too quickly once the Hataks got to orbit. Consideration had been given to launching missiles early, then re-routing them to intercept targets when their location was known, but it was easier to just launch fighters and use their missiles at closer range. If the battle had lasted much longer they would have been used.

February 1998

By now the fleet, designated once again Fourth Assault Fleet, is assembled in orbit and Admiral Grunwald takes the lead in the Teutonia. With a lot of adjustment the Ullr, with it's mostly Goa'uld designed components, has been upgraded with an almost entirely Goa'uld hyperdrive, upping it's speed to 25ltyrs/day. It will lead the fleet, carrying them at 25ltyrs/day

Given recent estimations of ship capabilities destroyers are going to be redeployed more as defensive units more, with the heavier ships making the main bulk of Fourth Fleet. Destroyers are still effective, but seen as too vulnerable in capital ship battles to deploy in large numbers. Fighters, when shielded, still seem an effective tactic at present so they most definitely will be present.

1st Fleet consists of three battleships, the Teutonia, Spelk and Deutschland, the last 3rd gen cruiser, all 3 3rd gen battlecruisers, 9 4th gen cruisers, 5 4th gen battlecruisers, 7 3rd gen carriers, 3 4th gen carriers, 10 4th gen destroyers, all 4 Zyklon B stealth destroyers, and all 12 3rd gen destroyers. They carry a total of 511 Jaeger-1250VT fighters in the advanced carriers and battlecruisers, with a massive 2380 strong force of Sturmvogel interceptors in the 3rd gen carriers. The 3rd gen carriers and interceptors are effectively a test. The Jaegers can take the radiation weapons power directly, but the Sturmvogels are very fast and maneuverable. New tactics of spread, envelopment assault in waves have been developed to attempt to avoid such weapons fire... as well as new flight suits with integral radiation protection to make the range at which they can survive such weapons considerably shorter.

There have been attempts to shrink the velocity limited shield system used on the Jaeger to mimic the Goa'uld personal shield, but so far these have been unsuccessful, though they do seem to be getting closer. Those systems could provide a low mass, easy protection against radiation for pilots, but they are not available right now.

By the end of February still no word has come from Yu and the Fleet is getting anxious. His four weeks are up and counting! Hopefully the word will be given soon.

***

In space, high above the Earth, two battered deathgliders float serenely, their occupants jubilant, yet still somewhat sad.
CARTER:
It's going to be a beautiful sunset, sir.
O'NEILL:
You know, Captain—this wasn't such a bad day after all.
CARTER:
Not bad at all.
BRA'TAC:
We die well, Teal'c.
TEAL'C:
More than that, old friend—we die free!
O'NEILL:
(looking out of the window)
Or not …
[The Shuttle Endeavour comes into view.]
SHUTTLE PILOT:
Er Houston, this is Endeavour. We have them in sight. I repeat, we have them in sight.

Back in the SGC:
[As O'Neill, Carter, Teal'c and Bra'tac enter, a large crowd of personnel break into applause. Hammond approaches.]
HAMMOND:
Master Bra'tac. Words cannot express our gratitude.
BRA'TAC:
You are Hammond of Texas?
HAMMOND:
I am.
BRA'TAC:
Your warriors serve you well.
HAMMOND:
I know they will be sorry to see you return home so soon.
BRA'TAC:
I must return before word of our rebellion reaches Chulak. My place is there.
[Bra'tac exchanges nods with Carter and grasps O'Neill's arms in farewell, before turning to Teal'c. He touches Teal'c's face.]
AIRMAN:
This way, sir. We want to ask a few questions before you leave.
[Bra'tac leaves with the airman.]
O'NEILL:
Not bad at all.
HAMMOND:
SG-1—there's someone who'd like to see you.
[Daniel makes his way from the back of the crowd.]
CARTER:
Daniel!
[O'Neill, grinning, pulls Daniel into a bear hug.]
O'NEILL:
(grasping his neck and hair)
Spacemonkey! Yeah!
[O'Neill steps back and holds Daniel's shoulders as Daniel returns his smile. Carter hugs Daniel before the assembled staff gather round, laughing and congratulating SG-1.]



(Yeah, usually I edit the excerpts I take from the transcripts to make them feel more story-like, but... I was lazy today )

 

[Patupi]

March 1998

On the 3rd of March the word came from Yu. He was ready. The Fleet readied itself, but this time didn't have a secondary transport fleet with it to salvage equipment. Some could be carried aboard the battlecruisers and battleships, but the intent of this mission wasn't to salvage or to raid planets. It was just to hit ships. However, though a second transport fleet was lacking, a second military fleet was not. The Deutschland was the only designated member of the Eighth Fleet at present, but ships could be re-arranged as needed, though two pre-planned layouts were ready for certain plans. The hope was to trick Horus into believing that fewer ships were present in this assault on both Yu's and the Reich's sides, to make him commit large fleets to the battle. Then to take them down at Al'coor in a joint action. By the path of destruction they would wreak it would be obvious where Yu and the Reich were heading, and if they'd gauged the forces they were using correctly it would be effective against the forces Horus let on he had, but not against his true fleet. The whole combined force that Yu and Reich held should be sufficient to defeat anything Horus threw at them.

They hoped.

In Teutonia twenty one Destroyers were laid out ready to sweep up and take worlds that Horus left unguarded, checked via gate access first. Yu would do the same on his border. The Main fleets would be too far away to do much about securing territories. These destroyers would be portioned of in groups of three, all 4th gen, and would be tasked with securing worlds from orbit and seizing the gate. Where possible they carried a gate with them (though they did not have enough to put one with each destroyer) so if the world did not have a gate, or if they locals somehow destroyed or disabled it, they would still be able to make contact.

Once contact was made Raubvogel fighters would swarm through via gate to help the defenses, then groups of engineers would begin taking components of the larger Jaeger-1250VTs through and assembling them on the other side to deal with Hataks if they showed up, in concert with the destroyers. After that small transports that fit through the gate would go and begin ferrying satellites up to orbit to begin to build a small defense net. They didn't have many such satellites in reserve as the defenses of the main Reich worlds came first and they were upgrading, but they had enough to bolster the capability of the destroyers and fighters present.

The designated day to coordinate with Yu was the 5th, and the Fleet launched on time, the numerous blue flashes just visible from Volksburg if you looked carefully as they jumped into hyperspace.

Cruising out Grunwald was nervous. Relying on a Goa'uld, even one as pleasantly lacking in 'Godhood' as Yu, was unnerving. This mission would likely have little chance of success if Yu failed to show. They had agreed that, although neither knew methods of intercepting subspace transmissions with their coding, just detecting transmissions going between Yu and the Reich would make it obvious early in the offensive that they were teaming up. They wanted Horus to come to that realization later, when they were close to joining up, and then be forced to hastily form a fleet to stop them. Grunwald personally felt this plan was too audacious, too reliant on everything going as planned. A simpler setup would have had more likelihood of success in his books, but the plan had been put forward by Neuman and Yu themselves during the meeting and it was obvious everyone else considered it a magnificent ploy.

Grunwald was merely the lackey that had to carry it out!

Sighing he put such thoughts from his head. It was hardly fair to them. This did seem like a good plan, but he could just see too many ways that little problems could throw things off. Without being able to communicate with Yu if one of them got behind in their invasion... well, the meet-up would be awkward to say the least! If it even happened at all!

The first world they stopped at, just beyond the borders of Reich space towards the spinward section, was guarded by only two Al'kesh and a Jaffa garrison on planet. The Fleet, as planned, split into two groups. One, Eighth Fleet, with two thirds of the force stayed out of range, outside the system. The rest in Forth Fleet swept in and struck the planet. It quickly fell and the Jaffa were either in the open or their housing easily detected. Orbital bombardment destroyed almost all of them. The Fleet left without even securing the gate. It was planned that Horus would not believe this attack was about planets... which it wasn't directly. That would come later.

The Fleet regrouped and moved on, striking two completely undefended worlds next, just bombing the surface then heading for the next on the list. The Forth planet had a single Hatak in orbit. It jumped to hyperspace before the Fourth Fleet could close to engage, but that was fine. They wanted Horus to know they were coming. The ground facilities were bombed and again they moved on, heading coreward.

The current split they formed at each system was one battleship, the Deutschland, three 4th gen cruisers, one 3rd gen cruiser and 3 3rd gen battlecruisers (loaded with 96 Jaeger-1250VTs). In the fifth system it proved it's worth. As they reached orbit and began their bombardment a flight of twenty Al'kesh and two Hataks jumped in right on top of them, presumably timed by some subspace comm from the surface of the planet. Despite the surprise attack the well trained Reich ships quickly turned on the new foes, battlecruisers with their slightly more fighter focused weapons battered at the Al'kesh, while the Hataks didn't last long. The battleship took out one by itself with two shots, the other destroyed by concentrated fire from all cruisers. Fighters were launched to deal with the few Al'kesh that survived the first wave and none made it back into hyperspace.

Reich forces lost one fighter in the battle, and the pilot was rescued. Severely burned, but alive.

This buoyed the mood of the fleet quite a lot and as they swept in coreward the crews were waiting for the next assault. They soon got their wish

The sixth world was another planet with no orbital defense, and the fleet cruised in and bombed hard, clearing orbit into hyperspace rapidly leaving little left of the Jaffa bases on the surface. The seventh however was another story.

A single Hatak was present in orbit, but as the fleet left hyperspace it swept rapidly around the planet to hide behind it. Signals were sent to the Eighth Fleet, just in case, as it looked suspiciously like a trap. Never-the-less they performed a micro-jump to an orbit just on the cusp of the planet from their current viewpoint, so they wouldn't run full tilt into what they couldn't see yet. The single Hatak was still there, and about ten seconds later, after they'd swung to bear on it, twelve hyperspace windows opened up, spilling a mix of Hataks and the other ship (which Yu had informed them was called a 'Cheops' class) right on top of them. This was a much nastier battle, the enemy pounding them hard, striking most of their fire against one vessel at a time. A 4th gen cruiser fell out of formation fast, pounded by a heavy plasma fire. It's shields were battered hard, though the fire was partially blocked as a battlecruiser tried to swing itself in front of some of the shots. Still, the cruiser was heavily pounded and it's shields collapsed, main and backup, and it took significant damage to it's armor.

However, while the Hataks and Cheops targeted the cruiser the Fourth Fleet was targeting them, mostly the lighter Cheops. The pyramidal ships blossomed in fire, three dying before the cruiser's shields fell, another shortly after. At that the enemy fleet abruptly jumped into hyperspace, leaving a severely battered cruiser as the indication they had been there at all, while the enemy had lost four of it's twenty in the short, brutal assault. From the speed with which they withdrew it was obviously a prepared maneuver. Horus expected the battle to be lost and seemed to use it as a test of how well his ships fared against the Reich. Twelve versus eight ships and the eight winning was pretty good going, even with the larger battleship and it's heavier firepower.

The Fleet made a short jump and started repairs to the cruiser's armor and a few turrets that had been hit, stopping at an adjoining system to pick up materials to begin to fabricate new armor plates while they were en-route. They were still within the schedule when they headed for the eighth planet on the list, half way to the rendezvous point with Yu. With the staggered course they'd taken to hit the worlds they had made it less than a hundred lightyears from the Reich border in the week they had been travelling, and, as in the plan, it was deemed that this should have acquired Horus' attention. After then tenth planet it would be a straight line into Horus' territory, aiming to meet with Yu at Al'coor.

Eighth and ninth planets were ordinary, just a couple of Al'kesh defending one, nothing defending the other. Two Hataks were spotted at the tenth, but left before engagement, and the planet was left undefended. The fleets shifted course and bore straight coreward now, aiming for Al'coor at maximum hyperspeed, dropping out every now and then to bombard worlds. At each one they expected to be harried again by light forces, but nothing showed. Plus they noticed far fewer forces on the planets they encountered. Slaves shipped off world, Jaffa moved out. Horus was evacuating worlds along their flight path. They hoped that meant he'd worked out that they were meeting up with Yu and the planned battle would be there. This was a little earlier than planned, but it should just help him force more ships into the area. More targets.

On the fourteenth planet they saw four Hataks pull out, and it was tempting to follow them out and trace them back to their lair, but they had a timetable to stick to. The planet was bombed and they went on.

At the fifteenth planet though, as soon as they reached orbit, a Fleet microjumped on top of them. Over Thirty Hataks and over a hundred Al'kesh! As the assault began Grunwald considered the battle quite winable with both fleets, but they would be too pinned down here and they didn't want to reveal the main Fourth fleet yet. Probably what they wanted was to stop them from joining up with Yu anyway. Thus after barely a shot was fired the Fleet jumped into hyperspace, leaving the Goa'uld forces behind, neither side taking damage.

Thirty Hataks must be a significant chunk of Horus' forces so the Reich were feeling pretty pleased with themselves as they headed for the final Rendezvous.

***

Horus sat in the throne of his newly completed Capital ship, a massive structure of brilliantly inter-meshed folded, golden metal, easily twice the size of an Hatak, and waited. Soon the enemy would be here. Yu was still, thankfully, tied up with Horus' harrying forces in his sweep down and here... here he had his grand fleet, a going away present from Ra. Fifty two Cheops ships, found in a vault in an asteroid base above a world of Ra's, combined with his own quite significant Hatak fleet, leaving him nearly a hundred ships to meet the Reich.

He was glad it had been Yu who had taken the 'bait' and delayed and not the Reich. He wanted to see how well these Nazis fared against a truly mighty System Lord!

 

[Patupi]

March 1998

On the nineteenth of March the fleets arrived at Al'coor. Again they stopped outside the system, then the Eighth jumped in-system. When they arrived twenty two Hataks were present in orbit, and one massive ship the Reich had never seen before. It looked sort of like an Hatak stretched out sideways to more than double the diameter with a tiny looking pyramid in the center. Whatever it was was bound to be powerful. The world was fortified as well, with over a thousand gliders in orbit as well as over a hundred Al'kesh.

Grunwald grinned as he cruised towards the planet. For this battle he'd switched his flagship, the Teutonia, out for the Deutschland to be in charge of Eighth fleet. He wanted to get a better picture of the enemy here before the full fleet joined him. From the looks of it it would be pretty evenly matched given Eighth fleet against what he could see, depending on the strengths of that huge ship. Such a confrontation would be nasty, both sides losing heavily in ships. No doubt Horus had some in reserve to bring him the winning blow... but so did Grunwald. A very large reserve! However the fact that Yu hadn't shown up yet was worrying. Still, plenty of time yet though. The plan was for a slow engagement at extreme range at first to play this out and buy for time for the meet up, while pushing for Horus to get in close in counter.

One thing though. If it did get to close range combat with that many ships it would be tricky pulling out. It was all well and good maneuvering and jumping to hyperspace with a small force engaging you like the Twelve ships they'd met before, but with this many ships? Getting out without losing ships due to maneuvering before the jump would be hard. And if their shields were already battered by that point it would be damned risky.

Grinding to a halt at high orbit the battlecruisers launched their fighters and the nimble Jaegers positioned themselves around the fleet. Missiles were launched and screamed down at the Hataks in orbit far out of their own weapon's range. In response, before the missiles were even a third of the way there, death gliders and Al'kesh swarmed out to meet them, sniping at the odd missile as they went past. The battlecruisers went into defense formation, more to the front and in a disk between the oncoming ships and the rest of the fleet while two thirds of the fighters zipped out to meet the unwelcome visitors.

With that many enemy ships, even with better craft, the fighters had their jobs cut out for them, but with fire support from the battlecruisers the deathgliders began to be smashed from the sky and the Al'kesh slowly dwindled. A flight of deathgliders did manage to perform a suicide run on one battlecruiser, followed by a strike by Al'kesh, bombing as they went past with conventional energy bombs. Thankfully it's backup shields held and it shifted back to the rear of the formation to regenerate the backup's shield levels and try to restore power to the main shield.

Grunwald gripped the arms of his chair as the bridge shook. The odd Al'kesh managed to avoid the defense ring and performed bombing runs on the Teutonia or one of the cruisers every now and then, but so far with little effect. They weren't organized enough to be a credible threat to the fleet as a whole, but they were wearing shield levels a little. Then the first wave of missiles struck the Hataks in low orbit and he grinned. They'd been targeted at just three Hataks and the wave completely swamped their shields and hull, leaving glittering debris where they had been moments before. Remotely they retargeted the second wave against five Hataks to spread the damage a bit more. It seemed that Horus hadn't beefed up his shields any since last time so standard assaults would work.
However they were learning and shots targeting the missiles proved more accurate in the second wave, lessening the oncoming swathe of missiles. The end result was three of the targets only having their shields severely weakened, though two were again destroyed outright.

It seemed that was enough of a goading and the Goa'uld fleet began to accelerate outwards to meet the Reich. Grunwald ordered the Fourth Fleet to ready for their micro-jump, and kept short pulse transmissions going to let them know things were progressing as planned. If the pulses stopped or they sent the go code the Fourth Fleet would swoop in. That way even if the enemy deployed subspace static (as the Reich had done in the past) the Fourth Fleet would still engage.

Most of the deathgliders were gone by the time the Hataks came into range, but the Al'kesh still were fighting, mostly being intercepted by the battlecruisers still. It seems Horus had worked out that the Reich's Uberbeams were weaker at long range and stopped at extreme range to begin to bombard the ships of the Eighth fleet. Shields flared as impacts came down, but it was spread across the whole fleet, weakening shields perhaps, but not causing any significant damage on individual ships yet. Meanwhile deathray fire was focused on single Hataks from the whole fleet, and their shields did not last long. However, several of the Hataks managed to jump out of the battle before missiles could be brought to bear on them after their shields were dropped. They were out of the battle, but not destroyed. This was not quite what the Reich wanted. The point of this was to dwindle Horus' forces.

With a determined expression Grunwald nodded to his SS officer, who grinned back. Definitely time.

"Close to two thousand kilometers. Bring the Uberbeams to bear. Let's whittle the herd down."

That was hardly close range, but enough to get the beams to do significant damage, and still draw this out. He really wanted Horus to commit the rest of his forces before calling on his reserve of Fourth Fleet. Missiles spat between the fleets, but at this range they couldn't get enough speed and tended to be somewhat easier targets for the defensive weapons of the Hataks. The Fleet began concentrating fire on two Hataks with a wave, still not quite blasting them, but a single shot from an Uberbeam would usually finish such a ship, even from a cruiser's lesser Uberbeam. Missiles stocks began to get low and purposely the Reich held back, stopping further barrage. True, the other ships would come in soon with fresh stocks, but if the enemy brought their reserve in at long range they wanted to harry them prior to Fourth Fleet coming in against them.

In the heads up display on the main screen he could just make out the pinpoints of light as flashes in the night as fighters exploded between the two fleets. The computer helpfully overlaid a faint tactical grid and overlays to show which dots were fighters, Al'kesh, Battlecruisers, missiles or Hataks. At such ranges even Hataks were only just visible on the screen, but you could just make out the outline of the distant ships if you squinted. The Battlecruiser disks were far more obvious. Only ten kilometers distant he could see them flitting around rapidly, blocking shots meant for other ships, spreading the load on shields to make best use of regeneration.

"Sir, that large ship is closing, coming through the others."

Grunwald was expecting some kind of superweapon, so was rather disappointed when a large flood of conventional plasma bolts were hurled at them from the massive ship. Still, there were a lot. More so than expected on such a frame. That thing was easily way bigger than the Teutonia, and perhaps didn't waste as much space as Hatak's usually did. One thing was obvious though, all that fire was directed on one ship, the 3rd gen cruiser the Vidarr found itself in a firestorm. A battlecruiser slid in front, taking the brunt for a second or two, but couldn't stay. It's shields were weaker.

"Have the Tyr and Vali form on us," Grunwald ordered quietly, staring hard at the display, "Battlecruiser Hlin follow us in and provide cover. We're going to close range on that thing and engage. Try and put us between it and the Vidarr but keep the hyperdrives warmed up on all of our ships. Then bring us to five hundred kilometers and give me full Uberbeam strength."

The Teutonia slide down, the storm of orange balls striking it's shield now instead of the Vidarr, it's primary shield very weak. As soon as the pressure was let off it switched to the backup shield to let the primary cool. Meanwhile Grunwald's four ships leaped ahead while the others spread out a bit to fire around them from their current position. With fire support from the battlecruiser against the few Al'kesh remaining they managed to avoid a suicide strike but the concentrated fire from the huge Goa'uld mothership was straining the Teutonia's shields. As they closed in the deathray turrets spat fire back at the enemy, focused on the huge vessel. As soon as they got to within 800km they let rip, massive beams of superheated plasma tearing into Horus' shields in reply to the firestorm it was sending back.

Rather than let their main shield collapse Grunwald had them switch over manually, getting the changeover pretty smooth, not letting a shot through in the fraction of a second break. The main shield was left to cool, but put back on standby to snap up if the backup failed. Meanwhile they were getting to medium range for the Uberbeam and it looked from sensors as if Horus' big ship was having trouble holding it's shields up. Just as he was smiling in victory, A Hatak swung in front and positioned it'self right in the path of the beam, absorbing it on it's shields. At this range they held, and it was taking the pressure of the big ship. The two cruisers were still firing their Uberbeams, but they were far weaker strength blasts. Grunwald saw two more Hataks closing in, presumably to take over the blocking position when this Hatak succumbed to the damage it was taking.

"Deathray fire here and here. Launch remaining missiles from Teutonia only. Take them out!"

The two Hataks closing in suddenly found themselves in a barrage of fire. One died instantly, shields collapsed from deathrays and missiles pulverizing the hull into wreckage. The other managed to pull away with a scrap of shield remaining, but couldn't block the fire, and just then the current blocking ship detonated, the Uberbeam ripping into the main ship's shield once more. If sensors were reading it right the thing was in trouble and...

Suddenly it jumped out, the Uberbeam scouring through the space where it had been moments before. It was a few moments before Grunwald recognized the other indicators, and his eyes widened just before his sensor officer gave the warning.

"Contacts. Multiple hyper-windows opening... we have forty... sixty... seventy more windows forming!"

In seconds it went from Horus having 15 ships to him having 87 ships! Most of these were the smaller Cheops, but they were almost as effective as an Hatak. This was not good!

"Give the signal, close on... how close are they?"

"They dropped in among the rest of Eighth fleet. The Vidarr's shields are getting low already." His XO said, staring at his display.

"They lured us out to engage that flagship!" Lange, the SS officer said, wide-eyed.

"No," Grunwald said abruptly, then turned to the XO, "Bring us about, charge the hyperdrives, all ships. Rendezvous... here. Give the signal to Fourth Fleet. We're coming in." He said, then spoke to Lange again. "They couldn't have known we'd peel off rather than bring our whole force in to deal with that ship. No, they just saw a chance after we'd split up. I counted on it, though I didn't think he'd have this many ships!"

Grunwald paused. There were odd purple flashes among his fleet out there. A quick press of a button and his local display highlighted one of the cruisers, and yes an odd purple discharge was striking them. It left the ship with a purplish halo that shimmered as he watched. Scanning back it was coming from the Cheops ships, which had turned on their sides and opened the top of the pyramid unleashing some sort of new weapon from within. Oddly it didn't seem to be doing much damage. Maybe it was designed more to affect armor than shields?

"Concentrate fire on the Cheops before we leave. Prepare all missile batteries for long range bombardment of..."

"Sir! The Hodr just reported their hyperdrive failed! They can't jump!"

For a second Grunwald didn't get it, then realized. Those purple flashes, they must be something to interfere with hyperdrives!

"Cancel hyperdrive orders! Bring us in to engage them."

"The Fourth fleet has just jumped out at the rendezvous sir, and about half of the ship back there successfully jumped." his XO said sadly. "They can't recharge quick enough to help. Our ships are faster this close to the planet. There's a chance."

Grunwald saw it wasn't much of one. Hodr and Vidarr were stuck in the middle of a hoard of Hataks and Cheops, and Grunwald and his little force were certainly not going to reach them in time. They fired at long range anyway, but the enemy was focusing on the trapped battlecruiser and cruiser. As he watched shields failed and the hulls started to vaporize. Two more Cheops blew to combined fire from fighters, the two trapped ships, and long range fire from his task force, but it was a foregone conclusion and first the Battlecruiser Hodr and then the Cruiser Vidarr were pounded into rubble, small explosions from ammunition detonating as they drifted. The Vidarr then proceeded to tear herself apart, the spinning disks shattering as she spread debris across space.

"Head to the rendezvous." Grunwald said in a gravley voice as the enemy fleet turned towards them.

In seconds they had jumped to the rendezvous, joining the massive Fourth fleet. Grunwald was not sure what to do. They would take a quite a few minutes to prepare the hyperdrives to jump again and before that those Cheops could close and stop them from doing just that. It looked like the weapons were not a hundred percent effective. Only two of his four ships left back there couldn't jump and all four had been hit repeatedly. Fighters swooped among the enemy ships, heading back to his group as Horus fleet turned and began to move towards them. He could turn and head off, but unfortunately not all his ships were now fast enough to stay ahead of the enemy. His older carriers especially were not. However that gave him an idea.

"Pull the fleet into a defensive formation, Battlecruisers and destroyers attempt to intercept those hyper denial systems if any are fired at us. They at least can stay well ahead of the enemy. Launch all fighters and I want all carriers to begin their hyper warm ups now. The carriers will launch for the Exit One rendezvous as soon as they are able."

His XO looked white as he stared back at him.

"But the fighters will be stranded. The battlecruisers won't have enough bays for them all!"

"I get the strong impression that that ratio will soon be dwindling. However once we win this we can bring the carriers back to pick them up. We are not abandoning them if we can help it. Sensors. Any sign of that flagship?"

"No sir, it hasn't turned up again yet."

Grunwald sighed, not sure whether to be happy or sad. That was a powerful ship and it being out of the picture helped them. But their point here was to reduce Horus' forces. That ship left behind would be a problem later. He suspected Horus himself had been aboard it.

"Alright, Give me a standard disk formation, aligned with the enemy fleet. Long range deathray fire to begin as soon as you have extreme range targeting solutions. Concentrate fire on single ships, coordinate among the fleet to keep our ranging on target. Cheops are first targets. Keep it together men, we can still beat them." He turned to the comms officer. "I need you to coordinate with the fighters. Keep the majority of the Sturmvogels here and send in all the Jaegers. We need to know of they have the radiation weapons. They've shown no sign of using them yet, but I'm unsure of trying dodging tactics against this many ships with a 2000 strong interceptor swarm. It'd be too easy to get near hits by accident, and near is all that would be needed with one of those radiation bombs."

The officer nodded and Grunwald turned back to the display. This could get real nasty. Where the hell was Yu?

 

[Patupi]

March 1998

Horus was beginning to get slightly nervous. Of course he couldn't show it. Not in front of the Jaffa. His fleet was massive, with innovative weapons to trap the enemy, yet those that hadn't been trapped weren't leaving, and those extra ships that had turned up were... a lot. They were definitely a lot, with three more of those huge warships as well! He managed to suppress a scowl as he viewed the data being sent from the Hatak's and Cheops in the region. His own ship was a short distance away, undergoing minor repairs. He had thirty minor Goa'ulds overseeing many more Jaffa doing the work now.

It meant of course his ship couldn't be in battle. Of course that was wrong, he should show them that God's cannot fail against such unworthy mortals. However it also meant his ship was unlikely to get blasted to dust.

He hadn't stressed rapidity of the repairs. Quality above speed.

As he watched the sensors he saw a large cloud of smaller vessels, the enemy's version of death gliders. Two kinds were present, one tiny one, smaller than a deathglider, and one larger, though not as big as an Al'kesh. These clustered around the enemy fleet as it regrouped, then the larger craft sped off towards his fleet. He doubted they had hyperdrives to escape if things got rough during their assault, but it was still an effective force, not to be ignored. He'd already seen that those larger vehicles had shielding to stop his Slow Death Launchers. What worried him was that this fleet hadn't left yet.... wait...

"Ilnar? Analyze their hyper signatures upon arrival." He stated to a his minor lord on the bridge. Normally he did not like having another Goa'uld on his Pel'tak, but he needed her scientific knowledge to study these Reich. "What is the signature's decay rate?"

She nodded and poured over a panel, a hologram showing odd wave functions.

"They... have a very slow decay rate. It seems these ships can't return to hyperspace. Not for five minutes or more after they use their systems."

Horus smiled. Ahah, an advantage! These primitive fools attempting to ape their betters. No matter how hard they tried they'd never equal the ages won wonders of the Goa'uld!

"Order the Cheops to wait till those small craft have cleared the enemy area, then jump in among them, immobilize them then jump clear. Pay special attention to the slower vessels. Then they will regroup and the whole fleet will assault them in the name of their god!"

She nodded respect, and his First Prime grinned, turning back to the controls of the ship.

Soon they would pay!

***

Grunwald watched as the Jaegers streaked in, launching half their missiles from long range as they approached. He'd ordered some to attempt close flybys of the Cheops vessels. He needed to know what they were armed with. If they had those radiation weapons he'd have to...

"I'm getting hyperspace signatures." The sensor officer said worriedly.

Damn it! The missiles were mostly aimed at the Cheops and those ships were all preparing to leave. He watched the energy signatures build, then frowned. No. Horus wouldn't just leave, especially with half his fleet.

"All ships maneuver. Incoming hostiles. Get the interceptors to assault the incoming ships!" He ordered.

The orders were still going out to the fleet as the Cheops micro-jumped.

Suddenly dozens of ships were around them, but at least some of the Reich ships weren't surprised, and fire shot out to meet them.

"The fools came in too close!" Lange said, with a feral grin. Grunwald just nodded back at the SS officer and gave a simple order.

Two Cheops were blasted to pieces at once as Uberbeams lashed out from multiple ships, Deathrays raked others, and plasma beams at this range poured onto them. Two more fell, then another, and all the Cheops did was fire the hyper inhibitors. At this range they couldn't miss, and over half the fleet was encased in a faint purple haze. Just under a minute of hellish combat (for the Cheops) left them down a total of eight ships before they jumped clear once more, meeting back up with the rest of their fleet.

"How can they jump so fast?" A crewmen said as he furiously tracked reports from other vessels.

Grunwald smiled.

"We have some experience of Goa'uld tech ensign. They're engines don't exactly have a cool-down time like ours, instead they build up problems. If they use their drives too often they risk doing serious damage to the systems. So they can't jump around too much either, but more than we can."

The ensign nodded sagely, not wavering from his duty while he spoke or listened.

"Sir?" The Comm officer said. "I've got a message from the Tyr. She says she can't lower her shields. There's some sort of energy build up and resonance in the systems."

"Probably something to do with the hyperdrive inhibitor. Tell them and our engineers to work on it. I take it by the faint purple tinge of the screen we were hit." His XO nodded. "Well, see if messing with the backup and main shields will clear it somehow. Something. If this field is tapped to our shields perhaps they are powering it?"

"The Tyr reports her attempt so far have had feedback issues. They fear if they do manage to shut the shield down the generator will explode!"

"So, can't just shut the power down. Keep working on the problem. They'll figure it out. Meanwhile do these fields affect our combat ability at all?" His XO paused, watching a display and keeping a finger pressed to an earpiece. Presumably he was listening to a report from engineering. After a few moments he looked back and the Admiral and grinned, shaking his head. "Good. Prepare the fleet. XO, what's the status of the fighters?"

"So far? Good. We have two reported Hatak kills, and another two Cheops. They had to attack the Hataks when the Cheops left, but now they're back to their orders. They've taken casualties, ten percent so far. Wait... I have a report from a squadron leader. He reports he's had three wings do close flybys of the Cheops. They report none of the ships have the radiation weapon blisters seen on the modified Hataks. He's only seen a couple of the modified Hataks as well, many of those don't have the weapons either."

"Alright, those ships out there are not as effective as us, but out number us significantly. I think it's time to try the interceptor swarm. Have them go in in waves to spread out. Hopefully the increased anti-radiation protocols and good piloting should help them withstand the few of those weapons out there. We need some punch and they are our punch. Have the fleet be prepared. They may try another hyperjump on top of us, though that would likely strain their drives doing it this quickly. I don't think they are that stupid."

Slowly the fleet organized itself into a defensive formation with destroyers and battlecruisers on the outside, while the Sturmvogel interceptors lined up into waves and flew off, over 1700 of them in five waves, leaving only 500 to guard the fleet.

The Jaegers were already hurting, but doing a lot of damage. It was tricky to keep on target with one enemy when so many ships were ducking and diving around one another, but somehow they were keeping the flight together. It took a lot of Jaegers on one Hatak or Cheops to bring it down, especially as most of them had already spent their missiles, but they were slowly scoring kills. One or two of the radiation weapons had been fired, but it looked like they knew the Jaegers were immune to that weapon. The Sturmvogels were not, and as they screamed in at much higher speeds, many radiation bombs were flung out at the fleet, tiny little ships. They merely dodged the first few, long range shots, effortlessly avoiding the blasts. But as they got closer they had less time to maneuver and one or two were hit. The internal radiation proofing seemed to help. At ranges that would have been fatal in a Raubvogel the craft came out still with a living pilot, but if they got too close ships became tombs for an irradiated pilot. Several survivors were already coughing and finding it difficult to cope. If they lived to return to their carriers they would be OK. There were many, very effective treatments for radiation sickness, plus one of the carriers had a Bio-Repair Pod if things got severe.

The Enemy however was not still for long. Shortly after the Interceptors zipped in among them they moved towards the Reich fleet, with the fighters still dogging their steps. As they reached extreme deathray range from the fleet the fighters were ordered to concentrate their efforts on one flank of the enemy. The other was targeted by the Reich. 4 battleships, 9 cruisers, 7 battlecruisers and 14 destroyers opened up, mostly targeting one unlucky Cheops. At that range damage was restricted, but it still tore at the shields, and after a hand full of seconds they fell, the deathrays tearing into the hull. Damaging the hull was tricky at that range, and they certainly couldn't punch through the armor, but the continuous fire ablated the hull away in areas, and after half a minute of concentrated fire it blossomed into a small fireball. Fire was switched to another, but there were over 70 motherships here. A lot for them to deal with.

That was when the Al'kesh arrived. Over two hundred jumped out among the fleet and began to bomb the fighters, killing a lot of the interceptors with radiation bombs. Simultaneously fifty Al'kesh launched from the attacking armada, those too armed with radiation weapons, striking hard against the interceptors. Grunwald ordered them back as they opened up with missiles and plasma beams against the nearer Al'kesh. The Sturmvogels took a severe pounding from the surprise attack, but of the 1700 only 200 were hit by the radiation weapons, killing the crew. However here was the kicker. All interceptors that registered their pilot as dead now went on autopilot and scream back to one specific carrier where a Bio repair pod (and certain life support units to keep them alive while they awaited their turn in the pod) could restore most of them back to life.

Horus choice of weapons, while tactically sound, was not too good versus the Reich's advanced medical knowledge in the long term.

For now though it stopped the interceptors from being effective. Plasma and Uberbeams had smashed the Al'kesh fleet hard, and only 120 pulled clear to coordinate with Horus' fleet. It looked like they were massing for a joint attack and Grunwald prepared as best he could while the Hataks and Cheops began to open fire.

Reports from the engineers was that they might be able to utilize the dual shield system to spread the stress and enable the active system to shut down, but it was risky. Two destroyers had been hit by the hyper inhibitor and Grunwald ordered them to attempt it, relaying their data while they did it to the rest of the fleet. They succeeded, but blew their primary shield, the backup being OK, and the inhibitor field was gone! Quickly Grunwald ordered the Carriers to attempt it now, and with the data from the destroyer they managed it. They quickly got the worst of the injured and damaged fighters, as well as those with dead pilots, on board and jumped to hyperspace before the Cheops could affect them again. They still had over 1900 interceptors and 420 Jaegers here, but they had not had time to reload. They had to rely on deathrays and plasma beams only.

Grunwald ordered the fighters out again, and saw the Al'kesh rise to meet them. Before the two could meet he sent the last of their missile munitions on, in one massive salvo, all targeted on the Al'kesh. Most of them were annihilated, and the fighters picked off most of the remainder, then swept into the enemy fleet. As they got into the thick of it, fire was slamming into the Reich ships. A battlecruiser attempted to cover a cruiser that had weakened shields, but extra fire switched to it, and suddenly the battlecruiser's shields fell and her skin boiled. She desperately attempted to roll the ship as she sped out of the area, but damage was massive, and it penetrated the outer disk, shattering the main drive. She spun, out of control, away from the fleet as fire switched from her to others in formation.

"Get us in closer! I need close range bombardment firepower!" Grunwald ordered, and the fleet shot in to meet the Goa'uld.

It was a massacre. At first, at long range, the Goa'uld held the edge, and two cruisers were destroyed for three Cheops in the next minute. As the range fell however the damage turned and many of the Cheops motherships were blown to pieces or wrecked. The fighters had switched to Hataks, targeting those with the radiation weapons to limit their retaliation against their own. It proved effective, and the remaining four Hataks found still to house those guns were broken.

Then the two fleets shot past each other, blasting as they came. At short range the Battleships tore into the Hataks and Cheops, often making one shot kills at the closest approach, but the motherships also had easier targeting, and at that range tore into multiple cruisers and battlecruisers. Another cruiser, two battlecruisers, and three destroyers fell from formation, ruined, but the loss on the other side was heavy. Ten Hataks and fourteen Cheops were gutted or vaporized, and the last of the Al'kesh were destroyed.

It was now 4 battleships, 6 cruisers, 5 battlecruisers, and 11 destroyers against only fifteen Cheops and thirty Hataks. It looked like things were still in their favor, mainly with the firepower of the battleships tipping the balance. Then ten of the remaining Cheops turned and hypered into range of the Reich fleet. They tore in and ferocious speeds, but still five were killed as they closed in. It was obvious that they were targeting two of the battleships. They'd realized the threat too. The fleet brought all guns to bear on them, and in the short time while they closed the Cheop's own guns barely had time to do much to the massive shields of the battleships.

They didn't have to. They rammed. Four slammed into one battleship, three into the other, the Cheop's shields already weakened from close range fire they winked out instantly, but their inertia was deadly. One battleship, the Leere, buckled, then was struck directly, no shields, by a ship travelling at a over twenty kilometers a second. The ship blossomed in a huge blast of thermal energy from the impact, the debris shot away on the other side of the impact at a hell of a speed. They'd used the initial speed coming out of hyperspace to boost ramming effectiveness.

The other battleship, the Deutschland, held it's shields till the last second, but the flicker between main and backups was enough to let molten debris from the Cheop's in at incredible speeds, tearing it's armor up and damaging half it's weapons on that side.

One battleship lost, the other severely damaged, in a matter of seconds. Curiously, the impact cleared the shields of the Deutschland of the inhibitor effect and Grunwald ordered it to jump clear to rendezvous with the Carriers. Of course, while the Cheops bore in they'd fired their inhibitor weapons around, coating several ships that had already lost their main shields and were on backups. With that they had no way to clear the inhibitor effect, and if the rest of the fleet did so they'd weaken their shields significantly.

They'd have to stick it out, hope that what they had was good enough to beat them back.

Grunwald expected another hyperjump from Horus, and ordered his ships to begin a ragged course, to make targeting them harder. He got reports from that one battlecruiser that had drifted from battle earlier. It's gravrider drive was shattered, but it's ion engines and hyperdrive were working. It had cleared it's shield and also was rendezvousing with the carriers. It was a relief that not all his lost ships had been taken out completely, but with the loss of the Leere, and the Deutschland out of the picture, they were hurting. All the ships had shield stress of one level or another, and several were on backup shields only, still struggling to re-engage the main shield.

Then Horus jumped in to long range and began to pound on the Fleet once more.

"Sir, I'm reading new contacts coming in at high hyper speed. ETA minutes at most."

"Why didn't we detect them earlier?" Grunwald bit back angrily as he watched things get from bad to worse.

"I think the inhibitor effect is messing with the HP scanners. I... oh." the sensor officer ended simply as he looked up at the screen.

Grunwald sighed as forty more red dots appeared on the other side of Horus' forces, turning and closing ranks... then the dots began to change from red to green as IFF signals were detected.

"Well I'll be darned." Grunwald said, a feral smile slowly spreading across his face.

The comms officer just nodded in his direction, obviously expected, and Grunwald just nodded at the screen in return.

The familar, stern expression of Yu was visible, though the rear of his throne was damaged and the his robe was burned.

"I have arrived, despite the despicable attempts by Horus to thwart me. Now we shall have vengence!" He shouted, slamming his fist on the arm of his throne. The effect was spoiled somewhat as the arm of the chair broke off, but Grunwald kept a straight face and merely nodded.

"Definitely. All ships, flank speed! Their hyper drives must be stressed out from all this dodging and diving. Gut them while we can!"

Yu on one side, The Reich on the other, Horus' forces were severely outnumbered, and seemed to pick Yu as the most likely foe and closed ranks, but the Reich's fighters swarmed ahead and got into the thick of it while Yu engaged, not only his main forces but with deathgliders too. Then the Reich fleet stressed their engines, engaging both ion and gravriders, and pushed ahead hard. They got in range then began braking to meet them toe to toe, and Horus' ships began to die.

At first only one or two attempted to leave, but Grunwald was right, their drives were strained. One got out, another couple did not, their drives shut down form the effort, stranding them here. The rest continued the fight, closing to point blank range with Yu, if only to limit fire from the Reich, thinking they would not want to hit their ally. In this close however accuracy wasn't a problem. They waited till they got in really close before opening up with Uberbeams (you definitely did not want friendly fire with one of those!) but the deathrays were let loose on the enemy, despite the proximity.

The last ten Hataks made a desperate attempt to hyper out, and four made it, the rest stuttered to a halt and then were pounded to rubble.

The battle was over, and the Reich had won, though they'd paid a heavy cost. Yu too had lost ten of his forty Hataks, though two might be salvageable. The fleets paused to lick their wounds and recover, but the signal was given and on all the worlds that they'd bombed, the stargates began to open, sensors sent through, and then if it was clear troops. The Destroyers reserved for the task shot out to salvage the planets and fighters shot through the gates. Presumably Yu was now doing something similar on the planets he had bombed on his way down. Very soon Horus would not only be out over 80 ships, but also missing something on the order of thirty planets.

Grunwald just imagined his face when he found out.

 

[Patupi]

March 1998

Grunwald supervised the landing on the planet Al'coor, but it was a foregone conclusion. Just like the last few worlds they visited this one had been evacuated by Horus before they arrived. Slaves and all. However there were some pieces of technology that couldn't be easily ripped up and shifted, like rings and the gate, so there was still something worthwhile. The planet, being so far out, was not really worthwhile keeping itself however. Likely the last six planets would be ceded. After they were stripped of anything valuable. Some of the fleet would perform that task on the way home, since they had no specialty support fleet this time.

He'd had a report on the Deutschland and the Baldr and both were repairable, though the Baldr was badly hurt with her shattered drive. Hopefully the battlecruisers drive could be repaired when they got back. It was an integral part of the ship so the engineers were not certain. Still, all told things hadn't been a disaster. Nearly so perhaps, but they had won. With Yu's help.

Grunwald was a little perplexed at Yu. Apparently he'd been harried all the way in, more so than the Reich, then one of his worlds attacked in an attempt to draw him off. Other than a daring assault by Horus to attempt to destroy Yu's flagship nothing had worked. Even that attempt had merely forced him to make temporary repairs before continuing. He had to admit that particular Eel-head he might get used to.

Speaking of which Yu had demanded (when did he ever 'ask' for anything?) to speak with Grunwald personally and was due aboard shortly.

The meeting was fairly straight forward, mostly involving repairs and spoils. The Reich decided against stripping Al'coor, and instead ceded it to Yu if he thought he could sustain a world this far out. Yu could honestly care less. It was of more strategic value than anything, a foothold in Horus' space and a sword pointed at his throat. Grunwald rather liked that idea. The wrecks of Cheops and Hataks were split evenly two Cheops and six Hataks to each of them. Yu wasn't interested in the debris of destroyed ships so Grunwald took that as recompense of the 'loss' of the Al'coor system. Those pieces were either stored on one of the battleships or ferried down to the planet and shipped to Teutonia via the gate. The salvaged ships were not in good shape generally. Only two of the Hataks would have both sublight and hyperdrive repaired in the next couple of days. The rest would need help to get home. Thankfully that had been thought of before hand and the destroyers had been equipped with a clamp arrangement and a magnetic stabilizer to keep them steady in hyperspace. The destroyers would tow the wrecks home for either refurbishment or dismantling. More likely the latter. Components were far more useful in their own ship designs.

The last point however was raised by Yu. He wanted to be escorted through the gate to Teutonia personally to see the Fuhrer. "There are things we must discuss." was all he would say on the matter. Since the Fleet was going to be here a few days (Yu's as well) Grunwald didn't see a problem, and sent a few officers back with him while he stayed with the Fleet, preparing for the long trip back. With the varied stops on the way to either strip planets or assist in defense it would likely be three weeks before they returned home, so one battleship and four cruisers were split from the force back into Eighth Fleet and headed home, one of the repaired wrecks leading with it's faster hyperdrive.

Watching Yu descend to the planet in a Reich light transport Grunwald wondered what he wanted to talk about.

***

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

The Fuhrer, and everyone else, seemed flabbergasted at what the System Lord was telling them. Colonel General Meyer, head of the SS, looked positively ill, and got up and left the room. Thankfully Yu did not take offense at this.

"It is not an unreasonable suggestion Herr Fuhrer." Yu stated firmly.

"I... just don't see how it is possible. For the System Lords I mean." He stopped, shook his head for a moment, perplexed. "Look, I understand things have shifted a lot in these last year or two, but... why would the System Lord Council ever accept a non-Goa'uld to it's ranks?"

"It is not unprecedented." Yu stated softly, leaving the Fuhrer gaping at him. "Yes, aliens have been admitted to our ranks over the millenia. You would not be the first."

Himmler stared at him, then chuckled. A rather dry laugh perhaps, but at least it took the sour taste from his mouth.

"I'll bet they didn't last long did they?"

Yu actually smiled. Faintly, but it was noticeable.

"True. Such appointments were always a matter of strategy, usually on the part of Ra. Appease a powerful enemy, keep him close so you can find as much about him as possible, then strike. I believe the longest appointment of a non-Goa'uld was four years. Given the tens of thousands of years the council has existed that is not a significant amount."

Himmler sat back in his chair for a moment, pondering. The Reich sit on the Council? It was a ridiculous thought, but also somehow rather fitting. They thought to learn of the Reich's weaknesses, well, how better to learn of the Goa'uld's weaknesses than to sit in on their deliberations? But he still doubted those on the council would accept it.

"I think they would need more reason that this last campaign Yu." Himmler stated finally. "If anything it would make them more wary of us, not trusting."

"Not so. I have witnessed the shock when, just before I left, the extend of Horus' growth was made known. Even then we underestimated him. How he achieved such a build up of forces is still unknown. It is assumed those vessels were mostly Ra's and he simply seized them. I have not witnessed a fleet engagement of such size for thousands of years, not since the great combined force battles against Anubis."

Himmler was tempted to find out more of this Anubis, but now was not the time for history lessons. He noted it mentally for later.

"However you do have a fleet, almost as large as Horus had. Why is that?"

Yu did smile now, but a feral one.

"Indeed, but I had to uncover many of my worlds to deploy what you saw. I have a vast territory to guard, and even under Ra's edicts I was allowed more vessels than any other. I believe Ra thought me... simple, in my dealings. Not interested in the constant bickering. However it suited him to have a powerful stabilizing force that he could call on. Even now, without Ra, the rest of the System Lords know I am not interested in taking what is theirs. Only if they strike at me will I fight back. It is accepted. However my fleet is nothing compared to a potential combined fleet, and the System Lords know it. If were to ever step out of line they could get many of their number, and a greater number of lesser Lords, to join their cause and field a fleet vastly superior to my own."

Yu paused and leaned on the table, staring at Himmler.

"And yet, in the last few decades you have built a fleet to rival that of mine, with a capability none can question after today. You currently would be more powerful than any individual at the System Lord Council bar myself. Given your relatively small territory it should be fairly easy to defend without holding your fleet back as well. They will fear you. This is good. If you show your attitude is like theirs then they will, grudgingly, accept you. Given your power they can do little else. Do not expect any true acceptance, and know they will attempt to destroy you, as they would any other System Lord if they can get away with it."

Himmler pondered.

"I don't suppose gifting the Bio-Repair Pod tech to them would help would it?"

A short bark of laughter came from Yu, but not much of a smile.

"They would think it a trap, and it would be wouldn't it?" Himmler just grinned back. "No. If they seized it they would use it. Given freely? Never. This does bring up another point. Our arrangement. If you do join the Council you will need my assistance. Yet my trust in you was sorely tested by that... fiasco with the Bio-Repair Pods."

"You are aware that was not intended. Our sole aim was to remove the damage already caused. It was in our best interests and yours!"

Yu nodded slowly.

"Agreed, but still the duplicity lingers." He tipped his head to one side. "However the ruse was cunning in it's audacity. That I appreciate. I gives hope that you can deal with the Council on their terms."

"And our deal?"

There was a long pause.

"I will not enter your Pod." Yu stated firmly, and Himmler sighed. "I will however take one to examine and duplicate the technology. If there are no dangers I will use it."

Blinking Himmler managed to hold back the grin from spreading across his face.

"On one condition." He replied cautiously. "If we do this, you share your 'improved' version of the pod with us and explain your improvements to us so we can improve our own."

An even longer pause began as Yu peered intently at Himmler.

"Agreed." He said finally

The tension lifted in the room and several people let out breaths they hadn't realized they were holding.

The rest of the meeting was fairly standard, Himmler stating which worlds he was keeping and which giving up. The furthest of those he kept would be set up as an outpost to facilitate heavy ship trade with Yu. At only 120 lightyears from Al'coor it meant a little less than a week by ship, rather than over two weeks from Teutonia. The new base, to be named Neu-Lübeck, would be built up to a significant trade hub, with ample defense given it's spot in the heart of Horus' territory. The area around the gate was not exactly fertile however and a Destroyer was slated to move it to a more habitable location near a river far to the North East where a base would be constructed around it.

Given the recent bombings of Teutonia some talk of building an underground base was considered to house the gate, but it would make ferrying fighters through the gate more awkward, and if they had to move the gate in future it would be a significant issue. Thus instead a heavy shield would be built, even accounting for inefficiencies in atmosphere, to defend the facility. The gate would be enclosed in a hanger like defense arrangement, armored, but with huge doors on one side that could be opened to allow vehicles through easily.

A few days later Major General Gehlen comes to see the Fuhrer and suggests an addition to the talks of 'sitting on the Council'. Peliar.

"Perhaps these Eels would be more amenable if one of their own represented us? We would make no bones about him being our leader, but as a representative he might be allowed."

The Fuhrer had thought he himself would be forced to sit on every meeting if the arrangement went through. This was a significantly better idea. No doubt he would have to sit in on some meetings, but...

"Agreed, but you shall chaperon him Reinhard." This took the Intelligence officer by surprise, but he took the Fuhrer's orders with some grace at least.

It did mean some surgery however. Implants were designed to defeat a Symbiote from joining to Gehlen, or a few other mind altering techniques they could think of. While they were at it they put a standard Elite Stormtrooper implant in, boosting regeneration, strength and endurance. Just in case. It was still not quite as good as a Jaffa, but getting close. However the Nazi Jaffa were already surpassing their Goa'uld counterparts. The FFGs had risen in capabilities to outstrip the improvements the original Symbiotes could achieve. Nazi Jaffa were slightly stronger and healed quicker than normal Jaffa now. Hopefully as work continued this would improve.

April 1998

Work continued consolidating the territory the Reich had taken, tying down a lot of the fleet in defense, both at home and in the new planets. Most of them were lightly guarded, though Neu-Lübeck had two cruisers, a battlecruiser, a light carrier and four destroyers sitting in orbit, in addition to fighter squadrons and a slowly growing defense net. Ten thousand settlers came from Spelk, Heschel and Teutonia to the new planet, founding a town near the gate's new location, though sufficiently distant to make sure if the gate were bombed the town would not take fallout.

There were very little rare resources available in obvious places, though given the Goa'uld's crude mining techniques and given that the planet used to be a Naquadah mine there might be more available after they properly survey the world. Other metals and materials were fairly common, enough that the planet might be self sustaining in the future, though that would take a lot of time to build up the infrastructure for. For now the planet relied heavily on imports as it built it's new town. After founding they were surprised to see a few from Ventus wishing to immigrate. Allowance were made and visas granted.

Gate travel was still heavily regulated, but civilian traffic between certain planets and during certain times allowed for such measures, were allowed. Given the extra gates recently acquired on worlds with high traffic levels the Reich tested planting a second gate on a world, and found it worked fine, though the original gate at first tended to be labelled as the receiving gate, but it was a small matter to adjust a protocol so they could allocate whichever gate they wished as receiving gate at a given time of day. Soon regular shipments were arriving at new shipment centers, stationed near airports and railways, at Teutonia, Heschel and Spelk. The other three gates were given to the R&D center for the continued research into them. So far the research had stalled, though they had some interesting insights into how the rings worked at least.

Peliar finds the proposal of him 'leading' the Reich's delegation to the System Lords Council rather amusing and takes great enjoyment at having Gehlen as his 'assistant', though Gehlen refuses to wear the 'slave robe' Peliar lays out for him one day. Hopefully the Goa'uld was joking, and Gehlen gives him the benefit of the doubt. However for now Himmler is holding off on any actual offers to the Council, and Yu concurs. There is strife among them at present, a 'spat' between Bastet and Cronos, and they would merely be irritated at such an offer right now. Yu however says they should not wait long. The closer Yu & the Reich's victory against Horus is the better.

***

With a woosh the gate stabilized and soon four people step out onto the bleak landscape.

"Woah." Jack says, scanning the blasted trees. "Someone seriously did a number on this place."

Daniel straightened his glasses and gazed on the cratered landscape and the many deathglider wrecks scattered across the plains.

"Yeah, the MALP pictures really didn't do it justice. Teal'c, is this normal for a Goa'uld... raid?"

"It is not Daniel Jackson. However it is not unheard of. An orbital raid from an Hatak could result in something similar."

Daniel squinted slightly.

"But... you don't think so."

"I do not."

Jakc sighed.

"Well, as much as I'd like to shake the hand of the Snake who did this, well, before putting a bullet in him, I think we'd do better to scout around, huh gang?"

Daniel peers across the landscape.

"Not a lot to scout is there?"

"Oh come on Danny! Clear skies, wide open plains, fresh air. What more could you want?"

"A lack of decomposing corpses?"

"You're no fun." Jack said before turning and heading off, attempting to find somewhat flat ground to trek across. "I say we head for that building yonder."

"Yonder?" Sam says, raising an eyebrow at Jack.

"Yeah, yonder. You know, two ticks off 'that aways'. Come on." and he strides off a little quicker.

As they got closer it was obvious the building was Goa'uld, but not merely misshapen. Some serious damage had been done to it, and there was something poking up beyond to on the far side. SG1 trekked around the structure, keeping to the partially burned out forest for cover, and circled around. What was visible on the other side was... unusual.

"Is that... no... can't be." Jack says.

"Anyone got 'Indian Love Call' on a tape deck?" Sam mutters, staring up at the huge disk.

"I do not understand?" Teal'c says, and sees Daniel confused as well.

"Sorry, just looks so much like those flying saucers from Mars Attacks." Sam manages while looking at the wreck through a scope. Then she almost turns white. "Oh that's... no!"

"What ya got Carter?" Jack says.

"You gotta see this sir." and she points up to the surface of the disk, up near the center.

Looking through binoculars he stares up and blanches himself.

"Oooookay. Not what I expected to see on an alien spaceship."

The whole team closes and soon what disturbed Jack and Sam becomes visible to the naked eye. A faded, partially blasted off, Swastika!

"I do not understand. What does this symbol represent O'Neill?"

"Trouble Teal'c. It means Trouble."

"Gliders!" Daniel yells abruptly and they turn to see four death gliders circling the area.

"OK, back to the gate, double time! Seems these... guys, didn't finish the Snakes off."

They ran off at full tilt, thankfully staying ahead of the gliders, leaving the remains of the 'Alien' ship behind.

 

[Patupi]

April 1998

SG1 came through the gate at a clip, stumbling a little with their pace.

"Iris!" Jack yelled, and shortly after the familiar sliding 'Snick' sound came as the Iris sealed behind them. Thankfully nothing followed on and soon the gate shut down.

"Well, that was fun." Jack said, slapping his cap on his knees to get the dirt out of it.

"Oh yes, lets do that again." Daniel added sarcastically.

General Hammond strode into the room and looked the group over.

"I take it it did not go quite as planned? No wreckage to salvage?"

Jack laughed.

"Plenty of wreckage General, not sure we'll be doing any salvaging. We were chased out of there by gliders."

Sam sighed.

"Or Stormtroopers."

Daniel stared at her.

"Oh come on Sam, there are plenty of explanations other than that."

"Explanations?" Hammond interjected, then shook his head. "Briefing room in an hour Colonel. I'll be waiting to hear about it."

"Oh you ain't gonna believe it sir!"

***

"Nazis?" Hammond said incredulously, and saw Daniel's frustration. "I take it you don't agree Doctor Jackson?"

"No, it's ludicrous! OK, there's a symbol there..."

"Swastika. It's called a Swastika Daniel." Jack butted in.

Daniel glared at him then continued.

"The symbol though has been used throughout history, often as a symbol of luck..."

"Wasn't too lucky for Hitler was it?" Jack muttered.

"LUCK... " Daniel said emphatically, daring Jack to interrupt again, "and we've seen before that Goa'uld have taken symbols we're familiar with before as their own."

Sam sat forward and shook her head.

"I don't think so. I mean, yes we've seen that before, but this was a flying saucer. It was nothing like any Gould ship I've ever seen before. Besides, it wasn't just a Swastika, it was a black swastika on a white circle with a red background. That's pretty specific."

"The red was flaked off, it could have been part of the hull there. The whole ship... if it was a ship... was pretty burned up."

At this point Teal'c looked curiously from person to person.

"I do not understand the consternation. These 'Nazis', could they not have been taken from Earth by a Goa'uld as other slaves have been?"

"It was fifty years ago Teal'c," Jack said, "that's pretty recent. We've seen nothing that shows that the Gould have been here in centuries."

Daniel held a finger up for attention.

"Thousands of years actually. The recent ones we're fairly sure were taken off by Thor."

"You mean Cimmeria?" Sam interjected, Daniel nodded back.

"Yeah, well, that's my point." Jack added, looking back at Teal'c. "We know they couldn't have..." Jack stopped, and he turned to look at Daniel.

"Oh." Daniel said.

Hammond looked between Jack and Daniel, obviously exasperated they weren't continuing.

"What? Jack, you've thought of something?"

"The gate was in Germany, smuggled out of a bunker during the end of the war, right?"

"Yes, it looked as if they were examining it, attempting to figure out... You think they weren't figuring it out, that they had already figured it out?"

"What if they did, and sent a bunch of Nazis off world?" Jack said firmly.

"No, it still doesn't make sense." Daniel insisted. "I mean, even aside from not having a dialing device and no means or time to build one, they had no indication what it was, let alone a power source capable of charging it up. Then there is the tiny fact that they never had the coverstone. That came out of Giza years before. Without that how were they going to know what to dial?"

Jack looked slightly mollified at all that, but still stubborn.

"But what else could it be Daniel? It's the Nazi flag for crying out loud!"

Teal'c chose that moment to step in once again.

"And still I do not see your consternation O'Neill. These are individuals from a period in your planets past, yes? Relatively primitive. Even if they had survived they would not be capable of building such war machines."

"Huh, don't bet on it! Nazis and flying saucers go together like... peanut butter and jelly."

"These Nazis flew flying saucers here on Earth Fifty years ago?"

"Yes." Jack said, simultaneously with "No" from Daniel. They both looked at each other.

"Well, maybe." Jack managed. "OK, maybe not, but it's a thing, ya know? Nazis. Flying saucers. Deathbeams from planet nine. The whole nine yards!"

Daniel rolled his eyes.

"Look I think we're getting off track here." He interjected before Jack could get on another rant. "OK, so these guys use a swastika for a symbol. They could even have copied it from Germany's first TV broadcast. You know, the Olympic games?"

"Hello, black and white television." Jack said sarcastically.

"Well, whatever." Daniel said, glaring at him again. "The point is not who they are, but that someone out there who is not a Goa'uld is fighting them, and doing pretty well if that field of shattered Deathgliders is anything to go by."

"I don't think the crew of that flying saucer would consider it a 'win'." Jack replied.

"Still, they fought them and seemed to have space ships. They may be outmatched for all we know, but they are a force we could side with. Who knows what other weapons they have?"

"Yeah, the jackboots alone could stomp the entire Jaffa army."

"JACK!" Daniel said, his patience finally gone.

"What?" Jack said innocently. "It's what everyone is thinking!" He looks around at the perplexed stares. "Or... maybe not." He stares at Daniel for a few moments. "OK, perhaps Daniel has a point. At very least we could ask how they get their UFOs to fly, or maybe agree on some rental options. But going back to that planet is out of the question. Where there are gliders..."

Daniel grimaced back.

"Yeah, Jaffa are soon to follow. Someone owned that planet before those... unknowns trashed it. I'm guessing either the planet's owners are coming back, or some other Goa'uld is taking over."

"That would be a reasonable deduction Daniel Jackson." Teal'c added. "Whichever false god is there will likely improve his defenses after such an assault."

"And if the Space Nazis couldn't hack it what chance do we have?" He glances around as the other stare at him. "What? What else do want to call them?"

Daniel just sighed. That name would stick, he just knew it!

"Very well, we'll take that planet off the dialing list for now." General Hammond said, then turned to Samantha. "But see if you can locate any nearby gate locations for further missions. Perhaps we can find these... individuals, whoever they are, and enlist their help. Dismissed people."

Sam still looked stunned as she left with the others. 'Space Nazis'! Whatever next?

 

[Patupi]

May 1998

As the infrastructure builds on Neu-Lübeck it is decided that it does need some orbital construction, and the mobile Shipyard currently doing upgrades and repair in Teutonia orbit heads out towards the newly acquired planet. It will take a month to get their at it's speed, but then the planet will be able to build anything up to a cruiser, albeit slowly. Best guess is it would take over one and a half years to build a cruiser, and that assumes that materials were shipped through the gate. If the ship yard has to mine it's own resources in the belt it would take even longer. Eventually a proper construction slip will be built there, but for now this will suffice.

After much packing and careful dismantling, a Bio-Repair Pod was brought to the gate room in five large containers, with four technicians to help install it. Then the entire ensemble, plus crew, was shipped to Yu's throne world. The technicians would return in a few days once everything was working. Yu did not give a time frame for when the 'improved' version would be ready, but Himmler had been insistent on regular updates. He was not going to simply give the Bio-Repair technology to him for free! They wanted the Goa'uld version of it to study.

Fleet activities were up again, but now back in training mode. The SS, already holding one cruiser, was 'requesting' a battlecruiser for their Raumflotte section of the Waffen SS. Given the increase in size of the Raumflotte of late it was not considered unreasonable, especially when the Waffen SS repeatedly won the various trials during fleet exercises. They worked hard to maintain their image as top dog. The other parts of the fleet were somewhat broken up, about half spread out among various worlds in defensive roles. Teutonia's Orbital Shipyard's repair bays were working overtime on the Deutschland and the Baldr to get them back into shape, actually taking the chance to perform upgrades on the Deutschland that weren't possible before with bulkheads blown and torn free. The first Battleship built was now being upgraded to full '4th gen' status, whereas before it had always been something half way between 3rd and 4th in class.

At Al'coor the last of the ships had been surveying the wreckage and found one cruiser and one destroyer that were salvageable. They were hauled back, along with salvage from the rest of the wrecks, to hopefully be repaired at Teutonia later. The system was finally fully ceded to Yu, Reich forces retreating back to Neu-Lübeck or Teutonia.

***

"NO! This is abominable! I will never agree to such... such disgusting a suggestion!" Bastet yelled, glaring daggers at Reinhard, who merely smiled back.

"This is fine with us. Truly such minor matters as the System Lords hardly affect the Reich greatly. We were curious when Yu suggested it, but if that is your will, so be it."

He turned to leave and Yu placed a hand on his shoulder, halting him, while staring at the amassed System Lords.

"This is not a matter of choice. The Reich and I have just defeated the largest fleet this galaxy has seen in over a thousand years. You know what Horus would have done had he finished assembling his fleet. He would have enforced his will on you all. And where is he now? The mighty Lord slinks away in shame at his losses. I say he no longer deserves a seat at this council, but the Reich do."

Baal looked ill, though kept his peace. Cronos merely mused quietly, staring intently at the newcomer. Others seemed divided in their interest, some seeming as if this were a mere diversion. Not worthy of their attention. Others peered intently at Reinhard, attempting to work out what he truly represented. Was this a game of Yus? He was not known for such trickery.

"Speak plainly." Cronos said slowly. "You seek admittance to this council, an austere body that holds sway over the entire galaxy? What do you bring to us that might be worthy of such rewards?"

Reinhard turned and smiled at the Greek styled System Lord, currently agreed to be the most powerful of the other lords.

"You mean other than the firepower to wipe any one of you out of existence? Not much." Several of the Goa'uld present riled at this and Reinhard waved them away. "We have no interest in seizing your territory. It will take us a long time to develop what we have, probably over a hundred years. Frankly that alone will suffice for us." Then he tipped his head to the side, peering at one after another of the System Lords present. "Unless one of you wishes to challenge us? That may be... interesting."

Yu grimaced.

"We do not have time for such posturings. Horus is still at large, obviously has access to many items once held by Ra, and has shown a willingness to move against other System Lords. He has lost his fleet, but who knows what other threats he poses to us. The Reich have proven themselves worthy in combat against him. They should join us in the hunt for this scum!"

"No." Baal said calmly. "They won against Horus simply because you joined the battle. They are of little interest to me."

"Odd." Reinhard said, still smiling. "That wasn't what your Jaffa said. Tell me Baal, have you told the august personages here about the new weapons you've been developing?"

Faces turned abruptly to Baal, whose face turned from placid to rage.

"How dare you accuse me of lying to the council! I have not..."

"I can supply samples. A new particle beam weapon I believe, specifically designed to combat smaller craft such as Al'kesh and gliders. I wonder why you have not discussed it with the Council, especially as Horus seems to favor large fleets of Al'kesh?"

"Speak Baal." Cronos ground out. "Does he speak the truth?"

Baal's eyes furtively scanned the crowd, then he smiled.

"It was a mere tactical weapon, no more. They are useless against Hataks..."

"Or our cruisers and battleships." Reinhard butted in softly.

"It would make no difference to the council's deliberations! I am not held to account on such matters! Tell me none of you are not fielding new technology now Ra is not restricting us any more?" A few furtive glances proved he had hit home. "These Reich are mere humans. Mortals meddling in the affairs of Gods. They do not deserve to live."

Yu glared back at Baal.

"Reinhard Gehlen is under my protection."

"And mine." Came another voice, and Peliar stepped forward, wearing an ornate jet black SS uniform. He had thought it amusing, while the SS nearly had a fit.

"Who is this?" Baal yelled at Yu.

Yu waved at Peliar as he strode into the room's center.

"This is Peliar, and he will be the one sitting on the council seat for the Reich."

Peliar's eyes glowed and made a feral grin and he picked out a sulking face among the crowd.

"Hello Camulus. Fancy meeting you here?"

"Enough!" Cronus yelled. "Why did you not say a Goa'uld would be the member Yu?"

"Because he will be representing the Reich. You must accept them as allies against Horus so..."

"WE MUST DO NO SUCH THING!" Baal yelled back, even louder. "This... thing is not a true Goa'uld. None would serve the likes of these mortals. I say we exterminate these vermin now."

Baal moved forwards to Reinhard, who promptly spun kicked, casting the System Lord across the room.

"My, that was invigorating." He said, smiling as various Jaffa and slaves around the room tensed. "Do not think to challenge me Baal. We are perfectly capable of defending ourselves. Even here where no weapons are allowed."

Cronos glanced around the chamber, reading faces slowly, then turned back to Yu, Peliar and Reinhard.

"You will leave. There is no consensus here. We will discuss this and meet again in two months." Then he strode up to Reinhard and came within inches of his face. "Do not treat us so cavalierly again. If you make one wrong move I will rip your lungs from your body and feast upon your heart before you. Now GO!"

Reinhard managed to keep his mild smile and simply shrugged.

"Very well. If you need our assistance Yu knows how to contact us." and he turned and strode out, Peliar following on behind.

"Well, that went well." He said to Reinhard.

"Pretty much what I expected. I think Yu has too high a hopes for us joining that... group. I severely doubt they will allow us entry. Which is fine by me. I only do this because the Fuhrer ordered it, not because I believe it the right course."

Peliar chuckled and followed him to the Tel'tak waiting for him at the docking ring. Eventually these scum would make up their minds, one way or the other. When they did the Reich would be ready.

***

SG-1 bridled as they were escorted by Jaffa towards the nearby Goa'uld encampment of Heru'ur (Horus). The Jaffa seem not in the mood for any trouble, Ma'Tok staffs firmly raised, pointing at the group's backs.

DANIEL:Before they rode into battle, the Sioux used to say, "This is a good day to die."

O'Neill backhands Daniel lightly on the arm, as a rumbling like thunder is heard in the distance. The team and the Jaffa stop walking and look up at the clear, blue sky. Looking around for the source of the continued thunder, they remain stopped. The Jaffa guarding them seem nervous.

DANIEL:Then again, maybe not.

Still puzzling at the source of the noise, O'Neill turns back towards the rest of the group. Daniel, staring up at something in the sky, reaches back blindly and pats O'Neill on his back to get his attention. O'Neill turns around and follow's Daniel's gaze. Above the single, nearly completed pyramid, an ominous black cloud roils and churns.

Jack Pulls off his sunglasses slowly

O'NEILL:Oh, my!

The cloud continues to form and a large spaceship can be seen descending from within the cloud.

DANIEL:Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is…Thor's chariot.

TEAL'C:an Asgard mothership.

The Jaffa escort mill around nervously, staring up at the sight in shock.

TEAL'C:I've heard them described in Jaffa legend.

The Jaffa point their weapons to the ship in the sky. Suddenly, a continuous screech can be heard and a bright light consumes the Jaffa that were escorting SG-1. O'Neill and company turn to see the light beaming out of the Asgard mothership and cause all the Jaffa in their encampment to disappear. The light is also consuming the pyramid landing site on the ground.

***

Back at the Stargate Heru'ur grimaces as he watches the pyramid he had so painstakingly built to land his ships and repair them, rapidly be dismantled by the Asgard. Damn them!

Cursing softly he wonders what else can go wrong as he steps backward through the gate.

***

SG-1 are now alone on the road. The Jaffa are gone. The destruction of the pyramid is complete and the encampment is empty. Behind the team, a light shines down and deposits Gairwyn on the road. Smiling, she walks up easily to the team.

GAIRWYN:The Etins are gone. Thor sends his thanks. It was your help that made this possible.

DANIEL:Well, to be honest with you, I think we got kinda lucky.

GAIRWYN:He told me to give you a message to satisfy your curiosity. I'm to tell you he's a member of a species who have visited your world often. They are a friend to all, protector of all, except the Goa'uld, with whom they are at war.

O'NEILL:Well, that's very nice. But I'd still like to meet the old guy.

GAIRWYN:Well, he said that, like us, you're still much too young.

The SG-1 members smile, knowingly at each other.

GAIRWYN:For us, there is still much to rebuild. Thor has promised to leave an Asgard teacher behind to help us.

TEAL'C:Then Cimmeria will be a safe world again. That is good.

GAIRWYN:Yes, it is. I'm to tell you that Thor's new Hammer will make an exception for the one called Teal'c. You are welcome here anytime.

Their attention is drawn once again to the Asgard mothership in the sky as it slowly ascends.

Hopefully they'd get to meet the old guy soon.

 

[Patupi]

June 1998

Work is still going on with the long term Gate Project, but after some rather spectacular failures in the attempted use of ring components in the gate designs (now no longer being used in the gate project) they have found some fascinating revelations about how the ring components function. This has led to a rework on the other project of understanding the ring transporters. At present they still cannot build a Ring transporter from scratch, but now they can build one mostly using Reich tech, with a few Goa'uld components... but these components do not necessarily come from Rings themselves. Various actuators and control system relays from various sources can be re-purposed to be used in Ring construction. Similarly the physics is not well understood yet so all they can do is recreate replicas of the ring system rather than vary how it works, but they are getting the building blocks of an understanding of what the rings do. At least these Reich built rings don't have to have overly ornate exteriors with either a stone or gold finish. With the stockpile of parts from wrecked Goa'uld vessels they can, in theory, now build as many rings as they want. The matter splitter modification can also be built into a set of three rings as well, enabling the system to be more stable than the ad hoc setup used up till now. This, along with better production, speeds up mining potential in the asteroids, moons and rings of Reich systems by a considerable margin.

Once they get them into production.

The new models are five, simple, solid metal rings, squarish in cross section and using a black and red paint job, or a camouflage one where needed. They are somewhat lighter than Goa'uld models, usually rely on external power, but have far greater control on how they function. They can lock out external connections if needed, though usually they are left open so they can be connected to in emergencies. Standard procedure now though is to lock out rings on ships when the red alert sounds automatically. They are compatible with Goa'uld rings, and the two systems connect together without any issues. The Reich rings are also somewhat less durable than the Goa'uld models. Both in sheer toughness and in the length of their working life, but overall it is seen as a good, functioning system. Testing of the first batch of ten is commencing now, and will likely be finished in mid July when they will begin installing on ships, both civilian and military.

It is hoped that eventually the system can be transferred into a non-ring system, say a booth or other system that would be more convenient to build into ship systems. At present the hovering rings that align themselves using gravitio-magnetic systems to get the matter converters perfectly set up, work well, but the whole snapping up and down to use is annoying. Usually a small ring on the inside top edge of the upper ring is painted with yellow and black warning lines with the words 'WARNING. RISES AT HIGH SPEEDS WHEN ACTIVE. DO NOT STEP ON RINGS' in bold German text around the edge. Some work on making them pressure sensitive so they cannot rise when something is resting on them is ongoing.

 

[Patupi]

June 1998

During June there were several meetings between Yu and the Fuhrer. No mention was made of the Bio-Repair Pod 'gifted' to Yu by either party, though Himmler was itching to know if Yu had tried it, or perhaps even found ways to improve the technology. Instead he was given 'pointers' on how to behave in the System Lord Council... should they ever actually get in. However it could hardly be called 'helpful tuition'. Yu's efforts at giving advice tended towards the terse, with him thoroughly frustrated in Himmler's inadequacies (as he saw it) and Himmler annoyed that Yu gave so little information while expecting him to know what was going on.

By the fourth such meeting Yu had given up and allowed a subordinate deal with Himmler's education in these matters, and things did go a little smoother. It wasn't that much to grasp anyway. It was hardly high politics, more of a exchange of grudges and posturing, Feudal in effect. Himmler did not see that he would have much of a problem, but appreciated the insights into general practices of individual Goa'uld and past tricks and tactics others had employed. Of course Yu or his subordinate did not give much out relating to his own dealings. Despite his willingness to deal heavily with the Reich he did not truly trust them well... just more than any of his fellow Goa'uld.

The fleet continued to slowly build, and the mobile repair yard has arrived at Neu-Lübeck and laid the keel on a cruiser, though that would take time to complete. There was talk of shipping prebuilt components through the gate and by ship to shorten the time for the first vessel to be finished, but that would increase the cost of the endeavor considerably, mostly due to FTL shipment of larger components. If done it was likely it would only be done on the first cruiser to be built there.

With the Zyklon B stealth destroyers up to 5 in number once more they are sent to scout areas around Reich territory, especially in Horus' area of space. They have orders to only engage if absolutely necessary, but instead gather information on Horus' planets and ships. Surprisingly this bears fruit almost immediately, Horus' large flagship spotted near Reich space around an uninhabited planet. The Reich has made attempts to study the 'hyperspace denial' system he used on them, and so far cannot replicate it. However they can get captured versions to work and have managed to install a version in the cargo bay of a battleship. It is hoped they can disable Horus and finally end this. They do not contact Yu and instead launch a rapid strike on their own with three battleships and four cruisers (including the Ullr for hyperspeed) with a support fleet of transports and a couple of carriers.

It is wondered if this might be a trap, but they don't believe Horus is aware of the latest design of stealth destroyer and are fairly sure he can't detect them, plus as the Zyklon B's wait they find a slow build up of Al'kesh and a few Cheops alongside the Flagship. It seems he is building a fleet, though what for is a mystery. He can't have enough to assault the Reich directly.

It seems however that Horus disagrees. As the destroyers watch his fleet of six Cheops, two Hatak and a fifty Al'kesh jump to hyperspace and are tracked heading for Isseum. Receiving subspace updates en-route the Reich fleet adjusts it's course, expecting to arrive before Horus gets there. The fleet stations themselves fairly far out system and readies their hyperdrives for a microjump, hoping to catch Horus as he arrives. With Grunwald in command once again they take the fight to Horus, even as he attempts to bring it to the Reich.

Horus jumps to normal space a little outside the system, and the Reich is surprised to find his hyperwindow signature is almost undetectable. It seems he knows about the first gen detection satellites and has adapted to them, but not to the Hyper Pulse scanners that have tracked him the whole way in. Grunwald microjumps in on top of him, just as two Cheops and ten Al'kesh are accelerating away from the rest of the fleet at high speed. Grunwald suspects this was an effort to bring them to relativistic speeds and slam them into the planet and orbital defense stations, but they haven't built up their velocity yet and are smashed by weapons fire immediately, two battleships destroying the Cheops in short order at this close range, and the cruisers battering the Al'kesh away. The remaining battleship fires on the flagship, both with it's main weapons and the hyperspace inhibiter.

Grunwald knows that once the shield is down (assuming the inhibiter resonance doesn't cause significant damage when it collapses) the ship will be able to jump once more, so targets the hyperdrive systems with his main weapons. When the shields come down Horus won't be going anywhere.

The rest of the Al'kesh mob the fleet, expecting to be able to suicide to do significant damage to the capital ships. The Reich is ready for this. In a pre-planned maneouver, the light carriers have been stripped to a skeleton crew, and now jump in to close range and launch fighters. They can't jump out immediately, but accelerate away from battle fast while the Jaegers intercept the Al'kesh before they can ram the cruisers and battleships. The carriers are vulnerable, but with so little crew it would not be disasterous if they were lost, and they are older designs. The battle is a mess, but few Al'kesh get through, and it's obvious Horus did not bring nearly enough ships to this fight. He was hoping to take the Reich by surprise, severely damage the defenses with long range, relativistic bombardment using ships as weapons, then follow up with conventional ships to wipe away the rest of the defenses. What he hoped to achieve by this is uncertain. He has been reviled by the System Lords so how did he expect to hold this planet after he took it? It doesn't make sense. Another System Lord would have easily been able to destroy what little ships he had here.

The last Hatak is destroyed and the Al'kesh are down to less than twenty ships, stuck in a bitter dogfight with Reich fighters, when the flagship's shields drop. Immediately the Uberbeam smashes through where the shield was and strikes the hyperdrive generator, vaporizing the exterior portion. Horus is stuck, and shortly afterwards rings activate on his ship, deep in the troop area, and a pod arrives. Nearby Jaffa fire at the pod, but it appears armored, but hissing oddly. The nerve agent spreads rapidly, killing hundreds of Jaffa before Horus realizes what is happening and seals bulkheads, stopping it from wiping out the rest of his forces. Shortly afterwards the pod stops hissing, then the rings activate again, swapping the pod for several Stormtroopers in armored power suits. The bulky suits are completely sealed and protect against the nerve agent, though still one trooper scans the area to monitor the agent, waiting to release a counter agent to help break the nerve agent down. For now more power troopers arrive, fully suited in the heavy armor, stomping through the area that had been cleared of Jaffa. Large frames are brought in filled with missiles and set up, and shortly afterwards small probes roll off down the corridors seeking the bulkheads. Once identified, missiles streak off the large racks, roaring down the corridor on grav pods and plasma rockets, smashing into the bulkheads and breaching them, letting the agent spill into the next section.

The power troopers stomp on, pulling their missile racks along with them, and every now and then they stop to breach the next section. Soon the Jaffa are not dying from the gas, the agent spread too thin to affect them enough to kill them before their symbiotes can cure the effects, and the troops release the counter agent to get rid of the redundant gas. Now it is a slugging match, but hundreds of troops have been boarded, all in heavy armor that can shrug off several direct strikes from Staff weapons, and when the heavy staff cannons are spotted the missiles streak out ahead to destroy them before the troops arrive. Casualties among the Reich troops are low, and so far over six hundred Jaffa have perished.

It's a massacre.

Horus has no capital ships left to jump to, though he has rings to hand. He could attempt to ring to an Al'kesh, but they are all heavily engaged in combat, and likely will not last long. Already weapons fire from the battleships has targeted his weapons and burned off over half of them. He hasn't even dropped the shields of one of the enemy and is desperately thinking of a way to win this.

"I surrender to your will." Horus' face says, his eyes downcast as Grunwald looks at the viewscreen. "I ask only that you not turn me over to the System Lords."

With a smile Grunwald merely nods agreement.

"Cease your assault, I will order my Jaffa to do the same."

"Really." Grunwald says slowly. "And why would I do that? Do you intend to glare me to death over the viewscreen?"

"I assume you want this ship. Otherwise you would have destroyed it once my shields were down." Horus said, giving his best glare, not that it worked.

"It would be nice, but frankly I think your design is poor. It would require a lot of work to make it an effective vessel." Grunwald says, with a soft smile. "Are you planning on blowing yourself up? Feel free."

Horus almost says something about the Reich loosing it's troops that are aboard his ship, but it is obvious Grunwald is not that worried.

"I am surrendering. Do you not wish my fealty?"
Grunwald almost laughed. The thought that he would ever trust Horus to work under him? Preposterous! However, he was offering surrender.

"If you insist. Order your troops to surrender and join our forces willingly first, then I will accept your surrender."

"I cannot stay here if I do so. I would not trust my Jaffa to hold back their wrath against me." Horus said grudgingly. "I will need to leave this craft immediately!"

"That can be arranged, but order your troops to surrender first. Then I vow you can ring aboard and we will not kill you."

"Not kill me or not harm me?"

Grunwald merely smiled.

Sighing resignedly Horus agreed, gave the order to his Jaffa, and then moved to his transporter, but grinned when facing away from the viewer, activating a small capsule fastened to his belt, a very short timer counting down.

Grunwald lowered the shield and allowed the rings to accept Horus' transport stream. He wasn't worried about battle damage. Very few of the flagship's weapons were operational, and the few Al'kesh wouldn't do much damage to the thick armor on the ship in the few moments the shield would be down.

Horus was surprised to see he arrived on the bridge he'd seen on the viewscreen, but noticed a faint shimmer of a forcefield separating him from the bridge crew. However when he steadied himself against a wall he smiled as he felt it without a energy barrier between him and the metal. An indicator light blinked on the capsule on his belt, seen out of the corner of his eye, and he held back his smile.

"Very well Horus. Remove all your weaponry and we will accept your surrender." Grunwald said, his eyes flicking down to a viewscreen then back to Horus every second or so.

Horus merely smiled. He waited a few seconds, ample time for the nanobots to locate the shield system and disable it, along with other ship systems. They were programmed to invade any control system, find controls for doors or energy systems, either weapons or shields, and disable them. That included hand weapons. They also would give him verbal control on all doors.

"I think not." Horus said with a sneer, then raised his hand, still with a ribbon hand device on, and gestured at Grunwald.... and nothing happened. He frowned, and gestured again, still with no effect.

"Did you believe I would let you on board without disabling your technology? I see you brought some Sub Mu machines with you. No doubt some infiltration device. They have had their individual power cores stripped by the way. Oh and Horus?" Horus had been staring at his ribbon device, and now looked up at Grunwald. "Thank you for resisting."

Grunwald raised his Deathray side arm and shot Horus in the neck, almost severing his head. The body slumped to the floor, some blood trickling out past the cauterized wound. Grunwald sighed as he stared at the dead System Lord.

"Strip the symbiote out and destroy it, but put the body in the Bio-Repair Pod. I want to know if the host has any information on what Horus was doing." Grunwald said dispassionately and turned back to the bridge staff. "Now, ensure those Jaffa on that ship stay surrendered. I want that ship secured as soon as possible!"

Grunwald knew it had been stupid to bring him onto the bridge, but he just couldn't resist the temptation to look him in the eye before Horus pulled his 'trick'. The Reich built rings had separated all the Naquadah from both his Sub-Mu machines and his body, meaning the tiny robots had no power and his body couldn't control his tools. Rather ironic actually.

Smiling he oversaw the capture of the Jaffa, who mostly were pretty compliant, and the start of the repair work on the hyperdrive. Soon they would have a new ship to add to the fleet, and some interesting news for Yu.

 

[Patupi]

June 1998

Horus' ex host was very cooperative, almost cringingly so. Wiping the 'joyous' tear stains from his shirt the SS officer reported that Horus was here to retrieve something of Ra's, though the host wasn't sure what. Whatever it was was hidden here a long time ago, long before Horus took over the system and made it his throne world. He also had a hint that it wasn't on the inhabited planet either, but elsewhere in the system. It seems even Horus was not quite sure of it's location, but had some kind of detector being built on his ship. A hunt begins to find whatever this detector is, while the Jaffa are being escorted outsystem through the gate. By the time the hyperdrive was repaired a couple of days later they had found at least five unknown devices that might be the 'detector', but all of them used the Goa'uld's Naquadah laced blood to control via mental command. Reich scientists were working on an electrical device that could manually activate and control such mechanisms through a control interface, but it was no-where near ready yet and the technology was somewhat experimental anyway. For the moment it looked like they needed Peliar to test them.

Peliar was amenable to testing the devices and soon arrived through the gate. A 'lab' was set up on a transport vessel in orbit (just in case one of the devices proved to be a bomb) and Peliar and a small group of scientists, along with some guards (for Peliar's security of course) set up shop. Peliar began to work with the devices but had some difficulty. Most of them had some kind of activation key, and a lot of work was spent between Peliar and Horus' ex-host to determine what they might have been.

A couple of keys were found, activating two items. A hand held scanner that could track Naquadah sources in real time from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, and a storage device that held information on numerous planets in Horus' empire. After another day of work they were getting nowhere with the other devices, when one of the Reich scientists wondered if the Naquadah scanner was the 'detector' after all. It seemed odd, as the sensors of the ship could do something similar. Horus would hardly need a special device for this. However when activated they noticed one trace that was not on the ship's sensors.

On the moon around Isseum was a large source of Naquadah that was invisible to all other scanners. A ship was sent to investigate, landing troops in power armor to scout the location. At first nothing was located, but Peliar suggested that perhaps it required a Goa'uld to be present. Using a personal shield that Horus had seemingly modified to hold air in, he ventured onto the airless moon with the troops and hunted using the scanner. The source was underground, but locating the spot directly above he found a pillar lift itself from the ground before him with a ribbed Goa'uld control interface. Nervously he placed his hand within but found it rejected his control and retracted into the ground.

It seems there was further protection here.

Grunwald was surprised it hadn't killed Peliar. What would make Ra build something that wouldn't cover up it's existence by destroying those that hunted it who didn't give the right code? Perhaps it was meant for others to find, but only select others? After talking with the ex-host Peliar thought he had a clue. This was some kind of weapon left for a specific purpose. No matter how much Ra was self absorbed he did think beyond his own needs on occasion... if he was sufficiently driven. And one such drive was revenge. It seemed Ra was obsessed over Annubis' return, even given that most thought him dead. Ra had sequestered numerous mechanisms to fight Annubis should he return, and part of that was a fleet of Cheops, slowly assembled over time by some automated means. This was unusual. Though the Goa'uld did have the Sub Mu machines that could build ships, they usually always ensured that such construction must be activated by a Goa'uld and filled it with 'magical' overtones to reinforce their image as gods. Ra however wanted these ships built in secret, with no Jaffa or Goa'uld to see, but didn't want them lost. If he died he didn't want Annubis to win in his absense and allowed for a System Lord to unlock the ships.

This chamber might be one of those vast construction hangers, or it might be something else. However whatever it was was designed to fight Annubis, that much was certain. It was possible that the Reich could just blast their way down to find out what was there, but it wasn't certain whether the place had a self destruct or not. Another option was to bring Yu in... who then would likely demand the place be turned over to him (at least several in the SS feared such) and that didn't seem a good option. It was unknown how the machine could tell if someone was on the System Lord Council or not, but there obviously was another option.

For the Reich join the Council, then the Fuhrer, or Peliar if a Goa'uld was required, would open the facility. There was a problem with this however. They did not want Peliar to be their 'Lord' on the Council, and merely being an assistant on the Council would likely not be enough to trigger whatever this was. If it didn't work with the Fuhrer (and there was no guarantee of this) they were unsure what to do.

In the end it was decided to leave this for the moment and leave no trace the Reich had landed here. With the existing protection Ra had built into it this place should be safe until they decide how to gain entry.

July 1998

Another meeting with the System Lords does not go well for Peliar and Gehlen. Insults, accusations and threats are the mainstay here, but after the meeting Camulus meets with them privately, stating he is willing to support their membership if the Reich would be willing to share certain technologies with him. This is politely refused, but it offers possibilities in the future. Obviously the Goa'ulds want the Uberbeam technology, which the Reich will not part with, but there might be other technologies they could. Such as the Bio-Repair Pod. That would be suitably ironic. However such dealings would have to be done carefully so it does not appear as if they are forcing such tech on the Goa'uld.

Some in the Reich government however say this would be a bad thing to attempt. Yu is a known quantity and him being healthier and saner a definite plus. Other Goa'uld would not be a benefit to the Reich to do this to. In fact it could make some even more of a threat to them. Arguments on this issue slow down any thought of making such deals to gain a place on the council, and several suggest that the System Lords would double cross the Reich anyway. Somehow get the tech then arrange it so they fail to get on the council afterwards, or get on and are almost immediately kicked off, making it of no use whatsoever.

Another meeting with Yu follows the Council meeting, though no mention of Ra's cache is made. He states that Bastet has seized over a quarter of Horus' old territory, and a large army of Jaffa. Others of Horus' planets have been seized by a variety of Lords, some by Cronos, but most by minor Goa'uld taking individual worlds. The Reich will likely have quite a few new neighbors now.

Yu states that he believes killing Horus was a mistake (though how he and the other System Lords knew that Horus was dead less than a month after the fact is not explained). With him still in the shadows others resisted taking his worlds. Now Horus property has merely filled others coffers and Bastet particularly is becoming a problem. She still is not the most powerful System Lord, even being behind Baal, but has gained considerably in strength. There are also rumors that she is making deals with Baal outside Council chambers. About what no-one knows. Those two together have more strength than Cronos, though not quite as much as Yu. The Fuhrer still says the Yu should insist on leading the Council. If he has more power than Cronos why does Cronos still form the titular head of the System Lords? Yu repeats what he has said before. 'Such things do not interest me.' and leaves it at that. However Himmler suspects it is more he has seen what has befallen those high in the System Lord Council before and does not wish to attract any more attention than he does now.

Yu leaves saying that he believes the Reich should be very careful how they deal with their borders. Tighten security, destroy all that come close. May will attempt to probe and weakness will not be tolerated.

Meanwhile a signal has been detected by the outpost near Hebridan from a ship in orbit. Contact proves it to be from that world, a small diplomatic courier vessel. After communications at long range the vessel accepts the offer of a landing spot and comes down to talk to the Reich. The scientists present are impressed with the sleek craft as it comes in, though there is no sign of antigravity systems it uses a variant of the vectored thrust, but using some unknown particle based drive. Whatever it is it seems both more efficient than Reich Ion engines and more powerful. It looks as if this ship, though somewhat dependant on reaction mass, could out perform most Goa'uld vessels.

The emissary, when he leaves the ship, is a surprise. Apparently Hebridan has both Humans and Serrakin on the planet, integrated into one culture, or so the emissary, named Kavin, says. It seems he is impressed by the few light transports and fighters present as well, very interested in the 'hovering technology' as he puts it.

Talks last some time, and the Reich negotiators find Kavin and his crew to be helpful and friendly, but definitely not a pushover. It seems they have had their share of political problems. These talks end mostly with just stating that this planet does not fall under Hebridan ownership and stating where their borders lay. It seems they have only a handful of worlds, all centered close together, and have not heard of the stargate at all. They are a very mercantile empire though, and are interested in trading for a gate. With present hyperspeeds it would be a significant journey to travel to Hebridan from Teutonia, but if a ship can be constructed here the Reich may be able to locate a closer gate... or perhaps build one.

One option they have is dismantling a gate, shipping it through another gate to their outpost world near Hebridan, then reassembling it on the other side. This is not a trivial task, but the gate project science team think it may be possible. Gates are very difficult to disassemble and are very tough. Also the task of putting it back together again afterwards (and hoping it works) so far has not been achieved successfully.

Another aspect that comes up is government. The Hebridians seem to be a republic/democracy setup, which does not fill the Reich with enthusiasm. They feel such governments are inefficient and just places for corruption to grow. The Hebridians are not that keen on Reich politics either, seeing them as far too authoritarian and lacking in commercial freedoms, but so far these views have not soured the talks. The ship leaves after a week with hopes that deals can be made in the future.

***
Carter Jacob and Martouf tumble through the event horizon, steadying themselves on the metal grill of the gate ramp in Stargate Command.

SELMAK: I must give you thanks. You have saved my life and that of my new host. We thank you.

GARSHAW: This is wonderful news.

HAMMOND: Yes. Can we talk to your host?

Jacob bows his head, coughs, then looks around sheepishly.

JACOB: So when the little fella inside me is talking, do I sound like she does?

TEAL'C: That is correct.

JACOB: It's strange. I can feel myself talking, but it's not me saying the words. You know?

O'NEILL: Don't know. Take your word for it.

DANIEL: How do you feel?

JACOB: Well, considering I got one of those things inside me, pretty damn good!

Teal'c smiles at him approvingly.

JACOB: Listen, George. Because of this blending thing, I already know everything there is to know about the Tok'ra. You made the right call.

O'Neill joins Teal'c and smiles surround them, from Hammond, Martouf and Carter, too.

HAMMOND: I hope so.

JACOB: I would be proud to serve as liaison between the Earth and these people.

HAMMOND: Good. Well, on that note, perhaps you can ask them to come with me to do a little debriefing.

GARSHAW: I'm afraid we cannot. We must go.

Hammond frowns, looking at her with a little shock.

TEAL'C: You are safe here.

GARSHAW: Because of the spy, the Goa'uld may already be at the site the Tok'ra have moved to.

CARTER: You can't stay a little longer?

MARTOUF: No, we must go quickly and stop the tunnels there before they are grown.

GARSHAW: We must move the Tok'ra to yet another new home. Do you not have a dialing device here?

O'NEILL: Yeah, we slapped a little one together.

GARSHAW: Hmm, you made it yourself, impressive. Will you show it to me? I would like to put in the coordinates myself.

HAMMOND: This way.

Hammond says, leading them out of the gate room, with Jacob, Martouf and Carter staying near ramp. Martouf looks at Sam instensely as the others arrive in the control room.

MARTOUF: I give you my word, I will watch over you father as if he were my own.

CARTER: Thank you.

MARTOUF: I look forward to seeing you again.

CARTER: So do I.

Martouf smiles, then walks away to stand before the Gate. Jacob approaches his daughter.

JACOB: It's ironic, ain't it?

CARTER: What?

JACOB: I was trying to find you a better assignment and you didn't need it. Now you've found me the best assignment an old soldier could dream up. Thanks, kid.

CARTER: You're welcome. Do you have to go so soon?

JACOB: Yeah. I have to go. Apparently, I'm the oldest and wisest among us.

CARTER: Oh jeez.

With a woosh the stargate activates and Garshaw re-enters the gateroom with O'Neill.

GARSHAW: There will come a time when the Tok'ra and the people of the Tau'ri will destroy the Goa'uld System Lords.

O'NEILL: That'll be a good day.

Daniel enters the room, approaching Garshaw with a Sagan Institute box.

DANIEL: Um…

he hands her the box.

DANIEL: …this box has a signature in it we can recognise. Just send it through the Gate and we'll know you want to contact us.

GARSHAW: Thank you. Come, Selmak.

Jacob and Carter embrace warmly.

JACOB: I love you.

CARTER: I love you too, Dad.

They let go, and Jacob turns to O'Neill.

JACOB: Selmak says, let me see if I can translate this, don't call us, we'll call you.

The others look on as the Tok'ra, including Jacob leave via the gate, giving hope to the SGC that fighting the Goa'uld might not be a lost cause.

 

[Patupi]

August 1998

After over a year of work the new Helium-3 Fusion reactors (Called NH-Fusion plants by the engineers) are deemed by Heisenberg to be reliable enough for use in Reich warships. The new reactors use less than a third the Naquadah than the old N-Fusion plants, though the Helium-3 fuel is rarer than the Deuterium and Tritium they used with it. However mining operations have been set up at two gas giants, one in Spelk and one in Teutonia systems, to mine the rare gas, and it is at least present in enough quantity to supply all Reich needs for a long time. It just is rather difficult to collect. These reactors have about the same power output for their size as current N-Fusion reactors and can be retrofitted to 3rd and 4th gen cruisers and battleships. However there is another development that is more of a surprise.

At Leere work has progressed on the overdrive destroyers for the last few years, but recent work has been puzzling. With the resonance between the Hyper Pulse scanners and hyperdrives they were studying the effect, including resonance between two hyperdrive systems in close proximity. When this is tried with two overdriven hyperdrives there is an odd result. They stabilize each other. Two drives, oscillating in power levels relative to each other can cancel out the stress the overdrive engines build up, meaning two, lighter hyperdrives can replace a single, heavier drive on a ship... and it can go at overdrive speeds continuously! At current overdrive models this means speeds of just over 70lyrs/day! Also, given the smaller size of the two separate drives they can be retrofitted to older craft as well, not just the 4th gen ships with the newer model of hyperdrive, replacing all the older 8ltyr/day models.

This worries the scientists, as it would seem this is superior to Goa'uld drives... but the technology doesn't justify this. They begin to study whether there are methods to overdrive Goa'uld hyperdrives, and worry that the System Lords already have this technology. Why they would have it but not utilize it is unknown.

Work is continuing on the Symbiote Immobilizing poison discovered the previous year. Already they have slowly reduced it's unreliability and it now can affect all symbiotes equally. Unfortunately it needs a very high concentration to affect symbiotes, meaning it must at present be injected, similarly to the dart method the natives used with it originally. Continued work may improve this further to the point it might be used in gas form to immobilize symbiotes, paralyzing Goa'ulds and severely affecting Jaffa.

The Drachen (Dragon) tank has currently replaced existing non-shielded tanks on the battlefield, though APCs and IFVs of slightly older design (unshielded) are still used. Scout cars have often been deployed and recently consideration is being given to making a small, hover scout vehicle to replace them in the Wehrmacht. While hover systems are impractical in combat vehicles due to stability issues and making the underside vulnerable, the same is not a problem for scout vehicles. The possibility of a computer controlled hover car using a variant of the missile drive pod for lift, is seen as possible. Since all out speed is not required they can mount three separate sets of drive pods, automatically switching between them. That way the drives do not build up the stress that the grav fighters do and don't need the 'cool down' time after an hour of use. However it means propulsion is only a third of what it would be other wise. Attempts were made at simply lowering thrust on a drive pod, but this doesn't seem to reduce stress build up unfortunately, so separate pods are required to make them work indefinitely.

The resultant scout vehicle has a single deathray for long range, light strike capability, mounted on free floating mount on the rear. This is operated manually by someone standing in the rear compartment, with no power controls for aiming. Accuracy at range is thus not high, but these are not seen as active combat vehicles, but simply as a scouting 'car'. The controls are simplified, the computers holding the craft at a fixed height to the ground normally, but allowing the driver to pop it up to higher altitudes to survey the territory and skip over trees etc. In adjunct to this three small grav drones are mounted that relay video feeds to the rear area for long range scouting. These drones are only about half a meter wide and are limited to the one hour time limit, and thus are considerably faster. The 'aircar' has a crew of two usually and is open topped, though it has armored sides and front windshield.

Up till now the Raubvogel grav fighters have been used as support gunships, often with gunpods mounted instead of missiles. However this is not the most effective system as the fighters rely more on speed than defense, and when called in to support troops in fixed positions can be vulnerable. Work is started on developing a grav based gunship, armored and possibly shielded if they can fit it in, with heavy weapons for ground support roles and able to fit through the gate. Unlike the scout car this likely won't be available for some time and will require considerable development work.

September 1998

Over the last couple of months things have been somewhat quiet on the Goa'uld front. Another meeting with the System Lords happens, and the usual shouting match ensues. A talk with Yu on general trade matters, again with no new issues discussed. Thor also talks via subspace communicator, and decries the Reich's assault on Horus... but not very hard. It seems he does not agree with his council's position on the Reich vs the Goa'uld at present, and it seems the Asgard council is beginning to see his point of view. A welcoming change, but so far with no direct benefits.

All in all not a lot happening.

However, in September this ends. The Hyper Pulse scanners begin to pick up small ships skirting alongside Reich territory, especially those planets seized from Horus. It's unknown who these ships belong to, though by the speeds it would seem likely they are Goa'uld vessels. So far no raids are made with these, but it is worrying. The Reich begins to increase border patrols, adding three battlecruisers and eight destroyers to the existing patrol fleets. It is hoped this should dissuade any interlopers from attacking.

Finally the Hyper Pulse network is complete to the Reich's satisfaction, a double layer of satellites at the border zone around Reich space, with several satellites around every inhabited planet to scan within Reich territory. Now additional satellites will be placed at other worlds in Reich territory, and stealthed relay satellites also placed there to observe them. It is faintly possible that the Goa'uld could find a way to protect themselves from Reich HP scanners. If so they'd likely want to study the HP scanners themselves just to add the technology to their list of acquisitions. These stealth observation satellites should warn the Reich if this happens on such planets without a defense force. On the border these satellites are guarded both by each other and by other, hyper window detection satellites of the older system. With such redundancy it is hoped the few further into Reich territory will pose a more tempting target, but just in case they begin to mass produce the stealth observation satellites to be slowly positioned near the border HP scan sats as well, though this will take time with so many present.

With the completed scan sat net and the increased patrol fleets the risk of an undetected attack is reduced considerably, though with current Goa'uld vessels outpacing Reich ships in hyperspace this does limit things. Several hybrid Hataks are attached to the intercept fleets to increase their speed until enough of the cruisers are upgraded to the new dual hyperdrive technology. This should allow at least parity in speeds for now for intercepts, and with the newer drive it should enable them to catch and follow Hataks through hyperspace. So far there is no known way to actually attack a ship in hyperspace, or to drop a target from hyperspace, so they would have to tail the ship till it reaches it's destination.

There is another problem here. HP scanners do not function on a ship in hyperspace, though they can communicate with scan sats in normal space and read their data. If they stray beyond the range of scan sats they could lose the ship they are tailing.

***

In the SGC Control room Carter is still at the console, Hammond is right there with her, as are Daniel and Teal'c.

CARTER: Sir, we're going to have to shut the whole system down and reboot.

HAMMOND: Can you close the iris, if necessary?

CARTER: Apparently not.

DANIEL: That's not good.

HAMMOND: Captain, I don't care what you have to do. I want control of this system back.

CARTER: Yes, Sir, I'm trying.

Suddenly, the Stargate starts to dial up again. The monitor shows "Incoming Traveler".

CARTER: We have an incoming wormhole.

Daniel looks at Teal'c as they wait for what happens next, nervous glances shared. The wormhole actives with it's typical 'Kawoosh', leaving an unprotected entrance from an unknown world. SF's stand ready in the Gate room to open fire. They wait and in a few moments, O'Neill appears through the event horizon and slowly starts to head down the ramp. Hammond looks at Carter in shock, then smiles. She, in turn, appears relieved. Daniel heads out of the control room and Teal'c follows.

CARTER: Everything seems to be back online again, Sir, including the iris.

HAMMOND: Good work, Captain.

Down in the gateroom Daniel and Teal'c come up to the base of the ramp as O'Neill approaches them. O'Neill regards them with a slight smile.

O'NEILL: I'm back.

DANIEL: What happened?

TEAL'C: Do you still possess the knowledge of the Ancients?

Jack sighs, but has a slight smile on his face still

O'NEILL: Nope. Don't remember a thing.

He turns to Daniel and tips his head a little.

O'NEILL: But you know that meaning of life stuff?

Daniel nods back.

O'NEILL: I think we're going to be all right.

With a smile the group relax, finally whole again with Jack free of the ancient repository knowledge and the team back together again.

 

[Patupi]

October 1998

While border patrols are being increased, the scan sat net completed, and the fleet bolstered, work on refitting existing fleet ships with the new dual hyperdrive is worked on. First the battleships are up, two at a time. One in Teutonia at the orbital shipyard, and one in a temporary orbital slip at Spelk made from some military repair transports and some civilian remote mining craft. It is hoped in a month all four battleships will be upgraded, also getting the new NH Fusion plants installed. They can at least then escort un-upgraded ships into battle. However, though the slips to do the work are the main limit to the upgrades, the new drives themselves havn't been produced in large numbers yet, so though there are smaller slips available to upgrade smaller vessels few are. Ten destroyers are planned to be upgraded, along with a host of military transport vessels. They should be ready by the end of the year.

With a transport ship and escorts available that can travel at 70ltyrs/day something that has been put off for many many years is hoped to be attempted. To return to Earth. Even with the new drives it will be a long trek, just over two weeks of solid travel, and keeping experimental hyperdrives going for that long is not reccommended. Thus the plan is to take a month, with frequent stops for maintenance and repair. The exact location of Earth is not certain however, they think they know where it should be from the gate coordinates, but since it's obvious the gate is either innoperative or destroyed after decades of attempts to dial Earth in the past (mostly just after losing contact) they may have to spend more time searching within the area, checking local sky maps and comparing it to prints of stellar constellations as viewed from Earth. That should refine the coordinates down to a closer lock.

Several people however are unhappy with using an untested drive for this and push for a delay while the ships are tested. Since it will likely be December or even January 1999 before the ships are ready that would mean February or even March before they can leave. Many are not happy with this. With the newer maintenance and repair systems on these ships long term usage is far better than previously, so months away from home should not be the strain on the systems as it would have been on older generations of craft. The liklihood of critical failures is slim. Just incase a civilian mining/repair ship is put aside for the upgrades as well, to head along with them. All ships in the long range fleet are planned to use the drives, even if only one should be needed to lead the others. If that one ship had hyperdrive problems... they'd all be stuck a long way from home. Thus the insistence on upgrades across the board in the fleet.

While plans for the 'Great Return' are made other issues need to be addressed. The borders keep being skirted by many ships, but still so far no attacks have been made. The direction of the ship movements make it seem like they are coming from Bastet's space, but it could be another Goa'uld from that direction, or even someone faking it to put blame on Bastet. A typical Goa'uld ploy.

More destroyers are put on patrol, but unless the ships do more than skim past in hyperspace there is little that can be done. No attempts to shadow the vessels are made, or to head to systems they could be heading for. They do not want to make it obvious the border satellites can track them in hyperspace as they aren't sure yet that the Goa'uld (other than Yu who the system was gifted to) knows about the HP scanners. Until whoever it is makes a move there is little that can be done about them.

At home, though Spelk is technologically even with Teutonia now, they're industry is still lagging a little behind. Even with this there are calls for a second orbital yard to be build in Spelk orbit for building battleships. The proposal is that destroyer production be halted and the slips dismantled, the components going towards building a slightly smaller orbital shipyard than the one at Teutonia, just for battleship construction (The Teutonia yard can build 1 battleship and 2 cruisers simultaneously). Given the recent reduction in destroyer tactics in fleet actions it is thought that current numbers of destroyers should be sufficient for the roles they excell at. Rapid, surgical strikes and for border patrols. Thus, eventually, the Reich decide that when the next three destroyers are complete in March next year to scrap the three destroyer yards and to commence with the cut down orbtial ship yard. Even if battleships take two years to build with staggered production the possibility of one built per year should be ample for Reich needs. The Teutonia yard finished producing the Leere (which was unfortunately lost in battle) early this year, so if the shipyard can be assembled now, with the equipment from the destroyer slips ferried up later, it may be operational in May 1999 to begin construction. That would mean that from 2000 onwards one could be built per year, regularly.

Some brief murmers are made in the Heschel council about matching this... which are promply ignored. Heschel is not up to Reich tech quite yet, and needs assistance with it's existing single cruiser slip. It is hardly in a position to build battleships yet! Even if it was it's position is too far distant at present to contribute to the war effort. At five hundred lightyears away it takes a long time to reach Reich space from there, and is reliant on the few ships it builds locally, it's larger than normal defense net, and fighter swarms to defend itself. Currently Two cruisers are present along with ten destroyers and a couple of carriers plus whatever fighters can be sent through the gate on short notice.

There are other concerns in the Reich than Heschel's physical isolation. With the borders spread in the coreward direction with the assault on Horus, the rimward borders are now relatively close to the core worlds, compared to the rest. Baal's territory is within days striking distance from Teutonia, Spelk and Leere and serious consideration is being given to an offensive against Baal in the near future, just to get some breathing room for the core worlds. This might however be a problem. Whilst the Reich could take on Baal on his own (they believe) his position as one of the main System Lords could easily draw allies and taint views against the Reich joining the Council. Instead, during various meetins with the System Lord Council they share what little titbits of information they have on Baal behind closed doors with his obvious enemies. If they can foment distrust against Baal, while hopefully gaining trust themselves things might improve.

They also begin using their Seventh Stealth destroyer fleet, the single battlecruiser that has (finally) been upgraded with the stealth tech leading the five Zyklon B destroyers. The fleet sweeps into Baal's territory and begins to examine his ships and planets from long range. It still takes considerable effort to make a 'soft' hyperspace translation to not show up on sensors, and generally they do so well outside the system to minimize the signature. Thus they begin spying on his space, and soon begin sharing what they think would help with the other System Lords.

Not all of course. They keep some information to themselves. Such as a fleet outpost building near Teutonia, already having five Hataks present, and two, odd-looking orbital shipyards forming. The Goa'uld generally do not build ships in orbit and this could well be an escallation, especially if he has other such yards elsewhere in his territory. Perhaps he is duplicating Reich construction techniques? Scannnig systems from long range is however problematic. Not everything can be detected, and generall passive sensors are used rather than active scans to reduce the risk of being detected themselves. This means a lot of the information is visual in nature, with general energy readings as well. No detailed surface scans. No material studies (beyond atmospheric tests of planets) can easily be done either. The passive sensor sweeps are also less effective, but still manage to get some interesting information. The fleet tends to break into three groups. One the battlecruiser and a single destroyer, the others into two groups of two destroyers each. Connected via laser links to minimize subspace emmissions that could be detected they coordinate their sensor sweeps to patch it together, effectively multiplying the diameter of the detectors to the distance the ships are spread apart. Hopefully this should improve resolution of faint details.

November 1998

Some interesting talk is beginning to come out of Gehlen's and Peliar's meetings with the System Lords. The council itself is still set against any proposal of the Reich joining, but already three minor members of the Council are siding with the Reich, and deals outside the Council chambers are becoming interesting. In return for the information on Baal Camulus in particular has given some interesting intel on Bastet. It's uncertain whether this is accurate, but it seems she is making deals in the back rooms with eight other minor Goa'ulds and at least one other System Lord to build a massive fleet to assault the Reich, worried that the Reich is making headway in the Council chambers. It's unknown how big this fleet (if it exists and not a fabrication from Camulus) is, but even two System Lords would be a problem for the Reich, though not an insoluble one. Such a large scale fleet might be an issue however. Some consideration is given to pulling the Seventh Stealth fleet away from Baal and sending it trailing and coreward towards Bastet's territory.

At present this is not attempted, but may be done soon. If Camulus is telling the truth the Reich could face an overwhelming assault from a Goa'uld Coalition. How long it would take them to assemble such a fleet is unknown, but doubtful it would be quick. Their ships are usually tied down defending territory from raids from other Goa'uld and take some care to free up.

The Battleships are all finished upgrading to the new drives in mid November and efforts to focus on the smaller ships begin, though manufacturing parts for the drives may take a while. Efforts on the cruisers is slow, most efforts focused on military transports and the few destroyers for the 'Great Return' that are being upgraded. Hopefully this will be enough.

Continued efforts to upgrade and improve the Uberbeams have not been very successful. Unfortunately the technology is cutting edge and difficult to fine tune to do more damage or more shield penetration. The system is already designed to maximize it's effectiveness at being absorbed by shields, overloading them, and if more advanced shields such as Asgards appear they should be able to tune to adapt to those shields as well, at least lessening the effect of such advanced shields to resist such weapons. However other efforts have continued on different weapons.

Ever since the early days when the Goa'uld plasma cannons were studied the Reich has considered duplicating such guns rather than the beams they currently use. Early on they simply couldn't do it, but even later when it was possible the beam's greater damage tempted weapons researchers to look more into that weapon, despite it's range problems. Now, with the long range damage limitations of the plasma and Uberbeams evident in recent battles, another look is being taken at plasma cannons that bottle the energy into a cohesive bolt that does the same damage at any range, just like the Goa'uld weapons. These may be a year or two from production (depending on how the research goes) but some other weapons research could be around the corner.

Deathrays had been undergoing varying degrees of improvement down the years, and unfortunately these, or heatrays, were unlikely to find any sudden drastic breakthroughs any time soon. However the coilguns were seeing some improvements, mostly miniturization of the control and stabilization systems. Right now the elecrtomagnetic stress weakened the metals in the coils themselves over repeated use, forcing a ship to replace the coils fairly regularly. Given that only the older destroyers used the weapons this hadn't been an issue, but the long range of a coil gun (albeit slow shot speed, limiting it's use against mobile targets to close range only) and the heavy payloads they could field did hold out for possible future use.

Then some spurious work with the Goa'uld inertial propulsion systems (which the Reich still had failed to duplicate successfully) gave some applications to extend the capabilities of internal gravity plating... and possibly use such systems to replace the magnetic accelerator coils of coil guns. The grav gun was borne, with far higher muzzle velocity, lower detectable energy signature (though it actually used more energy to fire), no wear on the mechanism with firing, and much smaller minimum size of components.

At present it was available as experimental devices only, but was also something that could be scaled down to hand held firearms fairly easily. At that scale low caliber rounds with NECE fillers could be useful, or other rounds. On most low caliber rounds however the amount of filler would not be great. The bullets were more needle than anything and didn't have a lot of internal volume. Conventional explosive would be almost non-existant relative to the impact of a bullet at those speeds anyway, though NECE fillers would be helpful making an armor piercing explosive round. Standards on 5mm round were made. With the higher velocities the damage from sheer kinetics would be much more than an old 7.92mm rounds. While such weapons would likely not be as effective verses shields as Deathrays, against hard targets they might be better. Plus, with a tiny Naquadah powercell in the weapon and no poweder in the shells, the medium sized drum magazines could easily hold a thousand of the needle rounds limiting the ammunition problems always endemic with projectile weapons.

With Trinium/Steel alloy tips for armor penetration and a selective switch to activate or deactivate the explosive the rounds could be multi-purpose. Allowing you to not blow soft targets apart if you wanted them alive. The possibility of adding in an electrical stun weapon was considered, but the Reich stuck with having such side arms as separate rather than integrating them with a main weapon. Such 'stun' weapons were problematic at best anyway. Stun a target running towards you and he was highly likely to fall so hard he'd break his neck anyway. The overly complex Goa'uld weapon combatted this by a selective stimulation (and incredible pain) of certain nerves, causing the legs to buckle in a way that most people would not hit hard. The Reich did not have the time to develop such a complex weapon so instead relied on causing damage to outlying parts of the body to disable targets. They could heal them later after all.

***

In the SGC the Stargate swirls as SG-1, the Tok'ra, Hammond and Fraiser watch Teal'c carry Apophis' body up the ramp. He looks upon the blanket-wrapped body of his former god for a moment, then passes it through the wormhole. Everyone looks on solemnly as the wormhole pulls the body through. Teal'c then turns and heads back down the ramp and leaves the room. The Gate then shuts down. Fraiser follows Teal'c.

Daniel looks around at no-one in particular.

DANIEL: What now?

O'NEILL: We wait.

CARTER: If Sokar wanted him alive, he'll just start up the attack again.

MARTOUF: No. I don't believe he will. Sokar has a sarcophagus in his possession. With it, he can revive Apophis even through death and torture him as long as he pleases.

MARTOUF: Surely, a fate he justly deserves.

Sometime later in the gate control room Martouf types something in the keyboard at the Command console. Carter is standing by the console, as are Daniel, O'Neill, and Hammond. Martouf's Tok'ra companions are waiting at the base of the ramp.

MARTOUF: These are the coordinates we would like you send us.

CARTER: But not to anywhere we'll be able to find you again.

MARTOUF: To contact us, you may use this.

DANIEL: That's Tollan. They used it to contact the Nox.

MARTOUF: Yes, we are friends of the Tollan, and we are friends of the Tau'ri.

CARTER: Thank you.

O'NEILL: Well, if we're going to be friends, you're going to need one of these.

Jack hands him a GDO device solumnly.

O'NEILL: It's called a G D O. It sends out a signal that let's us know who you are and if it's ok to open the iris. Otherwise, you could end up splattered against the…well…

Martouf smiles as he takes the device.

MARTOUF: I understand.

CARTER: Come on. I'll show you how it works.

HAMMOND: All right. Let's send them home people.

The Gate spins into action, and O'Neill looks on from the control room, contemplatively. Would they see Apophis again? How much of a threat was this 'Sokar'? Only time would tell.

 

[Patupi]

November 1998

In Early November Peliar and Gehlen got a subspace summons to another meeting. It seemed rather quick for such, and Yu had said they had been having meetings more commonly than usual lately as it was. When the meeting was convened all the Goa'uld seemed far more reserved than usual, very little bluster, but so far little of the reason was spoken of. Cronos demanded that others contribute resources towards strengthening this meeting station, and lighter ships as defense, but even these 'demands' seemed less emphatic than usual. Nerves seemed frayed all around, and Yu kept giving Gehlen odd glances.

During a break in the meeting Yu cornered Gehlen. He seemed nervous too, and Gehlen asked why they had been called in at all. This seemed nothing to do with the Reich joining the Council, and they weren't members yet. Yu said nothing, but instead escorted them to a more private location.

Once secure he said that several Goa'uld had reported instances of assault recently, and a week ago Melesh, a minor Goa'uld in Baal's service, reported discovering who was behind this. Sokar. It had been thought that Sokar was no longer a threat to the Goa'uld (Most thought him dead), having long been dealt with by Ra and a grand alliance of System Lords. It seems they were wrong. Rumors were he had built a large force, though no details were known. The consensus was that if he had let his presence be known he was already ready for anything the System Lords could throw at him. Yu was not so sure of that, but had faced Sokar before. Even if he wasn't fully ready he would still be a very nasty challenge.

The System Lords were nervous, especially as one of their number had disappeared. Apophis had been one of the top three System Lords, but before Gehlen ever got to the Council he had been reduced in rank, seemingly by some backwater race. Yu was not sure who it was, but knew that some of the Goa'uld present knew. He though it not worth looking into, despite Gehlen's questions on that. He was certain Sokar was behind Apophis' disappearance and the fear it was spreading in the Council was, he thought, the perfect time for the Reich to join.

"You want us to offer ships to this... alliance against Sokar?" Gehlen asked incredulously.

"The Reich, fighting alongside Goa'uld against another. Is that so different than what you have done of late?" Yu responded with a smirk.

"A point, definitely. But I cannot commit such forces myself. I am here on behalf of the Fuhrer. If our admittance is accepted he will come and arrange such things himself. They are his ships after all."

Yu nodded, accepting this. He had throughout his dealings with the Reich treated Himmler as if he were a Gou'ald himself. A great honor from his point of view. No-one had been fool enough to point that out to the Fuhrer of course. He presumably knew, but being told it? Not healthy to one's position. Or life and limb for that matter.

"Agreed, but you can state that it is the Fuhrer's place to do so, and that he has done so in the past. Your fleet is impressive, and an unknown. So far few present want to form any part of an alliance against Sokar. Some refuse to believe he has returned, despite the evidence. Fools! They sow the seeds of their own destruction! We must band together if we are to defeat him!"

"Even with our help how likely is that? In fact, if we join I imagine there are a few System Lords who would shun such an alliance simply because we are a part of it, hmmm?"

Yu nodded, frowning.

"There is truth in your words. Never-the-less I believe your strength would bolster any alliance beyond those members we would lose."

In the end it was too good a chance to pass up. The Goa'uld present would likely only agree, thinking it a short term agreement, easily dealt with later (presumably with the Reich's destruction). Hopefully they could turn that around to their favor.

"What of the arrangements Cronos spoke of? I believe I can promise that, if we join, we can send Al'kesh and fighters to guard this place along with the others." Though the Reich did not have many Al'kesh intact. Their own ships were more effective overall they felt.

"That will only come to pass if many agree. No-one wishes to be at the mercy of others. Either no craft will be allowed, as has been the case for many centuries, or all the System Lords supply ships to the defense. If all do not trust one another, mutual distrust will be sufficient to force them to work with one another against the outsider."

"Sokar." Gehlen said simply, Yu nodding. "Very well, I suppose this is the best chance we have."

Gehlen Peliar and Yu returned to the meeting and made their proposition. It was not met well, Bastet almost going apoplectic, though curiously Baal seemed reserved and barely reacted. Many seemed to think sending a non-Goa'uld to fight for them (admittedly with help from other System Lords) and do away with Sokar was a good thing, and after much bandying around and over an hour of posturing, they agreed to meet this 'Fuhrer' and listen to his proposals. If he was sufficiently persuasive the Reich may be allowed entry to the Council.

When Gehlen and Peliar return there is an uproar. Many in the party never believed that the Fuhrer would get his chance, and now they fear for his safety. The Fuhrer counters that he has been preparing for this for months now. He has already received implants, improving his abilities to the best Reich science can provide, with other implants to monitor his brain chemistry. If any things untoward is done to him a signal will be sent, activating a subspace beacon nearby (dropped by ship a few light hours from the area by Tel'tak a year ago for just this kind of eventuality) and relaying information to the Reich. The meeting area is fairly close by, though not easy to reach by ship... until the new hyperdrives were available.

Meanwhile those hyperdrives have been having problems. The Spelk, one of the battleships undergoing trials after having the dual hyperdrive fitted, had a near catastrophe. It's systems overloaded and the hyperdrive literally melted. The engineers think they know what happened and are fitting up a transport to test another upgrade to the system. Hopefully this will enable the Spelk to have it's hyperdrive fully upgraded without further disasters. Needless to say many are very unhappy with this development, but it is somewhat untested technology. The Reich has been racing ahead of late and perhaps getting a little to sure of it's own tech, even experimental equipment.

Hopefully all these problems will be fixed soon, and functioning dual hyperdrives will be available within the month. So the engineers confidently state anyway.

Since the meeting is met via gate, then Goa'uld transport, this is not an issue for the Fuhrer, though two Nazi Jaffa and an SS officer (with implants) join him, much to the irritation of the Goa'uld. The Nazi Jaffa have to wait on the ship. Only one 'attendant' is allowed at such meetings. The Fuhrer knew this, but wanted to push the impression of the Nazi Jaffa as something to reinforce his own similarity to the other Goa'uld. Colonel Klein had been twitching a bit since he learned of the Fuhrer's plan. It seemed he did not agree with it, but he was the Fuhrer he would be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to protect and serve him!

"Good evening. I take you are all well?" Himmler said softly as he entered, gazing intently, but almost casually at all those present.

"Bah! This is ridiculous!" Bastet fumed, but was silenced by a wave from Cronos.

"By reports you hold much strength in this 'Reich' of yours Himmler. Perhaps you can enlighten this esteemed body by what you can do to aid us?"

Cronos' sarcasm was rather heavy and several in the room laughed openly.

"I see. Perhaps you'd prefer Horus back on your necks as well as Sokar?" Several flinched at the mention of Sokar's name, and Cronos seemed rather annoyed to say the least. "Honestly, you field, what? A few hundred Hataks at most? I doubt you could use all of those in one engagement. It would open you up far too greatly. We have already defeated, with Yu's assistance," Yu nodded graciously behind him, otherwise showing little emotion, "a force of over eighty Hataks and Cheops under the traitor Horus. Can any here say anything similar of recent years? Even ignoring our cruisers, the equivalent of your Hataks, we have several flagship class vessels at our disposal and are willing to put at least two in a fleet ready to fight Sokar if any of your can manage to join us?"

"You dare question our honor?" Baal spat out, breaking his silence up till now.

Himmler managed to keep a straight face. Honor in a Goa'uld?

"No. I question how many of you are willing to sacrifice, and it will be a sacrifice, to fight this monster. Tell me, how many of you were around when he last fought against Ra and the System Lords?" A handful of nods around the room reluctantly came, mostly those that had been reticent to talk. "So you know, better than I, what kind of threat Sokar is to all of us. HOW MANY WILL JOIN ME?" Himmler suddenly shouted across the room. "HOW MANY WILL FIGHT TO SEE THE END OF THIS ABOMINATION?"

Baal raised an eyebrow at this display, and several of those that had indicated they had stood against Sokar before nodded ascent, or muttered 'I will." It was quite a turnaround, though not unexpected given the backroom deals Gehlen and Peliar had been making of late.

"Together we can defeat him, banish him permanently, push the specter of his unholy forces into the abyss. I say any that join us should be long remembered among the System Lords, just as those that defeated Annubis long ago were. WHAT SAY YOU?"

With a smirk Baal stepped forwards.

"Very well, I believe I can join this... endeavor. Fallacy though I think it to be." He said, sneering at Himmler, with his arms crossed defiantly. He then turned to look at the various assembled Lords "I say we convene... in private, to discuss allowing this... person, to join our ranks."

Most agreed, though Cronos looked peeved, and Bastet seemed positively livid.

It took hours of waiting for them to make up their minds, and Klein was rather surprised at the Fuhrer's calm demeanor, barely seemed worried at all. In the end, when he was called back to the meeting, he insisted on finishing his dinner first, much to their annoyance.

"We have decided to allow you to join our order. The System Lords.... welcome you." Cronos said, the last two words rather grudgingly.

"I accept on behalf of my glorious Reich. Rejoice fellow Lords! Soon Sokar will no longer darken our nightmares. Soon victory will be ours!"

A toast was raised, and Himmler privately wondered how long this would last. However long it was it should be enough for them to gain an advantage. As long as he held off the others from backstabbing them long enough.

***

"JACK!" Jacob yelled from the back of the Tel'tak. "I told you, keep it steady!"

"Love to oblige, might want to tell these Jaffa that. I don't think they got the memo!" He said tensely, still not happy with the eyepiece Jacob had fostered on him. "Any idea on... Whoah. OK, that was close. Ahem Hyperdrive anyone? Sometime this century would be nice."

"We're trying Sir!" Sam said, currently dug into the guts of the crystal controls in the rear chamber, totally out of her depth, her father guiding her for all of this. "The green one?" She asked hopefully. A wry smile from her dad showed she'd guessed wrong.

"Blue." Selmak's distinct voice said as he wrestled with a bypass sytem on an adjoining panel. "And take it from the lower area. Those are not as important."

"Oh, weapons?" Sam said as she shifted the blue crystal up into the slot occupied by the burned out crystal.

"No. Auxiliary life support." He said with a severe smile.

"Ah. Right. Not important at all." She muttered.

Suddenly the lights flashed above them, then steadied. The panels were slammed unceremoniously shut and Sam's father leaped to the intercom.

"Jack! Punch it!" Jacob's normal voice came back, shouting to the bridge. Shortly after the ship lurched it's way into hyperspace, leaving father and daughter relaxing at last.

"So.... how long do we breath now?" She asked.

"Don't worry pumpkin. He said Auxiliary life support. We'll be fine just the five of us."

"Six." She said with a smirk.

"Heh, yeah. Six."

***

"We really need to stop." Jacob said, the shaking in the ship getting bad. "I'm afraid we're a long way from any safe ports I know of. I think we'd just better stop at the nearest planet and land. Then we can shut down and finish repairs."

"Then I get to use the ruby slippers?" Jack said irreverently.

"Heh. Yeah Dorothy. You get to go home."

Jack smiled, turned and walked back towards the cargo area saying softly 'There's no place like home. There's no place like home.' to himself. He was just glad not to be flying this thing any more. The controls sucked! Give him a joystick and pedals any day over this glowy, mind reading sphere thingy!

"OK, here's hoping this is a safe port."

"You don't know?"

"Not as such." Jacob said, with a pinched look. "We don't have a lot of operatives in this area of space Sam."

"OK, you know best dad."

"Um, yes." Daniel interjected. "So... what do you know about this area?"

"Here goes!" Jacob said, ignoring him.

"Seriously. Anything will do!" Daniel said, then gripped his seat as the ship shuddered to a halt.

"Sensor alert!" Jacob said, but ahead was something far more important. A planet filled the viewscreen.

"OK, little too close." Daniel added helpfully.

"Really? What gave it away?" Jacob said, as he started to fight the controls, then took a deep breath and let go. "I don't know who those scans were from, but I think our best bet is to imitate an asteroid."

"One that pops out of no-where?" Daniel asked.

"We don't have much choice, and no sensor system is perfect. Hang on, this is going to be rough!"

The little transport ship screamed into the atmosphere, air blazing into an inferno around it. They plummeted down into the air Jacob scanning furiously.

"I think I've got something. Hang on!"

Suddenly the ship veered up, struggling to abate it's fall, already slowed by atmospheric friction. Skimming bare meters above the ground it sped off, then dunked itself into a lake with a splash and a gout of steam, settling to the bottom.

"There. I think we can get the air we need from the water with most systems shut down." He said, but was looking worriedly at the control panel. "That is... odd."

"What?" Sam asked, not able to read the panel.

"It looked like a bunch of ships, not ones I know of, were gathered at a spot about a thousand kilometers dead behind us. Almost exactly where I'd planned on emerging from hyperspace! It the drive hadn't stuttered on exit..."

"We'd have landed on top of them. Fun times." Jack said coming up behind them. "So, what else is new. Any idea where we are?"

"Not really." Selmak's reverberating voice said. "It's the only habitable planet I knew of in this region. Though that was only a century ago, and only savages ruled here then, lances and swords at best. Certainly not in any position to build spacecraft."

"So, newcomers huh? And definitely not snakeheads?"

"I would recognize the power signatures of any Goa'uld vessels. No, these are completely new to the Tok'ra. Given their gathering at our arrival it suggests some form of hyperspace scanning ability. I have only heard of a few that could do that. Annubis long ago, and the Asgard. Who ever they are they are advanced, and dangerous if these energy signatures are anything to go by."

"Then we fix the ship quickly, then skedaddle." said simply. "Don't suppose we can check out the locals? You know, while you and Carter are fixing the ship."

"How good are you at holding your breath Jack?" Jacob said, taking over once more, as he waving at the windscreen, bubbles ascending in front of it.

"Right. Waiting. Boy do I love waiting! Say Teal'c, did I ever teach you poker?" Jack said as he disappeared into the rear of the ship.

Sam and Jacob just smiled at each other, then Sam picked up her tools, as much use as they were. They nodded to each other then headed back into the rear.

***

Jacob looked up the panel, his eyepiece flashing.

"That's another fly-over. About two kilometers north. They're getting closer."

"But this should be OK... right?" Sam said hopefully. Not at all sure of what they were doing really. Just following what her dad said to do.

"Barely. Hopefully it'll get us back to a Tok'ra outpost. There is no way we can get to Earth from here! It'd take a month easily." He sighed and sat up. "Well, lets hope we hold together."

"Did I hear the magic words?" Jack said, sticking his head through the door. Sam nodded to him.

"Yes sir, we're going to try to get out of here. Assuming we can get past the patrols of... whoever it is up there."

"I think we pull up, then streak east. Our initial course should throw off any vessels, and what I read in orbit right now is west of our position. We pull east, hug the atmosphere while the hyperdrive spools up."

"Hear that Teal'c? I win!"

"I do not believe I took that bet O'Neill." Teal'c's voice came from the forward cargo bay.

Soon all of them were in the flight area, Jacob in the flight seat.

"Have to admit, it was nice of you to pull us out of there Jacob. Not often a stargate just up and vanishes on you."

"Not unheard of though." Daniel said with a smile.

"True. We do lead an interesting life don't we?"

"Yeah, we gotta find out who's pinching stargates." Jacob said sourly. "Goa'uld don't usually do that. Even if they're losing a planet they'd rather leave it so they have a chance to win it back again later.... OK, hang on!"

With a roar and a splash the ship shot up into the air, and vaulted to the skies. they got a breif view of some winged vessel banking to get out of their way, then Jacob yanked the ship over hard as he gained altitude.

"That was an aircraft, fast one too, but can't follow us this high." A bright trace of light flashed past them.

"Doesn't stop them from shooting at us though." Daniel said nervously.

"Don't suppose we can get one of those?" Jack said, peering out the side window, trying to see whatever it was that was attempting to follow them.

"Er... Jack?" Daniel said in an odd tone of voice.

"Hey, don't rain on my parade Danny!" Jack said, still looking back. "It'd be nice if just one time we could get one of those fancy alien thingumy jigs."

"Jaaack!"

"What Daniel?" He said, turning around... and stared out the front window as a very familiar shape grew just in front of them, carved into the remains of the heart of a city. "No... that's... Oh..."

"Don't say it!" Daniel said. "Just... don't!"

Jack looked at him as the little transport shot over the debris covered swastika carved into the city of Lostuno on Thent. Just before Jacob activated the hyperdrive Daniel winced as Jack shouted "Space Nazis!"

 

[Patupi]

November 1998

In the briefing room at the SGC three days later SG1, General Hammond and Jacob sit around the briefing table. Jack is smiling, while Hammond sits at the head of the table and looks around.

"I would not of have thought you would be happy O'Neill?" Teal'c says. "Did you not describe these Nazis as 'Evil incarnate'?"

"True true, but you're missing the big picture T."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"It means I was right."

"Ahh, I see."

"OK," Hammond said, "Now we're all here. Welcome back Jacob. I understand we have more information on the..."

"... Space Nazis." Jack interrupts, Jacob shakes his head.

"Yeah George. Well, whatever you call them, from what little we have on them they are advanced. The Tok'ra have been hearing some interesting rumors in that area of space lately, up to some vague details on a force that stood up to Heru'ur. Oh, by the way, the Goa'uld now seem to think Heru'ur is dead. We still don't have the details on that one. These guys may have distracted him enough for another System Lord to do him in."

"Huh, Apophis bites the big one and now old Baldy? Cool." Jack said, grinning.

"Actually sir, we don't know Apophis is dead. Sokar could have revived him. Although likely merely to torture him indefinitely."

"Win win situation then?"

Daniel frowned at Jack, shaking his head.

"Jack, I really don't think that'd be beneficial. I mean, Apophis, whatever condition he is in, is a real threat."

"Can we please stay on the briefing people?" Hammond said, slightly exasperated. "What do we know about these new folks?"

"Other than they fly around in honking great flying saucers?" Jack said with a smirk.

"We don't know that sir." Sam interjected. "We never saw one of their ships in this incident, just an aircraft and read the power signatures of the larger ships. There's no real indication it's the same people that flew that crashed ship."

"And a giant Swastika. I mean, come on, how many people use that?" he said, then held up a finger when Daniel opened his mouth. "I mean people in space Daniel. Space, with a capital S!"

"R... right..." Daniel said, looking oddly at Jack.

"Sam's right though George." Jacob said. "We really don't know much about these people, but the Swastika is odd. Despite what Daniel may think, Selmak has never heard of a Goa'uld using that symbol before. It's possible it's a newer minor Goa'uld who's keeping to himself the last century or so, but unlikely. The style though does seem very Goa'uld. Burn your mark into the populace."

"Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in dealing with the Space Nazis does it?" Jack said, fiddling with a pencil.

"...Or whoever, no. Not really." Jacob said, then turned to General Hammond. "Look, whoever they are they stood toe to toe with Heru'ur, seem to have built a significant number of ships if they can spare six ships half the size of an Hatak for such a minor world, and may have some method of tracking ships in hyperspace."

"And that is unusual?" Hammond asked.

"Oh yeah, big time! I've heard of races doing it, but never the Goa'uld. Well, not in a few thousand years at least. It's possible..." Jacob paused, turning to look nervously at the others around the table. "... well, there was Annubis, but he was killed by Ra and the the collected System Lords long ago. Sokar was known to have found some of Annubis' tech during the last battle he had with Ra. It's possible in the long wait he's managed to get a hyperspace scanner working."

"You mean you think this could all be Sokar?" Daniel said, obviously not believing it.

"It's not really his style, but he's been building slowly in secret. Perhaps he's using this 'race' as some sort of cover? Who knows."

"Well," Hammond said, shaking his head, "there is not a lot we can do about it right now. Keep your eyes peeled Jacob and we'll do the same. If you hear any more about these..." Hammond paused, seeing Jack mouthing 'Space Nazis' while still staring at the pencil he was twiddling. "... people, let us know. Now, I think I'm more interested on why we had to call Jacob anyway."

"Yeah, thanks for giving us that communicator." Jack said. "If SGC hadn't called you when we didn't show... heck, we'd still be there, running from those pygmies."

"Pygmies?" Hammond said.

"Little guys, dart guns. Real nasty attitude." Jack replied. "Made pretty decent venison stew though." he said staring into the distance.

"I do'n think that was venison Jack." Daniel said slowly.

"Don't spoil my day Daniel, please?"

Hammond sighed.

"So you don't think the locals had anything to do with the gate disappearing?"

"No General. These guys sure ain't the Nox!"

"So do we have any idea who took it and how?"

Sam and Jack glanced at each other, shrugging.

"Not really sir." Sam said. "We weren't even there when it left, but there were no tracks or signs of a ship landing nearby. Who ever took the gate and DHD didn't leave much in the way of clues for us."

"Another mystery huh?" Hammond took a deep breath. "Well, for now we just scratch another planet off the dialing list, but I'd really like to know who is going around taking gates!"

"You and me both George." Jacob said. "It's not normal for the Goa'uld I can tell you that. I've heard of one or two moving gates on occasion, but by now they mostly have the spares they need and don't remove them from worlds they are ever likely to visit."

"Maybe the locals were just too short for good hosts. Ya know, just not worth keeping the planet?" Jack said.

Jacob shook his head.

"I don't think that'd be a good enough reason Jack. No, something else is going on here and I wanna know what."

"OK, well thanks for bringing our people back Jacob."

"Any time George, but I have to go. This ship was going to be used for a Tok'ra infiltration mission. I don't think the council will be too pleased if we delay that too long."

The group stand and slowly head out, still wondering what is going on out there.

 

[Patupi]

November 1998

Reports of a Goa'uld mission entering Thent, remaining undetected for a couple of hours, then performing a risky high altitude hyperjump out, are reported to Teutonia. It seems which ever Goa'uld it is knows about the HP Scanners and came in incredibly close to the planet, virtually hitting it when they left hyperspace, skipping over the waiting destroyers. The ship, seemingly a Tel'tak cargo ship from the scans, vanished from sensors as it entered the planet's atmosphere and wasn't seen again until two hours later when it launched, despite over flights by numerous aircraft and space fighters to locate it. One fighter was lost during launch, possibly by fire from the ship or a collision. The details are unknown, and the remains of the fighter has not yet been recovered. How the Tel'tak remained effectively invisible, despite aerial surveys and orbital satellites performing visual scans of the region are unknown and the Reich suspect someone has some kind of invisibility technology.

The area remains on a heightened state of alert while surveys by troopers are done in the vicinity to ensure no surprises were left behind, but so far nothing has been found. It is likely this was some kind of intel mission, testing whatever their systems were to avoid detection and determine what they could of Thent's defenses. Why they would reveal this kind of advantage for so small a gain (Thent? Not exactly highly placed in the Reich planets) is unknown.

The Fuhrer, when he returns from his successful Council meeting, is not happy that someone is already working against him. More ships are assigned to patrol duty, especially two battlecruisers that have just been upgraded with the dual hyperdrives. The new engines are still not fully tested and the engineers still haven't ironed out the exact reasons it failed on the Spelk, but for now the engines on the other ships seem to be working fine. The ships join the patrols and other battlecruisers are brought back to Teutonia for refits. At least they will be refitted when the reason for the problem is discovered.

December 1998

So far joining the System Lords has not done much for the Reich. They do not exactly have a lot of rules to follow since Ra left, and from what Yu says they often work against one another anyway. However another meeting is not due for a short while so they simply stay in communication, planning a strike against Sokar... if the other System Lords can agree to send ships for a joint fleet! Himmler is slightly unnerved by Baal's turnaround though. There is no way he has changed his opinion of the Reich so something else must be up.

Given the problems at long range the Reich has been having recently a new design for a cruiser has been suggested. Rip out the Uberbeam and replace it with a very large deathray for long range firepower. Unfortunately this has proven impossible. A large deathray, between 100m to 200m long as been proposed, would require an equally large crystal for the main core of the weapon. No currently available manufacturing facility is able to build anything larger than a 40m crystal, and even that has not been actually attempted up to now. Standard heavy deathray cannons use 25m crystals in their design. There are also some possible design constraints necessary when building such huge weapons that will take time to work out. Leere R&D gets onto the problem, but for now the LR cruiser design is adjusted to have many smaller deathray turrets instead, about three times as many as a normal cruiser. It's range is not quite as good a single large deathray would be, and it's armor penetration will not be as effective either, but deathrays are far more effective at long range and are far better at reducing shields. Such a ship would be a significant boon to the fleet.

Also it is soon realized it could be the answer to another problem. Al'kesh. Such a cruiser would have better anti-smallcraft capabilities than battlecruisers, though actually damaging Al'kesh armor once it's shields are down would be tricky, but not impossible. Some consideration is given to having some Goa'uld plasma cannons installed as heavy firepower once an opponents shields are dropped (since the Reich's plasma bolt project has not given any results yet), but in the end the design chooses the new gravguns. So far only a medium cannon is ready, with a fairly low rate of fire, modeled on the experimental version. This cannon has a muzzle velocity of over 170 km/s, meaning about 4 to 8 seconds travel time in typical combat range, less than a second in close range work. This would make it very capable in short range, and somewhat capable at medium range battles, a great improvement over the coilgun's 10km/s, which limited it to very close range work, or work against static targets. The rounds are small compared to older coilgun designs, but at those speeds do a considerable amount of kinetic damage with very good armor penetration. There was some talk about mounting a crude maneuvering unit on the projectiles as well, given that they did not perceive any acceleration while being thrown to such speeds since it was done via gravitational forces. Sensitive electronic and drive components wouldn't have survived the huge accelerations on older coilguns. This might increase range still further, allowing the projectiles to compensate for ship's movement between firing and reaching the target, though it was likely the mobility of such small rounds would be limited. Making sure the projectiles received course updates from the firing vessel's scanners on the target would be tricky, especially if later versions of the weapon had higher rates of fire, but it seemed possible.

So, with gravguns for physical punch, the new cruiser design seemed to be workable. One was started in the orbital yard as a test vessel. The design was hardly revolutionary, only the overall deck layout and the gravguns were new, and none of this was seen to be a require extensive testing. However, given the current problems with the Spelk, though it was given the proven NH Fusion plant it stuck with the older hyperdrive. It could always be refitted later.

It would be 8 months before the ship was ready, and then, if the idea tested out well in trials, more could be built.

Alternatives to plasma beams and bolts or coilguns (and now gravguns) had been considered over the years. Particle beams, higher energy deathrays that emitted high frequency xrays or even gammarays, the disintegration bomb that so far had eluded Reich researchers (no-one really wanted to use pieces of gates for a warhead, especially if the warhead could be intercepted and wasted. They'd wait till the Reich could build that tech themselves more reliably), and oddities like cyberweapons that could disable control systems (still ineffective in trials). About the only one of these that was anywhere near testing was a particle beam, and so far it's range was no-where near as effective as deathrays, though in theory it would have better damage against material targets than deathrays. The engineers were so far not impressed with the tech, but it might be made to be effective in time. Baal had certainly used something similar as his anti-fighter weapon.

At present none of these would be likely to be introduced any time soon. The particle beam cannon might be introduced if they could improve it's firepower, but there was no sign of that as yet. With the introduction of the gravgun it seemed like a new weapons system was not really needed anyway, but work continued.

Near the end of December the Spelk finally has it's new hyperdrive replaced and undergoes further testing. This time no failures are detected, but a specialist heavy transport ship is fitted with the new dual hyperdrive (and an NH fusion plant, just in case there is some oddity with the two systems causing the problem) and begins trials in the outer Teutonia system. Hopefully they can ensure that no further failures will occur.

***

In an odd looking, dilapidated SGC gateroom the gate activates and SG-1 stumbles through, wearing very odd, 1960s era clothing.

O'NEILL: Auntie Em? Auntie Em?

CARTER: Where is everyone?

The bay doors slide open and an elderly man in a grey and black lounge suit walks in grinning.

OLD MAN: Hello, Jack.

Startled, Jack turns to stare at him, squinting as if almost recognizing him. The man walks up to the base of the ramp and claps his hands together.

OLD MAN: Well... fancy meeting you here! Teal'c. Keep the hair, seriously.

Teal'c looks confused, and Sam glances at his bald head.

Jack coughs and looks around nervously.

O'NEILL: Do…do we know you?

OLD MAN: I'd think you would Jack. Of course you'll get it wrong.

They walk down the ramp towards him and Jack squints.

O'NEILL: No... couldn't be.... You're... Me?

OLD MAN: Close, but no cigar. The name's Johnathan.

Jack blinks.

O'NEILL: Johnathan.. as in me... Wait, I said that already?

Johnathan smiles.

JOHNATHAN: It's a long story, and I think Sam would stop me from telling it anyway. Well, I've been only been waiting for you...

Johnathan looks down at his wrist, even though no watch is present

JOHNATHAN: ...ooohh. My whole life. Long and short of it, you entered the stargate a teensy bit too soon. Flare went 'FOOSH' you went too far. I've come to send you back.

DANIEL: How did you know we'd come here?

JOHNATHAN: Guess who told me?

He winks at Jack.

CARTER: Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

JOHNATHAN:Well, as much I'd love gab with all of you, time. Ya know. Gotta be precise right?

Again he looks at his imaginary watch.

CARTER: Already? But there's so much that you…

JOHNATHAN: Carter! I'm surprised at you! Train teleport paraboxes and everything.

SAM: Um... Trans temporay paradoxes?

JOHNATHAN: Yeah, those things.

Carter nods, understanding. Johnathan lifts his finger and points it at the gate melodramatically. Nothing happens. He looks at his finger, picks a piece of imaginary lint from the nail, then tries again, squinting. Suddenly the gate ripples into existence, but no 'Kawoosh'.

JOHNATHAN: Hmm, need to get this looked at.

He says, staring at his finger. Carter raises an eyebrow at this, but shakes her head, hurriedly taking the GDO out of her bag, keying in the activation code.

JOHNATHAN: Go forth my friends, and... Do stuff. Don't worry. Loads of cool stuff to come. I promise!

They stop and look at him for a moment, and Carter puts the GDO back before SG-1 turns and walks up the ramp through the wormhole. Jack looks back at Johnathan oddly just before he goes through the event horizon.

Johnathan looks over his shoulder, up to the darkened gate control room.

JOHNATHAN: Can I take this damned old guy mask off now? Damn things itches!

He said, peeling a piece of fake skin off his chin revealing a far younger looking face.

INT—GATE ROOM, PRESENT DAY
The Gate has already activated, and the camera cuts to the control room.

TECHNICIAN: Incoming traveler, sir.

Hammond and another technician hurry into the control room, and Hammond goes to the window. The gate Technician looks surprised as he looks at the control panel.

TECHNICIAN: It's SG-1.

HAMMOND: Open the iris.

He turns and runs out of the control room. Down in the gateroom the Stargate iris slides open as the bay door slides open and Hammond walks in, just as SG-1 steps through the wormhole. Seeing that they're finally home, O'Neill throws up his hands in relief, pointing both fingers at Hammond.

O'NEILL: Yes!

He heads down to meet Hammond at the base of the ramp, with the rest of the team behind him. He snaps off a salute to Hammond with a smile.

O'NEILL: We're home…

Behind them, the wormhole shuts off.

O'NEILL: …thanks to one sparky young Lieutenant Hammond.

CARTER: How did you know, sir?

HAMMOND: When I was a young lieutenant, I was ordered to escort four people out of Cheyenne Mountain. In the vest pocket of one I found a note with my name on it. Needless to say, I followed its instructions.

CARTER: But you couldn't have known when to give it to me.

HAMMOND: No, not until I saw the cut on your hand. Remember when I took your cuffs off.

CARTER: Then you've been waiting for this to happen.

HAMMOND: Ever since we met. I almost didn't let you go.

CARTER: But if you didn't, you would have changed your own history.

O'Neill simply smiles and shakes his head.

HAMMOND: It's going to be a long debriefing, people. We'll start in one hour.

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

HAMMOND: Oh, by the way, Colonel…with interest, you owe me five hundred thirty-nine dollars and fifty cents.

Carter and Daniel can't help but grin at that one. Jack even smiles back.

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

 

[Patupi]

January 1999

"They are fools!"

Yu was not happy. No meeting had yet to be called, despite the seriousness of the situation with Sokar. Few seemed willing to put any ships down in defense of the whole Council, let alone meet the large fleet the Reich had offered.

"They wish others to take the loss, not themselves, obviously. They hope that someone will step forwards. Our and your fleets would not be sufficient would they?" Himmler said, sitting across the table from Yu.

Yu shook his head.

"Unlikely. True, we have no real information on Sokar, but if he is willing to show his hand now he must at least be stronger than last time, and then it took Ra and a group of over twelve other Goa'uld, with five System Lords among them, to defeat him. He will have hundreds of ships and likely new technologies, or at least ones we have not seen before."

Himmler pondered for a few seconds.

"Can you think of anything that might draw him out, lead him into a trap?"

Yu raised an eyebrow.

"What kind of a trap?"

"I'm unsure yet, but at least we could simply fashion a truly massive Naquadah bomb in some kind of stealthed ship and detonate it when his fleet passes by." Himmler frowns. "Though that would require improvement of our stealth systems. At present they only work at range." He wasn't willing to say what range, even to Yu. "If we could even the odds with such a trap even just our forces could manage it."

"A worthwhile start of a plan, but hardly sufficient. I do not however know of anything definite that could draw most of his forces out. He is unlikely to assault with his full fleet until a time of his choosing, not ours." Himmler merely nodded sad agreement.

It seemed there was little they could do at the moment, though Yu and Himmler agreed to send scout craft out to attempt to locate Sokar at least. Hataks and Al'kesh from Yu, Destroyers from Himmler.

Himmler did not mention his suspicions of an invisibility device to Yu. If Reich scientists could determine how that was achieved and duplicate it (or at least find a way to detect them) then they may have a significant edge over Sokar.... or any other Goa'uld.

On the 17th January the engineers finally stated that they had isolated the problem with the dual hyperdrives, fixed it, and thoroughly tested the new configuration. It seemed there was a slight chance of resonance with EM fields from the internal gravity plating with the old dual version, which in turn sent the interconnected fields between the two drives out of sync, wrecking the system. Enhanced tuning and extra EM shielding on certain conduits enabled the system to be proof (or so the engineers stated) against the kind of accident that befell the Spelk. Work on the transports and destroyer escorts began again and the new 'defense cruiser' was early enough along in it's design that they could switch out the engine so that also would start with a dual hyperdrive.

Initial attempts to build an invisibility device themselves failed rather miserably, and so far showed no signs of working any time soon. They had a theory, and even some practical systems, but it only seemed to work at key frequencies of light, and even then so far the only systems worked in near infrared and down into the radio frequencies. The specialized hull material literally bent such light beams through the outer layer and around the ship, but they were unsure if such could be made to work at visual frequencies, let alone Goa'uld multi-spectrum and subspace frequencies from their scanners. However if it were achieved it was believed it could be melded with existing stealth technology to help with that.

The other side of the coin seemed to be working somewhat better. How to detect an invisible ship. Using part of the current particle beam weapon project they adjusted it so it would create a weak stream of specialized sub atomic particles, mesons, that would decay at a fixed time. Adjust the speed of the particles and they would decay at a a fixed distance from the ship and those tiny reactions could be detected by specialized scanners. The prototype device created an expanding sphere of minute detonations, and if something were stealthed those detonations would be absent, leaving a pocket of clear space where it was.

This was a fairly short range scanner at present, and fairly power intensive, but seemed that it should work with any kind of invisibility. The meson scanner was put into production to make a small batch that could be tested to detect conventional objects in space. If successful it should be able to be installed on cruisers and battleships as standard. The power requirements were a little high for destroyers.

With the apparent (untested in the field) success of the meson scanner an odd weapon system was proposed. The mesons would pass through most matter, or even some shield frequencies, before they decayed. Once they decayed it would create particles that would interact with normal matter. In effect if you could time it well (which the Reich had already managed to perfect with the meson scanner) you could create tiny explosions inside solid objects. With a large up scale in size such a weapon would be very good at penetrating armor, and somewhat effective at penetrating shields, although damage was not likely to be very good even on large weapons. If they knew the layout of a ship well enough they could target specific, vulnerable components, causing minor damage to key systems on a ship, shutting it down and disabling it. Not only that but the subatomic beams were almost undetectable. However, the downside was that anyone who knew their shield systems well enough could probably adjust them to block such weapons fairly easily once they figured out what was happening. Whether such 'meson guns' could be, in turn, tuned to then defeat such shield tactics was unknown at this time. More research would be required.

February 1999

So far no scouts have reported anything on the border searches, and Himmler is wondering why Yu expected anything this quickly. There is a lot of space to cover searching for Sokar. He begins to suspect the 'allied' Goa'uld has faster vessels than he let on, perhaps using similar techniques (or even more advanced methods) to the Reich's own dual hypersystems. Only two of the destroyers the Fuhrer sent out have the new dual hyperdrives so it will take time.

Now that the Reich is officially part of the System Lords the SES begin to mostly switch back to using their own jet black armors and Reich built weapons. The Mk 7 Beamer rifle is particularly favored among the Nazi Jaffa, having been focused into a much tighter beam than previous plasma beam weapons. With ranges well beyond a staff weapon, and devastating firepower, the heavy weapon is used by over half the Nazi Jaffa troops, being slightly smaller in size than a staff weapon (though considerably heavier) and just about able to be supported in a 'holster' on the back of the armored suit. Jaffa that use the Beamer rifle generally have an MR-9 light deathray as a sidearm. Others are a mix of MR-12s and the new GV-4 Grav rifle. This first working version of the gravgun as a rifle is so far not capable of automatic fire, 'only' having a muzzle velocity of 15km/s, but is capable of snap fire, holds two thousand rounds, and has a very long range, in excess of 5km technically (though it would take a skilled marksman to utilize that full range). It's punch is kinetic, and as such would not do well against shields, but against physical targets packs far more wallop than a staff weapon for slightly less weight. A lower damage, shorter range, rapid fire version is being worked on. NECE rounds are so far not standard as there have been stability issues, but they hope these will be solved soon. Such rounds, if used however, are very powerful, so far easily capable of punching through most light vehicle armor by the strength of the explosive alone (a little over 1/3 lb of explosive equivalent in this round), let alone the armor penetrating tip and the kinetic damage.

The GV-4 is definitely not a stealth weapon, the sonic booms the projectiles make are very noisy despite the small round size, let alone the noise of the NECE detonations if those rounds are used.

Despite these new weapon and armor assignments, some SES remain with Goa'uld Jaffa weapons and armor for use in stealth missions into enemy territory. Those that are instead using the new Nazi made equipment are also beginning to re-introduce the other equipment that the Wehrmacht has been using for decades. Various light ground vehicles, the new air scout craft (when ready for use), mortar and light rocket artillery, and some special anti-shield units with specialized heavy deathray field weapons. No tanks or heavy units, but lighter power armor is sometimes used, though the FFGs already give the Nazi Jaffa a considerable advantage. The Nazi Jaffa armor is sealed against vacuum and hostile gasses as much as power armor, though the Jaffa's boosted strength is not quite up to the scout armors artificial muscles at present.

At present non-Jaffa are present in the SES, but mostly they are composed of the Nazi Jaffa. This does not seem to be going to change any time soon.

***

O'Neill scrambles over the embankment and heads across the clearing, towards the waiting Jaffa. Trofsky watches.

O'NEILL: Jaffa, kree!

TROFSKY: Kel mak, Goa'uld! Kree tak!

O'Neill obviously doesn't understand what Trofsky has just said.

O'NEILL: You heard me, I said Kree!

DANIEL: Jack?

O'NEILL: Hey guys. Makepeace, nice rescue. Good job.

TROFSKY: Silence!

O'NEILL: All right, listen up. There's something you should know before you start shooting and killing and ruining what could be the start of a beautiful friendship—our beloved Hathor…is dead.

TROFSKY: What you say is impossible. Hathor is a queen. More than that, she is a goddess.

O'NEILL: Yeah ok, ex-goddess, maybe. I killed her myself. You should trust me on this, she's gone. She is no more. She's…well, let's face it, she's a former queen. So why don't we just put an end to this right now?

TROFSKY: We will end this with your surrender!

The chevrons on the Stargate begin to activate.

TROFSKY: Jaffa kree, Chappa'ai!

***

On another world Teal'c and Hammond sit in the controls of the ancient deathglider.

TEAL'C: Firing the weapon will be your responsibility, General Hammond.

HAMMOND: Understood.

They both prepare themselves as the ship powers up.

***

O'NEILL: Now.

Carter blows the C4, destroying the generator.

***

Back in the deathglider Hammond talks to Teal'c.

HAMMOND: What exactly did he mean by threading the needle?

TEAL'C: Observe.

With a sudden burst of acceleration, and much to the surprise of General Hammond, the glider leaps forwards at Teal'c's command and dives straight into the event horizon of the gate. On Hathor's planet it shoots out the other side of the wormhole and in it's first pass leaving the gate fires on the first turret, obliterating it. O'Neill pulls out his sidearm, aiming at Trofsky.

O'NEILL: Get down!

The captured SG soldiers duck, as O'Neill fires at Trofsky. Carter sees the second turret target O'Neill and runs across the clearing, shooting at the Jaffa manning the gun.

CARTER: Colonel!

O'Neill turns at her voice, then dives out of the way just in time. Bra'tac, along with half a dozen of his Jaffa, emerges from the Stargate. As Trofsky climbs to his feet and raises his weapon, Bra'tac shoots him, this time killing him.

In the deathglider Teal'c and Hammond focus on the battle below while they circle and line up on the last turret.

TEAL'C: Fire.

Hammond fires the Death Glider's weapons, destroying the final turret

HAMMOND: Yeeeehaaaw!

Bra'tac and his people rush up, surrounding and capturing Trofsky's Jaffa.

BRA'TAC: Jaffa! Tal bet! Tal bet!

Trofsky's remaining Jaffa surrender and Bra'tac heads over to O'Neill.

BRA'TAC: Human.

Teal'c and General Hammond, having landed the Death Glider, approach the gathering. They all share a moment of triumph before heading towards the Stargate.

 

[Patupi]

March 1999

Efforts to get the 'Great Return' mission ready continue, and the main transport is nearly ready, as are the escorting destroyers. Who gets to go on this monumental mission is under considerable discussion. The SS claim one of the destroyers personally, and request to lead the mission. However the somewhat extreme views of the Waffen SS are not deemed compatible with first contact missions, so although they will be joining the mission, their adjutants will merely be helping the Captains of the other ships, not leading them. The Raumflotte send an admiral aboard one of the destroyers to act as commander of the fleet, somewhat unorthodox on such small vessels, but his rank should stop any interference from the Waffen SS ship and the other SS crew in the fleet.

Late in March the ships are ready, but undergo trials to ensure no problems will occur. No matter how much the engineers insist they have the problems with the dual hyperdrives fixed the Captains want to prove it to themselves.

Meanwhile efforts to improve the Stealth destroyers of late have borne some fruit. Some minor upgrades in the system (Merely three days in drydock to install) allow the Seventh Stealth Fleet to head out again into disputed space, mainly heading down into Baals area of space, or over to spinward where Nirrti reins. Mapping the territory hereabouts helps confirm what the Goa'uld in the System Lord Council claim are their worlds. So far they have matched up fairly well, though there are some odd things going on in Baal's territory. One or two planets appear to have been evacuated, gate and all. No Jaffa structures remain at all on the planets, but it was obvious they were there up to about two months ago. Where is he sending them? Plus if the light scouting the Seventh fleet is doing is showing up these worlds how many more has he evacuated?

On the 29th of March an incoming gate link comes from Thor, asking permission to arrive personally. Somewhat nervously the commander allows it and Schmidt is called for. He arrives as Thor is being escorted into the briefing room.

"Greetings Field Marshall. We have many things to discuss." Thor says in a rather serious tone.

It turns out that Thor was planning on discussing some form of arrangement with the Reich, but then learned of them joining the System Lords Council. He was not happy about that.

"What do you expect us to do? We need leverage against them, and right now they still are capable of ganging up on us and smashing us flat! We will not stand idly by and let people be conquered and put into slavery by these monsters, and getting on the inside of their organisation was the only way we had to stay alive while fighting them."

"How do you intend to fight them if you are a member of the Council."

Schmidt smiled.

"Since when have the council members not fought one another?"

Thor grudgingly admits the point, but says that any non-Goa'uld in such a situation will always be looked on with fear. They will not let the Reich get away with what a normal System Lord would be able to.

In the end Thor announces that the deal he was going to offer the Reich is now going to be offered to the System Lords. He has called for there to be a meeting on an alien planet in one week from now. He leaves details with the Reich on the gate address and who these people are and what the proposed meeting is about. Thor then gets up to leave while Schmidt stares down at the first page of the display document Thor gave him and frowns.

"Tauri.... where have I heard that name before?"

April 1999

With a flash the gate stabilized and four travelers found themselves on another verdant planet.

"Mmmm, well. Still trees." Jack said staring around. "I'm still waiting for pink leaves... With polkadots."

Sam smiled as she walked alongside him.

"I think you'll be waiting quite a while sir."

The four came down the ramp, weapons at the ready.

"The tablet said 'Lo, and thee who falleth there shall not travel the path South'." Daniel said as he gazed around. "So I say... South."

"Sounds like a plan." Jack said with a smile then pointed South towards the treeline dramatically. "Verily."

The four black clad soldiers trekked into the forest towards the South, following an overgrown trail. It didn't look as if anyone had been on this path for a long time.

An hour of trekking later, when they broke clear of the trees, they saw the nearby cliff edge, and below in a valley was a series of crumbling stone buildings, built into the cliff walls on either side.

"Vaguely like Petra, though the architecture has elements of Peruvian stylistic patterns." Daniel muttered, walking to the edge of the cliff, staring down. "I wonder how long... Woah!"

A deathglider shot overhead from behind them and the group backed into the forest once more, watching it scream over the valley, then turn East. Jack shook his head as he watched it shoot to the left, then it turned North.

"Tell me that wasn't heading for the gate Carter?" He said sadly.

"Sorry sir," she said, staring North through the trees, "and I'm getting subspace signals from that direction too. I'm guessing heavier craft."

"Oh, just terrific!" He turned to the side and nodded to Teal'c. "Feel like taking on a mothership today T?"

"It would be a worthy challenge O'Neill."

"Might just be Al'kesh?" Daniel added hopefully. The others didn't comment and instead started North. "Hey, what about the city?"

"Come on Daniel! It'll still be there next time. You can study relics when we get back."

"IF we get back." He muttered, but hurried to join the group.

***

At the treeline they lay prone on the ground, staring out across the plain. Sure enough, before them on the plains was an Hatak, hovering over the gate. Curiously there were many Jaffa gathered around the gate and one or two Goa'uld ordering them around.

"This is Nirrti's territory isn't it Teal'c?" Sam asked Teal'c, who nodded back. "Then what's one of Baal's motherships doing here, and why didn't they just use the gate to get here?"

The work around the gate seemed odd, almost as if they were repairing it. They certainly had the DHD apart and the Goa'uld down there were odd in themselves. It wasn't often you saw three Goa'uld working together like that. Presumably they were all minor Goa'uld in the service of Baal, so he kept them in line. Still, odd.

Then a surprising thing happened. After one of the Goa'uld who was digging in the guts of the DHD came up smiling, an energy field suddenly sprang to life from the nearby Hatak and lifted both the DHD and the Gate up from the ground and floated them up into the underside of the Hatak, where a huge set of doors slid open to accept them.

"Hey, that's not theirs!" O'Neill said indignantly. "Isn't there some sort of Gould FBI we can call Carter? Pilfering a gate without due care and attention or something?"

"I think that's drunk driving." Sam said absently. "What the heck do they want with a gate?"

"More to the point, what the heck are we going to do without one!" O'Neill muttered, glaring down at the ship. "We gotta get in there, and fast!"

"Well, there is one sure fire way?" Sam said nervously.

"No, we are not getting ourselves captured! Some Jaffa captain or something might take it into his head to just kill ol' SG-1 just for the fun of it, no matter what his master wants."

"I do not believe Baal has anything specific against us O'Neill." Teal'c added. "Neither do his troops have anything against us specifically. Most likely we would be simply captured."

"Unless one wants to take a potshot at the old 'Shol'va'." O'Neill said pointedly. "No, it looks like the Jaffa are ringing up fairly slowly. We have time to get down there and see if we can sneak on board."

The four slid back into the trees, then ran down at an angle, aiming for the section with the most number of rocks they could use as cover between the forest and the rings. After a surprisingly fast sprint they started leapfrogging across between boulders, heading for the rings while the numbers of Jaffa dwindled. By the time they got within ten twenty feet of the Jaffa there were only twelve left, and as they watched six stood within the rings and activated them.

While the others were distracted by the noise of the rings Jack led the group out and charged them, knives out. The fight was short and brutal, necks cut, six Jaffa laying bleeding on the ground.

"I still don't see why we couldn't have used Zats!" Daniel said, trying to wipe his hands clean. He'd been rather hesitant with his one kill.

"Energy signatures Danny boy." Jack said, and Sam looked a little surprised. "What?" He added indignantly.

After a rather hurried change of clothes and weapons (their own SMGs buried nearby to collect later), and with the bodies dumped behind some rocks, they stepped into the rings and activated them, Teal'c in the lead. However they didn't need his assist this time as no-one was present when they rung up.

"OK, plan A. Find the gate and dial out." Jack said quietly, and led them on.

"O'Neill. I still believe this subterfuge is ineffective. Any Jaffa will notice the lack of symbiotes."

Jack peered out tentatively, checking the T-junction ahead to ensure there were no patrols nearby.

"Yeah. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it Teal'c."

***

After twenty minutes it was obvious they couldn't find the cargo bay that the ring had been taken to. Teal'c had taken them to the two bays he thought most likely, and the gate was in neither. Now they had decided to head for the Pel'tak and at least get some information about where the gate was.

"We could always take the ship?" Jack mused idly as they neared the recessed door to the Pel'tak.

"Four against a thousand Jaffa?" Sam said, incredulously. "I know we're pretty good, but we're not that good!"

"Yeah, shame. Be nice to have one of these babies." Jack said sadly, patting a wall affectionately. "I wonder what mileage it gets?"

Teal'c held his finger to his lips as they neared the hatchway which had been left open. Within they heard voices and when Jack stuck a mirror around the corner he saw some Goa'uld he didn't recognize talking to someone on a holographic veiw.

"Looks like there's some dispute here. Two Goulds having a spat. Ooh, is that another mothership on the screen?"

Teal'c Took the little mirror and viewed it himself.

"Yes, in the service of Nirrti." He said softly.

"Oh, she isn't going to be happy with Baal is she?" Jack said smiling. "What's the sentence for grand theft gate d'ya recon."

"Death." Teal'c said simply.

Jack stared at Teal'c for a second then nodded.
"Uh, yeah. Guess so. They are Goulds after all. We probably should get off this ship rather quickly." Jack added, then paused. "Company!" He whispered, pointing back into the corridor.

A troop of eight Jaffa were stomping up the corridor and Jack and the others were forced to hide behind the wall as they passed.

"Easier said than done." Daniel said sourly. "We still don't know where the gate is!"

"Well," Jack said, looking down at the armor they wore, "We could just go in and ask nicely?" He said, nodding towards the Pel'tak.

***

"How dare you!" Nirrti's agent said on the screen as Lotun grimaced at her. His Jaffa had readied the hyperdrive, but if he returned without getting rid of any witnesses Baal would skin him alive! Right now this idiot didn't know what he had been doing. Later when they found out Baal would be blamed. This Goa'uld was a dead woman.

"Do not be so quick to judge. My master has rights of passage through this system. If you harry my transit Baal will spend many a long week taking you apart piece by piece."

"This is my Mistress' territory and I know nothing of any rights of passage! I would have been told if any existed."

"It is not my fault if you are poorly informed. Go back and speak to your Mistress, then I will be on my way... when you have apologized for your arrogance."

The infuriated Goa'uld fumed and broke the connection.

"Quickly," Lotun said to the Jaffa master on the Pel'tak, "I want her weapons and hyperdrive targeted before she calls out. Fire the weapons as soon after they are powered up as you can. I want no warning! Raise shields after you fire."

It was a risk, she could detect the energy build up and fire ahead, but unlikely. Lotun gripped the handrests of his throne and waited the few seconds while his Jaffa prepared... then struck. On the screen he grinned as he saw her ship struck from multiple weapons, a huge barrage at such close range with no shields. Despite the posturing and shouting earlier she had merely assumed this was a threat from Baal. He would never strike at Nirrti directly! The two System Lords were too closely intertwined in dealings in the council. Either of them raising shields earlier would have been a blatant signal they were going to attack, thus both had closed range with shields down. This was an unfortunate decision for her. Fire returned from her ship with the few weapons she had left after the strike, and unfortunately before Lotun's Jaffa could raise the shield.

Lotun grimaced as his ship shook, but was rewarded a few moments later with the enemy Hatak vanishing in a blast of energy.

Lotun turned to stare at the Jaffa Master.

"I apologize my lord. I was not fast enough to raise the shields." He said, bowing his head deeply in supplication.

For a few moments Lotun stared at him, then sighed.

"What damage did we take?"

"Mostly minor, but two weapons were destroyed and our hyperdrive is disabled." He said, looking nervously at his master.

"You will pay dearly for this Vin'tak. Later, when I have the time, you will suffer the wrath of your..."

Vin'tak was very surprised when Lotun's angry speech was interrupted by the Goa'uld's head exploding. He turned to see several Jaffa running into the room, staffs and Zat'Nik'Tels firing at the occupants. Despite the surprise he managed to dodge behind the throne and take cover, pulling his Zat'Nik'Tel from his belt.

"I see you there." came an odd voice. "Now what say you just drop that Zat and come out peacefully? Otherwise we'll be forced to kill you."

"Ask them nicely?" Another one of them said quietly.

"It's about as nice as I get." The first one replied.

"Indeed." Said a third, who looked and sounded far more like a true Jaffa. "Hear me Jaffa. Your false god is dead. Come out and denounce him as such. You are free!"

"You are no Jaffa!" Vin'tak said bitterly, not sensing a symbiote in any of them, though with the many ones dying within his fellow Jaffa on the floor it was difficult to be sure. "I will not betray my god!"

Vin'tak angled around the throne and fired, his Zat'Nik'Tel blast catching the forth one, a female, squarely, even as the others responded with similar fire back at him, striking him with a blast. As he tumbled to the floor in pain he saw the one he had struck grimace, but shake the blast off. Who were these people?

***

"Well. That went well." Jack said staring at the twitching body as it collapsed at his feet. "You OK Carter?"

"I'm fine Sir. One isn't likely to do much. I have no idea how many we can take though."

"Something else to ask Harlan when we get back." Jack said sourly.

"If we get back." Daniel added.

"Oh come on Daniel. Look on the bright side for once!"

Sam suddenly looked up oddly, cocking her head.

"Sir? Do you hear that?"

Jack turned around, listening.

"Nope. What should I be listening to?"

"It's... German? It's on about 52GHz..." When Jack looked blankly at her Sam smiled and added. "Radio transmission, in German. Daniel, can you hear it?" Daniel paused a second then nodded while Jack slapped the side of his head for a few seconds, grimacing. Sam moved over to the door while still talking to Daniel. "What are they saying?"

"It sounds like coordination orders and... wait, the same voice in Goa'uld! Demanding this Hatak's surrender! Uh... who could stand down an Hatak and speaks German?"

While Sam ducked out the door to peer up and down the corridor Teal'c shook his head at Daniel.

"I know of none Daniel Jackson. However, rather than searching through this entire ship for the gate, perhaps we could illicit these people's assistance?"

O'Neill frowned.

"It's just gonna be another Gould." He said.

"I don't think so." Daniel said, shaking his head. "No Goa'uld would demean himself to speak a 'primitive' language like that, and it sounded more casual, as if German were their native tongue and Goa'uld was learned, though learned very well by the sound of it." Daniel paused. "Hello, er, we're kinda stuck on this ship. Could we get a lift?"

"Daniel?" Jack said, confused, then a look of comprehension came over him. "Hey! We get to talk things like that out before making the bad calls!"

"Since when?" Daniel said, then continued listening to a reply from the unknown ship.

This time they were all tuned in and heard a voice back, in English.

"Who is this?" Came a the voice with a thick German accent. "I demand you identify yourselves? Which System Lord do you serve and why are you on-board Baals vessel? Are you his prisoners?"

Jack glanced down at the dead body of Lotun.

"Hardly. Baal's servant here is... currently unavailable. We're on the...." He read Daniel's lips as he mouthed 'Pel'tak' "... Bel'tak, and would kinda like to get off this ride. Can you manage that?"

There was a pause then the German voice responded.

"Very well. If you can shut down the Hatak's shields and get to a ring transporter we can bring you out."

"Sounds like a plan." He said, then just to the others beside him: "Let's move it people!"

Teal'c went to the control panel and, after some fiddling, managed to lower the shields. Then it was a frantic dash down the corridors towards the ring system they'd passed fifteen minutes before.

Of course there were Jaffa in the way.

"Cover the back!" Jack yelled to Daniel as he Zatted another Jaffa from the corner. Daniel did likewise to a Jaffa coming up from behind them while Teal'c fired his staff into a third in front. "Damn I wish I had my MP-5 now!"

In a few more seconds they'd finished off the Jaffa at the rings.

"OK, move it!" Jack yelled, running into the rings and holding his finger over the wrist device on his captured Jaffa uniform. While waiting for Daniel to reach them he yelled into the air and on the radio waves. "I hope you're ready out there Fritz! We're coming in hot!"

As soon as Daniel was inside the rings he hit the switch, seeing several Jaffa coming around the corner and firing shots at them as the rings descended. Most hit the rings, flashing off the side.

Most.

"Daniel!" Jack gasped as they arrived, not even paying attention to the hulking men in jet black armor around them as he crouched beside Daniel as he collapsed slowly. "Speak to me Danny! Are you OK?"

Laying in Jack's arms Daniel looked down at the large hole in his right side.

"I... I've been better." He said weakly.

"Sir?" Sam's voice came worriedly from above.

"Not now Carter. Get some equipment, he needs..."

"SIR! We're all in trouble! Do you have power?"

Jack looked stumped for a moment, then cocked his head.

"Oh terrific!" He carefully put Daniel down, stood up and turned to the man who looked to be in charge among the black armored soldiers. "Who turned off the juice?"

The man looked suitably confused, partially as to why the man in front of him, wearing no armor, was completely unphased by having a dozen weapons pointing at him.

"Well? Come on? Who's responsible!"

"I believe that would be me mister...?"

"O'Neill. Colonel Jack O'Neill. And maybe you can tell me what you did to our power?"

The man blinked, and Jack slowly started to look confused as well. Mainly because this man was not wearing jet black armor, but was in a very familiar looking black military uniform. One with a black peaked cap and the letters 'SS' emblazoned on the epaulets.

"I'm sorry? Did we step into the twilight zone or something?"

The man coughed.

"...This is Nirrti's 'Zone' if you can call it anything. And I am Standartenführer Sanger, SS adjutant to Captain Trommler of the Reich destroyer RDT-003."

Jack turned and looked at Sam, then at Teal'c, then back at Sanger.

"Excuse me... did you just say SS adjutant?" The man frowned, then nodded. "SS as in... Nazi?"

"Yes. You know of the Fourth Reich?"

"F... Fourth Reich?" Jack turned again to Sam, shrugging, then noticed Daniel on the floor, his eyes closing. "OK, whoever you are, he needs medical..."

"Mechanical." Sam interjected softly.

"Right, mechanical attention immediately. And we need our power back in a matter of hours or we're dead. Sam, how much charge have you got?"

Sam closed her eyes a minute then turned back to him.

"About three hours. But I doubt Daniel has that much, even if he's fixed."

"Wait." Sanger said, stepping back. "You aren't human are you?"

Jack looked down at the black and grey cavity in Daniel's side with the clear fluid leaking out.

"What gave it away Einstein!"

Sanger paused for a moment then made a decision. He gave orders in staccato German and soon several Jaffa (though their armor was black, not silver. Jack decided not to ask right now) rushed in and helped carry Daniel off to a repair facility.

***

An hour later they were all in a rather high tech looking workshop with several stunned looking German scientists and Daniel sitting up on his bed with wires leading into his chest.

"Ze Intermediate power Zystems are still down, Unt regulation is... not gut." The man said in his broken English. "Do not vorry. He vill be fine."

"Well that's good for you anyway." Jack joked, then his smile faded as the man looked at him quizzically. "I hate it when jokes don't cross language barriers."

"Well sir, it's not really that funny anyway." Sam said seriously.

"No," Sanger interrupted seriously as he came into the room, "Threats seldom are. Gentlemen and lady. I am pleased to announce that the Fuhrer has agreed to allow you to travel to one of our worlds to use the Stargate there. Unfortunately, in exchange we would like to scan your unique... physiologies, rather thoroughly. Do not worry, we intend no harm to you, but the robots technology you represent would be of considerable benefit to us. We also have several Generals who wish to debrief you and discuss matters between our two peoples."

O'Neill frowned as he stared at Sanger.

"Look, don't take this the wrong way, we appreciate the rescue and getting Daniel back on his feet." He glanced over at Daniel as he lay there, still hooked up to wires. "Well, sort of. Anyway, we can't just let you go poking around in us like that and we won't discuss classified material."

Sanger smiled.

"And I wouldn't expect you to Colonel. We will not be doing any 'poking around' except to repair your friend. Our scientists have already determined you are a very advanced system. A truly self-aware robotic system. We have computers actually more advanced than those we have found in your friend there, but the software? That is way beyond anything we have developed. We would be interested in how you... well, came to be. This is voluntary. You understand that if we wished it you would have no choice in the matter. You are standing in a ship speeding into Reich territory as we speak, with over eighty soldiers on board, most of those Nazi Jaffa who are far stronger and faster than you, even with your mechanical systems. Instead we offer a trade. Information for information. We have a great deal of knowledge of the Goa'uld. Perhaps we could share some of this with you, in addition to information about the Fourth Reich in return for knowledge of you and your people?"

Sam held a hand up slight to get attention, and then smiled.

"Perhaps we can first talk about what happened to our power sources? I'm glad you could rig up an EM recharge system, but I'd like to know why it was necessary."

Sanger brushed the comment away with a gesture.

"Merely a security system. We have modified our rings to filter out Naquadah from incoming matter streams, thus making all Goa'uld weapons useless. It makes life much more difficult for any Jaffa boarding parties."

"I imagine it would." Teal'c said slowly, raising one eyebrow.

"And that drained the Naquadah from the power cells. I'm just glad we don't have Naquadah in our brains!" She said, shaking her head. "That would have been difficult to fix!"

Sanger smiled and motioned with his hand behind him towards the rest of the ship.

"Well, once your friend is repaired you can look around non-secure sections of the ship, as long as you have an escort. Feel free to look around, just do not poke around if the guide instructs that you cannot enter somewhere. We have 'classified information' just as much as you do."

"Understood." Jack said.

"Very well, I hope we can come to an understanding and help each other fight the Goa'uld in the future. Our two civilizations would be a great deal of help to one another."

Sanger gives a cringingly familiar salute and leaves the room. Jack shakes his head, and turning away from the scientists he mouths to Sam 'Nazis?', and she shrugs back at him.

"It's a big universe Sir."

Jack sat back to wait and see what these 'Fourth Reich' people wanted to say. If they proved too nasty they were busting out. If the Goa'uld couldn't deal with them, the damned Nazis sure weren't going to hold them prisoner! He glanced around the well furnished workshop with soft blue toned walls and plush leather seating. Nope, sure not going to hold them prisoner, even if it was a guilded cage.