Abydos, SS Gate Complex, 1990
Scharführer Heinrich Muller absently toyed with the cardboard coffee cup as he leaned against the wall of the radar room. He was bored. Very bored. There never seemed to be anything to do while on duty, here in the Gate Complex itself. Of course, he reflected, he could be off in the desert, chasing down the last of the locals to be found anywhere near the gate complex and the research station that was examining the new materials that the locals had been mining. Something strange about them, it seemed. Perhaps the potential, he had heard it whispered, for a new type of super-bomb, something to outdo the Americans with their hydrogen bomb... he didn't really care, when it came down to it. It wouldn't affect him either way, unless worst came to worst, and the Reich and the Americans tore into one another, something which would leave few enough survivors, and would see both states brought down. Or if the Soviets got up to something in Poland... it would be good to have a new sort of super-bomb then, to smash the massed Soviet hordes... not that it really mattered. The Reich did not need anything that the Soviets had, and the Soviets would have to be madder than the usual Slav to want a war with the Reich.
One of the radar men cursed, interrupting his thoughts, something he found he was a bit glad of - they had been gloomy ones, after all, the sort of thoughts that boring duties brought on.
He frowned, and asked the radar man:
"What is it?" to which he got an immediate reply:
"Something's wrong with this machine. We don't have any aircraft out flying, but this thing," he slapped the display roughly, as if hoping to make it change its story with the methods one might use on a defiant prisoner, "is reporting that we are either about to have a mountain land on us, or," he looked up, a young fellow compared to Heinrich, "we are about to have a whole flock of airplanes come in and recreate the Battle of Britain with us as the poor Londoners." Heinrich frowned - the boy was young, so young that the Battle of Britain was no more than an abstraction to him, a historical event like any other. Heinrich's father had flown in it, though, and had always talked of how there had been so many RAF planes, so much flak... he'd been glad when the treaty was signed in 1943, and the Luftwaffe had been able to stop its costly attacks...
Again, back to the present. He frowned:
"Well, the locals have no aircraft, thanks God... perhaps... a flock of birds?" Even as he said it, he knew it was unlikely - there were almost no birds in the desert... the radarman had come to the same conclusion, and made to say as much before Heinrich cut him off:
"I don't know. Call up the Base Commander, ask him if the Luftwaffe is up to something we weren't told about. I'll go check with the men outside." the radarman nodded, and went for the field telephone, as Heinrich went for the door.
Outside of the radar station, the heat was a bit worse. A few rough barracks had been set up, built with local labor before the locals had been mostly killed off. Around them were a few smaller outbuildings, storage and such, a large machine shop, a mess-hall and an armory completing the base that had grown up around the pyramids.
Around that, barbed-wire ringed the entire base, with a few machine-gun pits set up to protect against the possibility of raids by locals. The small Luftwaffe base nearby was almost as large, even if it only had a few spotting planes, and one or two fighter-bombers...
He made his way over to the machine shop, since he'd noticed that among the three six wheeled armored cars parked there was the command model that the Obersturmbannführer in command of the SS detachment here used as his personal transport. There were a good dozen of the six-wheeled armored cars on Abydos, they were good at chasing down the locals when mobile action was needed, and were easier to maintain than proper panzers. It was a bit of over-kill, he guessed, but he wasn't going to complain...
He passed a squad of men coming in from patrol as he neared the machine shop - they looked tired, and dirty, but happy - happy to have made it back in one piece, looking forward to hot food and hot showers. They were joking with one another... just then he heard a sonic boom. He looked up, as did the men, and noticed a pair of black shapes, moving swiftly. One of the young soldiers laughed, and called out:
"Look at the Luftwaffe, they can't resist showing off for us on the ground!" a few of the others laughed too, although Heinrich noticed that the Unterscharführer commanding the patrol looked apprehensive, as he felt himself. Those hadn't looked like Luftwaffe planes...
And then they came back, a swooping approach, coming in low and slower this time. Almost as if...
Even as he formed the thought, they attacked. Bolts of light flew from their wings, like tracers from a slow-firing gun, hitting the camp... they were making a strafing run, it was an attack! Heinrich threw himself flat, suddenly longing for a weapon, but he didn't have one...
One of the two aircraft hit the machine shop, where the armored cars were parked - Heinrich felt his jaw drop as a few hits destroyed the parked armored cars, reducing them to flaming wreaks. Impressive fire-power...
Someone opened up at the attack craft with a machinegun, and that brought the shocked soldiers back to the moment - the Unterscharführer screamed for his men to fire... and they did. For whatever good small arms fire was against aircraft...
The other attacking aircraft, the one that hadn't targeted the machine shop, went for a barracks, and reduced it to flaming ruin in moments. Heinrich felt a moment of shock, thought of the men inside, how they were dead so suddenly... but then there was more to worry about, the attackers were circling, preparing to make another strafing run.
Heinrich got onto his feet, and began to run, towards the armory. He didn't know what good it would do if he got his hands on a rifle... but he knew it would make him feel more secure.
As he ran, he wondered -what was happening, what was going on, was the Luftwaffe base under attack too...
It didn't really matter, though.
When he reached the armory, he found a few of the men there, gathering kit, faces grim... he took an MP-65 when someone offered him one, glad of its solid weight. It was a brute of a weapon, a descendent of the MP-44, a thing of stamped metal. A real man-killer, as he'd seen on occasion skirmishing with Arabs in the Mediterranean colonies, or with French terrorists in Occupied France, during the Riots of '88. But against aircraft...
Absently, he accepted a pair of extra magazines, a canteen and a helmet. He was just putting the helmet on when the aircraft made their next pass...
The mess hall and another barracks were reduced to burning wreckage this time, he could hear men screaming, and was suddenly afraid... one of the men was in his face, a nervous young fellow, practically screaming:
"What do we do, sir?!" he couldn't think of anything...
And then the Luftwaffe came, the two fighter-bombers. They fired off missiles, and raced overhead, engaging the enemy, shooting down one of the enemies... he heard the men cheering:
"Sieg Heil the Luftwaffe!" and then he saw it. A flying mountain, just like the radar man had described it. It shot down the two Luftwaffe planes like one might swat flies, so easily... and then it started shooting into the base camp around the pyramid... it was, Heinrich decided, almost certainly the worst day of his life. And then the armory exploded behind him...
Later
Jaffa soldiers searched the ruined base at the order of their god, Ra. Their god was curious, and wanted to know more about the strange events that had been occurring on its rarely-visited world. After all, Abydos was a valuable source of Naqahdah, one that Ra found... useful. And, these... strange people, whoever they were, had downed a Death Glider with strange weapons the likes of which had not been seen before.
One of the Jaffa prodded a human soldier who lay near the ruins of the armory. The human twisted a little, and let out a moan. The Jaffa looked up, saw his commander:
"Honored First Prime, this human yet lives. Shall I end its life, or should I secure it as a prisoner?" the First Prime considered this for a moment, then,
"Let him live. Ra demands that we bring him some of these people so that he can get answers." the Jaffa nodded, and called for one of his comrades. Together they began to drag the SS man away, back to the ring transporter.
Later
Heinrich Muller woke up with a pounding, throbbing, headache. He had never felt so... awful... before. Like the worst hangover in the world... he couldn't see anything, he realized... and then he remembered what had happened, and suddenly felt even worse.
He was just beginning to twitch and collect himself when there was light. A bright light, shocking and blinding. He fell on his face, moaning in terror, realizing that he'd pissed himself at some point, and that the sensation of trousers soaked with cold urine was one of the least pleasant ones in the world... then he saw the... the enemy, best to think of them as just the enemy.
They wore complex armor, and carried some sort of staves... ceremonial garb? Then his eyes were drawn to the figure on the throne. Definitely human... it... or was it he... spoke:
"Bow before me human. I am Ra." he actually laughed then, at the sheer absurdity of it all, that the most insane scientists and archeologists who'd been translating the writings, who'd tried to fit it all in with the Norse-based religion of the SS, had gotten something right... the... thing spoke again:
"Why do you laugh, human? Which System Lord, which god, do you serve?" and Heinrich couldn't stop laughing, at the sheer absurdity of it all...
Sternentorkommando, Austrian Alps
Gruppenführer Michael Schmidt listened grimly to the Hauptsturmführer's report. It was... disconcerting, to say the least, to think of the Abydos base losing contact... he sighed. A full battalion of SS troops, a small Luftwaffe contingent... armor... and all of it seemed to be gone. They had opened the gate to attempt communication... but nothing. Nothing at all. Had the natives somehow overrun the base... no, that was impossible. Were the Americans out there, then? A terrifying thought, that there could be another gate on earth. But, if that was so, wouldn't their teams be going through the American gate on their way back a good half the time? They weren't... something, he decided, was up.
As the Hauptsturmführer continued listing the very few things that they knew for certain, Gruppenführer Schmidt cut him off:
"So, we know a lot about nothing, it seems to me. We do not know what it was that happened to our base... or even if it is destroyed. All we know is that when the time came for their routine check-in, they missed it. For the first time ever. And, that when we called them up, they did nothing, and did not respond. For all we know, the locals, a bunch of late Iron Age savages, have overrun a battalion of SS troops... who had air and armored support, and the advantage of a strong defensive position. I believe that, American propaganda notwithstanding, the SS is not that inept." he paused, "Tell me, how many men did we lose last year on Abydos?" the Hauptsturmführer hesitated for a moment:
"Eight, sir. Two to an accident with a grenade, one who got lost in a sand storm, one who fell while climbing the pyramid and four lost to native attacks." Schmidt considered this:
"So, either every radio on Abydos just somehow decided to malfunction at once, or these natives somehow overran the base. Or, God help us, aliens..." he let the statement trail off, then shrugged:
"Send a team through the gate. The Assault Company of SS we have here on standby should do. Tell them to find out just what is going on, and..." he paused:
"Have them go in loaded for bear. Russian bear, the kind with tanks and airplanes - I want each squad to carry shoulder-launched ATMs and SAMs." the Hauptsturmführer nodded:
"Anything else, sir?" Schmidt considered that for a moment... then:
"No. Take the 1st Assault Company, have them ready for deployment as soon as you can. I'll be on the phone to Berlin, seeing what the higher-ups want us to do." a nod - the Hauptsturmführer left the room with a stiff-armed salute, leaving his commander to talk to Berlin...
Later
Gruppenführer Schmidt was glad to have received clearance for his operation. Even more glad for the eight missiles loaded with nerve agents and prepared for deployment through the gate that he had been authorized to deploy...
He met the 1st Assault Company in the gate room, the fortified chamber that had been prepared for the event of an attack through the gate. Even if no aliens had been encountered yet, it did not pay to be incautious...
He watched them forming up by squads, checking weapons and kit, and he felt a sense of pride in the skill he saw. They were killers, SS, the finest killers in the Reich. He saluted them as they went through the gate, calling out:
"Sieg Heil!" which they echoed, loudly and with pride, as the gate activated. Before they made their attack, they threw flash grenades through, and fragmentation grenades a moment later.
A pause, counting seconds... then another shouted Sieg Heil, and then men went through... Schmidt watched them go, and then ordered the gate defense teams to move the rockets in, with their load of deadly nerve gasses. He had not wanted the team he was sending through to know just how serious the situation had seemed...
Abydos, Later
The Jaffa guarding the gate leveled their staff weapons as soon as it opened, crouched and took aim as best they could, a little afraid perhaps, but with courage enough not to show it... the leader shouted for one of his men to go inform the First Prime, and was just looking back at the gate, when... some sort of something came through. Little metal somethings... he knelt down to examine one, picking it up and holding it close to his face to get a better look... more little metal things came through, differently shaped, an interesting development... was this supposed to be some sort of attack? The... things were thrown, after all...
Then the one in his hand went off, a flash grenade going off less than six inches from his face...
The Jaffa screamed, suddenly blind, and then the fragmentation grenades went off and cut short their screams... and then the 1st SS Assault Company was rushing through the Star Gate, screaming their battle cries...
Moments Later, a Different Perspective
SS-Oberschütze Wilhelm Metzger screamed in anger as the enemy fired at him, inaccurate blasts of coherent energy, each hitting with the force of a high caliber sniper rifle at least... but, most of the shots were hitting the walls, or the ceilings or the floor. He smiled, and gave the enemy a short, controlled, burst from his MP-65, knocking him down like nothing, for all his ornate armor.
With that enemy down, he took a cautious step forward, along with the other SS men. Something was not right...
They had come through the gate in full assault mode, half expecting sand-bagged machinegun positions... instead they'd gotten these... Egyptians. Like something out of the Egyptian artwork he'd seen in the exhibitions, when the Cultural Ministry had been trying to make the case that the Egyptians had really been an Aryan people...
He took a closer look at the one he had killed - it wore a strange sort of helmet, like an animal or something, and strange armor over what looked to be honest-to-goodness chain mail. A strange sort of alien, even ignoring the face that it looked too much like a human being... more so than the foul aliens from the television dramas he'd liked when he was younger...
Shooting started again, as his squad came around a corner - a few of the enemy were trying to hold them up, but they didn't last long, automatic weapons fire cleared them out. Wilhelm cursed, though, as he noticed that his squad had taken its first loss. It seemed that even if these enemies could not hit the broad side of a barn most of the time, they could still be dangerous...
More shooting, and grenades - he rounded a corner, and came almost face to face with an enemy. This one wasn't wearing a helmet - he looked... human, fully human. Arabic, perhaps, in extraction... the human enemy smashed him across the knees, knocking him down. He shouted a warning as more of the enemy swarmed in to attack... even if their shooting staves were ineffective at ranged combat, they seemed effective enough at close-in work... he saw one of his comrades go down, smashed across the face, mewling and spitting blood and teeth as he fell... and then another SS man fired, fully automatic, a long burst, almost emptying his magazine, knocking all three of the enemies who had been in close off their feet.
Wilhelm stood, and looked around... another SS casualty, the man he'd seen struck over the head seemed to be bleeding, with a cracked skull. They moved on, leaving the body for whoever came after them to pick up.
Later
The pyramid seemed clear of enemies, as far as Wilhelm could see. His squad rushed out of one of the doors, intent on seeing just what there was to see out where the base had been...
The first thing they noticed as that the base had been leveled. Flattened, as though someone had hit it with a full-on artillery bombardment. The next thing they noticed were the enemies among the ruins, taking shots at them, yelling strange battle cries in their odd language.
The Unterscharführer called for a sniper, as the SS men laid down a withering suppressive fire on the enemy... who seemed to have no idea of what it was to take cover. They would kneel, yes, or crouch, but not throw themselves flat, or hide behind the terrain... they suffered horribly for that, as the SS men machine-gunned them, while their counter-fire ineffectively hammered at the stone of the doorway.
When the sniper finally came, there was little work for him, as the SS troops assaulted through the doorway, and into the outside...
It was then that the enemy showed their hand in full - a pair of aircraft, swooping in to strafe, sending down more of the enemy's coherent energy blasts, but these ones more effective... two SS men were hit behind Wilhelm, and they were killed instantly, bodies smashed, and actually burning.
The Unterscharführer called for an SAM, and got his wish - one of the men took aim, and fired - he'd gotten a lock, it seemed, because his missile struck one of the attacking aircraft head-on, sending it down to earth in flames, to explode spectacularly.
The other attacking aircraft circled, began another pass... the man with the launcher worked frantically, desperately trying to get it loaded...
The enemy craft fired again, this time killing another SS man, not the one with the launcher, though... the launcher, prepared, sent off another shoulder-launched SAM...
The last attack craft met its fate almost at the very lowest point of its dive, a hit to one of the wings. It went into a death spin, slamming to earth with appalling force, like a hit from a heavy artillery piece.
Wilhelm looked around the ruined base. Nothing left shooting at them. He turned back towards the pyramid, and gasped in amazement. There was another pyramid, albeit one made of metal, on top of the pyramid's tip. Something was very wrong here...
As he stared, the Unterscharführer spoke, quietly:
"I think now we know how the enemy managed to overwhelm our forces here..." no one responded. They were too busy staring at the thing. How the heck were they going to fight a metal mountain?
And then came a report from inside the lower pyramid, the one they had known about, a panicked report from one of the other squads coming over their radios:
"They came for us without warning! Hundreds of them! Requesting immediate assistance! Sieg Heil the Schutzstaffel! Kill the enemy!" then automatic weapons fire, grenades and the heavier sound of the staff weapons.
So. The enemy had some way into the pyramid from the ship above it. So the SS men could get inside...
As one they headed back towards the entryway they'd come out from. They were going to see what they could do...
Later
The enemy kept coming, ridiculous Egyptian armor over chain mail, screaming their war chants... the first waves had broken in the face of fragmentation grenades, and then the rest of the SS forces had been back, and they'd rallied around the gate, fighting ferociously as more and more of the enemy came for them... it seemed like there were hundreds of them.
After a few more waves were beaten back, they'd been out of grenades, and the staff weapons, ridiculously ineffective though they might have been, were having a noticeable effect. And ammunition was running low.
They had been just about to dial up earth and return through... all talk of how the SS never retreated aside, this was proving to be unwinable... but then the attacks stopped. At first they took it as just another lull in the fighting, and used the lull as they had other earlier opportunities. Place those too wounded to keep fighting near to the gate, gather extra ammunition and supplies from the dead and badly wounded...
When that was done, they'd settled in to wait for the next rush. But it hadn't come. Instead, a rather nervous fellow in the tattered uniform of a Scharführer had come up, calling out as he did:
"Heil Hitler! I'm one of your own! Don't shoot, I come to speak to you on their behalf." they'd let him in, and he'd had the chance to speak with the officers. He told them, sighing and smiling sheepishly at the ridiculousness of what he was saying:
"I am Scharführer Heinrich Muller. We are fighting aliens. The metal pyramid on top of us is their spaceship. They've got some sort of teleportation device that lets them go down to the surface very quickly. I estimate that there are... at least several hundred of them left. Even if you have killed a fair few." he gestured at the corpses of the enemies that they had killed around them - they were using the enemy dead for cover in some cases... he continued:
"As for why they sent me... these are the Goa'uld. The soldiers you are fighting are the Jaffa. These are in service to some sort of leader up in the space ship... a leader who claims to be..." a pause, a nervous cough, "... the great god Ra." one of the officers actually laughed at that, and then another asked:
"An alien?" and Heinrich nodded:
"An alien. An alien who wants us to worship him as a god." they considered this, then:
"Why did they send you?" to which Heinrich replied, with a chuckle:
"Why else? To secure your surrender." they laughed at that, glanced at the gate... and then nodded to one another. Best to get back to the Reich with new information that was this important...
Abydos
The surviving SS men made their retreat through the gate in good order, falling back by the numbers, one half of the squads watching for Jaffa attack while the other half ran through the gate, then one half of the remaining squads shrinking the perimeter, and the others running through... it was at that point that the Jaffa showed themselves.
It was a mad rush this time, no subtlety, no bothering with a ranged attack. Just rushing. The SS men used their MP-65s at fully automatic settings, cutting down the Jaffa like they were nothing... even if they were harder to kill than ordinary human beings would be.
SS-Oberschütze Wilhelm Metzger was one of the men who'd found themselves facing that rush - he found he rather enjoyed facing the Jaffa as they charged. Easier than fighting competent enemies. Much easier. It was almost comically easy to gun them down as they came on in their rush - their armor was useless against automatic weapons...
Just as he cut down a pair of rushing Jaffa, he heard the man to his left shout something:
"Achtung!" then a frightful roar... he glanced to his left, jaw dropped in shock. The man who'd just fired off his anti-tank missile into the oncoming Jaffa, driving them back, explained with a grin:
"Well, it's not like they've got armored support..." he let the point trail off, but Wilhelm was already back to scanning the approach as he made his explanation. A few more Jaffa tried to engage, using the doorways for cover, leaning out to fire their terribly inaccurate weapons, then taking cover again.
So. The enemy was learning...
An SS man screamed then, and Wilhelm glanced in the direction of the scream - one of the men who'd been running into the gate's shimmering blue field had taken a hit, had been sent flying. Flames licked the location of the hit, already spreading in the man's uniform... Wilhelm looked away, momentarily nauseated by the smell of burning flesh. Like burning pork...
He picked off a Jaffa with a well-placed bullet, then heard one of the officers calling for his squad to fall back. He came up from his prone position, to a kneeling stance, and emptied the magazine he'd had loaded, tearing up the ornate wall carvings around the doorway he'd aimed at, but not having any noticeable effect on the Jaffa hiding behind the wall, other than to make him keep his head down. Which he hoped would be enough...
He stood, and ran towards the gate, a crouched run of the sort he'd been trained to use when moving from cover to cover. Stay low, avoid enemy fire...
The wounded had been the first through the gate, but they'd left the dead. It was one of those he tripped over, a poor SS-Schütze who'd had his belly shot away somehow... an unlucky fellow...
Wilhelm thought, as he fell onto his face, that he'd been hit. For a moment. A bad wound, if he didn't feel it... but then he was coming back up, beginning to run towards the gate as the last rear-guard squads folded in and made their own desperate rush...
The Jaffa were becoming courageous now, were making a new rush, sending more fire at the gate. Two or three SS men took hits as they ran, all of which seemed fatal. Or would be - the rest of the SS men were not about to stop for a wounded man...
When he reached the gate, and jumped through, Wilhelm felt amazingly relieved. He got out of the way of anyone coming through behind him, then slowed his pace.
He glanced over his shoulder... saw the last survivors make it through, then staff blasts were following, and he heard someone who sounded like he knew what he was doing ordering them to break the connection... they did, the shimmering blue vanished. They were safe.
For now, Wilhelm realized. Only for now, now that the aliens knew about the Reich...
Abydos
Ra looked at the Stargate, and felt... more angry than usual. He turned to his First Prime, asking:
"Your men were in the room when the enemy fled. What was the address to which they fled?" a pause, then:
"Most honored Ra, we do indeed have the Gate address. It was -" his words were interrupted. The gate began to engage. Ra took a step back, frowning, as his Jaffa formed ranks, two deep, with staff weapons leveled and ready. Surely the enemy would not attempt a second attack here in one day...
Earth, Sternentorkommando
Gruppenführer Michael Schmidt watched the heavy chemical warfare missiles pass through the gate with a smile. Six missiles, of the sort that was aimed at London and the other British cities, or at Russia... each loaded with enough nerve gas to kill a small city... the enemy was in for an unpleasant surprise. An extremely unpleasant surprise.
The survivors of the 1st Assault Company watched the missiles launch from the side, those of their number who were seriously wounded moaning faintly or screaming loudly depending on their level of strength... they watched the missiles go through the gate one by one in very rapid succession. And then, one of them, he couldn't tell who, said, quietly:
"Sieg Heil the Schutzstaffel. We've gotten the last word." a laugh, that spread among the men, then a shouted chant:
"Sieg Heil the Schutzstaffel!" Gruppenführer Schmidt watched them, and smiled faintly even as the medical staff took away the wounded. They had done well, if they still had the morale to chant like that...
He turned to the surviving officers of the 1st Assault Company, noticing the ragged man they had picked up for the first time. He shrugged mentally:
"All of you, including the new man, I want you in my office with reports in four hours. Take the time for a shower and a change of clothes. You look like you deserve it." they nodded, and began to follow their men out. All but the ragged man, who seemed to be a bit disoriented, who was observing the lay-out of the Gate room as though it was his first time doing so.
Gruppenführer Schmidt frowned, wondering if he should mention that to the doctors, have them check the man for a head injury... but then he decided against mentioning anything. Probably just shock, they'd see if anything too terrible was wrong with him during the medical exam they'd perform anyway. Such minor things would, he decided as he headed towards his office, almost certainly take care of themselves.