Chapter 4 : A snake reflects in a mirror
"Screw me".
"Yes, Milord ?" Is it me or does that greasy dumb Jaffa look eager ? thought Karl'ac with disgust. He may have to get rid of this warrior. Later.
He kept silent and stone faced all the way to the other end of the temple. This corridor was a lot longer and made several doglegs before turning into a stair heading up towards the surface. About twenty steps from the bottom, he could see the rest disappearing under a layer of sand and rocks. The way was indeed completely obstructed by an accumulation of stone, and it did look thick. He eyes caught something on the shadowy floor... the bodies of two Jaffas in the rich, gaudy ceremonial armor of Ra's personal guard. They were in the same state of mummification as Ra and the traitor, suggesting they had died there after punishing the deicide. It looked like they had tried to scrape and dig away to no avail and simply starved to death.
Karl'ac absentmindedly rapped on the rocky obstacle, trying to wrap his head around a possible solution to the conundrum he was in. Oh, if needed, he could eat his Jaffas... but that would only delay the inevitable. The Chappai itself looked undamaged. He might be able to rig something, although he wasn't an expert in this field.
He turned and headed back, deep in thought.
He spent the next hour inspecting the temple thoroughly in case there were any pieces of technology laying around. He checked the temple's power source, a small naquadah cell that was almost used up. No luck there, as the dim state of the internal lighting had hinted. There was nothing else. He was stuck in the late Ra's temple-cum-recreation den, on a hostile planet, with no way out.
He ordered his Jaffas to take turn and try to burrow out, using blasts from their staves. The problem was, the blasts worked really well at breaking up rocks, but sand would then pour in, along with more rocks. He told the Jaffas to stop bothering after two of them were almost buried after an attempt. Not that he cared much about their lives, but he figured their death could be made more useful.
He was sitting on the steps of the Chappai when the first shock was felt. A tremor vibrated through his boots and he stood at once. Overhead, he could see dust and sand displaced from cracks in the ceiling. Chu'rel turned to him.
"My Lord ? Did you feel that ?"
"I did, First Prime."
"Could it be an earthquake ?"
"Somehow, my faithful servant, I don't think so."
A second shock, then a third a couple of minutes later. The tremor was more noticeable and the air was now heavy with dust. Five minutes later, as all were wondering what would come next, a loud boom and a violent shake almost made them lose balance.
"Someone's digging us up !"
"I do concur on your wise observation, First Prime."
They went back to the central hall where the bulk of the Jaffas were milling around, looking at the ceiling and vaguely pointing their weapons at it. Karl'ac headed straight to the exit passage, flanked by Chu'rel and a pair of armored warriors. Arrived at the foot of the stairs, they could distinctly hear a faint scraping sound mixed with sharp hits. The sound came closer as they waited, until twenty minutes later it had become a dull roar coming from beyond the blockade, which started to shift. At this point, Karl'ac had sent for more Jaffas and retreated to the first dogleg, where he could peek around. The roar stopped, then the brief silence was cut by the sharp sounds of metal hitting stone. At last, something gave way and Karl'ac squinted at a thin ray of light coming from above, illuminating the thick dust motes swirling in the air. The light became wider and he could only conclude that someone, or something, was opening up the passage. Whether that was a good or bad thing...
With a final metallic screech, the light became blinding and he retreated behind the corner, blinking tears. The stairway was open.
At a wave of his hands, Jaffas took firing positions, one rank kneeling so the standing ones behind could fire over their heads. All done silently. Karl'ac peeked out of the corner and took a deep breath as a shadow blocked the wide wedge of light coming from above. He strained his ears and heard the sound of careful footsteps. His experienced ear told him there were bipeds, several of them, hobbling over uneven ground, then over the regular stone steps of the stair.
They were coming. The Jaffas tensed, and their staves crackled with energy, ready to fire.
After a time that seemed to stretch forever, they could see a shape... legs first, then torso and arms, head, followed by a another one, and another. They could only resolve the outline as it was silhouetted by the background light. It seemed humanoid, two legs ad two arms, but... different. Deformed. The proportions were wrong. It looked positively massive, with unnaturally long arms, bulging limbs and a barrel-shaped body. As it moved towards them, they could see it more clearly. It evidently wore armor, not the like the chainmail favored by Jaffas, but an articulated and segmented one that covered every inch with a dull glint of not quite metal. The head and features were masked by a fully enclosed helmet, featureless except a visor where eyes would be and several protruding bulges and lumps. It held a weapon in its arms, pointed forward, nothing like the familiar tubular shape of a staff, but a boxy black thing bearing no resemblance to anything they knew. It had two holes on the side facing them... one bigger than the other, and what could only be described as attachments of sorts along what was almost certainly a gun barrel. What kind of energy would this thing shoot ? Some of the Jaffas speculated it might be something like a staff and a zat combined, as they watched the thing stop 20 meters from them, flanked by two others of its kind. The leader moved its head, seemingly scanning every side of the corridor ahead of him, not giving any sign of caring for the waiting Jaffas.
Now what ? Thought Karl'ac.
The lead beast bellowed a command, and raised his weapon in unison with its companions. They were fast, but the Jaffas were prepared, and both groups opened fire at the same time.
The next seconds were confusing. Blinding flashes and a loud rattling, the swaaack ! of staff guns, screams and wet unhealthy sounds, then the sensation of being brutally pulled back, almost dragged at a running pace while the tumult behind was progressively making way to silence again. Karl'ac came back to his senses in the main hall, staring at an alert Chu'rel and Jaffa troops running to the corridor they'd come by, weapons raised and some clutching shock grenades.
"Chu'rel ! What gave you the right to lay your hand on your God ! Answer at once or I'll kill you!" he snarled in his deepest voice, eyes flashing.
"I beg your forgiveness my Lord ! I only acted to protect you ! My life is yours to take if I offended you !" The Jaffa looked sincere. Karl'ac relented. "Tell me what happened over there !"
"Sire, your warriors gave their lives for you as was their duty !"
"I know that and expect nothing else" was Karl'ac's slightly irritated reply. "So are the enemy dead ?"
Chu'rel answered over the din of battle. "Lord Karl'ac, I believe they have more warriors and effective weapons. I saw my comrades blood flow in response to the beasts' strange guns. I..." He was interrupted by a loud explosion followed by screams, some recognizable as Jaffa's and some not. "My Lord, it may be wise to leave this place" he added.
"I have an idea, but I'll need some time... take command of the remaining Jaffas and make the enemy pay every step !"
Chu'rel bowed his head and turned to the assembled warriors near the contested tunnel. "Jaffa ! We will bleed the enemy dry in this temple ! Kree !"
"KREE !"
Karl'ac started to make his way to the Chappai room. In fact, he didn't had the slightest idea how to escape this predicament, but he figured the Jaffas' futile deaths were always worth a few more minutes of his life. He paused. In front of him was the dumb Jaffa, looking up with and overeager air. "What are you doing here, worm ? There's a battle going on and your duty is to fight for me, your God !" - and hopefully remove your worthless genes form the Jaffa pool, he added silently.
"Milord, I have a cunning plan !"
Great. A Jaffa with delusions of intelligence. Heck, might as well listen, it wasn't as if he didn't need ideas.
"Tell me, worm !"
"Milord, we could use the ring transporters to escape back to the ship !"
Karl'ac's eyes flashed in anger and disbelief. His palm halfway reached his face before he regained his composure and simply used his hand device to blast the wretched servant away.
He was beginning to turn away when... by Apophis, why didn't he think of it before ? He spotted a staff gun laying around, picked it and almost ran to the Chappai. There, he frantically (he could afford it out of view of his Jaffas) began to disassemble the weapon and remove the glowing naquadah power cell. There, he had a power source ! One that could easily activate the Chappai. He only had to connect it, then dial the seven chevrons manually. He set to the task with haste, as the racket was coming closer by the minute. As he proceeded to strip some power wiring from the staff and attach it to the Chappai, he wondered what kind of weapon was producing the rattle he could hear. It wasn't the smooth "shwack" of a staff, or the almost musical tones of a zat'niktel. It sounded like a string of small sharp explosions very close together, mixed with occasional louder ones, usually followed by the shrieks of wounded warriors.
He finished the power connection and thought of a destination. His own systems were a no-go, Nirrti would be waiting for him. Apophis would probably want to punish him for his failure although he hadn't provided any help. Lord Yu might be understanding enough not to torture him outright. He didn't know a lot about the old System Lord's planets, but he'd heard that Chingtoku was a quiet agricultural world with a pleasant climate. He'd lay low for a while and then appear to Lord Yu's court. Yes, that seemed like the most sensible course of action... And then he'd come back to this cursed place with a proper army and exert a harsh revenge on those impudent people. Oh how sweet that would be.
He started to turn the Chappai manually. It was an exertion as the material was extremely dense and heavy, and there was a substantial amount of dust clogging the mechanism. As the first chevron engaged and locked successfully, he heard the commotion coming from the central hall. He'd better hurry up.
He'd locked the fourth chevron when Chu'rel burst in, sweating and panting. "My Lord, the enemy has reached the hall ! Half our Jaffas are dead and the enemy warriors are an endless flood ! They're inhumanly strong and fast and those guns of theirs are deadly ! We won't be able to hold them for long !"
"Then help me turn this Chappai !"
The Jaffas had lost half their number delaying the beasts in the far tunnel, and now that they had reached the more open space of the central hall, the fighting turned even more vicious. They leaned from behind the pillars to lay down fire and evade the enemy's, but their opponents started to use more of the small explosive grenades fired by their guns. The regular projectiles (indeed they didn't fire energy pulses but lumps of solid matter at very high speed, primitive but effective in piercing Jaffa armor and perforating their vital organs) were bad enough, especially fired in dense bursts, but the larger ones had positively horrifying effects, ripping limbs and heads off, or making mush of torsos encased in trinium mail. Blood and entrails had made the stone ground of the tunnel slick and treacherous and that alone had slowed the charging beasts more than the Jaffas' own fire, which seemed to have trouble overcoming the strange armor : a staff blast blackened and weakened the alien material, but it took two or three more on the same spot to wound the flesh under it. And that didn't stop the growling beasts. They seemed stronger and more resilient than even the mighty Unas, a mortal wound would still leave them fighting on for several minutes. One Jaffa had had the misfortune of being in front of such, the berserk beast had rushed him and literally tore his head out even as his comrades poured staff fire on it, before collapsing at last in a smoking heap, shaking the ground.
The Jaffas were courageous, but this was unprecedented. Several lost control of their bowels, adding to the stench of the dead and dying but not quite running away. Obedience and discipline were drilled into them since childhood in service of the gods, and the fact that they didn't break and flee was a testament to the Jaffa culture's martial prowess.
The tattered remnant of Karl'ac army retreated back to the western corridor in order to avoid being flanked and swamped and to concentrate their own fire. Their back to the Chappai, they poured an uninterrupted stream of plasma bolts in the tunnel, momentarily stopping the advancing horde. Their heart jumped in their chest as they heard the wooshing sound of a Chappai activation and saw the glimmers of blue light illuminating the walls around them.
"The Chappai is open ! Quick !"
Just in time. An enemy grenade sailed in and exploded, stunning the Jaffas, whose fire faltered enough for one beast to charge down the corridor, shooting on full auto at the retreating combatants.
Karl'ac was stepping in the shimmering blue pool of energy when he felt something punching hard on his back. He staggered forward, shocked and barely conscious of Chu'rel propping him. At the other end of the wormhole, he saw green trees and clear blue sky and heard his last Jaffas exit the Chappai at a run, still firing from the hip until after the wormhole flashed into nothingness. His vision faded at last as the symbiote entered a healing trance.
Back in the temple, the charging beast had stopped in front of the strange circle and watched its center turn from a pool of liquid light to... empty air as the rest of its squad deployed in the room. It's primitive mind didn't even pause to contemplate that the tiny cameras in its helmet had transmitted everything to its commander. Ghouloons didn't think about such things.
On the surface, a bulky shape sat over a pool of glassed sand, two hundred meters from the crater excavated by the orbital battlestation Subjugator. A heavy hypersonic assault scramjet, it had landed here with a company of Rapid Reaction Force ghouloons and their human officers. The commander, clad in battle armor, sat in the command chair, his tanned, lean predatory face gazing at the flat screens showing video and biometric feeds from the ghouloons soldiers as well as their position and status. He had directed the battle from here, and his mind was now rich with possibilities. He typed a command and the gray haired face of the Archon appeared, the snarling dragon emblem of the Domination emblazoned on the reinforced concrete wall of the War Directorate's underground command center.
"Archon, I can report that the mission is a success. We have secured the underground facility and driven the invaders back."
"Driven ? Care to elaborate on this, Centurion ?"
"Sir, we killed most of them, but a small group managed to escape using some sort of portal, probably leading off world. The Science Directorate will have a field day with this, I think. "
"Good. Keep the perimeter secure until you're relieved. The ground convoy is two hours out. After that, you will certainly deserve some rest and certainly a medal, Centurion. You did an impressive job there."
"Sir, I only did my duty."
"I know, Centurion Makkonen. Service to the State !"
"Glory to the Race !"
"Shrakenberg out." concluded the old, aristocratic face before cutting off the transmission.
The Drakan officer stood up and stepped out of his craft. Looking at the smoking hole that marked the beginning of a new era for the Race, he mulled over.
Gods, they think they are, eh ? Well, soon they'll learn that gods only exist to serve us !
