Chapter Eight: Turnabout
The first ever lasgun to roll off the Area-51 production lines sat on the conference table at the SGC like the proverbial forbidden fruit after a bite had been taken, the lump of metal and plastic all but staring at them accusingly over what they had done. The construction had been frighteningly fast, much of the tooling required already being in existence in one form or another somewhere else.
As far as SG-1 was concerned, it was too perfect. Daniel in particular was displeased with what sat before them.
"I'm not saying it's not useful, it's just that I do not trust the source. Oh, I'm sure that the first couple of trades and gifts will be in our favour, but as time goes on the price will get steeper and steeper. They've pretty much admitted to being untrustworthy," Daniel argued.
"I know what you mean, but I think that they're trying to intentionally put us between the proverbial rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they appear to be violent, scheming psychopaths who we would want to think twice about jumping into bed with… while on the other hand they appear to be violent, scheming psychopaths who we would want to think twice about making enemies with, especially with the Ori and guys like Baal running about," Mitchell pointed out.
"It is indeed a conundrum. There have been other rumours stirring amongst the Free Jaffa of late, of strangers offering incredible things and promises of aid against the Ori. There is even talk that there is a woman offering freedom from reliance upon symbiotes and tretonin," Teal'c reported.
Scowling somewhat, General Landry said, "As much as I agree with your judgements, I'm afraid that the congressional oversight committee has decided that trade with Prometheus is too good to pass up, and they request that you go meet with him."
Daniel's frown deepened and he said, "I was afraid that you would say that. I would also like to point out that I think our new 'friend' Prometheus knew that you would say that too."
"Now I know that he sent us a message two days ago saying that he wanted to meet us elsewhere because his friend Lady Justice was attracting too much Prior heat to make meetings safe, but will we just be meeting him off world, or are we to escort him somewhere else for negotiations?" Mitchell asked.
One corner of his face twitching upward, Landry said, "You can at least be relieved that the oversight committee did take to heart the fact that you did not fully trust him and thus any meeting would take place at the Beta Site."
"Where he will be polite and shower us in gifts of technology, slowly gaining our trust until such point as he gets an invite to Earth. I can feel it, he wants to get here and take something from us, I just don't know what," Daniel muttered darkly.
"As much as I appreciate your insights Dr. Jackson, I'm afraid that my hands are tied on this one, and unless you want to start an interplanetary incident with some very powerful people by taking drastic measures of your own, there's nothing you can do about it," Landry replied equally darkly.
"I doubt simply shooting him would actually do anything," Daniel noted before he tilted his head towards the lasgun and asked, "So are we going to be bringing that off world with us?"
Shaking his head, Landry replied, "No, we are still doing full field testing, but there is currently a great deal of pressure to start moving the weapon into service by the end of the year for our special forces teams the advantages it offers over conventional weapons are so great."
"How exactly are we going to spin this one by the way?" Daniel asked.
"We've already been introducing some of the new derivative power technologies to the public at large, not naquadah generators of course but some better batteries and the like from the technologies we have already. With the theory we have for the new laser technology we can select one of our front companies to announce the discovery and then within a year we should be able to have the public convinced that this sort of weapon is feasible," Carter explained.
Sighing and shaking his head sadly, Daniel said, "It's all so reasonable, isn't it?"
"Please! Be reasonable!" Netan cried out in horror and anguish, all of his pride and arrogance gone, reduced as he was to this pitiful, begging state. It had been a long hard fall from where he had once been, and far, far too quick for his liking, as there had not even been the fun of years of decadent living to make him soft to blame for this situation.
No, in less than a month this damnable woman had swept to power in the Lucian Alliance and now here she was sitting upon his throne, leering down at him.
Lady Compassion, as she called herself, wore clothing more suited to some slave dancer girl than a mercenary warlord, her entire attire consisting of little more than a strip of black leather that barely contained her ample breasts and a long, dark purple loincloth coloured similarly to her hair that had a tendency to fall in such a way as to just barely remain decent. It had the effect of distracting others from what she was truly doing as the men were too busy drooling and the women too busy trying to cause her to spontaneously combust.
Holding a delicate, wide brimmed glass in her hand by the stem and swirling about the amber liquid within, Lady Compassion smiled and said, "Netan, I hold in my hands and entire plant's worth of the active psychoactive chemicals in kassa dissolved in pure grain alcohol. This is enough to kill a three hundred pound Jaffa warrior in his prime a dozen times over. Including the glass, this drink is probably worth enough to put a down payment on a Death Glider if you found the right market."
She then downed the entire drink in a single gulp and crushed the delicate glass in her hand, causing shards to lacerate her long, delicate fingers and palms. Alcohol and kassa extract mingled with her unnaturally dark red blood and pattered against the floor. The smell was rich and metallic and heady and all in attendance found saliva rushing to their mouths as the little drops hit the floor.
Grinning too broadly, Lady Compassion said, "Netan, I am not a reasonable woman, so why do you throw your pleas upon something that does not exist?"
Rising so smoothly and seductively from the throne that it was almost obscene, Lady Compassion picked up a long, thin, slightly curved sword from where it lay and sashayed down to him, licking her lips in anticipation, her eyes going wide like a drug addicts after just getting a fix.
"Netan, I am Lady Compassion, it is who I am to feel the pain of others and attempt to help them. Your kassa idea was wonderful, but you had so little insight as to how to use it. It is not to be given to the highest bidder when so many crave it; it is to be given to all so as to make their lives better. Not so much that it destroys them, but just enough that they will follow whoever controls the kassa. Netan, you caused much suffering and planned to cause much more. Netan, I have caused you much suffering, and plan to cause much more," Lady Compassion said as she slowly circled him, drawing the tip of the razor sharp blade across his flesh with feather light precision, only just cutting the very surface of the skin.
With a deft flick Lady Compassion drew a deep line across Netan's back, cutting deep into the muscles along his left shoulder, cutting right down to the scapula in places. Crying out in pain as he lost much of the control of his left arm, Netan suddenly found himself unable to do anything else as she was suddenly next to him, suffocating all thoughts with her scent. More than just the smell of drugs or perfume, it was an inherent bouquet that seemed to bypass the nostrils and act directly upon the brain.
She bit into his ear, the act intensely painful as his flesh parted beneath her inhumanly sharp teeth and yet somehow intensely sensual such that the sound Netan let out was trapped somewhere between describing intense pleasure and searing agony. She then whispered, "I can feel your pain Netan. The problem for you is that I like pain."
Those in attendance watched Lady Compassion take apart Netan over the course of the next seven hours, and none could say that there wasn't at least a glimmer of jealousy in their hearts that their former leader should be blessed with Lady Compassion's tender mercies so.
Passing her blood soaked blade off to a servant girl, Lady Compassion said in a bored tone, "Clean that please."
Practically oozing onto her throne, Lady Compassion then drew her right thumbnail across her left wrist, letting her own dark blood mingle with the already browning gore from Netan. She then reversed the ordering of the implements and then held out her hands for her followers. She said to them in an urging tone, "Come, drink of my blood, and eat of my flesh, so that I might open the gates of paradise for you."
As the mercenaries and warlords all kneeled before her in reverence rather than the fear most had known from the Goa'uld, Lady Compassion wondered how much she would be able to piss off the Tau'ri that still had religious faith when they found out about this.
In another layer of reality in another universe Asukhon looked at the board they had set up and watched as Mislaato finished consolidating her hold on the Lucian Alliance and scored bonus points for being the first one to acquire ships, while Tzintchi continued to push his tendrils outward into various subversive cultures that would welcome him without truly understanding what he was until it was too late.
They could all see where the game was going. Her early lead was about to evaporate as the others built up a larger industrial and tech base while she still languished on a few backwards worlds and her largest stronghold teetered precariously on the brink of destruction.
Tzintchi glanced at the game while absentmindedly spinning together strands of alien genetic code for one of his projects. Noticing the movement of the pieces, he said, "I do hope you have a plan dear because I do believe that is a squadron of Ha'taks lead by a Prior appearing over your world."
Lady Justice sat atop a throne of hundreds of skulls, the result of the many battles in the past few weeks between those who had dedicated themselves to the Eightfold Victor and those who followed the Path of Origin. Some of the skulls were from the Asukhon's worshippers, but the large majority were from those that worshipped the Ori.
The village had long ago been evacuated by all but the stoutest of warriors, and even then the greatest ones amongst them were elsewhere, tasked with rebuilding the pack when this group met their end. Those that remained were arranged in a very specific manner, whipping themselves, drawing blood to please their goddess, staining the soil red with their fervour. Already a few members of the congregation of violence had collapsed; their bodies unable to take the strain the self-flagellation and religious ecstasy put upon them.
Lady Justice looked up at the sky just in time to see the first dots of light falling towards their position. She smiled a shark toothed smile.
In orbit the Prior watched with grim satisfaction as the blasphemers disappeared beneath a searing ball of white light. While the use of the unhallowed technology of this galaxy was repugnant, attacking through the Stargate had been simply impossible with that demon guarding the other side. In the balance, using Ha'taks as instruments of divine punishment was far less offensive to the Ori than allowing the demon and her flock of evil to survive. Of course, such creations of wickedness would have to be abandoned now that the job was done, but still…
Down below on the planet the fireballs from the orbital bombardment started to dim, far sooner than they should have. The mushroom clouds began to change and distort, their colour shifting to an awful blood red, spreading out across the planet like some sort of sickness.
An image of something horrible happening began to form in the Prior's mind as he tried to read the strands of the future.
"Destroy that cloud!" He cried out in fury to the followers who had provided the ships. They complied obediently and sent more shots raining down upon the primitive, undefended world below. For a time the burning air drowned out the darkness, but these new shots too were consumed, and the cloud began to split and form geometric patterns.
Stalking angrily up to the controls of the flagship, the Prior shoved the Jaffa out of the way of the Pel'tak and began personally commanding the bombardment. The unhallowed technology of this heathen galaxy was just feeding energy into what was taking place. Something sacred and pure would be necessary.
Power flowed through the Prior and into the ship, transforming the yellow-orange blast from the cannons into elongated arrows of brilliant white flame that lanced down into the planet, burning away the unholy taint spreading across the surface. Wherever the Prior turned the guns the touch of the Ori drove away the demon's blasphemous presence. But already much of the mark it was making had been completed. More power was needed. More power. More…
The Prior had not even noticed the point where he had burst into flames without burning, such was the strength of the connection with his patron Ori that the ascended being had actually manifested through him to provide enough power to purify the planet. They did however notice when a very annoyed and insistent cough cut through their focus.
Standing in a ring about the Prior were a dozen Ancients glowing with soft white light in contrast to his bright orange fires and looking very, very pissed.
It was at that moment that the Ori who had manifested just realized that it was alone and outnumbered by several orders of magnitude in a hostile galaxy.
"You know, we let your agents operate unhindered as you were not technically breaking our laws, right up until this moment," the lead Ancient said before the group surged forward and mobbed the interloper, dragging him screaming off to the higher planes for his punishment for violating their laws of non-interference.
Aboard the ships all that had seen what they just had suddenly found their decision to throw their lot in with the Ori looking considerably less well thought out than they had originally considered, while the rest of the ships continued their last order and tried to destroy the sign.
Down below on the planet the spell Lady Justice had crafted using the sacrifice of her followers reached completion. While not normally one for such trickery, Asukhon was nowhere near as inflexible on the idea of magic as her predecessor Khorne had been. Thus as a final 'Fuck you' to the Ori, Lady Justice had created a planet wide graffiti mark, a grand illusion of bloody clouds to taunt her foes.
Of course, the fact that the mark she chose was one that if it received a large influx of energy from say an Ascended-boosted orbital bombardment it would do something more than just create a short lived illusion was not entirely coincidental. The Ori had, in their panic, burned a grand symbol into the planet in continent sized strokes and provided all of the energy needed.
Reality broke down, unzipping about the world. Lightning cracked across the sky and the seas turned to blood as the Warp began to boil forth in skies above, swallowing the planet whole.
Tzintchi swore in seven thousand languages simultaneously as he watched Asukhon's plan unfold before he glared at her odiously.
Blinking her lashes at him in false lady-like modesty, Asukhon said, "Now my dear, they did it to the poor Tau'ri with their first supergate, there is no reason turnabout can't be fair play. Besides, you should feel flattered I stole something so clever from your play book."
As he picked up one of the Ori figures and tossed it onto her scoring table and then conjured forth a Daemonworld, a freaking Daemonworld, he asked, "How many points is that?"
"Considering I made sure it would still be connected to the Stargate network, more than you'll likely ever get," Asukhon said sweetly.
Tzintchi swore again.
