The Time Lord Empire.
The Hegemony War. Part Two.
John Sheridan sat in the command chair of the War TARDIS, his telepathic mind awash with reports from every member of the crew about the status of the ship. War TARDISes were smaller and more compact than their exploratory contempories, all the better for weathering in combat, and their defence systems were more complex than the Exploration grade time ships. He was presently examining orders to blockade Hegemony space since he didn't hide his disgust that humanity were doing what the Minbari had done to them, but he knew they had a point. The Hegemony were evil, and their xenophobia was more intense than the various races in the Milky way. The war had merely been going on for nearly a week, and it was hoped it would be over in another.
Since the declaration, oppressed races and planets held in the power of the Hegemony for so many years, were taking the time to ferment rebellion, and the Time Lords were sending soldiers to help their insurrections. Sheridan supported that plan, it would mean allies, and in war you needed allies, but that was under convertional circumstances. The Time lords were powerful, but their war was a rallying cry, a final assault on the Hegemony, and the liberation of the slave races whose only crime was they were not Hegemony.
The Asgar, the Goa'uld, the Tollana, amongst others, had joined in, and sharing their resources and intelligence with the Time lords, they had formed the core of the war against the spider like aliens.
The President was in meeting with the Tollana, Goa'uld and Asgar representatives, and was eyeing them along with the rest of the Council. She knew that in front of her were incredibly powerful representatives from ancient cultures that had long since had the power to resist the Hegemony, but they had never been able to stop them even by banding together, which they had done a few times in the past. The Hegemony had been too strong for any of them, and since none of them, aside from the Asgar and the Goa'uld were old enough to be significantly a threat to the Hegemony, none of the races in front of her would have been able to fight the Hegemony without help.
The Time Lords were about to sign a treaty that would stipulate that the three races should join the Time Lords in the war, aiding them in the war. The President took the time to study each of the aliens.
The Asgar were physically tiny, with silver-grey skin tones with a tinge of purple, and their skin was as smooth as a crystal. They reminded the President of the holographs she had seen of the Vree, a race that had visited Earth countless times in the 20th century, but the Asgar were older and much more shorter than the Vree, though they shared evolutions. The Asgar were spindly thin beings, with massive black eyes, and a small mouth.
The Asgar were advanced, and when the first TARDIS had landed on their homeworld to absorb the knowledge of the Asgar, Time Lord tech advanced with it when they returned home. The Asgar and the Hegemony had been waging war against each other for millions of years, and still the Hegemony were able to put up a bigger fight than the Asgar, mostly because the Hegemony possessed a genetic memory, and they learnt from their experiences, changed and evolved. They would be valuable allies in the war, as their ships possessed superior faster than light technology compared to that used by the Hegemony.
The Goa'uld were different. Physically they appeared to resemble humans, but that was a misnomer; in fact the Goa'uld were a symbiotic race of beings, with one part being a snake like creature which dwelt within a pouch inside the body. The humanoid host resembled a human, but they were taller and thinner than a human, and their hair was dark ranging in tones of red, blond, brown and black. None of them had lighter hair, and their skin tone was pale, but when the skin reached the temple, a pinkish ( sometimes purple ) tinge appeared, and their eyes were a sparkling blue. None of them had any other colour tone to their eyes.
The Goa'uld, like the Minbari, operated a caste system, but it was based on how senior a Goa'uld symbiot was compared to the host; the older the symbiot, the more senior and powerful it was. The symbiot jumped from body to body, and they could even change caste from scientist to engineering, piloting, etc, but none of the high borne symbiots were to join with the inferior type of symbiot. They were for the warrior class of the Goa'uld empire. That was the strangest thing about them, the President mused, that there were two forms of Goa'uld, similar to how different Dolphins were to Whales, or Dogs to foxes and wolves.
The Goa'uld, like the Hegemony, possessed a genetic memory, and all the symbiots spawn possessed the knowledge of its seven parents, and it was probably why they had survived for so long. Unlike the other two races, the Goa'uld's technology was based on an ancient Hegemony war web that had crashed on their homeworld, and they were able and successful enough to reverse engineer a good percentage of the ship, but the rest couldn't be salvaged. Ignoring the possibilities of danger, the Goa'uld had launched themselves into space, and as each generation passed so too did their knowledge, and that was passed down symbiot by symbiot, but they wouldn't meet their energy for another thousand or so years, building a massive empire like the Hegemony, and when they did meet, the Goa'uld met an enemy of tremendous power and sophistication. The Goa'uld had ceased empire building, and they changed their priorities to fighting the Hegemony, and they had won dozens of battles, forming the core of the resistence, but it had floundered over the years, and needed a boost of resources to keep it going.
The President knew that the Goa'uld were on the point of oblivion, and couldn't help but be impressed with how they had managed to hold their own for so long. The same could not be the same for the Tollana.
The Tollana resembled humans more closely, but like the Centauri before them, any chance of genetic similarities were thrown out away and practically forgotten, but apart from that there was no genetic similarity, and unlike the Goa'uld and the Asgar, they weren't fighters. Instead they were scientists and engineers, relying on their advanced technology to achieve some measure of a victory, but they did exchange technologies with their allies, but that was like giving a small coin to a starving man on the point of death.
The President wasn't even sure she wanted the Tollana in these negotiations, but she was aware that if it weren't for them, and the technology the alliance would've been destroyed years ago, and the Hegemony would've overrun the galaxy. If we hadn't intervened, the president thought to herself. It had been one of the long term plans of the Time Lords to destroy the Hegemony, and this was one of the first steps.
The Asgar spoke, drawing the President out of her musings, " How were you able to destroy the Hegemony war webs? Even an Asgar - Goa'uld fleet with Tollana upgrades could not do that to an entire squadron." The aliens voice was deep and smooth.
The president looked down, and decided to tell the truth. She explained how the Time Lords could look through time and space, peer into other worlds and learn everything about other races. When the three representatives realised the Time Lords had used the technique with their own technology and cultures, they reacted with anger before the president made them see that they had only done it to learn about a new culture, but the Tollana, who didn't like their technology being shared, even with the alliance and only did it reluctantly, were furious.
The President ignored their put out expressions, or whatever the expression on the Asgar's face was, and carried on regardless. " Does it really matter where we got our technology? We made most of it ourselves, and only added yours on afterwards. We were stranded in this galaxy a century ago, and we had to rebuild our race after a war that had destroyed a quarter of the species. When we arrived here, we spent years rebuilding ourselves, not for conquest. That was left behind in favour of knowledge gathering. Even without our time travel technology, we still managed to destroy a warship belonging to the Hegemony."
The Goa'uld representative commented, " Our intelligence reports detailed that incident, but we were unable to confirm it."
" Well, it happened. Now you three have a choice. We can help you with the Hegemony, and we can destroy them. For that I suggest an alliance, a Federation between us as the founders of the federation, and we can bring in the survivors of the slaves that the Hegemony have destroyed, working together to bring an era of peace about."
" What do you intend to do with the Hegemony when we have formed this Federation?" The Tollana representative asked.
The President looked down and looked up again. " We intend to put them on a galaxy wide trial, and then we intend to destroy them."
That brought them onboard, though they were not enthusiastic about the trial, so the President explained what the trial was going to be. With astonishment and growing excitement, the alien delegates eagerly agreed to it.
To my readers, I've written another Babylon 5 story similar to this one, its called the Masters of Time and Space.