A/N: Chap 37 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Against Ra

"Everyone down!" Harry shouted in Khebbish.

Teal'c's men hit the ground of the tunnel just as Harry sent a stream of fire into the front lines of the attacking Jaffa. It was not fiendfyre—not even Harry could risk using demonic, semi-sentient fire in a small, enclosed space with his men. However, with his magic the fire was stronger than anything Albus Dumbledore or even Voldemort could have managed—at least before Voldemort discovered the Sed ritual.

The stream of fire scorched not just the front line of Jaffa, but the next five lines behind them, melting their facemasks and blinding them completely. One of their staff weapons exploded from the heat toward the rear of the formation. The whole tunnel shook and a few rocks fell from the ceiling, but the rock of the mine walls was so dense and strong it withstood the blast.

"Clear, push them back!" Harry ordered.

Soldiers clambered back to their feet, struggling against the brutal gravity, and fired point-blank at the latest Jaffa encroachment on his forces within the cavern. It was still the first day of the siege, but Cronus was not waiting around. The only reason Harry's forces had not been overrun yet by sheer numbers was the mine tunnels themselves. Cronus's Jaffa could not flank Harry's position or come in huge numbers, rendering every single engagement equal in initial numbers.

The state of affairs, however, could not go on forever. Despite all the supplies they brought with them, they would run out of bullets within three more days at the rate of attrition they were experiencing. That didn't even speak to the losses of personnel. They'd lost over four hundred men in the first five hours of the engagement, and that number would have been significantly larger if not for Harry and the ward stones he'd used to secure four of the six tunnels that intersected their dome. With only two tunnels to defend, they were able to hold their own for the time being.

When he was sure his men had re-established a defensive position with sufficient heavy weapons to hold for a while, he made his way back to the impromptu headquarters. He passed by men sagging exhaustedly against the walls, resting between rotations at the front. With each he passed, Harry made sure to look them in the eyes and nod, stopping occasionally to help where he could.

By the time he reached Teal'c, the whole mountain was shaking again from orbital bombardment. "Akai'kheb," the Jaffa general greeted him. "A new casualty report arrived from the southwest tunnel. The line held, but we lost another fifty men."

Harry could only nod grimly as he surveyed their losses. "General, I think we've accomplished all we can here," he said.

"I agree, Akai'kheb. However, the evacuation will be difficult even with your magic. Lord Cronus undoubtedly has the gate guarded with fixed emplacements and staff cannon towers. Nor would it surprise me if there are ha'taks and al'kesh standing by in the event we broke free. We still have a hard fight ahead of us."

"All the more reason to go while we can," Harry said.

"Akai'kheb! General Teal'c, there are sounds coming from the stone!"

"Bugger me," Harry muttered. "They must be drilling through the walls. Show me where, soldier!"

Teal'c followed. "Soldiers, form up, we may have a breach!" Teal'c called. Despite their exhaustion, the heavy gravity and the sweltering air in the cavern, men and women scrambled to their feet and readied their weapon. They reached the far wall of the central cavern—a point well away from the other tunnel junctions and the precious naquedah ore they followed. As they approached, Harry could also hear the sound—an odd, grinding noise with almost crystalline tinkles strewn through it.

Moreover, he could feel something moving within the rock. "Back away!" Harry called. When the men were far enough away, he started casting his most powerful wards and protective spells, hoping to buy his men enough time to hold back the assault while he prepared the portkeys. The only reason he didn't have the portkeys ready ahead of time was that the magic became unpredictable when moved to a world other than where it was cast.

"Firing line, ready!" Teal'c snapped.

Khebbish soldiers, an even mix of Eridu, Byrsa, Mal Jaffa and even several Hebridans, formed into firing lines, one line standing over the first which knelt down, each ready to lay down a withering amount of fire on whatever was about to break through the wall.

Daniel chose that moment to run into the junction area from the second unwarded tunnel he'd been defending. "What's happening?"

"Wall breach," Harry said tersely. "Get ready!"

They waited in tense silence as the grinding, tinkling sound grew closer. When the wall breach hit, however, it was nothing like what Harry expected. Instead of the tip of a drill or the flash of a mining laser, the wall instead seemed almost to melt away, exposing an oddly textured passageway of what looked almost like gray-blue crystals.

Standing in the middle of the opening, looking alarmingly attractive in a way-too-short pleated, gold-armored skirt, exquisitely molded breastplate and a golden diadem, stood a Goa'uld woman. Dark eyes set under rich black hair in an oval face regarded them all coolly.

"I am Enyo," she said before even Harry could think of any action to take. "I seek words with the one who calls himself Akai'kheb."

Harry, Teal'c and Daniel shared a long, confused look before Harry rose from his fighting stance and walked to the edge of his hastily conjured wardline. "I am the Akai'kheb."

"I greet you," she said with grave formality and a stiff nod. "Know that Lord Cronus has positioned thirty thousand Jaffa around the stargate, with staff cannon placements in such numbers that even Ra himself with all his armies would have difficulty reaching it. Additionally, he has two cloaked al'kesh hovering over the gate at all times, and five ha'tak in orbit with orders to destroy the gate rather than allow it to open. With your ships destroyed, there is no escape."

"I'm sure I'd have found a way," Harry said calmly.

She stared at him for a long moment before giving him a wholly un-Goa'uld like smile. "Perhaps you would have, Akai'kheb. My people have been watching you for many years now, debating whether to make contact or not. We believed it pointless to assist when we learned of your plans to attack Parnas. That is, until we saw the true target of your attack. Lord Cronus has sent ships back to Knosis, but despite that, he will not be in time to stop your plan, will he?"

"No," Harry said, finding no reason to lie given the plan was already well under way.

"Your target was always Knosis. Presumably to save the Hebridan people from slavery. A noble act for a noble leader." She glanced at Teal'c. "Your ability to recruit Jaffa, and your willingness to free them from their slavery, is in large part why I stand before you now. Your willingness to sacrifice to save greater numbers is the other. I am Enyo, but I am not Goa'uld. I am Tok'ra, and I have come to offer you and your men a way off this world."

Harry frowned, unfamiliar with the team. Beside him, Teal'c stiffened. "Akai'kheb, the Jaffa have heard of the Tok'ra. They are Goa'uld who opposed the ways of the System Lords."

Enyo shook her head emphatically. "I share nothing with the Goa'uld but biology. I am Tok'ra. I share this body with my host, Eredeth, who volunteered to accept me. The Tok'ra do not believe in taking unwilling hosts, and we oppose the Goa'uld in any way we can."

Harry knew she spoke the truth because he could feel the very human consciousness within the woman, watching, listening and quietly adding her own thoughts to that of the much older being within her. The effect was wildly disconcerting to Harry, facing a single face with two distinct personalities. "You're not doing that good a job of resisting the Goa'uld," he said at last.

"We are few," Enyo admitted. "Our queen was caught by Ra, stopping our numbers from increasing. The other System Lords all sent Ashraks after us until we were forced to flee. Since then, we have fought as we could using subterfuge."

Harry looked at his adopted son. Daniel shrugged. "I've got nothing," the young man said. "I can tell she's telling the truth. Eredeth thinks I'm cute. Beyond that, I'm just don't know."

For the first time Enyo's demeanor cracked. Teal'c, however, merely nodded. "Indeed, Daniel Jackson, my daughters agree that you are very cute."

"How could you possibly have heard Eredeth?" Enyo asked, astonished.

"Because he's telepathic," Harry said. "What's your plan?"

Enyo gathered her wits quickly, which Harry admired. "I have a group of Tok'ra agents who have assisted me in tunneling through the mountain to a clearing where six cloaked al'kesh wait. It will be a tight fit, but it should be enough to carry away your surviving men."

Harry rubbed his jaw. "Right. Fine. Teal'c, begin evacuation procedures while I lay down the last two ward stones. Daniel, I want you leading the way. I'll bring up the rear. Enyo, one word of warning. If you betray us, I can make your death last for years. I won't need a sarcophagus to keep you alive, my wives can do it with their very blood."

The Tok'ra blinked in surprise once again, but quickly regained her composure. "My own life is as in jeopardy as yours is, Akai'kheb. If my treason is discovered, even your threat would pale to my fate at the hands of Lord Ra."

"Then I guess you're coming with us," Harry said. "Teal'c, let's get the men moving."

~~Kobol~~

~~Kobol~~

Hermione ducked instinctively as the Goa'uld death glider spiraled into a row of slave tenements she'd just evacuated. Overhead, the last remnants of Cronus planetary defense struggled in vain against the one area that the Khebbish attackers had a clear advantage in from the very beginning—air and space superiority fighters.

Around her, terrified slaves tried to run harder toward the Khebbish beachhead in the center of the capital city of Knosis, and the friendly Ha'tak which rose in the middle of it laying down suppression fire against the Jaffa. Their progress was impeded by the sheer volume of their numbers and the ground combat that still raged around them.

The battle for orbital supremacy had gone as well as they could have hoped. Of their ten boarding parties against Cronus' ha'taks, seven had managed to take control of their targeted ships, while the loyalist Jaffa self-destructed the other three to keep them from falling into enemy hands. When the main elements of the Imperial navy struck, it was to find seven ships on their side against the remaining thirty three that defended the planet.

General An'hur conducted the space battle while Hermione watched nervously from the throne of her stolen ha'tak. The two sides were perilously even in numbers of capital ships. The Khebbish navy consisted of six hat'aks stolen from Cronus and, before him, Tilgath. Added to that were the five Hebridan carrier cruisers, each previously disguised as ocean-liners, but which were in reality capable frigate-sized destroyers. Rounding out the fleet were the newest additions, a dream project of Harry's that he was only able to fully pursue when he was able to obtain a staff of Hebridan-trained engineers.

The first six Khebbish star destroyers looked similar to their cousins from the most ancient Corusca galaxy that they were named for in that they had a diamond-dagger shape, but with several notable changes. For one, they were smaller—only a thousand meters long. Rather than a high-mounted conning tower, the dagger-like ship's dorsal line rose steadily to form a heavily armored single crest, making it look almost like a rearward shark's fin, but one which had a good view of the dorsal landing bay that bisected the heavily shielded, outer hull of the ship.

The ships bristled with turbolaser cannons and missile pods, but it was a Goa'uld-style hyperdrive that wrestled it between the stars, Goa'uld-style shields that protected it, and a powerful series of fusion generators that propelled it in sublight. The six ships were built all at the same time in the ship yards Harry constructed in the Kalmah System's asteroid belt and combined all the best elements of Hebridan, ancient Coruscanti and Goa'uld technology in a lethal mix.

Even with the seven ships Hermione stole, however, that put their total capital-ship count at twenty-six ships against a defending fleet of over thirty three defenders.

The difference in relative strength, however, evaporated when the Imperial navy disgorged its cargo.

Hebridan space interceptors launched from the Hebridan cruisers, but from the Khebbish ha'taks and star destroyers came swarms of fighters, hundreds of them. Some were the first generation Headhunters that provided the Empire's first air/space defense vehicles. The rest, however, were the newer fighters and Harry's absolute pride.

Swarms of X-wing fighters closed in on those ha'taks not engaged in combat with Khebbish capital ships. They were not a perfect copy of the Coruscanti ship made so famous in its galactic civil war that Harry used to tell her about. The fuselage was shorter and the wings not quite as long, and all four wings were swept forward to mount the Goa-uld staff cannons each sported.

The Tollan Treaty forbade the Empire from developing ion weaponry or using existing Tollan ion weaponry in an offensive capacity. So instead, one fighter from each squadron carried a single hyper-drive capable naquedah-enhanced nuclear missile. The missiles were, by themselves, more expensive than the fighters that carried them.

Hermione watched with satisfaction as the first missile launched into hyperspace and appeared a split second later inside an enemy ha'tak's shield, having bypassed the enemy craft's defenses entirely with the Hebridan-designed AI guidance system. The explosion did not destroy the ha'tak entirely—Goa'uld ships were astonishingly resilient. However, it caused the shield to ripple and fail. Fighters swarmed in for the kill while other squadrons looked for new targets.

General An'hur's deployment was text-book perfect, easily overwhelming the defending ships despite what should have been even or even superior numbers. He directed his own capital ships to concentrate fire sufficiently to overcome individual target shields, often times allowing other enemy ships to get in their own shots before they too were targeted.

The battle in orbit raged for nearly thirty minutes, primarily because the enemy ha'taks refused to surrender or withdrawal. The battle would only end with their utter destruction. They exacted a heavy price, though. The Empire lost three of its own ha'taks, one of its new star destroyers and one of the Hebridan cruisers.

As soon as the fleet was assured they would not be bombed from orbit, Hermione led their landing forces. The stolen ha'taks came down first, while the remaining Hebridan ships followed. They carried between them the single largest deployment of Khebbish soldiers ever assembled in what was the single most risky operation.

They immediately started taking fire from the surface, Hermione noted. The Goa'uld lacked ion cannons, but staff cannons came in many sizes and power settings, and the planetary cannons Cronus constructed rocked Hermione's ha'tak violently when they were hit.

X-wings and the bulkier atmospheric Khebbish gunships immediately descended on the towers, while her own ship began targeting known Jaffa strongholds throughout Cronai, the capital city and the largest population center.

The hard part of the battle, however, was just beginning. They were looking for an unknown number of slaves, likely in the hundreds of thousands, out of a population of several hundred million. They had two days to save as many as they could. In ordinary circumstances, it would have been an impossible task.

Fortunately, neither she nor her spouses ever believed in ordinary circumstances.

"Signals are coming in, Blessed One," the Eridu pilot of her ha'tak said with an exultant smile. "Thousands of them!"

"Chose a point equidistant from as many signals as you can find and put us down," Hermione ordered. She tapped one of the many com channels on the arm of her throne. "Landing shortly. Prepare to disembark." She stood and addressed the Eridu man, a former Protector and veteran soldier of the Empire. "Major, you're in command of the ship."

"Yes, Blessed One," he said with a nod as she stood and left the pel'tak.

The moment the ship sat down, they came under withering fire from Jaffa soldiers. What followed was the most intense ground combat Hermione had ever experienced. She employed every aspect of magic and the Force she could, leading her soldiers from the front in armor charmed so heavily she took three direct staff blasts before she even noticed. The gun ships swooped in whenever they got bogged down and pummeled Jaffa strong points. The Hebridan-designed gunships reminded Hermione a little of Earth helicopters in that they vaguely resembled dragon-flies. However, the fact that they could be deployed from and return to orbit put them light years ahead of their Earth counterpoints.

They finally established a perimeter within which they could move with relative safety, and that's when Hermione led rangers in sorties into the city to recover the slaves. She knew that ha'taks and other Khebbish capital ships had landed in every city on the planet and were doing the same. They had less than two days to recover as many slaves as possible before Cronus' forces arrived.

The slaves came in groups of a few hundred each, led either by Khebbish Jaffa agents or those Jaffa of Cronus they were able to convert to their cause over the course of their two year spying campaign. With the Hebridans came the families of their supporting Jaffa, seeking the freedom that only the Empire of Kheb could provide.

Hermione knew very well that there were likely spies of Cronus among them, but there was little she could do about it. They would process the survivors once they reached safety.

If they reached safety.

She reached the security perimeter with her latest group of rescued slaves and stood by on guard as Khebbish soldiers waved them toward the waiting ha'tak. Once they were in, she made her way toward the forward firebase where she found Colonel Isral Jaxton, former commander of the Hebridan defense force and now a ranking officer of the Imperial Defense Force, coordinating sorties.

He looked exhausted as she walked into the tent that housed their communications and command equipment. Even as tired as he was, though, he stood over a holographic display table with a real-time display of the city from the drones overhead pointing out where to send the next sorties.

"Colonel," she said in greetings when he finished.

"Ma'am," he responded with a tired nod. In the field, in combat situations, titles and formality seemed silly to Hermione. "We've recovered five thousand Hebridans and another four hundred Jaffa."

She couldn't help her frown. "What about planet-wide?"

"Early reports have us at seventy thousand so far. We've captured the planetary gate and are evacuating as many people through it as possible in order to prevent Cronus from sending ground reinforcements."

They were in their eighth hour of the invasion; she'd hoped for a lot more than that by this time. They had an estimated thirty more hours before they had to withdraw or face prepared, superior attacking forces.

Jaxton noted her frown and with a swipe of his hand changed the display to a simple Mercator projection of the planet. Red dots covered every single continent, causing the colonel to sigh. "The slaves were spread out over the whole planet. Cronus was careful not to allow any large population groupings, seeding them through his existing populations. And while some of the locals are not resisting, he is their God and they're not keen on helping us either. Add to that a complete absence of mass transit and the sheer number of Jaffa fighting us, and it's been slow going."

"You've distribute the pamphlets?"

"Planet-wide. That's likely why we have as many people as we do." With a few taps on the table's keyboard he brought up a different set of dots, this time blue and in far, far fewer numbers. "We have teams of al'kesh and gunships scouring the planet to pick up isolated pockets. Some are coming under fire, and often times they're only picking up a dozen at a time. It's going to take time, ma'am."

Hermione hugged her arms over her chest. Their spies estimated that Cronus had captured almost twenty million Hebridan slaves. In the first eight hours of their forty-hour mission, they'd recovered less than one-twentieth of them. "At this rate, we're not going to be able to get them all."

"Ma'am, at this rate we'll be lucky to recover even a quarter, and we are taking losses. We have a casualty rate of ten percent so far."

She didn't bother to hide her wince at the percentage, which translated to many thousands of men. "We've got to make this worth it, for their sake's," she said.

"And we will, ma'am," Jaxton promised.

~~Kobol~~

~~Kobol~~

Harry liked to think he was not an easy man to shake or disturb. While he may have looked like he was in his early twenties after his near ascension, he was in fact forty-three years old. He wasn't the young, aggressive bull who took on and beat OPEC both commercially and militarily. He was the ruler of an empire than spanned several worlds with a population fast approaching a billion human beings.

Being around the Tok'ra, however, disturbed the hell out of him.

The hosts talked to their symbiotes all the time, and perhaps because of the nature of their joining, they projected those thoughts out almost as if they were screaming. So Harry, walking in their midst, felt as if he were caught in the center of a shouting match.

He knew that Daniel, who was in his way even more sensitive to the nuances of the Force than he was, must have been suffering even more.

It did not help that Enyo and her host Eredeth kept talking about Daniel's ass.

She'd stayed with Harry and let her fellow Tok'ra take the lead with Daniel as they evacuated the caves. Harry's ward stones and a few holographic projectors and automated weaponry would hopefully convince Cronus' people that they were still trapped. The fact that somehow Enyo was able to close the escape path behind them would leave the System Lord wondering where they were and how they escaped.

"This technology is amazing," Harry noted, desperate to distract the Tok'ra spy from her and her host's continuing analysis of his adopted son's backside. "Did the Tok'ra develop it?"

"While I am loathe to admit it, in technology were are similar to the Goa'uld," Enyo said as they walked at a quick pace through the tunnel behind Harry's surviving soldiers. "We discovered it many hundreds of years ago and learned to recreate the technology. But we did not develop it ourselves. We have made sure to keep it from the Goa'uld, of course."

"Of course."

Lighting came from the crystals themselves, which also provided an interesting reverberation of sound. The heavy breathing and tramping of thousands of soldiers moving at a steady job made the passageway thrum loudly, forcing the two to speak over it.

"So what do the Tok'ra wish to accomplish by helping me?" Harry asked.

"An Alliance, of course," Enyo said with a wry smile. "As you noted, our own fights against the Goa'uld have been less than effective. We may gain some small victories, but in truth we've been limited in what we do not so much by our abilities, but by not having a clear mission. Who were we to save? All humans and Jaffa were slaves. There were a few free worlds, but they knew better than to fight the System Lords, so there was no point in trying to form an Alliance."

"And what would you bring to such an Alliance?" Harry asked bluntly.

"At the moment, an escape route," Enyo said with a knowing smile.

He could help but grin back. "Granted."

"We bring an intelligence network second to none," she continued more seriously. "There are Tok'ra agents seeded throughout the System Lords. Though we adamantly refused to consider ourselves Goa'uld, biologically we are the same. That means the System Lords cannot tell us from themselves except under torture. Our agents have learned to hide very well."

Harry considered his own intelligence network, run primarily by Luna. She did not like to consider the fact that she was the head of the Empire's secret police and intelligence division, but really there was no other name for it, and she was very good at being sneaky. They had agents in several System Lord worlds, but their influence was limited to the Jaffa and human slaves alone. There were some levels of governance only Goa'uld could penetrate.

Or, it seems, Tok'ra.

"Then it seems we have a lot to talk about when we get back to Kalmah," he said, decision made.

"Indeed," Enyo agreed, being smart enough herself to recognize that he had accepted her offer in all but form.

~~Kobol~~

~~Kobol~~

"Sensor buoys report hyperspace eddies five hours away," Jaxton reported as he joined Hermione not at the forward air base but along the base of a shallow canyon that ran through one of the major agricultural areas of the planet. "Majesty, we're out of time."

Hermione didn't answer immediately, though she knew time was of the essence. Instead, she merely stood and looked down into the shallow canyon and the bodies that filled it. Bodies by the hundreds of thousands filled the crevice like a dam of rotting, stinking flesh, extending for miles on either side.

Scouts reported the find while trying to pick up outlying pockets of Hebridans in the field—the bodies were easily visible from the field. A few brave volunteers ringed into the horrific landscape to do a series of random DNA tests, and if the random sampling held true, they were all Hebridan slaves.

Hermione and her forces managed to save four hundred and thirty two thousand Hebridans, and another eight thousand Jaffa converts. Cronus' remaining human slaves refused to leave, and Hermione did not feel she had the right to force them into freedom. But the remaining nineteen million and six hundred thousand captives of Hebridan lay rotting in a glorified ditch, killed at Cronus' orders when he left Knosis to capture Harry. The sheer amount of effort expended in killing so many left her stunned.

She wasn't even crying. The horror was so deep, so profound, that she could not even comprehend it enough to weep. She could only stand on the edge of the canyon and stare down at the seemingly unending piles of bodies.

Jaxton was as dry-eyed as she was, but she suspected that was due to exhaustion. The past day and a half stretched all of the Khebbish forces to their limits. Cronus' loyal Jaffa continued their constant attacks despite Khebbish air and space superiority. The Jaffa used human slaves as shields, making sure to fire from the middle of large pockets of innocent civilians as they attacked.

The Empire fought back regardless, of course. Hermione herself had more kills than any single unit could claim. But it was much, much too late for those she looked upon.

"How could any sentient being do this?" she whispered finally. The wind abruptly changed direction behind her, momentarily blowing the stench away.

"Majesty…Hermione, we must leave."

"We're going to destroy them, Jaxton," she said as she continued to stand and stare. "We're going to wipe every Goa'uld from the face of the galaxy. If we ever find the home world where they originated from, we're going to glass it. This will never happen again."

"I know, Majesty," Jaxton said. His own voice was so hoarse it came out as a reedy whisper, almost. "And I'll fight right beside you as long as I'm able. But the people we have rescued need us. Please, come."

At last a single tear fell. Hermione wiped it away and nodded. "Right, let's get moving. Any word from my husband and adopted son?"

"The Emperor reports a safe escape from Parnas. He suffered fourteen hundred casualties. Prince Daniel is safe and they are on their way home."

"Then let's go home too, Jaxton. I'm sick of this world."

"You and me both, Empress."