AN: This chapter ended up being longer than expected. Expect most chapters to be a lot shorter.

Another thing, the different Egyptian mythologies conflicted on whether Heru'ur, or Horus the Elder, was a son of Ra or Geb and Nut. This fanfiction assumes that confusion was caused by there being two Goa'uld named Heru'ur.

Also before anybody tries looking her up on the Stargate wiki as happened on alternatehistory, the Goa'uld Nephthys did not appear in the series, which is why I picked her.

Nephthys

QM1 was standing in front of the Quantum Mirror in search of the first alternate reality to visit.

Through the mirror they saw exactly the same room only without themselves present.

"The same artifacts in the same places." Captain Godfrey Mutton noticed. "Clearly too much like our own reality. Next!"

Archie Novak moved the control on the Quantum Mirror's remote.

Now they saw an Area 51 reduced to smouldering ruins, the lingering remains of a giant mushroom cloud could be seen above the horizon.

"I spot some Horus Guards over there." Sergeant Attwood pointed to a pair of barely visible figures searching the rubble of an outlying building.

"Horus Guards? Strange." Michelle small said. "Usually, it is Apophis who takes over the alternate Earth."

"Next!" Shouted Godfrey Mutton. "We can't save every fallen parallel Earth."

Now they once again saw an intact Area 51, but this time somebody stared back.

On the other side stood four surprised soldiers wearing identical uniforms.

The captain looked at their badges, QM1 was printed on them.

"Mmh, a point of divergence during the selection of this team?" Doctor Novak wondered.

"Next! We need an earlier split of point."

The physicist sighed. "I'll try to pick a point of divergence decades ago."

He turned the button farther than previously. It apparently worked as the other side of the mirror looked nothing like Area 51 now, with futuristic lights unlike anything they had ever seen on Earth. The newly visible room was also filled with rows of artifacts, but different ones, interspaced were some exotic weapon designs. Open white doors leading to black hallways could be seen in the background.

"Finally!" Godfrey Mutton had already run out of patience. "This one is it."

Corporal Small pointed to a flag draped on a wall. "Is that a swastika?"

"Next to a portrait of the Führer?" Daniel Attwood added.

"Wait should Hitler not have died of old age by now?" Doctor Novak wondered.

"Not if he has a sarcophagus." Small replied.

"But doesn't that make you insane and evil?" The scientist replied. "Oh, wait, he already was."

"No Nazis!" The captain interjected. "Next!"

This time they had a lucky find.

The Quantum Mirror on the other side was located in a blue room with closed shutters, together with some other artifacts, most sitting on shelves and some boxes. The boxes had writing on them in English, a few had even British flags stamped in them.

"Yes!" Captain Mutton was elated. "No language barrier problems. Let's a go!"

"Wait." Michelle Small raised her hand. "We still haven't yet put our recognition code on the wall." She quickly spray-painted 'A9$B', a random string created by a computer program, on the wall behind them.

Then they touched the Quantum Mirror. They crossed it in an instant.

"We're on the other side." Attwood said.

"Thanks for the announcement." Novak smirked. "I had not noticed."

Michelle Small took out a piece of paper. "Luckily, I had made some notes on how to best explain how the Quantum Mirror works to them, should they not know. That might save us some time."

Then somebody accidentally crossed an infrared laser, and the alarm went off.

"Was that a tripwire?" Michelle wondered.

Footsteps were coming closer.

"Raise your arms." Captain Mutton ordered. "We don't want to accidentally come over as hostile."

Then the door was kicked open and two men wearing unknown, but British looking, uniforms stormed in.

They aimed their weapons at the team.

"Identify yourself!" The first one said, his nametag identified him as Brooklyn Gifford. "How did you manage to get in here?"

Novak pointed at the mirror. "We came here through the Quantum Mirror."

"Don't tell me that is another device for interstellar travel, like that accursed Gateway to Heaven." The second British officer bemoaned, according to his nametag he was named Cameron Taylor.

"No, it is for travel between alternate realities." Sergeant Attwood replied.

"Travel to what?" Brooklyn asked.

Then Michelle took out her notes and explained it in a mere five minutes.

"I believe I understand it now." The Gifford replied.

"So, it's some sort of Star Trek-esque Mirror Universe, except without everybody being evil?" Taylor asked.

Doctor Novak shook his head. "No, just no. That is not how the physics behind it work."

Corporal Small felt insulted. "Then explain it yourself!"

"I can't, you need to have studied quantum physics for over a year solely to grasp even the simplified basics of-"

"Well, anyway." Brooklyn Gifford interrupted the scientist. "That explains the American uniforms, as in our universe the United States no longer exist."

"What!?" Captain Mutton yelled.

Cameron Taylor began a lengthy explanation. "It was dissolved by the Goa'uld Nephthys. The president had refused her demand to submit and become a protectorate, so she threw a 200 megaton naquadah bomb on Washington DC. After managing to make the rest of Earth submit to her using a combination of gunboat diplomacy, promises of technology, and divide-and-rule, she returned her attention to the USA and had it balkanized. She divided America in twelve based on the Federal Reserve Districts, she must have been too lazy to do the research needed to come up with a division herself."

"That raises more questions than it answers." Sergeant Attwood said.

"Protectorates?" Novak wondered "Don't Goa'uld tend to be more into 'blowing everything up and enslaving the survivors'?"

"Nephthys prefers her new planets intact." Gifford said as he followed his colleague. "Plus, she's doing it in secret and moving over the dozens of millions of soldiers necessary for occupying Earth would get noticed by the other Goa'uld. Her secrecy also means that we don't need to fear that the other Goa'uld might complain about her not outlawing science or something."

"Nephthys? Was she not a Goa'uld queen, an Underlord, and Seth's ex?" Michelle asked.

"Indeed." Taylor replied. "They apparently did not part on good terms. The first thing she did after her Kite Guards caught Seth, was to sentence him to death for his betrayal of their siblings, Osiris and Isis. She and her new brother-husband ate his living symbiote on live TV, of course only after they had tortured Seth to death and resurrected him a thousand times."

They must have hated each other even more than my parents. Daniel Attwood thought.

"Oh, right." Michelle said. "Nephthys grieved her siblings so hard, she ended up as the goddess of mourning."

"Oh, also she prefers to translate her title as Grand duchess instead of Under Lord. Maybe because she dislikes the connotations of being someone's subordinate." Gifford mentioned.

Then Brooklyn Gifford opened a door. "Are you perhaps interested in a view of her Ha'tak. An image tells more than a thousand words, as they say."

"Well, I suggest we start from the beginning. When we found that damned Gateway to Heavens." Taylor before he entered.

"The first planet we reached was Abydos, I was part of the team." Brooklyn Gifford clearly felt honoured by being one of the first humans setting foot on another planet. "Once we deciphered the locals' language, they told us that a few days before our arrival they had been visited by the malevolent god Ra in his spaceship. Her Majesty's Government realised the need to find out what we were up against. We believed we had taken sufficient precautions to prevent those snakes from tracing our teams back to Earth. Of course, if we had known then that the Goa'uld could really bring back people from the death, instead of that being a magician's trick to impress their slaves, we would have used something stronger than cyanide pills to prevent life capture."

Cameron Taylor continued the tale. "In the second year of our program, GH-5 the Australian team did not came back from a mission. Next week we lost contact with all our off-world bases, we later learned they all fell to Nephthys' soldiers as she knew their locations and iris codes from possessing the missing team. We found ourselves unable to do anything as somebody was constantly dialling in. A month later a flying pyramid appeared in the sky, broadcasting a demand that the Stargate be handed over, being Nephthys, she claimed she did it for our own good so we would not attract a Goa'uld worse than her to Earth."

"So, you are part of a resistance group?" Captain Mutton asked as he was following them.

Brooklyn Gifford shook his head. "We are only keeping some artefacts hidden from her in the vain hope that they might contain something which we could use against her Ha'tak. However, that runs into the problem that she stores quite a lot of hostages on it."

Michelle was the last to go through the door. "Oh, another thing. The Gateway to Heaven, we call it Stargate after Daniel Jackson's translation."

"Daniel Jackson?" Gifford was surprised. "Was he not a crank who claimed that the Pyramids of Cheops were built by aliens?"

Godfrey Mutton stared at him. "But we saw Goa'uld spaceships land on pyramids on other planets."

"Yes, we did too." Taylor replied as was going up a staircase. "However, thanks to that tyrant of a Nephthys, we now know the snakes used prefab trinium pyramids for that on Earth. The stone landing platforms on other planets are a later development, the result of natural population growth leading to a surplus of slave labour. Plus, if Doctor Jackson had known anything about dating methods, he would have realized the Great Pyramids are way too young to be built by aliens."

Then Gifford opened a new door. The big telescope in the middle and the round roof suggested they were in an observatory. "From here you can see her Ha'tak yourself, it is located above the equator. She had confiscated our Gateway and placed it up there. She has placed Osiris in charge here as she can seldom visit Earth without any of her overlords getting suspicious."

Captain Mutton quickly entered the room and peeked through the telescope.

The pyramid appeared in the centre of the view. Several smaller spaceships were building something next to it, it consisted out of long white structures reminding him of quays in a dock. Several ropes hung beneath the Ha'tak and the structure. As cabins were moving up and down on them Godfrey assumed they were space elevators.

"Nephthys is building a shipyard?"

"Yes, she wants to build a secret fleet. She apparently believes Ra will die of old age in a few centuries and wants to use the following chaos to expend her domain and become a System Lord. She does not believe her current three dozen Ha'taks suffice."

"Well, she'll certainly need them." Michelle said. "When she tried that in our universe after Ra's death she was defeated by Cronos and Heru'ur, who immediately began quarrelling on how to divide her former territory."

"Wait." Novak interjected. "I thought Ra limited his Under Lords to but a dozen Ha'taks." He couldn't let them become too powerful after all.

"Yes, however, she's also an Underlord of both Ra and Cronos, whilst her brother-husband is an Underlord of Bastet. This allows them to add up the ships all their different lieges allow them." Gifford explained. "That loophole was patched four millennia ago but thanks to her lobbying there was a Grandfather's Clause."

"Wait, Nephthys remarried after having divorced Seth?" Sergeant Attwood asked.

"Yes." Corporal Small replied. "However, it happened after the rebellion of Earth and is thus not mentioned in Egyptian Mythology. She had married her brother, named Heru'ur, confusingly enough both Ra and Nephthys' parents, Geb and Nut, had decided to name one of their sons Heru'ur."

"It also has other benefits." Taylor continued. "For example, Ra forbids his Underlords, except his son Heru'ur, from having shipyards so they stay dependent on him for their ships, Nephthys gets around this by placing her shipyards in Cronos' domain. Bastet by contrast forbids her Underlords from having queens, so they cannot be self-sufficient in new symbionts. In their case Bastet had simply given up on enforcing, allowing Nephthys to visit her husband's domain in Bastet's realm, together with her daughters so lang as she pleases."

Captain Mutton shook his head. "That is very interesting and all, however we have more important things to focus on."

"Yes." Sergeant Attwood turned to the British "Ever heard of the Asgard? They might be the solution to your snake problem."

"The Asgard? Are there also Norse themed Goa'uld?" Gifford wondered.

"No, they are a different race entirely." Attwood explained. "The only good guys who aren't useless radical pacifist or rebels hiding in tunnels we have encountered so far."

"But how are we to contact them? Nephthys took Earth's Stargate." Michelle asked. "But wait, the Antarctic Stargate!"

"There is a second Stargate in Antarctica?" Gifford smiled. "If we had known this earlier, we could have started a new GHC straight under Nephthys nose."

They discussed this for an hour.

"Yes, this could work." Cameron Taylor said. "Not even a Goa'uld would be paranoid enough to get suspicious of some new researchers and equipment being sent to an Antarctic research station."

"And I was already losing hope that one of those artifacts would prove helpful." Gifford said. "If this works, we will help you in return. Assuming you don't already have all the technologies which Nephthys gave us."

Novak was very interested. "What technologies?"

"Let's see." Gifford said. "At first when she was still pretending to be a 'friendly' Ancient Egyptian Extra-terrestrial, she gave advanced medicine for free to all countries. However, poorly enough we haven't succeeded in reverse engineering the most important of them, such as her cure for every type of cancer and anti-aging nanites."

"Oh, and don't forget the GMO super crops. They ended all hunger everywhere, well, except in the countries who had banned them for being 'unnatural'." Cameron interrupted him.

"And then she also gave us green energy technology, can't let your protectorates get destroyed by pollution after all."

"And then there are also those ship components, such as crystal computers and room-temperature superconductors, she had taught us to build. So, the nations of Earth could build as tribute to her."

"Though I have to admit the energy-shields in her fusion reactor design are much more energy efficient than anything we could have macgyvered based on the design of the shield reactors we are supposed to build for her warships." Gifford ended.

Novak literally salivated at the mere thought of acquiring all these new technologies. "Super crops, crystal computers, room-temperature superconductors, and nuclear fusion! It looks like we won the jackpot on our first spin! Err, I mean I feel very sorry for what that serpent did to your Earth."

"Does she not fear that technology could be used against her?" Captain Mutton asked.

Gifford shook his head. "How? Earth has no natural naquadah, trinium or other elements in the Island of Stability. Technically we could power it with nuclear power instead but then any weapon installation or spaceship capable of reaching orbit would simply be too big to be built without being detected by Nephthys' spies and satellites."

"And our native technology is simply completely inadequate for the task." Taylor continued. "When Nephthys lowered her Ha'tak to bomb DC the Americans throw massive amounts of repurposed nuclear missiles at her. No matter how good the missiles' stealth or ECM was, they were all simply shot down. Except for a few she let through deliberately to show her shield could simply shrug off explosions of a few hundred kiloton. Before dropping the bomb, she raised her Ha'tak back above the range any of those missiles could reach, as if to prove we could only hit her if she allowed us. The USAAF was just as powerless against her Death Gliders. They lost thousands of planes, however the Death Gliders' ECM, chaff, and point defence was so good not a single missile hit them, they were so fast and agile not a single one of them got caught in a jetfighter's gunsights."

I take it that must have been the 'real' Death Gliders the Goa'uld use in their internecine combat, and not the discount models given to second-rate troops to intimidate primitive natives we encountered so far. Captain Mutton assumed.

Several days later

The Ha'tak still hung above the same place of the equator.

It originally was a wreckage rusting in a ship graveyard. A Ha'tak of Bastet which had been destroyed by one of Heru'ur's Ashrak'taks, obelisk-shaped gunships designed for hunting down and destroying other capital ships, when Bastet had joined forces with Apophis in his 12th failed attempt to usurp Ra two millennia ago.

Nephthys had it repaired in secret. Cronos and Bastet had stationed inspectors in her shipyards to make sure all her new ships were equipped with trackers, as a way to keep her in check. Off course every Goa'uld and his grandmother either had a secret fleet he could use to do things behind his superior's back or wished he had one. Now its damaged cannons had been replaced by new ones, the holes in the hull had been patched, the Pel'tak renovated, the shield generators and naquadah reactors salvaged and replaced, its hanger bays had been filled with small craft once again.

Thanks to its past the ship suffered from such things as weak hull integrity in several spots and some undetected burned through powerlines. Not that this mattered, the ship was built to invade planets much better defended than Earth in its lonesome. Which also was the reason so much space on the ship was devoted to such things as troop quarters and bomb storage, in contrast to Ashrak'taks who are based around cramming as much plasma cannons, shield generators, naquadah reactors, and engines as possible in a ship.

It was but one of the many ships which had been secretly repaired in a shipyard hidden on a Stargateless rogue planet. However those weren't enough Nephthys realized she needed a secret fleet much bigger than what could be produced on a few rogue planets.

The ship's crew consisted out of many human engineers, pilots, and soldiers. Nephthys was one of the few Goa'uld who had never switched over to using Jaffa, preferring to guarantee the loyalty of her high-ranking minions with a system of extensive background-checks and psychological profiling. In the case of her highest-ranking subjects she, or her husband, had even shortly possessed them during their job interview to read their minds, that way she was sure she could trust them completely.

All members of the crew had either 'died' or died for real and secretly been resurrected. Their families were kept ignorant and given death certificates. 'The Great Mother', an epithet Nephthys had borrowed from her older sister, did not like loose ends.

The trinium space elevators were working nonstop to move personnel, hostages, and supplies between the surface and the ship. Pieces of advanced machinery, still beyond the capability of Earth to make itself but necessary to produce the most complex parts of Goa'uld ships, were let down with parachutes. To prevent any suspicions from Nephthys' superiors they were officially 'recycled due to obsolescence'. The very first spaceship components were also brought up, but most of the production facilities had not even begun being built.

Of course, this trickle did not suffice to sate the massive hunger for sophisticated machinery a busy shipyard had. In Nephthys domain many newly produced spare parts simply disappeared from the books or were 'recycled after failing quality control', in both cases they simply appeared here. The flow of the raw materials earmarked for the hull and inner structure of the first ship was even larger.

Earth was ahead of schedule in setting up production lines with the aid of machinery and engineers given to them by 'The Grand Duchess'. Probably because the schedule was based on other instances of planets being turned into shipyards and Earth had the advantage of being the only instance with an unrepressed scientific method, not being told the hyper-advanced, fully automatic equipment they were working with was 'magic' which they weren't allowed to study on the pain of death. In most cases the quality of the finished products was also above expectation. Nephthys had generously rewarded the 'Earthlings', as the Tau'ri referred to themselves. They had already received a cure for Alzheimer, and a R&D team led by one of her 'sons' was busy with finding a cure for AIDS.

However not everything went better than planned. For example, India's tribute had failed the quality inspection. Osiris had thus used one of the Ha'tak's plasma cannons to create a 'firework show' above New Delhi, warning the Indians that if they don't do better next time the plasma bolts would explode closer to the surface.

In the middle of the Ha'tak's pyramid the canteen was located. It currently was lunchtime; it was always lunchtime for somebody in this ship with a crew above a hundred thousand.

Osiris was seated in the golden chair at the silver table reserved for the highest officers. His host was handsome, with the Mediterranean look typically of the descendants of the people moved across the stars by the Ancient Egyptian Goa'uld. Osiris had picked him from a list given to him by Nephthys, containing criminals who would not be missed.

He was dressed like a pharaoh, well actually the pharaohs had been dressed like him, as Osiris had simply taken the clothes he had worn when he had ruled Egypt out of his tomb. An Atef, a tall white crown was placed on his head. His face was painted green to denote his status as a god of agriculture. However, as he was dining, he did not have his Heqa staff and flail with him.

His stool was inlaid with many precious gemstones and the silk cushion was decorated with many scenes from Egyptian mythology. The food on the table was made by the best cooks of Earth the Kite Guards managed to get their hands on. Just behind the table a world-renowned orchestra was playing classical music.

However, all this failed to lift Osiris' mood.

Despite munching on the most exquisite foods known to man, he had not even once shown any trace of enjoyment during his dinner.

Osiris resented his position, his 'little sister' and 'little brother' had become the oldest by virtue of not having been held in stasis for five millennia and had started ordering him around like a subordinate as soon as he had been awakened. Even worse it turned out his beloved sister and wife, Isis, had not survived. His sprawling domains had been long seized by his many enemies or Nephthys who did not want to give him his worlds back. And lastly his 'dear sister' had forbidden him to force those undomesticated primitive natives to worship him, as befitted his station, as that 'was not worth the trouble'.

I hate this job. He thought. The only bright point is that at least I'm safe, there is no way those damned Tau'ri could become a threat or Ra could discover me here. The last time a Goa'uld had visited Earth was nearly a millennia ago when Raiden had abducted some Mongols, and as Ra had already became senile of old age there was no way he would find out what his sister was planning.

He shook his head there was no purpose in wallowing in self-pity, he filled himself with resolve. Hopefully, Nephthys will make me her highest lieutenant after her plan succeed. But then I must first prove myself a loyal and diligent servant. Part of him preferred to overthrow Nephthys, but what would his love, Isis, and his mother, Nut, say of that if they had still been alive? Plus, overthrowing Nephthys would be suicide anyway. She always took great effort to ensure her minions are only loyal to her, even going so far as to launch a universal Nish'ta immunization campaign so her enemies could not use that to turn her subjects against her.

As he stuffed the last fork of lobster in his mouth, the orchestra began playing a new music piece. Fortunately, those Tau'ri primitives did not solely advance in the field of technology, but also in the fields of cuisine and music.

It was not enough to turn his sombre mood into a smile, however.

Narmer, head of the guards, was busy cracking a joke. "-Then Apophis entered the room. He took a seat next to Nephthys, waiting till Ra would arrive at the peace conference. Our archnemesis noticed that Our Lady was writing something in her note tablet."

Then Narmer made a poor imitation of Apophis voice. "'What are you doing my dear grandniece?' He asked her."

Followed by an even worse imitation of a woman's voice. "'I'm writing down a joke one of my subjects made about me, dear granduncle. I collect them, some are very funny.' She replied.

'Oh, how many do you have?'

'1437 pages. I have been collecting them for a very long time.'

'I have 198 cemeteries and 27 mines filled with them.' Apophis replied."

Narmer then broke out in laughter, he was the only one.

"You have already told us that joke twice." Neheb, the captain of the ship, replied.

Meanwhile, Osiris was thinking about his own children, most of them had ended up being employed by Nephthys, his daughter Sopdet even became her grand vizier, and were now older than him. How unsettling.

Suddenly, Tiye, the Chief Sensor Officer, put down her cutlery. She had apparently received a notification on her wrist-mounted communication device. Nephthys loved giving her minions the most awesome toys. For once Osiris agreed with her, how better to prove them one is the best deity.

"Our satellites have picked up something weird in the continent on the south pole, seismic shifts of unknown origin and energy readings suggesting FTL-travel from the same place."

"Probably a glitch or something." Osiris replied, they had Earth's Stargate and an underground hyperspace window was simply impossible. "We'll send somebody to check it out once we have finished deserts."

Neheb frowned. "But, even if there is tiny chance it is urgent and important, should we not send a team now?"

Osiris had to suppress to urge to use his Kara'kesh to smash that recalcitrant who had dared to disagree with him into the wall. Nephthys, like Isis, had this naïve maxim that your underlings tend to be more loyal and dedicated if you take care of them 'like a stern but loving mother'. Thus, she would scold him if he reacted that way to ignorants giving him 'advice'.

"Then do it yourself." Osiris answered with a fake smile on his face. "Hunting spectres created by malfunctioning satellite sensors is way beneath my station."

Neheb gave Osiris a look filled with disdain as he turned on his own wrist-mounted communication device.

I hope I soon get real minions and not this disrespectful bunch which only follows my orders because my sis ordered them to.

A quarter hour later.

During desserts they were looking at the wall. A bad action movie, filmed on the planet Luxor and subsidised by Nephthys' Ministry of Propaganda and Entertainment, was being projected on the wall.

In the current scene a legion of Kite Guards was defending a poorly protected planet of Cronos from slave-raiding Serpent Guards. There also was a commissar present who used the breaks in the fighting to make 'morale improving' one-liners such as 'Apophis and Nirrti hate us because Our Lady loves us.'. Whilst the well-supplied Kite Guards were currently winning against the brave, but poorly led minions of Apophis, victory is not yet certain. The first lieutenant had been compromised; he was secretly having contact with the Tok'ra.

Osiris had not yet heard of the Tok'ra before. According to the movie, they were 'treacherous demons using their lies to hide they are actually spies and saboteurs send by Apophis'.

Then an alarm went off and the film automatically paused itself.

"Unscheduled Chappa'ai activation." Osiris muttered.

He put away his 'last' piece of cake, the previous two pieces of cake had also been supposed to be his last, and stood up.

He began walking towards the gate room. He was followed by the high officers, who were speculating the reason behind this incoming wormhole.

Probably an unexpected delivery from my sister. Osiris assumed. Alternatively, it could come from a Tau'ri off-world base we somehow missed. The gate room has defensive shields and weaponry to defend from attacks though the Chappa'ai, so I don't fear the latter possibility.

As soon as he entered the gate room, he immediately noticed something was amiss.

"Why is there no sensor orb?" On Nephthys' orders it was standard procedure to always first throw a sensor orb through the wormhole, in order to check whether the exit is obstructed or there is an ambush or problem on the other side, no exceptions.

Then the air began to shimmer in front of the Stargate.

"What was that?" Tiye wondered.

Then a transparent figure began to appear behind the shield around the Chappa'ai.

"A hologram?" Osiris muttered. But that's impossible. Holograms can't be projected through wormholes, certainly not if there is a forcefield in front of it.

The figure became opaquer and took on a recognizable shape.

"It's an Asgard!" Narmer's face was filled with fear.

Though if there is somebody who can project holograms through wormholes it must be the Asgard.

"Who has the honour of speaking with me?" Osiris asked. He was not intimidated by the Asgard. Osiris still remembered the time the Goa'uld had won many great victories against the Asgard. Poorly enough that had not lasted thanks to the quick pace of the Asgard's technological advancement, by the time he had been locked up the only kind of victories they could win against the Asgard were costly and small. According to Nephthys, the Asgard were now so advanced not even that was possible anymore.

"I am Thor, the supreme commander of the Asgard Fleet. You are to end your unjust occupation of Earth, release all hostages, return everything you have stolen and-"

"You call this an occupation?" Osiris interrupted him. "If only my sister had allowed me to conduct a real occupation, then I could properly redomesticate those recalcitrants gone feral."

Neheb was visibly shaking out of fear. "Please, don't hurt us for his insolence, your utmost excellency. We shall contact Our Lady, the most benevolent Nephthys, immediately."

"How do we even know this is a real Asgard and not some Tau'ri trick?" Osiris asked.

Without warning a blue blast came out of the wormhole. It passed through both the stargate forcefield and energy shield like a knife through butter and hit the wall.

The explosion threw everybody on the ground.

The lights went out, after a few seconds they went back on but started to flicker.

Osiris pushed himself off the floor. Blood dripped out of his nose. "Ok, it's an Asgard." An ion cannon. When the Asgard began mass-producing those shield-piercing weapons, it was enough to turn the tide of a war we had been winning up till then in the favour of those grey Shol'va.

Tiye had avoided falling on the ground by grabbing a rail. She began pushing buttons on her wrist-mounted communication device. "I'm opening contact with Our Lady, the glorious and just Nephthys." Normally they avoided using FTL communications devices as the network was not secure, however Nephthys' encryption algorithms were sophisticated enough that there was no danger of the sporadic short message being decrypted.

A hologram of 'The Great Mother' appeared out of the device. She had an old, but still beautiful and graceful face. She had the smile of a loving mother and the eyes of a stern schoolteacher whose sole goal is the success of her students. A picture of this face hung in every classroom, every government building, every barrack, on all her dozens of planets.

The only thing betraying her as an absolute autocrat over many planets was her Pschent or double crown, consisting of both the red and white crown worn by the pharaohs. She used it to remind her subjects she was twice an Under Lord, once for Ra, once for Cronos.

Further she was clothed in a prudish, dress coloured blue, purple, and red; the colours kept flowing around as she moved as the dress was made of a meta-material which looked blue when seen from the left and red when viewed from the right. As befitting Nephthys' practical nature her dress had an overabundance of oversized pockets. Lastly shield generators in the shape of falcon wings were attached to her back.

"I hope this is important." The Under Lord sounded annoyed. "I was buzzy with very important Goa'uld stuff." Well, actually she had been playing videogames with her husband and favourite children, but her subordinates need not know that.

She gasped when she noticed who the hologram and who it represented.

Thor once again stated his demands.

Nephthys bowed to the Asgard, something she normally only reserved for Ra. "Your mercy, I humbly request to be given time to retrieve my personnel and material from the surface."

Thor was relieved. Were it to come to combat his victory was certain, but intergalactic travel is very expensive. "If only all Goa'uld were so wise as you. Your request is granted, however some of the finer points still need to be discussed, such as reparations for inflected damage."

"Reparations? Is all what I have given them and all what I have learnt them not enough?"

The Asgard's face remained inscrutable. "You bombed them."

"Only twice, which was nothing compared what they had been inflicting on themselves with their wars and pollution before I had stepped in." Nephthys replied, as if she truly believed herself that she was spreading her 'enlightened rule' for the benefit of the conquered. Which actually was very possible considering some Goa'uld were mad enough to believe their own claims to godhood.

"Those are internal affairs of Earth, none of your business."

Nephthys stared at him, wordlessly asking him: 'Why then do you Asgard interfere with the internal affairs of the Milky Way?'.

"Does 'releasing hostages' also include the cooks and musicians?" Osiris wondered.

"Yes." Thor replied.

"Go to Sokar." Osiris cursed.

"But Nephthys pays so very well." Said a musician who had sneaked in out of curiosity to the source of that violent shake of the spaceship. "Wait, they don't have my favourite TV-series in the Domain of the Kite. On second thoughts, I prefer to stay on Earth afterall."

Another day later

The artifact storing warehouse

QM-1 had just come back through the Quantum Mirror, they had to spend most of their time in their own reality to prevent any risk of Entropic Cascade Failure.

Brooklyn Gifford was holding up a tiny syringe everybody in the team was looking at it. "This here is one of Nephthys' cancer cures, our brightest minds estimate it will take decades before we can mass-produce it ourselves. Her anti-aging nanites likely will take even longer."

"Bummer." Doctor Novak replied. "But how does it work?"

Brooklyn handed over the vial to Michelle "It is some sort of genetically modified virus which only targets cancer cells."

"Is that not dangerous?" Sergeant Attwood wondered. "What if it mutates into some sort of dangerous plague?"

"The snake claims that has not happened even once in the four millennia she has been using it on her own subjects." Gifford replied. "And considering the amount of safeguards the eggheads found in its design I'm inclined to believe her."

"I'm sure we will find something to give in return." Captain Mutton said. "Perhaps safe Stargate addresses?"

"Thank you." Cameron Taylor replied. "However, I fear they will end up being unused. From what I gather most countries do not want to risk once again attracting Ancient Egyptian Space Aliens to Earth. The Goa'uld might be false gods but they are so powerful and have so much knowledge they might as well be real ones. So, it looks like our only off-world activity will be diplomacy with the Asgard and Nephthys."

"Making deals with a snake? That is-"

"There still is a lot she has not given us." Gifford interrupted the captain. "For example, grass that is genetically modified to generate electricity. Plus, momentarily she is our only source not just for various medicines, but also for every element in the Island of Stability and the Helium-3 we need for our fusion reactors. As we speak the UN security council is even negotiating with her to purchase her space elevators and half-finished shipyard. They want to create a fleet of their own to defend Earth, encase somebody else's flying pyramid drops by."

"We had asked the Asgard for aid in those fields." Taylor added. "But they weren't much of a help thanks to their policy of 'avoiding unnatural interference with a civilization's development'. Though the main reason they refused to give us further help was because they feared that if the Goa'uld find out the Asgard have been uplifting us they might retaliate by attacking the treaty-protected planets."

"Do you not fear that serpent might use any trade as an opportunity to smuggle in a plague or something?" Attwood asked.

"No, she would gain nothing from it and does not see Earth as a threat." Brooklyn replied. "She might be just as capable of unspeakable evil as the rest of her kin, but her history is evidence of her having a prudent and cautions personality, she is too calculating to do the bad thing if doing the right thing is smarter. If it is successful, she would cripple a valuable trade partner, and if it fails, she could expect retaliation."

"You sure?" Captain Mutton was not convinced.

"She needs those spaceships." Taylor said. "That was the reason she came here. She does not see Earth as a threat."

"You'll pay her in ships?" Novak asked.

"She refused to accept anything else." Gifford replied. "Also, we need her technical know-how to build those ships in the first, refusing would slow the construction of a fleet to defend Earth even more."

"Well, her invasion of Earth was quite the master move." Novak quipped. "It failed and yet she still gets part of the ships produced by Earth."

"I believe we have to leave now." Daniel Attwood said. "General Hammond must be impatient to hear about what we have brought back."