Friend or foe
Chapter 3
A short time later Jack was sat in his room trying to read a book Daniel had leant him in the hopes that it would tell him something about the Goa'uld. Unfortunately most of it made as much sense to him as quantum physics. Luckily he was saved from confusion when the phone on his desk rang noisily at him. "yeah?" he answered it.
"Our guest has regained consciousness, you might want to get the rest of SG1 down here." Dr Fraiser told him.
Jack nodded before realising that over the phone you couldn't tell if someone was nodding; "Sure be right there." He hung up and quickly called Teal'c and Carter telling them what he'd been told, lastly he phoned Daniel. It took the scientist a while to answer-he had obviously been engrossed in his translations.
"Oh-huh?"
"Daniel the Goa'uld's awake, we gotta get down to the infirmary."
"Sure." Daniel replied a little distractedly.
"Daniel?"
"Yeah?"
"That means now."
"Sure."
"Not in five hours once you've discovered the meaning of life or whatever else you may be doing."
"Fine Jack I'll be there in a minute."
"No not in a minute, I know what that means, it means; I'll be there once I've finished doing this. Which means; I'll be there once I've work myself round in circles for an hour or so because I think I'm so close to finding the answer." He heard Daniel sigh at the other end of the line, "So no; 'I'll be right there's, Just get down there with whatever you got so far, OK?"
"Fine, I'll be there immediately, OK?"
"Great." Jack hung up knowing the absent minded archaeologist would still probably take half an hour to reach the infirmary.
By the time Jack reached the infirmary-yet another dull grey room in this dull grey complex-Carter and Teal'c were already waiting. The Goa'uld sat up in the bed, still secured with thick leather straps, she looked sickly pale but as he entered bright, cat-like, amber eyes met his own.
"How many more of you are there? A girl could get bored of waiting." Either the Goa'uld was speaking purely with its host's voice, or it was the host speaking. She sounded so normal, ok so her voice sounded like melted honey and she had a foreign accent that was like nothing on Earth, but other than that she sounded totally normal. Jack was spared the trouble of asking as General Hammond entered behind him with Lieutenant Colonel Alec Silver-the commander of SG4.
The Goa'uld stared with a mixture of shock and what may have been confusion, or...recognition? as the general entered. "I am General Hammond, This is..."
"GENERAL? YOU HAVE DOEN WELL FOR YOURSELF GEORGE." The Goa'uld interrupted, this time using it's own voice or at least the voice generally associated with the Goa'uld. It sounded more powerful, the honeyed tones were lost though a hint of the accent remained.
"Who are you?" Hammond asked. And how did it know his name?
"MY NAME IS KELEKHERU, THOUGH THIS WAS NOT THE NAME YOU KNEW ME BY."
"So what was that name then?" Jack asked.
"MY PREVIOUS HOST SPENT SOME TIME ON EARTH UNDER THE NAME OF KRISTAV BOUDREAUX"
"Kris?"
"You knew him Sir?"
"We were stationed together in over twenty years ago. I would never have suspected Kris of being Goa'uld."
When the Goa'uld spoke again it was with the honeyed tones of the host; "He wasn't Goa'uld, if he was you would all be dead now."
"That's nice." Jack commented.
"You just admitted that this Kristav was you're previous host, if that is so he must have been Goa'uld." Teal'c said levelly.
"NO! We are not Goa'uld."
General Hammond turned to Dr Frankil at this point. The Dr pulled a cloudy radiograph from it's folder. "For some reason the X-rays were blocked partially by the skin, but even so you can clearly see the Goa'uld skeleton here." She said raising the image to the light and indicating the slim vertebrae of the Goa'uld almost lost in the foggy image.
"That is not a Goa'uld." The girl said.
"Coulda fooled me." Jack replied.
"It's possible she could be Tok'ra." Carter offered.
"We are not Tok'ra, Tok'ra are merely Goa'uld who see things differently."
"Then what are you?" Jack asked, more than a little impatient. As he had predicted Daniel still hadn't arrived.
"We are Kriaz-Nor."
"And like that means so much to me."
The 'Kriaz-Nor' glared. "The Nor were once Goa'uld as the Kriaz were once human. You can clearly see that I am not human, is it not possible that the Nor are no longer Goa'uld?"
"You're saying that the Goa'uld have evolved into the Nor?" Carter asked, "Is that even possible?"
"It was not natural evolution if that is what you are asking."
"Well that certainly clears things up." Jack commented with more than a hint of sarcasm.
"What does?" Daniel asked as he finally entered the room.
"Where the hell have you been?"
"Um...finishing the translation." Daniel replied a little sheepishly.
"What did you find out?" The 'Kriaz-Nor' asked."
Daniel stared for a moment, pushed his glasses up his nose then turned to Jack.
"May as well tell us what you found out."
"Ok, um...basically the hieroglyphs say that this is the Queen of Heru'ur, a Goa'uld named Allisenna, Queen of the Mau."
"Queen of the what?"
"Mau." Allisenna answered, "Cats, you'll never guess why."
"So there's no indication that she may in fact not be Goa'uld?" Hammond asked.
"Um...no."
Allisenna laughed, "Do you think I'd tell Heru'ur that we're not Goa'uld? He'd kill me."
"Um, have I missed something."
"Oh nothing much Daniel, only that this Goa'uld may in fact be from an entirely different species not created by natural evolution whose previous host seems to have known the general."
"What?"
"Look all you need to know is that we are not Goa'uld, oh and Heru'ur has found out and is trying to kill us."
"Great another Goa'uld to try and kill us."
"Oh he doesn't know we came here, we destroyed the dialling device before we came through and the stargate after."
"How?"
"We blew it up."
"That simple huh?" Jack asked.
"Kris was rather fond of...blowing stuff up, as I remember." Hammond replied.
"The Goa'uld have some pretty good explosives, it would have been a lovely explosion."
"Great so now we have a pyromaniac Goa'uld who isn't a Goa'uld but happens to have made enemies with a rather powerful Goa'uld anyway. Wonderful."
"There's just one thing I don't get." Carter began.
"Only one?"
"Well mainly one, how did you get hold of SG4's remote signal?"
"Huh? Oh the remote thing, it was taken from your people when they were captured by Heru'ur a few weeks ago, I thought it might come in handy."
"But we returned with all our equipment intact and untampered with." Alec said.
"Wait, when were SG4 captured by Heru'ur?" Jack asked.
"Oh that would have been when you were infected by that device the Ancients left on PX whatever." Daniel answered.
"Oh."
Carter turned back to speak with the 'Kriaz-Nor'; "So if the device was untouched, how did you send the signal?"
"Oh it wasn't untouched, I just put it back together real well. Kelek' don't have as good a memory as the Goa'uld, and your technology is a little more advanced than he remembers, but it wasn't hard to work out what the things did, then I just had to work out what signal it was you sent so I left a receiver hidden by the stargate and..."
"And sent the same signal through before you escaped." Carter answered.
"Basically."
"Didn't you think that we might close the Iris anyway?"
"Sure, but where else would I go?"
"Don't your people have your own world?" Daniel asked always interested in other cultures and races.
"We did, it was destroyed." Allisenna answered rather matter-of-factly.
"What, how?"
"The Goa'uld."
"How did you escape?" Jack asked.
"We didn't. look basically my people were genetically engineered by a Goa'uld called Basset over a millennia ago in the hopes of forming the perfect Jaffa, unfortunately something in the process meant that any Goa'uld blended with a Kriaz was subtly changed. They lost much of their genetic memory among other things. The Kriaz-Nor were produced to be the perfect Jaffa but they soon became the total opposite, turning on their creator. Basset was killed and the Kriaz-Nor were freed, although technically most of our race is merely Kriaz.
"Over time many Goa'uld tried to attack us but we fought them off. As the attacks became less frequent the Kriaz became complacent and less of us chose to protect our world. Eventually one Goa'uld, Sekhmet, attacked in great numbers and my people were unprepared to fight them off. We managed to reach the stargate with one other named Mykka, we activated the device and sent him somewhere-though I do not know where-before we were captured.
"I do not know why we were taken to the Sekhmet, but it saved our lives. Before we helped Mykka escape we set huge explosives, the whole planet was destroyed along with two of the attacking mother ships. Now we could be the last of our race."
"What about Mykka?" Carter asked obviously enthralled by the tale.
"We do not know, we don't even remember where we sent him, we had to forget so that Sekhmet wouldn't find out. For all we know he could have arrived on a Goa'uld controlled planet and be as dead as the rest of our people. Or he could be out there somewhere, alive."
"And then you just happened to become a Goa'uld queen?" Jack asked sceptically.
"You make it sound so simple. We were captured by Sekhmet a Goa'uld who at that time was at war with Heru'ur, Sekhmet fought many of Ra's battles many Millennia ago, but she tired of this. She believed that she could rise to power without the aid of Ra and so turned on the son of Ra, Heru'ur. But Sekhmet was attacked by Heru'ur and finally destroyed. With Sekhmet's destruction Heru'ur gained all of her lands, ships and prisoners, including us. We knew that one Goa'uld loyal to Sekhmet had pretended to be a captive and was preparing to kill Heru'ur. We saved his life and quickly gained his trust, finally becoming his queen. Since then we have searched for any of our race still alive, and especially for Mykka."
"Have you found anyone?"
"Maybe. There is a ship, badly damaged, in orbit of a small desert planet deserted by the Goa'uld many centuries ago. Heru'ur believes that it belongs to some higher race, but I know that it is a Rajinee attack vessel-the Rajinee were the warriors of the Kriaz-Nor. Although it is badly damaged it has managed to destroy any Goa'uld ship to come near it. Heru'ur is planning on sending one of his mother ships in the hopes of gaining advanced weaponry."
"And you believe this ship contains survivors from your world?"
"We do. We also know the gate address to the planet the ship orbits."
"If The Goa'uld know the address why haven't they used it?"
"They did, they were killed."
"Well that makes me feel better, I think not. So now you expect us to take you to this planet?"
"If any of my people are alive there they will not attack you whilst we are with you. Also we would give you the technology the Goa'uld want. The Kriaz-Nor stole much Goa'uld technology when basset was destroyed, we covered the stargate and did not use this, but we did make use of weapons, communication and stellar technologies. The ship will contain weapons powerful enough for you to destroy any Goa'uld mother ship attacking you."
"If you hadn't heard we managed pretty well ourselves against a pair of attacking mother ships." Alec pointed out.
"We know, you have a team on board one of the ships and a renegade Jaffa to aid you, next time you may not be so lucky."
"We will think about your offer." Hammond replied before Jack could argue further.
"I'm sure you will, but whether you decide to come with me or not, I would like to be allowed to use your stargate to reach this world."
"As I said, we will think on it."