AN: The coincidence in this chapter is, I'll admit, incredible. However, I want to get on with the fic so I'm using it to push things forward. Otherwise we'll have another load of chapters of the Soviets stumbling about and really they should have already been wiped out by the numerous 'scientific' threats they face like alien pathogens or black holes which they'd be unable to handle as well as canon did.
Remember to leave some comment telling me what you think. The pace of the fic will be accelerating which inherently means more will be skipped over but I'm anxious for this not to lead to a parallel decline in quality in favour of advancement.
-x-
Almost as soon as they stepped back through the gate to Earth a Corporal came up and saluted "Colonel sir," he said, "The General wants to see you immediately sir."
"Very good, thank you." Durov nodded to the soldier and led his men up to the briefing room where Abramovich was already waiting along with Igor and SG-2, Ivanovich at their head. They had decided previously that such exhaustive and time consuming checks as they'd previous used to prevent contaminants getting back to Earth were unnecessary due to the inbuilt defences the Stargate seemed to have against such things, and it also increased the speed of their operations massively. They'd decided that as they couldn't predict the incubation period of alien diseases there was no point in a mandatory isolation period as they'd had before, and instead moved toward a weekly medical examination that all off-world teams underwent. It was now up to the team leaders to decide whether to isolate themselves on their own judgement.
"General." Durov said as came in, "What's all this? Reniv said something had come up."
"Go over your mission first, then we'll proceed with this." Abramovich said, patting a dossier he had on the table in front of him."
"Well sir," Durov began, "Briefly, the Svoriin are about fifty years behind us and are composed of various city states who seem to have a religious disagreement regarding Thor's divinity or lack thereof. There's previously been wars there over it and our arrival may have inflamed this. We spoke with two naval officers from both sides of this schism who had different responses."
"Would you recommend reinforcing Reniv's position?"
"I'd certainly recommend plotting firing solutions to the ships in the harbour around the gate. That way we can bombard them from safety in case they try to destroy the gate with their naval guns. I'd also keep a company of riflemen in reserve on one of our rapid response sites."
There were three 'Rapid Deployment Planets' or RDPs for short that the Soviets had so far set up. Each had a small garrison and rudimentary fortifications and were used for routing purposes. Instead of preparing a sortie and squeezing tanks thought he SGC Chapeyev had had the idea of keeping them ready on other planets instead, which also meant the Earth Stargate could be used without fear of needing to deploy quickly through it, or having teams retreat back into a full gateroom or similar.
"Do you think there's cause for such action?" asked Abramovich.
Durov frowned, "Depends entirely on them sir. But we'd best be ready whatever happens."
The general nodded sagely, "If it comes to it I agree, I'll get Kuzenov on it… Sergeant Andripov! Go find him and tell him to have his men ready." He said to Dimitri.
The big man saluted smartly at the command and quickly went out.
"Now, as Reniv mentioned to you something very interesting has come up and we have a rather narrow window of opportunity. I'm sorry there's no time to get your rested but we need to move on this."
"That's alright sir, we were only over there for half an hour." Replied Durov, though SG-1 had been inspecting one of the new bases before that so they had been away from Earth for half the day at least.
Abramovich was looking at Igor and the archaeologist shuffled his papers. "Earlier today I was ahead with my work and I looked in on Corporal Mikhailov who's been helping me translate the material we've been getting from Chulak. He was going through the pictures Captain Kartin's been taking from around the settlements but he directed me to the batch of surveillance tapes the team there's sent over. Of those tapes I started with the most recent, as I didn't intend to stay for long and that's Lushat's job usually but the dialect on Chulak seems to be one of the older variants of Goa'uld, possibly because of Apophis' great age compared with the rest of the Goa'uld so I've been using it for reference. Anyway, and I'm sorry I couldn't get copies of this in time for your arrival, but let me read you the transcript I've made up. There's two speakers here, the first is Bra'tac, the old First Prime, the second Teal'c, the new one. First they start seemingly continuing with pleasantries and family news. Bra'tac talks about the progress of a few of his students and Teal'c says a few things about the war with Ba'al, which is apparently going reasonably well."
"Did you have any details?" interjected Durov.
"Lushat's on it, he's sorting through for commonalities with older surveillance transcripts to see if any of the Jaffa officers have been moved around and so on, it'll be with Intelligence by the end of the day."
Durov nodded and motioned for Igor to continue.
"Now till this part I assumed this was all the usual stuff we've been picking up through the recording devices, and I was quite happily making some linguistic notes without paying much attention, till I reached this part, which I'll read verbatim:"
Teal'c: Apophis will make alliance with Baset, Anker has been seen on Kalossia.
Bra'tac: Do not let vengeance cloud your judgement. If you strike at Cronos now when he's yet to declare for Ba'al that will certainly push him into opposition with us.
Teal'c: Opposition with a false god, and a capricious one at that.
"A period of silence follows this, but wait, I can see the look on your face Vladimir but there's more!"
Bra'tac: Draw on your past, but do not let your past draw from you. You vowed to kill Cronos to avenge your father, and you came here because Apophis are Cronos are mortal enemies. But now you are First Prime! Remember your brothers. Do not lead them into slaughter to sate your own desires.
Teal'c: It would be better that they destroy themselves. If I could only establish a larger battle then Cronos, Ba'al, Apophis and the whole lot of them would be wiped out in one strike!
Bra'tac: And what warriors would you call on? There might be a hundred on Chulak with the will to follow our cause, and even if there were a hundred thousand with us Apophis has thousands of Ha'tak and millions of warriors that would stand against you. For a time we might have some success against if we allied with other Goa'uld against him but eventually they would declare you Shol'va and the System Lords would descend upon you and Ra himself would come.
Igor finished his narration and looked up. "They commiserate a bit more, but that's about it. Afterwards they have a meal together and Teal'c leaves, promising to come back to mark the anniversary of his father's death with another meal in three days. However, this tape was made two days ago so that would be today."
Durov was amazed. "You're telling me the current marshal of Apophis' forces, as well as the previous marshal are both actually… what would you even call it? Heretics?"
"'Shol'va', it means traitor in the same way we would use 'infidel', someone who isn't faithful."
Durov shook his head. "Well we certainly didn't think we'd find this when we bugged his house."
"Lucky really sir." Said Ivanovich who had led the team that had set the bugs. They were small radio transmitters hidden around in various furnishings in the old Jaffa's home. Their batteries had to be replaced every few weeks but Bra'tac was frequently out and about so it wasn't difficult for Kartin's team to sneak back in and sort it out.
Durov nodded. They had originally hoped Bra'tac, who frequently trained his students in or around his house, would let slip some strategic details, as while he was retired now with Teal'c as his replacement it was amazing the amount of strategic information the Soviets could get out of a casual conversation between high-ranking Jaffa.
"What's the mission then sir?" asked Durov.
"Make contact. I can't think of any logical reason this might be a deception and the two of them together is too good of an opportunity to miss. If this is some ruse kill them both and make it look like an enemy attack, Ivanovich and SG-2 will be there with explosives and combustibles for this purpose while you'll all have the new and improved caseless ammunition Tarelkin's been working on."
"Is it more effective against the Jaffa armour General?" asked Igor.
"That's the idea, though I doubt they'll be wearing it inside in any case."
"And what's the contact to be sir?" continued Durov.
"I give you full discretion." Said Abramovich. "We are against the Goa'uld and apparently so are they, we want any actionable intelligence they may have, and ideally an agreement toward further operations together in future."
"I understand sir." Durov said, already considering the possibilities. "Valentin, what time is it on Chulak now?" he asked Captain Ivanovich
"They've got a weird length day there sir, 28 hours or there abouts. On our terms it should be… around 2100."
"And how long to get to Bra'tac's house from the gate?"
"If we can confirm the route is clear with Kartin forty minutes on foot. If its not clear and we have to go through the forest it could be three hours or more, which would be about two hours to midnight there, but in that case there's four villages on the way we'll have to get around."
"Minimum of three hours for the mission and we'd get back under dark again, maximum of six, say seven if there's problems… That would be about dawn wouldn't it? As I remember its summer there now."
"Yes sir, though you'd still have about eight hours from now till they start waking up over there. Like I said, the planet has a longer rotation."
"I'd rather not come back under daylight. Not if we've just assassinated their marshal." Said Durov. He turned to Abramovich, "Can you pull another company from the Regiment? And give us fire support? I doubt we'll be at war with the Svoriin in the next few hours so we can use whatever base we assign the reserve for there to."
The general nodded, "Better yet use Kuzenov. This is more important than steam ships."
"Alright." Said Durov, "It's a plan. I've got a few more modifications, I'll speak to them myself but I want you listening in Igor. Do we have any transmitters I can wear on me and you can feed me information?" he looked down at his uniform. "We better to change into camouflage as well."