Chapter 22

Lightning Fervor

Helltanz's notes: Any way to elaborate this chapter takes place around the beginning of Season 7 of stargate. A small note I'm operating on what was cannon before Moebius's time travel episode, Continuum was a piece of shit we're ignoring it just like it ignored what was already established cannon.

-Chapter begin-

War had indeed begun as expected amongst the forces of the system lords. "Prepare to launch 4-MVF-M15B Muramasas." Raiden ordered rattling off the phrasing with minimal effort, truthfully edetic memory and thousands of years of giving orders in the midst of fleet battles helped. Thousands of years ago had Ra not gone ahead during the great war against Anubis, combining his power with Apophis and Cronus along with their other allies it might have been possible to achieve Coalition dominance over the system lords. Such things were in the past now, long gone.

Ra was no longer an issue, and centuries of work were now bearing fruit. Sokar was sitting out this conflict, for now at least, which meant that Anubis and his allies were the ones fighting against the other Coalition members. Long ago they had all been allies a massive base which dwarfed even Ra and his allies power when combined. LIke such groups eventually there had been a fracture in the ranks, and it'd torn the alliance apart, Sokar had gone and found religion, and Anubis had just gotten overly ambitious. Then the war started, and the remaining members had waited too long and Ra had struck first mustering the ranks of the lesser system lords to attack Anubis and force him back, and then Sokar had screwed up after that.

All that was long ago now Anubis was back and their Coalition, now the strongest of the Goa'uld System Lord groups, was going to war against its former members. It was an irony, that it was. Numerically though it was funny with Heru'ur, and Sokar sitting out the majority of the system lords ships were not in the war that would tear the galaxy apart.

One of the fighter command officers nodded and gave the order as the Shinku Rai Tatsu delivered a salvo of Positron blasts causing two of Anubis's Ha'tak to explode violently. Another of the officers spoke up drawing the Shinto kami's attention. "Lord Yu's Daos," those were Yu's entry into developing his own mobile weapons, personally he thought Yu, and engineers should have stuck to ship design. "are attempting to hold off a Moebius squadron."

"Redirect a squadron of Murasames from the Karin to defend them," Murmured the system lord, "Transfer two our Ha'tak to that region to assist." As far as things went Yu had done a great deal but right now he simply didn't have the numbers, of either trained pilots, or actual mobile suits, or the support base to field mobile suits en masse especially against a couple hundred moebius mobile armors. That was precisely what Anubis had thrown at them.

While both new weapons required different hangars than the old and inefficient death gliders, which had been the stable of the Goa'uld fighter patrols for millennia, Anubis's mobile armors were vastly easier to produce and the hangars were far less complex. Their controls, as Raiden could personally attest too, were vastly simpler.

The officer bowed, "It will be as you command."

Two of the massive super Ha'tak appeared from hyperspace. The large multi kilometer vessel were escorted by fourteen type threes. The reinforcement arrival contribution to the battle formed up into their own battle line and each Ha'tak released a number of Mobile suits or wave of older Death Gliders. The Death Gliders weren't likely to be useful for anything other than support. Then again it was the best even the majority of Raiden's underlords could manage.

"Lord Raiden we are detecting a cloaked Tau'ri cruiser observing the battle."

He wasn't particularly interested in such, as Anubis's ships continued their counterbattery fire against his second line, "Ignore it for now." The system lord ordered, if the Tauri wished to watch their gods do battle then let them, Anubis seemed to have issued similar orders, or the the other system lord was too occupied with this irritable stalemate.

"As you command."

Raiden watched the battle progress, this was the first major engagement between the two forces. Intelligence indicated while Anubis had been on modernization, the installation of ancient derived upgrades on Ha'tak, his real expansion of infrastructure had been to a new design of ships, and the moebius designs. He'd been doing this since he'd returned. The simplicity of the moebius design meant he'd nearly completely phased out the Death Glider in both his fleet, and his ground installations, as well as with Baal's own forces, and even a sizable chunk of his underlords. It was a stunning accomplishment.

This battle was that which meant the war had now truly begun the majority of the allied Contingent. Through information passed on by his own order, the majority of the major alliance members were well on their way to developing Mobile suits. Even some of his underlords had joined in proposing their own designs to complement their rebuilt fleets.

The massive forms of the kite shaped Peacemillions appeared releasing a massive salvo of missiles devastating a wing of Moebius of significant size. Anubis unfortunately could replace the vessels easily even that large number.

The red and white colored forms of Hinotama model Mobile Suits soared through space along side its fellow phase three compatriots, as well as the new Phase Four models that were just entering combat. The Phase three's were able to easily overwhelm the technologically inferior Mobile armors, needless to say the Phase fours had an even easier time destroying Anubis's fighters, unfortunately numerically they were still drastically smaller than those weapons.

His communications officer perked, "My lord the enemy prepares to flee," Anubis's commander had by now deemed the battle a lost cause strictly speaking the order to withdraw was not a mistake. The truth was though Anubis's forces had still proven rather effective, leaving dozens of allied ships burning, while it was true the bulk of those were escorts, or aging Ha'tak they were still losses, to say nothing of the losses to the mobile suit corp.

Raiden looked through the summary of his looses irritation.

-scene break-

As far as the SGC was concerned that Raiden, and Yu had gone to war against Anubis, and Baal was good news. The Tok'ra and Jaffa were still split on the matter after the Alliance between the three factions had been terminated. The Jaffa liked the idea, for the most part, hoping that the two factions would weaken each other. The Tok'ra though were less optimistic.

Preliminary intelligence reports had indicated that right now initial confrontations had boiled down to both sides exchanging attacks. A general mobilization order had gone out through both alliances, it was the true sign war was starting. Soon then their underlords would be vying for their superiors' attention and throwing their fleets at the other sides borders. That would be where the bulk of the casualties would be, the armies of the actual system lords were better equipped and better trained. Once upon a time better equipped meant less, now though with both sides adopting better armor, and weapons that only improved the value of training.

To complicate matters here on earth there were the other agencies who were all still clamoring to try and get a piece of the Stargate Program. "Colonel Fury, this is General Hammond,"

The responsible officer for SHIELD, and his second in command both had Army dress blues on, which had stirred the old inter service rivalry pot on the way down. "Sir," Fury, and his second in command saluted, "Its come recently to SHIELD's attention that your command squad recently acquired what we know to be a tesseract." He handed a sealed folder marked classified on it to the warrant officer, who presented it to general Hammond. "Our former lead scientest recovered one several years ago during a recovery operation from a Nazi debris field," While searching for Captain Steve Rogers, "The notes contained in that file detail what little we have on the Nazi program which was used to use the Tesseracts power to travel to a world they called Heaven. Upon review of the data provided by the Joint service intelligence review briefing we have high expectations that the Stargate was what the Tesseract was powering. Our studies of the Tesseract that the Howard Stark, our point man on Science back then, and our copies of Nazi research tell the Tesseract is a powerful subspace nth dimensional power supply mechanism. It's litterally capable of supplying a massive amount of power."

The announcement touched off a string of blathering from there was very little that really was known definitively about the Stargate up until it'd been brought out of storage. It'd been discovered by the Expedition in Egypt, and then the US had gotten a hold of it in 1944. After the US had gotten a hold of it, and Ernest had gotten stranded the gate had been boxed up, and been left alone until the project had been reformed.

"Your saying there is already one of these?"
"SHIELD's joint Project with DARPA is codenamed Project Pegasus is designed on back engineering Nazi technology they developed with the Tesseract, we believe such a pathway critical to fending off another alien invasion."

… That was right the president was discussing creation of a new command that would bear responsibility for planetary security. The plan was to place Stargate Command as a part of this chain of organizations.

-scene break-

Deep within the very heart of his demense, Vis Uban was Raiden's capital. The ancients were the original reasons that Raiden had colonized the world. Within a century of locating the planet he'd built it into the industrialized heart of his domain. It had been risky back then, but now such investments had clearly been rewarded a thousand fold. Only Yu's homeworld boasted more substantial metropolises than his own, even if rumor had been that Ra had secreted away planets that rivaled the Jade Emperor's core domain. Vis Uban was the ideal it was well defended while remaining perfectly comfortable and able to sustain any whim. It also served as a major training and building ground for Raiden's military.

Raiden's homeworld or his capital whichever title one preferred to attribute it was the remnant of ancients once great empire, and a world off the usual goa'uld path.

The planet was covered in large forest Parks with the primary continent housing nine large cities. The definition of large cities in this case were roughly the size of the Rashomon class, with the ninth and final one being twice that size, of course the cities also were responsible for ship building and other Industrial activities, of course the planet was much larger than that of Earth. To be specific about 2.4 times earth's size

The Cities were a mix of metal industrial facilities and traditional residential divisions. In orbit were four moons. Two of these, one with a luminescent rings, were comfortably inhabitable, while the other two were like earth's moons and were used to house construction facilities. They were accompanied in orbit by the multiple massive space stations, the only things capable of matching the Rashomon class in raw firepower, beside those defense stations there were numerous orbital shipyards and mining facilities. The mining facilities were remnants, and expansions on Ancient technology which mined the nearby asteroid belt. Those harvested resource could then in some cases be converted, and processed to build defense facilities.

The cityscape, of all of them really, of the Capital resembled Earth's skyscrapers, except for two facts many were much larger and the city had changed in many centuries, in fact the cities last major change, in architecture, was more than two thousand years previous. New buildings were obviously add, and of course maintenance was done far more frequently.

The Orbital facilities were generally reserved for use by the core worlds of Raiden's dominion, the Solar system the Bairn was present in was among them. Each system they were outfitted with numerous and varied, and very much lethal weapons, much like Raiden's jaffa or his ships for that matter. That was actually what was coming to become a problem, and had stymied his advance.

Raiden observed the workings of the control center, the Tok'ra thought they were so smart. They such annoying scum, the only reason that Raiden hadn't let the other System Lords in on the Tok'ra tracking devices was because he could track it as well, with a little help.
The command center operated in much the same as Asgard monitoring equipment that Anubis was now rumored to have access to. Whether that was truth or not hardly mattered given both he and Anubis used systems based on Ancient technology. The system transmitted real time information detailing the movements of ships across the entire galaxy. With this advanced system in combination with the Tok'ra tags Raiden could monitor and coordinate numerous pinpoint strikes against the middle zone.

The central region of Goa'uld space. Right now that was currently the main target of two of the three major system lord factions. This area was a key asset and needed to be controlled before Raiden could either A force Anubis to capitulate or B simply seize Anubis's territory by force. As things went B was the more likely choice as Anubis was not likely simply surrender to his former allies.

Unfortunately both would be costly when it came to resources. That was of course the reason that major wars between the system lords were rare they were expensive. It would also take years of war without a major decisive victory, and even the subjugation of Anubis's worlds would take a generation, or a thorough burning from orbit. All that would remain after would be the formation of a new High Council of System Lords.

The System lords would extend their dominance to the rest of Galaxy, with the exception of certain planets certain worlds were far too much trouble to bother with or were protected by the Asgard or another likewise powerful race. Once this war was done it would take time to rebuild things as he liked but after all he had time.

The main purpose of this non total conquest was not to draw the attention of Sithis's old comrades the other Daedric lords. It was true that though Sithis was easily more powerful than all of them combined, for a combined number of reasons, that one would not want to know, and had the support of Mephala and Malacath amongst others.

Neutral agreements existed with Hermaeus Mora, who actually just sat around and watched what happened, and Namira, who was content to live among her precious defamed, would keep them from interfering.

Additionally since Mehunes Dagon was dead, thankfully taking that pesky Akatosh with him, though to be accurate the Daedric god would concede Akatosh had decided to go suicidal as it were.

The others would act, as they liked, not bound by any such pacts. It simply wasn't worth it to risk a war, better to simply not have any thing to do with them and all the while let them deal with the Aedra. Raiden frowned. Both groups were one short now, with the aforementioned deaths of Akatosh and Mehunes Dagon.

Both Sokar and Raiden were glancing at the screens, yes, all was going according to plan. For Sokar he considered that Mephala truly was a wonderful strategist, she had plotted and planned assisting was what she did best after all.

As it stood Anubis would launch his first renewed offensive, if troop movements within his territories were anything to go by. He was still likely on a fool's errand looking for the six eyes,why he wanted them exactly Raiden was unsure but it couldn't be good. In any event it hardly mattered. He knew they were ancient artifacts, systems of some sort but even if he knew what they did tracking down all six seemed ludicrous.

-scene break-

Sithis knew his compatriots would, both Aedra and Daedra, would become aware of his actions and take steps to advance their own plans. Such was fine after all that was what he wanted them to. The choosing of the Guardians had been one thing, but an open invitation to take time on earth that was something else. Stendarr would certainly watch when he could, Arkay as well just because he would have his own pact member so close.

For some reason the immense civilization which had predated the earliest 'Ancient', i.e. the Ayelied, Ori and Alteran civilizations, had all suffered serious cataclysms and no one could really explain why and this had continued striking the early 'Ancient' civilizations, and it intrigued him. It always ahd. If such destruction had been internal strife more would have survived even with the immense power that those civilizations had at their disposal no something else something external must have involved to some extent. Then again he remembered how the Alterans when they had gone to Pegasus. It had been there that they had created the Wraith, Lilith's work, and that had lead to their downfall.

His plans were now beginning to bear fruit in any event things were coming along quite nicely despite some minor issues, the only real threat was if the Aedra decided to unify thoroughly and attack, though admittedly the Alteran Ascended would also be a short term nuisance as well. Of course the Alteran were now merely a nuisance that continued to exist but no longer, due to their choice to abandon the material world, a real threat. No it was the hybrids that remained in the other galaxy that truly posed the only remaining problem.

In any event Sithis had other matters to address, it was a pity he hadn't been asked to destroy the Thanagarians as that would be useful to furthering his plans, but the Dark Knight's assigned task would be more than sufficient to furthering them. Let him try and puzzle out what the Dread Father hoped to accomplish it hardly mattered.

Kandrakar was the real issue now that Earth had guardians again, well he could begin the next phase of subverting the planet to his goals. He'd no interest in open subjugation, and conquest of earth. There was also of course deploying the Dark Brotherhood en masse was certain to draw the attention of the others, which was why he needed Kandrakar to fire the first 'shot' in the war. He needed something to provoke the other Daedra, and Aedra, and weaken the Realm's defenses, weaken the veil enough for his plan.

The matter of an active blood pact also was going to prove extremely useful. "Yes, things have become interesting," He murmured, events were at present in his favor and the only other known threat that could match the daedric lord, the Ori, were too far away to do anything without being seen 'A mile off'.

-Chapter Conclusion -

Helltanz's Notes: -