"You could have chosen a world with better smell" O'Neill said and wrinkled his nose.
"I did not chose it. There is a piece of technology here which we need to use right now" Mokar said as he begun to search for the way back inside. "Over here."
"What are we looking for in this dump?" He was sinking down to his knees while wading through the swamp.
"The machine which turned me into an Alterran." Mokar activated the hidden switch which beamed them into the facility. "Feel free to look around, it'll take me a few minutes to calibrate the machine to the right settings."
"Where are we?" When he turned around there was no sign of Mokar and the question went unanswered.
The Alterran knowledge had allowed Mokar to access the hidden control room which controlled and overlooked the whole trial. On one of the walls hung two counters reading one and nine hundred twelve thousand five hundred sixty one, the number of successes and the number of attempts since the construction of the facility. It was the lone console that he stepped up to. On it he could see the entire process and all the variations to the trials he could make, yet it was only one part of the process he was interested in changing and using.
When he returned to the corridor where he had left O'Neill the man was standing halfway down it and looked into one of the rooms. "I was beginning to wonder where you'd gone."
"I needed to change some parameters of the process used by the facility" Mokar explained and waved for him to approach.
"And this facility was what created you?"
"This facility was what changed me from Jaffa to Alterran" Mokar corrected. He stepped away from the crystal in the wall and motioned towards it. "When you are ready just wave your hand over the crystal. I will wait for you by the gate."
"What is this going to do?"
"It will make your quest easier."
With a wave of his hand O'Neill was gone and Mokar hurried up to the crystal to change everything back in the control room before heading back to the gate to take care of a few things. When O'Neill was beamed out into the swamp he was sitting on the platform of the gate and waited.
"I hope you know what you were doing with those two things. I've almost been killed indirectly by both of them."
"It is perfectly safe O'Neill. I hope you like my gift."
"What gift?" Crawl towards the gate through the mud and water. His legs were too unstable to support his weight.
"In the days to come you will see all those years washed of your body, they will not return for many hundreds of years. Since you will also be serving me all these years I have added something to allow you to use the DHDs like I do, but that will take a long time. Come you will need some better clothes."
"Probably, these are ruined!" O'Neill said as he crawled onto the platform.
"Here." Mokar pulled a jacket as white as snow and a pair of equally white pants from the bag he carried. "O'Neill, you are now the first of the next generation of the service race, the ones you call Lanteans."
"I'm proud" O'Neill scoffed. But he still took the clothes and walked behind the gate to change.
"There are more things you will need" Mokar said and followed O'Neill.
"Do you mind? I'm trying to change."
"I know that you are" he said without any intention of moving and removed two small black orbs from the bag. "You will need these two."
"And what are they?"
"One is your identificator, it will identify you to most Alterran equipment, for example it will allow you to reach the hidden part of the gate network, like the lab, potentia factory or processing facility. The other is an emergency transmitter, you can guess what it does can't you?"
"I can. So which is which?"
"You can chose, but once you have used it as one it can not be changed."
"And how do they work?"
"Like this." Mokar pressed the two orbs into O'Neill's hands, one in each. On the backside of the hands a bump formed and when he removed his hands there were no sign of the two orbs ever being there. "Just press the bump and think of the function you want to use the first time, after that you should only need to think about it."
"This feels kind of creepy."
"You will get used to it. Further down the road the identifier will not be needed." He returned to the DHD. "I have stocked the ship with enough supplies for two weeks, I suggest you return before that."
"I'll be back long before that, I only need to find a Jaffa and get a bomb" O'Neill said as he came over and begun to dial the gate.
"A possible recruit?"
"If we're going up against the Goa'uld he might be, but sadly for you he's already part of my team" O'Neill said as he walked through the gate.
"And you're already in my team" Mokar said while he redialled the gate and stepped through to the potentia factory.
A few days later, after he had prepared their equipment and everything else he thought they would need to take the city he placed a hand on the DHD he begun to search for the gate to the lab they would need to grow a new body and transfer a consciousness into it. He knew that it was suppose to be in the Shaban galaxy but the Alterra there had been reserved with the information they gave to the creation of the repositories.
It took him a long time to find the right gate but when he did it was not what he had expected. Standing by the DHD was an Abasy, best described as a modern demon, complete with horns and wings. The one standing by the DHD seemed to be one of the higher ranks within what could have been described as the fire cast of the race and around him were most other types and ranks of Abasy. The Abasy used suits to interact with the world, in their true form they were a cloud of gas incapable of interacting with normal matter, their size and colour could differ depending on their heritage, but when they possessed a suit they became physically able to interact with normal matter and the moment the suit was destroyed the cloud faded back out of phase, meaning they could not be touched. As far as the Alterra knew they had not managed to kill a single one despite slaughtering millions of suits.
The suits they possessed had been built to be fearsome and to scare the more primitive races, borrowing from many primitive thoughts of primal elements in the younger races they had made suits inspired by fire, ice, earth and wind. Sadly it had worked well and the population had fled in panic when they came instead of putting up some resistance until the Alterra had arrived.
They had been the reason the Alterra had been forced out of three galaxies, Mubt, Annwn and Thulenaor. For him this changed everything, of course he could not assault the lab or even hope of using it again so he used the few connections the DHD had to activate the self destruct in the lab.
When the countdown begun to sound through the lab all of the Abasy begun to hurry away from the gate. When he could not detect the Abasy any more he prepared to survey the other installations in that galaxy so he activated the life sign scanner and watched in disbelief as it showed twelve life signs clumped together in one of the labs, the Abasy could not be detected due to their nature but they could be detected by the EM fields they emitted and there were no deviating EM fields left.
After reassuring himself that the Abasy were gone he dialled the gate and stepped through. The lab looked almost identical to the one he had under his control, with the addition of a door which opened to the planet beyond and a few more actual labs. The lab he was interested in was much deeper into the facility so he hurried up to one of the consoles and shut of the self destruct while also activating the lab's shield to keep the Abasy outside if they begun to wonder why the lab had yet to explode.
It took him a minute to reach the door. When he opened it he regretted it, his stomach turned around and tried to force the latest ration pack up again. The lab, which must have been one of the growing rooms, had been transformed by the Abasy into a torture chamber with body parts and organs strewn around the room.
From every wall red and grey spikes the size his arm pointed, each and everyone of them covered in a white and blue goo. Impaled onto these spikes were countless humanoid bodies in every possible position, all with body parts missing or hanging in thin pieces of flesh. The twelve life signs were easy to find as the ones which were alive radiated a sort of blue aura.
This was not a known species, at least not to the Alterra. Still they did seem to be on the same side as the Alterra against the Abasy. As he begun to remove the closest one from the spiked wall he saw the blue and white goo streaming out of the holes, but to his surprise the wounds closed only a few seconds after it was down on the floor and its breathing steadied.
As it lay there on the floor he could see two white stumps sticking out of its back and before his eyes they begun to grow while feathers grew out of them. In less than a minute they had grown into a pair of proper wings which covered its entire frame. Letting it have some rest he begun to help the other eleven down from the spikes and watched their wounds heal fast, even faster than his own wounds would. Here and there a missing arm or leg slowly grew out again when they touched the floor.
Behind him the first had recovered enough to stand up. "We thank you stranger. We thought ourselves to be lost."
"I am happy that I might have found allies against the Abasy." He saw one of the others forcing itself up and moving up to him.
"It is as Camiel claims, we thought we would die here." Its body was covered by the mighty wings which seemed to be even larger than the others but its voice did sound more feminine. "If it is allies you are looking for you have found them."
"Can you move? We need to evacuate the facility before they return."
"I can and the others will too." The facility was rocketed by an explosion and Mokar was thrown towards one of the spiked walls. One of the tips touched his flesh and jolts of pain ran through his body.
With some effort him pulled himself of the floor, still shaking in pain. "Let us hurry." He lifted up one whose legs were slowly growing back.
"I hope you have a ship capable of outrunning their ships." Everyone followed him out of the room, some by their own accord and some carried.
"My only ship is busy at the moment."
"Then what hope do we have of making it of this planet?"
"Through the gate." He freed himself from those he was supporting to dial the gate.
When the gate dialed he turned around to lift up the cripple but he found all of them kneeling in a semi circle.
"Don't just stand around there, move it" he shouted but they stayed where they were.
"You are of the divine?" one of them asked. This one too seemed to have a feminine voice.
"Silence Azriel" the first woman hissed.
"I am of the Alterran." Another explosion threw them all to the ground. "Please come with me, we must hurry."
"It will be as you command" she said after they had gotten off the floor and walked up to the gate.
When all of the creatures had stepped through the gate he waved his hand in front of the potentia socket and watched three panels in the wall open to reveal one drained, one half full and one full potentia. It did seem a bit too much for a simple lab, but he did not complain as he place the full potentia in his bag and resumed the self destruct. Then he hurried out of there.
On the other side of the gate the twelve humanoids were looking out through the panoramic window on the star which powered the potentia factory. "Are you of the Divine?"
"As I have already said I am of the Alterran race. The builders of the gates" he replied as he pushed by them to the control room.
"Then you are of the Divine, builders of the heavenly gates" the lady said as she alone followed him into the room.
"We prefer to be called Alterra." He tapped at the console.
"Still you are of the Divine. It is our greatest honour to meet you. We have awaited the return of your kin for many eons."
"I am sorry to disappoint you, but there is only me."
"Then you are The Divine. When the Divine left us long ago they foretold their return. A new generation of Divine who was to be lead by The Divine itself."
"And what is The Divine to you?"
"You are the one to lead us against the Abasy. You will lead us to victory."
"I am sorry to say this, but I am in no position to defeat the Abasy. My kind fought them before and lost. What they posses may be destroyed, but their true form can not be damaged."
"That is why those coming before you created us, we can reach them when they fade from this world and we can kill them as they try to flee back to the fiery pits that spawned them. Lead us and we will bring you victory."
"There are many things I know, but I have no knowledge of your creation." The gate activated and the hover sleigh he had called for came through, one of its sides opened up and piles of clothes drifted out and onto the floor. "I will need to see your leaders."
"The Arches are all gone Divine, I am a Watcher of the Choirs, captured as we tried to defend the Arches by the side of the Guards of Iya. We twelve, a fraction of the defenders of Iya are all that remains of the Angelo."
"Then you will have to grow in numbers to be of any use to me." He walked outside with her close behind and picked up the clothes. "But we will start small, get dressed."