Jump Chain Gothic 4 - Confederation -
Part 4
Annwn. Milky Way Galaxy.
Once more I was in a meeting with Master Bra'tac and he seemed very pleased with himself.
"I have returned with several rare technologies that I believe will be valuable in trade" said the old Jaffa Master as he lifted a box and placed it on my desk "This is an Altir, an orb which creates an artificial link between two warriors using an implant. I only have the one, but I am sure your scientists can learn something from it".
This device I did know about. Teal'c and a Jaffa who'd served Apophasis had been linked with this device so that the loyal Jaffa could hunt Teal'c no matter where on the planet he went. Teal'c was still able to win despite someone having access to his mind.
"The second item for barter will need to be broken down before being sent to you" Bra'tac informed me "It is a reconnaissance probe,the Goa'uld version of what the Tauri call a MALP, the machine was used by Anubis for much the same purpose. These Probes were sent to various planets to determine which of them should be explored by Anubis's forces. The probes are equipped with plasma repeaters, defense shields, long-range communicators, and data-storage crystals".
Now that sounded like it would be worth studying. We had our own probes, small floating balls, like drones, which did our scouting for us, but something like a Star Wars probe droid could be handy if we ever sent a team to somewhere hostile and then needed something to give them a little fire support.
"What do you want in return for this stuff" I asked.
Bra'tac presented me with a scroll, which listed his desires. He wanted me to supply his faction of the Jaffa, the Progressive Party with regular supplies of tretonin, staff weapons, zat guns, armour, three squadrons of Death Gliders, as well as many cargo ships, troop transports, and Al'kesh bombers as I could supply.
All of this I could provide as I had the industrial base required here in my city-ship, but it would take a lot of time and resources to provide all this stuff. Thankfully I had robots who could most of the manual labour.
"This is a lot of stuff for a probe droid and an implant" I pointed out.
Bra'tac nodded, it was as if he'd expected these words.
"This would also forge a close connection between the Progressive Party and the Confederation, meaning that you would given access to all the information we can provide on matters of importance, and you would be able to call upon Jaffa warriors to aid you in times of conflict. We may even find more technology that you desire".
Ah so these were the terms of alliance not just a trade deal. That changed things, and it wouldn't be so bad if a good number of Jaffa became dependant on Confederation for support as they wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this city-ship or the people who ran it.
"The exact numbers of ships and is open to debate. And of course the ships I already promised will arrive soon" said Bra'tac.
Yes I needed those taken apart so that they could be copied. Of course I could design new ships that would incorporate our best tech, but I wouldn't share the best we had. Instead I would just slightly improve existing models in a few different ways.
"I'll need a sample of tretonin" I told the old Jaffa.
Some was provided, and I knew it be artificial in nature, and if so then we could replicate it in the short term while setting up the means to produce it on mass that didn't require Trek tech.
"I agree to your terms Master Bra'tac" I said while standing.
We shook hands, and that was that. Jaffa deals are sorted out very quickly.
(Line Break)
Annwn. Milky Way Galaxy.
I never would have imagined that evil space corn would cause so much trouble, yet here I was in a lab with the Asgard geneticist known Heimdall, as we worked to better understand the tainted foodstuff called Kassa.
The addictive plant was very similar in appearance of Earth's corn which came from North American. The food/drug was grown in large quantities by the Lucian Alliance on many different worlds, and supply could met demand, there had been riots on worlds were the Kassa had sold out.
This was because Humans were extremely susceptible to the chemical make-up of the plant, and of yet we'd found no way to counter the effects of the drug/food. Which meant anyone who'd tried it either had to keep eating the stuff or go through horrible withdrawal.
In the show it was suggested that kassa was an Ori creation, yet another method of bringing people under their control. It was certainly a means of control exploited by the Lucian Alliance for their own ends, however there were no Ori in this galaxy, at least as far as we knew, and I didn't think the Alliance had the means to produce something like this.
More likely this was the creation of some Gaould, who'd intended to use it as a method of control over their human slaves, but had somehow lost control of it. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that Ba'al was behind it. He had to be doing something as he'd been oddly quiet of late. In fact he'd never bothered me at all, which was worry as it might mean he was planning something.
The crop first came to the SGs attention when SG-3 explored a planet where the inhabitants behaved strangely and rioted when the supply of Kassa ran low. An officer called Lt. Mooney had a taste and quickly grew addicted to it. A man called Colonel Albert Reynolds had to restrain him and bring him back to Stargate Command.
"According to the intelligence we've gathered a large amount of the Kassa crop is grown on P6G-452" I said "So we can take out most of this crap from orbit with some well placed shots".
Heimdall was working on some sort of virus which render the Kassa harmless, but while I trusted it (Asgard didn't have genders) I knew that viruses could mutate. In my view it was better to burn the stuff. Then the Alliance would run low on product and not be able to sell it, and once it became unprofitable they'd simply stop growing the stuff.
"While that method would indeed be effective" replied the small alien "The Alliance employs many workers to harvest the Kassa, you would be killing them as well, and they may not have a choice in the matter".
I wouldn't put it past the Alliance to use slave labour.
"Very well" I said, giving in "But don't blame me when we end up with killer corn trying to take over the galaxy".
Okay so that wouldn't happen, but unleashing a genetically engineered virus upon several planets to combat drugs seemed foolish to me.
(Line Break)
Museum. P4M-328.
We'd come to this world seeking the Clava Thessara Infinitas (Ancient for Key to Infinite Treasure) which was most likely the work of the Alterans who'd ruled this galaxy several million years ago. According to legends, the Ancients stored away vast riches, including weapons, before their ascension and the Clava Thessara Infinitas would lead a person to this treasure, if they could decode the key.
Of course I knew that only some of the Ancients had ascended back then, others had travelled to the Pegasus galaxy and had created their successors known as the Lanteans as well as many worlds that would be home to humans, but because of the time gap even Merlin knew nothing about the Key to Infinite Treasure.
Nor did he chose to tell me about where his other treasures were. He wasn't going to help me gain more technology, but neither would he try to hinder me. He'd actually told me that in a message, sent via the same Asgard ship I'd requested to go to Atlantis to return Merlin's hologram chess set. Not that this was the only reason it was going to Atlantis, the Ancients who worked in my city-ship were getting rotated back home, and getting replaced with other Ancients.
While doing research on Ancient Merlin's volumes from his library on Camelot, Dr. Daniel Jackson found some of the history of the Clava Thessara Infinitas, but this research also led him to the conclusion that it was nothing but an elaborate hoax.
In the show Stargate Command used what they knew of the Clava Thessara Infinitas to convince Adria of its existence in an attempt to capture her. False memories were implanted into Vala Mal Doran to further convince Adria.
The Goa'ulds Athena and Qetesh created a partnership with the intent of going after the Clava Thessara Infinitas, which was how Vala knew about it as she'd been Qetesh's host, however, it was a short-lived union as the Goa'uld can not be trusted, even by their own kind. Later on Athena came to believe Qetesh had deciphered the code which unlocked the map to the treasure, and thus used her vast resources from within Earth's The Trust to kidnap Vala Mal Doran.
While the symbiote had been removed from Vala by the Tok'ra, Qetesh's memories may have been retained and buried in her subconscious. Athena, whose host corporate executive named Charlotte Mayfield, used a memory recall device on Vala to gain access to these lost memories. Before revealing that Qetesh had lied to Athena about having the code, Vala escaped from her captor.
After their encounter with Athena, her research notes concerning her pursuit of the treasure were brought back to Stargate Command. Dr. Daniel Jackson reviewed these notes and eventually reconsidered his conclusion that it was a hoax. Using her research and the SGC's Stargate database, Daniel Jackson suggested the coordinates of a planet to visit where the cache of "Ancient wealth and weapons" could possibly be located, which were the coordinates to this world, which I knew only P4M-328.
In the show they sent a MALP, but the results of its reconnaissance confused Daniel Jackson, as the hieroglyphs on the walls near the Stargate, what they thought was a tomb or pyramid, were all jumbled up.
Despite this Major General Henry Landry allowed SG-1 to travel to the planet, and the team ended up gating into a museum on a planet with similar development to that of Earth, but they were not aware of the Stargate's function or of alien life
Their first contact with the officials of the planet ended badly, and once the team was permitted to return home, the people there buried their Stargate. When Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell asked one of the museum curators if a stash of weapons was found near the Stargate dig, the curator said that no such thing was uncovered. However this didn't mean this was the wrong world.
This museum included in its displays such things as, replicas of Ra's headdress, the helmet of a Horus Guard and the uniform of a Serpent Guard. This would seem to indicate that P4M-328 was under the control of both Ra and Apophis at different times in its history.
These finds were much more recent that anything the Ancients would have stored on this world, so it was possible that the Clava Thessara Infinitas was on this world, and was simply buried much deeper than the Goa'uld stuff the natives of this world had dug up.
Alas when we got into orbit our scans showed no signs of any Ancient technology, but we did detect naquadah so I considered it worth while to come down here and take a look around. This was also a chance to test our phase cloaks outside of the lab.
One of the items that we'd detected was an A'tar Blade, which was a melee weapon used by Goa'uld Ashrak assassins. The blades of this type of weapon were forged using naquadah and they were capable of penetrating any form of armour, although that might have changed with the coming of the Kull.
I knew that such a knife was used by an Ashrak who managed to get to the Tau'ri's Alpha Site, where he used it to kill Tok'ra, Jaffa, and Tau'ri. After the Ashrak was killed, Bra'tac hailed the knife as a symbol of the alliance between the Tok'ra, Jaffa and Tau'ri, because it had brought them together against a common enemy.
Before stealing the knife I used Cortana to disable the high tech security system, then I tagged the item with a small device which tagged an item for transport. It was one of the little toys my group had access to.
"Seven I'm about to tag an item" I said over the comm, once I had dropped my phase cloak "Beam it up to the ship I want it for my collection".
A naquadah blade was worthy of my Cosmic Warehouse, or maybe I'd stick on a wall somewhere like I did with lots of other weapons I had collected over the years. I didn't feel bad about stealing as I'd done far worse in my time. Besides I'd prevented the Ori invasion, the people of this galaxy owed me big time.
As soon as the knife vanished I re-cloaked and moved on soon coming to the second object that had shown up on the scans. Which was an ark. This ark was a small coffin-shaped device with an image of an Egyptian eye on its surface with Scarab Combination Locks on the corners.
The sides of the ark contained slots through which a user was capable of accessing the internal control crystals. However, improper use of the crystals was capable of either increasing the time until detonation (by tampering with the red control crystal), or even bring about a premature detonation.
My scans revealed that the device contained a ten pound block of weapon's grade naquadah, you could buy a Goa'uld cargo ship with that much high quality naquadah.
"Seven I need you come down here and defuse a bomb" I said once I had again de-cloaked.
Before the former borg drone beamed down I commanded Cameron, my Terminator, to hunt down any guards and to knock them before putting them somewhere secure. The place was closed right now, and so she shouldn't have any trouble.
It was important that we got people out of the way, as if something went wrong we couldn't beam the bomb away without risking setting it off, and since we were within a major city I wasn't going to risk this bomb ever going off.
(Line Break)
Stargate Command. Earth.
Upon returning to the city-ship I'd decided to over everything I had on the Clava Thessara Infinitas, and treasure it was suppose to led to. Then I'd gone over everything I knew about the Ancients, not the ones living in the Atlantis, but rather the Alterrans, as the Infinite Treasure was theirs.
Then while going through my records I'd found that there had been an Alterran on Earth not that long ago. A handful of years in fact. This was because when the Ancients took the city of Atlantis to the Pegasus Galaxy, she was the one Ancient left behind in the Ancient outpost in what would later be called Antarctica.
Millions of years later, she was unearthed in a block of ice not far from where the second Stargate was discovered over four years before. Her name, Ayiana, which is the Cherokee word for "eternal bloom", the name was given to her by a Dr. Francine Michaels, one of the researchers who found her. However that wasn't her actual name. I'd read the book that covered the events of Stargate Atlantis: Rising so I knew that her name was really Clya Urbanus.
SG-1 and Dr. Janet Fraiser were called to the base at the South Pole to study her. They were shocked to discover upon defrosting her that she was, in fact, alive and was able to regenerate herself.
She was the first indication that the Ancients were advanced humans who evolved (not necessarily on Earth) millions of years ago. It was later surmised that they were the first evolution of humanity while the humans currently living on Earth and throughout the Milky Way are the second evolution
After spending only a few hours with Jonas Quinn, she was able to fully understand every word of English that he said and could even speak some words herself. This was another sign of how advanced she and her people were compared to present day humans.
Unfortunately, Clya Urbanus carried the Ancient contagion that had ravaged her people millions of years ago and infected all of the researchers as well as SG-1 and Doctor Fraiser.
She also possessed the ability to heal almost any injury, though she was severely weakened in the process of healing others. However I could heal without becoming weaker, as the near-ascended girl in the Cloister had taught me to heal and never been made fatigued by it. Which suggested that Ayiana wasn't as close to ascension as I was now, either that or the plague took a lot of effort to cure.
She must have felt guilty about his as Cyla Urbanus used her abilities to heal them despite the huge risk to herself. She succeeded in completely healing all but Colonel Jack O'Neill before she collapsed. She was subsequently brought to Stargate Command where she died soon afterwards from exhaustion. O'Neill, fortunately, was soon cured when he blended with a Tok'ra symbiote.
While she was dead there was a small chance, if she'd been put back into some sort of stasis. If she'd been put into stasis shortly after dying then I could place her in the Sarcophagus I'd recently obtained, and then use my healing powers to cure her.
For some reason it was much easier to heal other people with near-ascended powers than it was to heal yourself, that was why Clya Urbanus had been able to cure every she'd accidently infected but not herself. So as long as we brought her back in controlled conditions (the Cosmic Warehouse were you couldn't get sick) then I could handle the plague.
Then I'd have a living breathing Alterran, one who might know how ZPMs are made, or what the Clava Thessara Infinitas actually was, or if the whole thing was just some Alterran bedtime story.
"Gothic welcome back to Stargate Command" greeted General Landry "How can we help you?".
I got right down to business.
"General I need to know what to a woman you called Clya Urbanus" I said "You might know her as Ayiana".
Of course he didn't have a clue so I had to remind him of the details.
(Line Break)
Annwn. Milky Way Galaxy
While the real Clya Urbanus was beyond my ability to bring back to life, as she'd been frozen, but not in stasis just in a morgue. Thankfully I'd been able to get her DNA so I'd decided to clone her. Well not me I'd gotten the Asgard to do it.
Heimdall had needed some convincing, but I'd done a lot for the Asgard and it wasn't as if I was going to mistreat the clone, in fact once she'd given me the information I needed I'd let her go and do whatever it was she wanted. I'd take her to Atlantis if she so wished.
Still it wasn't a good idea to abuse the cloning tech. Humans dislike being cloned as they felt it threatened their unique specialness, which was stupid because no one was unique, there were thousands if not millions of alternate versions of yourself in other realities.
Currently I was looking down at the clone of Clya Urbanus as she talked with Daniel Jackson, who was here because the IOA had insisted that someone keep an eye on what I going to do with Clya Urbanus's body. As a compromise I'd told the IOA that I would bring Daniel Jackson back here with me, and that he would have access to everything I learned from the clone.
Which didn't actually mean that anyone else from Earth would get anything, but the IOA didn't know that, and if they got all huffy I could appease them with some shiny bit of tech, much like how a sulking child could be made calm with something sweet to eat.
Jackson came out of the isolated room, and came to sit next to me. The glass that separated us was one way so Clya Urbanus couldn't see, but given that she glanced our way more a few times I figured she could sense us, or at least had guessed that the glass was one way.
"How is she?" I asked.
Jackson had a way of getting through to people, he could make friends easily. This ability of his had even worked on me, and it was one of the reasons I'd picked up to be a part of this project. Also he likely knew more about the Ancients than even I did.
"She's fine" Jackson told me "I never met the original, but from what I understand she wasn't very talkative. Ayiana, she's decided to go by that name, is more chatty, a result of not spending millions of years in a block of ice I guess".
Good so the cloning process had worked despite the fact that source of the DNA had been frozen twice and was several million years old. Which was as crazy as it sounded. And the process wouldn't have worked at all if not for the fact that Alterran cells remain intact when frozen unlike human ones which don't. Lantean stasis tech didn't actually freeze people, despite appearances, as such they might not react to being frozen like an Alterran would.
"The bad news is that she doesn't remember everything" Jackson was now telling me "But that might be temporary, she is only a few hours old after all".
While the Asgard grew clones in a process that lasted months, I had access to cloning technologies from several universes I could do things faster. Plus it help that she had some ability to self heal, that was most likely helping to counteract the side effect for such rapid cloning.
The Wraith could clone rapidly as well, but when they cloned humans it led organ failure and without the proper treatments the clones died within days. Ayiana didn't need to worry about that as I could heal, but according to our tests she didn't need my help. The Alterrans were an amazing people in terms of biology as well as technology.
"Will she cooperate?" I asked "I'd rather not try to force the memories out of her".
Which I could do, but I didn't want to copy memories without permission as that could be considered mind rape.
"I'll talk to her some more" Jackson said "We need to give her time to sort herself out before we start pestering her for information".
To me that seemed wise.
"Well there's no rush" I said.
Jackson looked at me.
"Aren't you bothered by cloning people?" he asked.
I shrugged.
"Cloning isn't as unnatural as people think" I told him "After all aren't twins a kind of clone?".
There was no simple answer to the issue of cloning despite my feelings on the subject, however while human cloning was illegal on Earth, and Alterrans were human in a sense, I was the head of the Confederation so I got decide if cloning was illegal here or not.
"I guess some people think that it's wrong to create life like this" Jackson said.
Again I didn't agree.
"People make more people all the time" I said "We call it reproduction".
"This isn't the same thing" Jackson argued "Some would call this playing god, which is what the Goa'uld did".
Well not really.
"The Alterrans seeded humans across two galaxies" I said to Daniel "All I did was make one person".
Jackson decided at this point to spend some time pondering that while we both looked down at Ayiana. I had to wonder if I had done the right thing. I had in a sense brought her back from the dead, and that was playing god, and while I was an advanced human I was no way divine so I had to wonder if I'd done something wrong.