(Sorry to those who are getting this a second time, but I've added a forward to my story and all of my chapters moved forward.)

The captured warriors as well as the dead were sent to a secret location somewhere in Central Missouri. They still couldn't get the Missouri State Highway Patrol to release their warrior into Air Force custody, but now that didn't matter, as Simone had managed to capture one that spoke English and was willing to cooperate. His partner that had been with him in Chesterfield managed to disappear and now the trails of all of the possible alien warriors were going cold. They sat in a warehouse with concrete walls, a concrete floor, a simple brick exterior, and surrounded by several battalions of troops disguised as street thugs, drug dealers, prostitutes, and junkies.

The warehouse had holding cells, offices for Jack and Simone, and a lab for a medical examiner. Now, the medical examiner had two bodies of warriors in her lab, the one that Simone had killed, and the one that the police had killed. As things stood, two warriors were killed, one was recovering from snake venom, and six were in custody, five of them with the Air Force. That left nine at large. It had been a rather large scouting force, which led Jack to believe that they weren't on Earth to scout. They were chasing someone or something. Then there were the two human bodies, who Jack wasn't counting in the final number.

He sat down in front of the warrior. Simone stood just behind. Jack said, "I am Colonel Jonathan O'Neill, United States Air Force, and this is October 12, 1992. The time is…" he checked his wristwatch, "…0839 hours." He faced the warrior. "State your name for the record."

The Jaffa looked up as if considering an act of defiance. "Fal'ukert. I am a Jaffa in the service of Ra. I am second in command to the First Prime."

"Okay, none of your friends seem to speak English, so how is it that you speak it?"

"It is a device. Ordinarily, only the First Prime has it, but since I am being groomed to succeed him, I have one as well. It is implanted in my brain. It translates for me, and you hear your language when I speak."

"I see. The producers of Star Trek would be interested in that." Simone snorted. Jack continued. "Okay, you and your buddies have killed a lot of innocent people who were just minding their own business. May I ask why?"

"We had not anticipated coming to a planet with such heavy law enforcement. Those who had seen our faces were dispatched. Our orders were to avoid capture. It seems this has proven difficult."

"All right, our trackers said that there were a total of seventeen people leaving those ships. We've captured five, including you, the police have another, and we have two bodies. That leaves nine. Do you have any idea how we can find those other nine?"

The Jaffa looked to Simone then back at Jack. "There are only five more."

Jack's eyebrows went up. "Really? Our trackers were wrong?"

"You're trackers were not wrong. Of the nine you seek, only five of them are in the service of Ra. The other four are fugitives that we seek."

"What did they do?"

"They fled. Is that not enough reason to hunt them down?"

"No…I can't say that it is. I don't know how evolved you are, but I'm not primitive enough to chase something just because it runs."

"Very well. They are slaves. They're lives are not their possessions. They do not have the right to leave Ra's service, but by Ra's divine order, we only pursue one of them. If we find her, we may leave the others to their fates, but she is to be returned alive. If we run across them before locating her, they are to be eliminated. If we find her first, they are spared by Ra's grace."

"Are they human?"

"Of course they are."

"Look, I want an explanation of this. Those are alien space craft you were flying."

"They are vessels of the gods."

"And you are…?"

"We are Jaffa, warriors of the gods. Ra took us and changed us so that we could serve him completely."

"So how have humans come to be on other planets?"

"The benevolent Ra has taken them to all of the worlds of his realms."

Jack wasn't sure how his face looked, but he wouldn't be surprised if his eyes were the size of dinner plates. The implications were more than frightening: they alarming…as in "threat to national security" alarming. "So let me get this straight. Your Ra found humans a long time ago and enslaved them and started ferrying them to other planets so he could keep them enslaved."

"That is as Ra has said it."

"So why are you chasing this person, this woman."

"A child; she is very young. She has seen perhaps fourteen winters. Ra has always had a special interest in her. My First Prime tells me that Ra has directed the parings of families for many years to produce gifted offspring. She was born of a brilliant mind, whose sense of numbers never failed and she could never forget that which she learned. Ra planned on implanting his daughter within her, making her one of the immortal gods. When we told her of the great honor that was to be bestowed upon her, she and five others fled. They cried epitaphs of freedom as we pursued them."

A terrible sense of urgency flooded Jack. "Do you know where she is?"

"We lost her when the police arrived. She went with them and only they know where she is."

"She must be an elusive quarry."

"She is. She was born in a jungle in a primitive, bow wielding tribe. They make their houses from straw and their mattresses from bundles of leaves and feathers. They are exceptionally skilled at survival and know how to use the land against you. The only thing that keeps them obedient is their reverence for their priestess and their fear of our godly weapons."

Jack didn't finish the interview. All of the questions he had were blown from his mind, and ignored on his clipboard once he learned that a young girl was in danger. "Take him back to his cell. Since he's cooperated, give him a couple of creature comforts." Kawalsky saluted and escorted the Jaffa away. Jack turned to Simone and said, "What are you thinking?"

Simone said, "I'm thinking we've got to get to that girl before they do. Any ideas where she might be?"

Jack nodded, "We'll check with state but I have a feeling the police didn't remand her to state, which means she'll be staying with one of the police, and I'll bet it's a certain redhead I crossed paths with down in Rolla. The name is Sergeant Carol Lawrence. She was the first officer in charge of the investigation until she was put on leave for a knife wound to the shoulder."

"You're sure?"

"She was sitting with the girl in the squad car. I looked right at her. She was a tiny little thing. It never even crossed my mind that she could be neck deep in all of this."

"Jack, what are you thinking?"

"Simone, I've got a little boy and I know what I would be doing if he were being chased by these bastards. I don't care where she's from or how she was raised. She's a little kid and she needs help, now."

Simone nodded. "I'll get to work locating Carol Lawrence. What did he say about her having a talented mind? He said she didn't forget. We should also check recent school enrollments. Someone just might have thought it was a good idea to put her in school until this got straightened out. A foreigner who doesn't speak English and has a photographic memory is sure to catch someone's attention."

"There's something else about his statement."

"'The benevolent Ra?'"

"This Ancient Egypt thing keeps popping up, doesn't it?"

"I'm convinced. I've checked. We can't get Langford, but maybe we can find an Egyptologist in St. Louis."

Jack nodded. "I'll deal with that. Missouri University, St. Louis University, and are there any museums?"

"St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park has ancient history exhibits. They're your best bet. St. Louis Public Library also has historians and archeologists on staff."

"How do you know all of this?"

"I read more than just the Sunday funnies, you know."

Jack rolled his eyes and said, "I want to have a word with Doctor Frasier. Let's learn exactly about these changes that our buddy was talking about."

The medical lab looked like any forensics lab. It had an autopsy table with sink and drain. It had medical rulers and scales next to the table. There was a table with a microscope, and set up next to it was some kind of apparatus made of glass and plastic tubes with a flame burning underneath a flask (a distiller). There were a number of devices that Jack couldn't even identify. The only reason that he recognized the distiller was because he had tried his hand at making beer when he was a teenager. Of course, he had quickly become acquainted with the word "moonshine".

The autopsy table occupied by the Jaffa the police had killed. Frasier looked up at Jack and Simone and said, "I sincerely doubt you're wondering about the cause of death."

Simone shook her head. "Pretty easy to see he's got a hole the size of Wrigley Field in his abdomen."

"Yeah, that was a problem. There was enough of his abdomen left to see that the cavity had somehow been altered, and it had nothing to do with alien anatomy, but there wasn't enough to see how it had been altered. Either fortunately or unfortunately, your fellow who was recovering from snake venom so nicely; he suffered heart failure."

"Heart failure?" asked Jack.

"Yeah, you know, water moccasins are dangerous, but they're not like cobras or asps. Most adults survive. Still, there are a percentage of adults that die from water moccasin bites. He looked like he was going to pull through, but then he went code blue this morning and they couldn't bring him out of it. Awfully interesting; the way his hand was bit, I'd say he was holding something. That snake came down from above. Do you see a problem with that?"

Jack said, "Snakes like trees."

"Not water moccasins. They like shorelines and still water."

Simone said, "The snake was thrown at him."

"Or kicked, or golfed, or any number of ways that snake could have gone airborne. If he had coiled, he would have come from underneath. From what I hear, he probably had it coming so it's no terrible loss to the world, or the universe, or whatever gallery we're playing in. He had something interesting his stomach."

Jack said, "What is it?"

Frasier reached into a jar with a pair of tongs and pulled out what appeared to be a snake. "This is what really killed him. You see, this little fellow was feeding enzymes to our fellow that kept his vital functions normal. When the water moccasin bit him, this creature was intoxicated as well. Its host survived, but it didn't. Apparently, its host couldn't survive without it. If it had been alive, I might have been able to tell you more about it. I can tell you this much: it comes from nothing that ever evolved on this planet. These guys are human; altered, but human. This is your alien. It's okay. It's dead."

Jack took the offered snake and looked at it. "It looks like it has the same dentist as the Predator."

"Excellent, you noticed the quadrilateral hinged jaw; ideal for burrowing and latching onto something. Colonels, those other two bodies were perfectly normal except for a few minor evolutionary differences that gave them away as not being from around here. One of them died of a self-inflicted wound to the head. I found another one of these snakes without its head. It had been lodged inside the guy's head, and from what I could tell, some of the pieces were attached to the brain stem."

Simone said, "Like what? This thing was controlling his mind?"

"Or trying to."

Jack said, "You have to ask, 'who do these guys claim is god?' Remember what he said? Ra had altered the Jaffa to serve the gods. Why did he alter them to stick snakes in their stomachs? And how exactly was this girl supposed to be made into a god?"

Frasier said, "I don't know what you discussed with that man, but it sounds like this girl is in very serious trouble, especially if these snakes are the gods we keep hearing about."

Jack dropped the snake back into the jar and looked for something to wipe his hands on. Doctor Frasier handed him a disinfectant sanitary cloth. Jack said, "No wonder she ran."

Simone said, "Anyone would. Jack we have to keep this under our hats."

Jack spun and said, "What? We have to go straight to General West."

"Jack. This is a girl from another planet. You know what they'll do and she's just trying to get away from these bastards. She's trying to keep her life. She's trying to keep her soul. General West will put her in a hole somewhere where there will be people sticking needles in her, extracting every bit of information out of her they can. They'll treat her like property."

"Look, General West is a father, too. He has two daughters. I sincerely doubt that he's going to sign an order to turn a fourteen-year-old girl's brains into scrambled eggs."

"General West answers to Senator Kinsey. That's the man with the money."

Jack inhaled sharply and nodded. "We can't just keep our supervising officer out of the loop. I know how I'll deal with this."

# # #

General West read Jack's report with all of the professional care that one might expect from a man of his position. West had flown out to Scott Air to personally oversee the recovery of the crashed space craft. Assigned a temporary office, West looked as if he belonged anywhere he went. He set the report upon his desk and said, "What do we know about the people these…Jaffa are pursuing?"

"Only what we were told, sir; that they were slaves, come from a primitive society, are survivalists, and one of them had been selected to be…I'm not really sure what."

"That isn't much to go on, but it changes the scope of the investigation. This operation is already top secret, but based on this information, I feel it has to be restricted further. This is being classified above top-secret."

"Sir, I still need to bring an expert on Egyptology in."

"If that's what you need to do. You know the procedures. You know how to procure a 312 Nondisclosure Agreement."

"What will happen to the people these warriors are after?"

West clasped his hands together. "That is not my decision alone. Right now, we need to focus on getting these remaining five warriors off the streets of our country and securing their targets."

"Sir, we're not honestly going to throw a kid in a hole somewhere and experiment on her."

"Like I said, that is not my decision alone and we have our priorities, and you have your orders. If you'd like a different assignment-"

"That won't be necessary, sir."

"Dismissed."

Simone was right. They didn't speak the entire time they were in Scott Air. Jack looked around as he drove by a high school, a lovely suburban neighborhood, a McDonald's, and a Walgreens, all in a military base. Scott Air was self-contained town except that those patrol cars belonged to military police. Every car came equipped with a driver side gun mount for an AR-15…okay, that was just being cynical. Maybe half of them came with gun mounts for AR-15s, or maybe M1 Carbines.

Jack said, "Can you believe this? Have you ever been on a base like this?"

Simone said, "Oh, sure. Camp Pendleton, Wright-Patterson; most of them are like this. You don't expect the families to live in barracks and eat c-rations, do you?"

"C-rations are better than McDonald's, anyway."

"What? Not enough beef in your factory farm by-product sandwich? You going to tell me how your meeting went?"

"I asked what would happen to the victims when we located them. His exact words were, 'That is not my decision alone.'"

"What then?"

"I don't want to discuss it until we're off base and out of this perfect little Stepford town."

"I told you, man. I told you."

Jack still didn't say anything after they left Scott Air. It wasn't until half an hour later when they were crossing the Martin Luther King Bridge into St. Louis that he said anything at all. "Can you believe they charge a toll to cross this piece of shit?"

Simone said, "They must be using the money to keep it from falling down because they sure ain't maintaining it. In fairness though, the only tolls are on the Illinois side. I think the toll is for route 3."

"It feels like my shocks are toast." Once they were off the bridge and onto smooth pavement, Jack said, "Okay. General West is definitely going to make these people disappear once we get ahold of them."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Lose the kid. I want to find the Jaffa. Whatever these people are doing, we'll worry about that when we get there. We need to protect this kid, make sure it doesn't get back to the Department of Defense, because they are the ones that will be putting pressure on West, and then we lose her. She's a kid. The state, the cities, the counties: they all have a ton of programs for missing and unidentified children. They won't find her any database, and odds are if this cop has taken her in, this will be a completely fresh start for her. Nobody even has to know. If General West has a problem with it, we can simply point to the fact that these aliens with this advanced tech can't catch her, and if she made it into a state program, we'll probably never find her. Janet already told us that the DNA is regular human DNA on every level, that the evolutionary changes were…what was that word?"

"Macroscopic."

"Right and whatever little quirks she has nobody will think anything of it. Nobody will be the wiser. They'll just assume she's a little strange, or a genius, like Beethoven or Einstein."

Simone said, "Okay, Carol Lawrence lives in the county, which means we need to head down to 55."

"Wouldn't city hall be right here?"

Simone shook her head. "I thought so, too. The county and the city are separate entities."

"Actually, why don't I head into the city and find my experts, and give you the car?"

"That works."

Jack took a cab to the art museum, having found nobody that specialized specifically in Egyptology (but every other kind of ology) at the library. The cab dropped him off at the city art museum in Forest Park. A statue of General Lafayette on a rearing horse greeted him in the main driveway. Walking into the ornate entry hall, he walked across the granite tile floor to the customer service counter. There was a young high school age girl writing something out wearing a navy blue suit with a museum tag on her collar. Jack noticed that the staff was all in identical garb.

She looked up and briefly observing his uniform, her eyes momentarily observing his name tag, said, "May I help you, Colonel?"

"Yes, do you have an Egyptologist on staff I could speak with?"

"Not on staff, but we have the Curse of Tutankhamen's Tomb exhibit here for the next month and they have two with them. Maybe the curator can help you."

As they walked, Jack said, "Shouldn't you be in school right now?"

"I am. My employment is part of a college incentive program that St. Louis offers inner city students. I get a day off school to come here for the whole day, every other day, except Thursday, in my case, I leave school an hour early, and for working at the art museum, I get high-school credit, college credit, and * dollars an hour, part-time."

"Good deal."

The curator was a rather small unassuming man, wearing a black suit. He had a receding hairline and wore black framed glasses.

"I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, U. S. Air Force."

"Colonel, I'm Donald Morris, I'm the curator. How may I help you?"

"I have a situation that I need to speak to an Egyptologist about."

"The Air Force needs an Egyptologist?"

"Trust me. The problem is even weirder than that sounds."

"Sure. I think Louise is free for the rest of the day."

Five minutes later, Jack was shaking hands with a blond woman in her mid-thirties. She wore a white suit with padded shoulders with matching skirt and kept her hair cut short. The shirt had ruffled collar.

"Colonel O'Neill, I'm Doctor Louise Knight. We're getting ready to pack up for the day, so if we can make this quick."

"I'm sorry, we can't make it quick." Jack looked at the curator and said, "I'm sorry, this has been classified above top-secret and I am extremely limited to the number of people I can have sign a nondisclosure agreement."

Knight said, "A nondisclosure agreement?"

"Yeah, basically, before I can talk to you about my problem, I have to have you sign an agreement saying that if you talk about this to anyone you can be…uh…you could get into a lot of trouble. I'll understand if you don't want to."

"Charged with treason, you mean. What on Earth would you need an Egyptologist for?"

"Well, if the curator would give us a bit of privacy and if you would provide a thumb-print, you'll find out. You see, I have this briefcase with a nice presentation and really classified photographs. I just need someone who can read Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs."

"Well, I'm probably an idiot for doing this, but now I'm too curious not to agree."

The curator left and locked door behind him and Jack opened his briefcase and pulled out all of the forms. Once they were signed, he explained the situation to her.

"Okay," she said, "where's the hidden camera?"

"No hidden camera. In fact, once we're done here, I'd like it if you'd agree to come up to Scott Air and take a closer look at the wreckage."

"All this for a crash? Doesn't the government have its own experts?"

"We do, but in this case, we have an alien battalion chasing escaped slaves, and killing American citizens in the process. The first victim was a Missouri State Trooper. Next was a family on a camping trip. They murdered the mother while she shielded her nine-year-old daughter and then killed the daughter. We have several in custody, and we have five more at large. We are looking for any clues we can at finding these people and putting an end to this."

"Okay, what have you found out so far?"

Jack told her about the interview with the Jaffa warrior Simone had captured. The entire time, he watched her face turn from careful attentiveness to stunned disbelief.

"Well, how can translating a few panels help?"

"It can help a lot. We don't just have a few panels. We've got part of a computer database, nearly a thousand pages, and it's all in Ancient Egyptian. We think some of it is an operator's manual for the ship, but there seems to be some kind of procedural documentation with regards to this military force. We don't know if it's a medical guide or a tactician's guide. Whatever it is, we think it can give an insight into who we're dealing with. I've got some pictures of it here." Jack pulled out a several images that had been taken and enhanced and handed the stack to her.

She looked them over and after about fifteen minutes said, "Well, you're right about this part being an operator's manual. It contains instructions for maintenance and operating the atmospheric drive systems, but this other stuff; these are…I'm not sure. There are stories of battles reminiscent of what we've read about on historical tablets and they have storytelling flair. It looks like it might be a crew log. Is this from the stolen craft or the pursuit craft?"

"That came from the one the human's took. Everything was trashed in the pursuit craft. The computer was toast. Absolutely nothing works. The human's turned out to be better pilots. We were actually able to recover quite a bit of stuff from their ship."

"Well, I have a name for your stolen ship. It's called an Alkesh, and it is a light, high-speed attack cruiser specializing in strafing and bombing attacks."

"That's something. If we get that crew log translated, we can at least understand the psychology of these warriors."

"From what I've been able to read here, think Sparta on steroids. They talk about ravaging villages of helpless people for the glory of Ra. They talk about battling against hopeless odds and prevailing."

"Well, can you help us?"

Knight nodded. "This all appears to be the hieroglyphics we're used to. Nobody agrees on an exact translation, but I agree with Doctor Ramses Saleem's interpretations. This is pretty straight forward. I can transcribe everything in hieroglyphics to English. If I run across demotic, Coptic or other known Egyptian styles, I can translate those. I can't make any guarantees if I run into anything alien. I could give a best guess, but in order to do a translation, I'd need a key."

"Like the Rosetta Stone."

"Exactly. Compensation is more than satisfactory. I just need to contact my partner and let him know he has to carry the exhibit without me for a little while."

"Doctor Saleem?"

"Oh, no! Doctor Saleem is an expert on the Ancient Egyptian language. He is not affiliated with this exhibit. No, my partner is Doctor Stephen Rhodes. He's assigned by Oxford to oversee the exhibit's tour through America." She shook her head. "What do you know? Doctor Jackson was right and I can't even tell him."

# # #

It was easy enough to confirm that Aylala was staying with Carol Lawrence, now a lieutenant. Once Simone had managed to fine that out, it was easy to discover her name and that she had been started as a sophomore in Mehlville Senior High. Simone's first step was to pull the records, only to find that no records on Aylala would available until the next semester. All she could get access to was ID, a course schedule, and the result of a skill and intelligence evaluation. The results were uneven, Aylala excelling in some fields and clearly struggling in others. One thing was certain. She knew English, and she knew it very well.

She had already observed Aylala for much of the day. She seemed to favor a leather jacket that she never took off, indoors or outdoors. She also seemed to keep a small group of friends, one of whom Simone was able to identify as Nathan Lawrence III. There were several issues that would complicate matters with Aylala. First, the state adoption board had deferred to a private adoption agency, legalizing her presence in the United States, and it appeared, based on the circumstances of her arrival, Carol Lawrence had managed to secure a hearing for political asylum. That hearing had already taken place in the Eighth Circuit Court with a DCFS working standing in for Aylala en absentia. The court had ruled in favor of political asylum. Senator Kinsey wouldn't like that.

:::The girl is to be the host of one of my siblings. She must be taken to the Stargate.:::

:::Is this going to be a regular thing?:::

:::No, ordinarily, I would be in control.:::

:::Okay, then, taking the girl to Ra is a big, fat "No.":::

:::You must acquiesce to me eventually.:::

:::You make a valid point. Let me offer this as a rebuttal: eat shit and die.:::

:::In none of my ancestor's memories has any host resisted as hard as you.:::

:::I'll take that as a compliment.:::

:::It is.:::

:::Then what will you do?:::

:::Tail her. Keep my distance. Observe her. Then when Colonel O'Neill's ready, we'll introduce ourselves and question her. Find out where she came from, what she can tell us about your friends, and if we can help her.:::

:::And if she can help you?:::

:::Better than being stuck in a concrete room at Area 51 for the rest of her life. Now shut up. I'm working.:::

:::If I can find a more suitable host, would you be willing to trade your freedom for another person's slavery?:::

:::What? I am not letting you have that little girl!:::

:::I don't mean Aylala. I mean, what would you give to secure your freedom from me? Would you let me enslave another? I would be willing, you know, and you would be free.:::

:::I guess I'd have to give it some thought. I'm not sure if I could live with myself if I did something like that.:::

Simone's radio crackled and Kawalsky's voice came over the line. "This is Major Kawalsky to Colonel's O'Neill and Porter. There is a significant disturbance down in Arnold by the Festus border. We have CCTV footage of an assailant in full body armor, all black and using weapons similar to the Jaffa, attacking a convention of some kind. Police have responded. State troopers are on their way. Arnold police are calling for military assistance. Weapons are ineffective. Repeat: weapons are ineffective."

:::Okay, just what the hell is that?:::

:::That would be one of my siblings using an advanced elite combat suit. It is quite indestructible.:::

Simone picked up the radio. "O'Neill, did you hear that?"

"I copy. Our boys at Lambert gave me a ride and I'm heading down there with reinforcements."

"Oh, Jack, It'll take you an hour to get from Downtown St. Louis to South Arnold."

"Not in a Blackhawk."

Simone paused a moment. "Sweet ride."

"You're just jealous. ETA 10 minutes. Do you have a twenty on the girl?"

"Yeah, I'm outside her school right now. Do you me to take her into protective custody?"

"Not until we see the whites of their eyes. Hang back until we have no other options. We'll deal with our newcomer."

There was a sinister laugh. :::I wish I could see that. He faces one of the gods in its invincible armor.:::

:::Jack is an industrious fellow. He might just surprise you.:::

Her radio squawked again, and Kawalsky said, "My team is on location now. I don't know what his armor is, but he just took a hit from a stinger missile and he is still coming. He's destroying anything that gets in his path." There was an explosion, followed by static, and then, "Christ, he's like the damned Terminator. That explosion was from an RPG. It did not stop him. An RPG did not stop this bastard."

Simone continued to listen while watching the school. She was becoming anxious really fast. She didn't like listening to her men getting trounced and not getting in the middle of it. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes went by, and then the radio crackled again. "This is O'Neill. I'm on location now. There are several police casualties here and a few of our airmen. Two deaths, one of them an airman, and 46 injuries in total. There is a shitload of property damage. The assailant has vanished. He has disappeared without a trace, literally."

"Disappeared?" Simone asked the interior of the car.

:::The suits are equipped with cloaking devices.:::

"Oh, now that just sucks."

# # #

Aylala had somehow managed to survive her first week of school. History class continued to surprise. It seemed one couldn't take anything that was written at face value and determining what really happened meant sifting through garbage to find the truth underneath. It was actually rather disheartening to find that history was based more on perspective than upon fact. It made her wonder if anything was real. She had expressed that feeling in class on her third, to be met with laughter from Mr. Higgins, and his suggestion that she read the writings of the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra who, as it turned out, had a great deal to say about the nature of reality.

It was through those authors that she began her understanding of Ra in all of his depravity. Aylala had begun a very deep self-examination based upon the beliefs of these two men, questioning her own existence. She began to recite as though a mantra, "You did not exist before you were born and you will not exist after you die, so did you ever exist at all?" It was terrifying to approach such a question from any angle, and Ra had been forced many thousands of years ago to approach that very concept. After all, it was said that one could claim immortality via one's legacy, but how long does a legacy really last? It was certain that very few people on this planet knew their own ancestry past their grandparents.

She should have moved on days ago. It was a miracle the Jaffa hadn't already found her, yet she stayed. Why? How did this cold, sprawling, technologically haywire, egotistical place hold such sway over her? She had been shunned by her family, favored by a despot, and her destiny was to lose her very soul to the serpent. Here, complete strangers took her in, clothed her, fed her, maybe even loved her. If the Buddhism that the Dalai Lama and Chopra wrote about was right, then her body and much of what she was, wasn't real, and if that was so, that meant she was transient. That which is transient longs for permanence.

That was what Ra had sought when he searched for his survival. He journeyed and desperately sought immortality. Once he had accomplished that, he sought power; the power to build a world for himself that would never change unless he wanted it to. He was transient, and he wanted control over that destiny. He had felt helpless, desperately helpless. For a moment, she almost wished she could tell him. For a moment, she didn't feel that different from the old tyrant. She didn't want to be helpless anymore. She wanted the power to control her destiny. More importantly, she wanted a home and she wanted a family that would love her.

It was Friday night and she discovered that outside the window of the guest room that had become her bedroom, there was a ledge she could easily put her feet out on, and if she stood, there was a clear step to the roof. This night was warmer than the last few days had been. She had gone into her drawer where she kept hidden the things she had snuck with her from the Alkesh. She had the zat'niq'tal, a memory crystal, and one thing she had stolen from Carol's evidence bag. It was a gate controller. It could not be read. It could not be altered. It had a single use. It in it, encoded, the Stargate coordinates of the planet it had last been activated on. It could only be used once, pointed at the control unit of the Stargate. After that, it needed to be reprogrammed. It also homed in on the nearest Stargate. The device pointed her to coordinates that she discovered was in a city called Washington, D. C.

She lied on the roof with that control module in her hand, turning it over, pressing the buttons that only performed their three individual functions. The first button would transmit when a gate was in range. The second button raised a map suspended in air in a projection known as Pepper's ghost. The third button would expand that display and overlay it over any map, automatically reading and recording the information from that map. Those two buttons also activated the homing beacon.

She wondered where her last three friends were. Jamala had lost fingers in the crash and was bleeding profusely. She hoped that she had gotten away. Rodmalga was with her. He was the strongest warrior in the village. If anyone could keep her safe, he could. Then there was Empalga. He was not much older than her and he had courted her, but she had rejected him. His arrogance had reminded him the Jaffa. Still, he had proven a true friend when he followed her on the Alkesh. He had always been standoffish since their misadventure had begun. She had begun to reconsider so faithful a friend as a mate and she approached him, he raged against her, screaming that he would never be with one like her. The words had been meant to hurt, but they had only relieved her. He always said hurtful things and she had been given an excuse never to address the matter with him again.

There were things about this planet that didn't sit well with her. Now that she stared up into a crystal clear night sky, the one thing that bothered her the most stared back at her. Almost all of the stars had gone. These Tau'ri-she was sure the people of Earth were Tau'ri-had filled their nighttime sky with false light and had drowned out the stars. It made her quite sad. The stars were so beautiful and now she could barely see them.

"Mom doesn't like it when anyone sits up here." Nate had surprised her. She didn't realize he had found her or that he had even come out, but there he was, sitting right next to her. "It's a really nice night out."

Aylala nodded, sniffing back tears. "Your sky is empty."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, the light pollution. They say entire constellations have disappeared. You know, there's a camping spot mom takes us too down in Farmington. The sky there looks nothing like this. It's far enough away from the city that you can see millions of stars. There's a place in Nevada I want to go to. They say that there's a place there that's far enough from the lights that the sky is exactly as it was before the electric light. It's the clearest night sky in the country." He stopped a moment and said, "You're really quiet, now."

"I like listening to you talk."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. How was your Tae Kwon Do class?"

"It was fine, I guess."

"Tell me about this art. What is it?"

"Well, it's karate, I guess. You know what karate is. You don't. You know all of the Shaw Brothers movies my dad watches? Well, it's kind of like that…well, I mean, they use a lot of different styles from China. Tae Kwon Do isn't Chinese, it's Korean, and umm…I'm not explaining this very well. I saw you copying what they do on those Shaw Brothers movies. I didn't know you could do that."

"It's probably not an ideal way to learn, but I already have a strong education in my tribe's fighting techniques. That makes it a bit easier for me." She looked back up and said, "Your stars; what do they mean?"

"You haven't read any books on the stars?"

Aylala shook her head.

"Well, we have an old legend that a long time ago, heroes and monsters ran across the Earth, and the heroes fought the monsters and made the world safe and that the ancient gods honored the heroes by telling their tales in the stars. That one there is Hercules. He was the strongest man in the world, but a monster drove him insane and made him kill his wife and his children. When he came to his senses, the gods made him perform twelve labors and that was how he atoned for the death of his wife. Then he was captured by Romans, and was chained to too pillars in a stadium, where people pointed and laughed at him and threw things. Romans were taking over the world and Hercules used his strength to topple the pillars and bring the stadium down. The gods gave him his own constellation so that he would always be remembered.

"That one, down a little to his right is Leo. It was a magical lion that Hercules had to beat fight in one of his labors. That one right there, almost straight up, that's the Big Dipper. It's part of a bigger constellation called Ursa Major. That was a great bear that roamed Greece and was prized by the greatest hunters. It was the goddess Artemis that brought him down. Artemis is up there somewhere too, but I don't think you see her with all the light pollution. She hunted with a bow. There's another bowhunter called Orion and he's right there; the big hourglass with the three stars as a belt. The point of the sword hanging down from the belt isn't actually a star; it's a nebula.

"On the right you can see his bow. You're kind of like Artemis, aren't you? A great huntress with a bow…"

She smiled. "I do not know about that. I am not a goddess."

"Well, you certainly look like one."

Aylala looked over to Nate and grinned, "What you are doing is called 'hitting' on me, right?"

"I-umm-well-maybe, just a bit."

"Artemis was a maiden, and I have no wish to be a maiden when I have gone past my age."

Nate's face flushed red. Aylala pretended not to notice. She pointed and said, "What's that one?"

"That's Draco. His name literally means dragon." He looked down to her hands. "What's that?"

"This? If I am to find my way back home, I will need this."

"I thought you didn't want to go back."

"I don't, but…I have friends, and they want to go back and fight. Sometimes I feel selfish for not wanting to go with them. They run to a battle to save our home while I flee to safety and comfort. Then there's something to remind me that I'm not just running away from home. I'm running from a place I never belonged. My mother tried many times to banish me, once to have me killed, but the people protected me. She should be happy I'm gone."

"But, you can't run to a battle. You're just a-"

"What? Just a child?"

"We're children. We don't fight in wars."

"I am no child. I am a woman of the tribe. I have hunted for the tribe. I have walked in the footsteps of the gods. I have killed the enemies of the tribe while my sister died next to me. I am a blooded warrior. I have killed six men; four of them with my bow, one with a weapon that I am not familiar with, and one whose throat I cut. Do not call me a child, and do not think of yourself as a child either. You can think for yourself and act for yourself." Aylala sighed. "If you knew the world I am from, you would see me differently."

"Then tell me, and I'm willing to bet that no matter what you have to say, you'll still be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and the most amazing person I've ever met."

Aylala was almost in tears. "It is a horrible thing."

"And maybe I'll know you better for it, and maybe you'll know me better for it."

Aylala calmed down and spoke evenly. "Just days after I walked the path and earned the name of woman, my brother had caught a merchant cheating our tribesmen. The merchant snuck into our village at night and sought to kill my brother as he slept. He accidently trod upon me and tried to silence me with his knife. We wrestled for the knife, but he was a small man and I was stronger. My father's bows were the first ones I ever used and they were very tight, so I had very strong arms, and I drove the knife into his throat. That started a war. My brothers and sisters all fought to defend the tribe. I was the youngest, so my eldest sister came with me. I had killed two of the merchant's allies when a bolt from a crossbow struck my sister in the ear. I killed the man that killed her and killed the merchant's brother. That ended the war. My sister was still alive when the fighting ended. She was even laughing and joking. I thought she would be okay, but she died before my mother could get to her. She died very quickly. She was laughing at a joke I had told, and then she stopped laughing and she was dead."

Nate sat for a moment, digesting all of it. "I don't know what to say. I wish you never had to go through that. The last one you killed was the one you saved my mom from. I…I wouldn't have my mom right now if you hadn't been there. What made you leave your home?"

"My people are slaves to the highest authority in our nation. We mine his ore for him and he takes the food we farm. If we do not obey, his soldiers kill us. He intended to take me as a servant in his inner court. There is only one thing they want a girl child for and it is not to serve drinks or clean floors." Nate closed his eyes in disgust. "I fled and for two years, they followed. They found me here." Aylala looked down as Nate took her hand held it in his own. She started crying, silent tears flowing down her face. "You don't know what freedom truly is. You don't know what it is not to have it, to live in a prison of terror. Now you know; the girl who is sitting next to you is not a princess or a goddess. She is a low slave with a scarred back running from her masters."

Nate brought her hand up and kissed it. "You're a goddess to me."

Aylala turned to him, her eyes wide in surprise. "You should be careful. I come from a world of strong tradition. Once you have me, it's for the rest of your life. There will be no dating this girl and that girl like you are shopping for the right shirt. Where I come from, the first one you love is the only one you love…forever." She leaned in and kissed him.

They wrapped their arms around each other. More than the intimacy of their closeness, they were enveloped in the sheer comfort of simply holding each other. "Do you really want to keep me forever?"

Aylala nodded. "Yes. You make me smile. You make me calm. I feel… secure." She kissed him again.

"But I'm nobody."

"So am I." She kissed him again.