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Chapter 1: Nine months of toil, tears and progress
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Part 2
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Training Camp Dawn of thunder
Slavna Zemq
Perun's homeworld
Milky Way galaxy
Staff blasts lit up the night sky. Sharp, ear-piercing explosions shook the ground, while silver streams of coiling energy passed overhead.
"Move it maggots!" A daemon spawned from Perun's wrath roared, kicking Jek'il into motion.
The young Jaffa panted for breath and looked wide-eyed around. Gray-armored figures were pushing through the mud all around him, though he could see no one in the green paint-job of his unit. There was only gray, or muddy brown all around.
Death gliders howled from above like damned souls and opened fire. Streams of bright explosions blossomed like spring flowers, lighting up everything in sight. By now, Jek'il knew better. Without a second thought, he buried his face into the mud. It wasn't a moment too soon, because energy blasts screamed over the muddy field, only to vanish harmlessly in the darkness.
"Move, your sons of septic cows! Perun does not need cowardly weaklings!" The daemon called Drill Instructor roared again.
Jek'il made sure he still had his rifle in his hands, because losing it would mean a fate worse than death, and went forward, moving like a worm through the mud.
A much larger, and older Jaffa got up. He shook off much of the mud hanging onto his armor and roared an ancient war cry.
Serpents made of light flew from the flanks and converged on the single fully standing figure in the muddy field, briefly lighting him like a bonfire. The burly man collapsed face first in the mud, all the while keening like a little girl. Jek'il swore an oath and all but swam through the nasty muck to reach the poor wretch and roll him to his side so he wouldn't drown. He noted a figure in a very visible, and somehow pristine white armor looking down at him. To the youth's surprise, a Drill Instructor demon nodded once at him, then pointed at the distant hill that was the target of the exercise.
Wide-eyed, Jek'il nodded back by reflex, then kept imitating a worm swimming through the muck. If he told his buddies what just happened, they would never believe him!
What felt like an eternity later, the young Jaffa made his way to a small depression just under the hill where he found his exhausted unit. It was pure luck, really! He blindly stumbled into Squad Leader Dana, who was indistinguishable from a mound of mud until. That was until Jek'il unwittingly put a hand on her back in an attempt to crawl further forward.
It was Dana's familiar voice coughing and cursing that gave the Jaffa the first clue what he had just done.
"Perun's balls, lad, where were you?!" Dana glared at him through bloodshot eyes.
"Making my way here as ordered," Jek'il mumbled.
"At least we're all here now," Dana turned to her back and looked around. "Take a brief break, otherwise we aren't making it up there," She pointed up the slippery slope above them.
"We'll have to work together," Jek'il concluded after seeing a pair of fellow Jaffa slip down through the mud while they tried to climb up alone.
"Either that, or we'll make ourselves fools in Perun's eyes," Dana grumbled. At mentioning Lord Perun, most of Jek'il's buddies uttered quiet prayers.
Dana gave them just a few more moments to take their breath, then ushered them up the hill.
They had to push, claw or even drag each other up that cursed mud-ball. Jek'il was operating blindly, acting as his training told him, while his brain all but shut down out of sheer exhaustion. He didn't recall reaching even halfway up the hill, much less somehow dragging his ass up to the top.
"Jaffa Kree!" That roar kicked up Jek'il's mind into gear, and he stumbled to his feet, looking blindly around. Something cold and fresh splashed into his flesh, making him splutter.
"You did well, Jaffa! Very well indeed!" A deep male voice spoke in a bombastic way that barely registered to the Jaffa's weary mind. "A clean-up station and hot food are waiting for you down the slope. Get your asses down there! The next class needs this place!"
Jek'il started at the speaker, barely recognizing him as a proudly smiling Drill Instructor, which was, of course, impossible! Everyone knew that those daemons only smiled when they caused pain and misery!
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Tempest Airbase
Slavna Zemq
Lord Perun's homeworld
Milky Way galaxy
A few months after taking over Perun, I found myself in the freshly overhauled main military airbase on my throne world. The reason was a stroke of luck, which nowadays meant even more work for me.
A full maintenance overview of all available small craft and their incorporated systems uncovered diamonds in the rough. They brought to my attention that two of my Al'kesh bombers had cloaking devices. One was damaged, creating a flickering field after a few minutes of use, while the other one appeared intact. That revelation resulted in me grabbing one of my Heralds and dispatching him here to secure those two bombers into two distant, heavily guarded, and reinforced hangars. Once he saw to that, my minion had my maintenance crews slowly and carefully disassemble the whole bomber with the defective cloaking device, while painstakingly taking notes on every step of the process.
That particular exercise had multiple uses, not the least of which was serving as the base for creating a proper training and maintenance manual for my Al'kesh fleet.
When all was said and done, I wasn't a proper scientist. I did manage to find the time to get certain important engineering courses during the decades I spent serving the Sith Empire. After all, that was the second universe I ended up living in, and who knew if I would ever find myself in a third. That said, back then, that know-how aided me greatly in figuring out what ideas for tech upgrades were viable, and which ones simply weren't feasible with the technology available.
To tell the long story short, while I did recognize some components in their general function, most of the technology used by the Goa'uld should have been total gibberish to me. What little Perun knew. Even then, the regular session with Lyda to finish her brainwashing and slowly find out everything useful she knew, was more useful in that regard.
The first thing of note was the shield system. While a massive power hog compared to regular deflectors or particle shields, I was familiar with, this shield acted as a combination of both. It was able to stop both physical objects and energy attacks. In practice, the Goa'uld shields had more in common with the various variants of planetary defense and theater shields, than anything mounted on a mobile platform, as a matter of course.
Back before ending up here, there were many crash programs to find a practical way to combine particle and deflector shields into one for the defense of starfighters and capital ships alike. Yet, here I was, looking at what might have been the holy grail of space-borne defensive technology, even if a rather primitive example of said technology.
I spent nearly an hour examining the shield generator and its emitters. While it more or less made sense from an engineering point of view, I was missing the math and the implications of how it theoretically worked. That was a painful reminder that I was rather poor as far as science staff went.
The engines were a novelty too. Instead of regular propulsion, the Goa'uld used gravity engines. They allowed for rapid maneuverability, despite the current speed. The trade-off was a huge size and even larger power consumption. In contrast, the ship engines I was familiar with were of more conventional design, they often required some kind of reactor mass to act as propellant as well, along with either regular fuel or drawing power from the primary ship reactors. The trade-off was smaller size and lesser power requirements giving faster single vector acceleration, at the price of much slower turning speed and deceleration.
For a brand new ship design, I would want a hybrid system. However, such designs would be viable only in the distant future.
The weaponry went a lot to be desired. As a matter of course, I wanted at least one more turret on top of the bomber, along with heavier, forward-mounted cannons for strafing runs against hardened targets or capital ships.
The great prize was the cloaking device.
That was a game-changer and something I wanted incorporated throughout my fleet – all arms of it. The tactical possibilities it opened, especially against Goa'uld who had most of their realms lightly defended, were practically endless. Even just cloaking my existing bombers, which all had a slow hyperdrive installed, would open countless possibilities to raid for material, intelligence, and scientific data.
"Herald, gather my best technicians among the fleet and ensure that both they and this place remain constantly under heavy guard. They're to examine the cloaking device, fix it and if at all possible, figure out how we can build more of them!" I ordered.
Unfortunately, my know-how was insufficient as far as the said device went. I couldn't figure out anything but its most basic superficial functions – like how to safely feed it energy, etc…
I looked at the far wall, wherein the distance was my other cloak capable Al'kesh. When I had enough competent troops ready, I might have to risk executing a raid or two against rival research centers, or smaller shipyards.
I left the hangar followed by a small security detail and headed towards the nearby ready squadron. Those were regular Death gliders, and still death traps. A few smart fellows up on my Ha'tak were busy playing with improved weapon loads. Twin-linked staff cannons to increase fire rate, an experimental "mini-gun" system mounting three or four standard weapons on a set-up that should allow for rapid-fire, the works. So far, there were issues with linking up such makeshift upgrades to the Death gliders' electronics suite and making them
work. I had no programmer or other assorted IT specialists on staff. In case of something not working, my maintenance staff usually had the component, yanked out. Then they sent it for recycling in one of the few modern fabricators I had, while plugging in a spare.
That state of affairs made me contemplate figuring out how to restore Perun's mind. That way, I could murder him again and again, much slower this time, and that was on general principle alone.
How the fuck did the Goa'uld ascend to be galactic overlords in the first place? My face twitched at that thought and its obvious answer. The competent ones either ran things, while letting themselves go, got themselves killed, or bid their time to overthrow their imbeciles of overlords, just like me.
The less said about designing useful stand-off munitions about my small craft the better. The best we could do with my joke of an R&D staff was unguided rocket pods. Sadly, or perhaps, fortunately, even those were huge improvements in a ground attack role. That was why, I had one squadron practicing with them all the time, while another was on alert status, and the rest in one form or another in rest and recovery cycle.
On the bright side, even the failed prototypes for the small craft turned out to be useful support weapons for my infantry, especially if mounted into defensive positions. No conventional attack was going to break through the Stargates on my principal worlds, and that was before I had either a shield or mechanical metal covering devices ready for deployment on my critical Stargates.
I briefly thought about commandeering a glider for a flight to chill out, but quickly dismissed the idea. There was still too much to do, and too few people to delegate to.
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Part 3
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Camp Bastion
Pirin
Lord Perun's homeworld
Milky Way galaxy
A brand new firing range, still smelling on freshly turned up the soil, stood up like a large sore at the side of the overhauled Jaffa barracks on the planet Pirin. First Prime Stephan faced a lot of grumbling, by Jaffa who failed to keep their mouths shut and mounthed off, earning themselves a shovel and orders to dig. To be fair to his brothers in arms, Stephan had been a bit uncomfortable when his Divine Lord first introduced the changes in training, weaponry, well, in what it meant to be a Jaffa.
However, the results, no matter how shocking, spoke for themselves. There was no doubt, Lord Perun more than lived up to his title as a Lord of War.
Stephan stood in front of a semi-circle made of a thousand-strong Jaffa. They were spread in three lines so they all could hear and see what was happening. A cadre from the reformed Thunder Guard flanked him, and each of them held a staff-rifle in their hands. The First Prime alone had his good, old-fashioned staff. He raised it for all to see.
"This, my fellow Jaffa, is our traditional weapon, as you should very well know!" He began, allowing himself a small smile. "This is a weapon steeped up in tradition and ceremony. The Gods made the first of us with staffs just like these in hand!"
Cries of approval met Stephan's words. He silently handled his staff to his second in command and took his rifle from the younger man.
"This right here is a modified staff!" The First Prime declared. "There is nothing ceremonial about it. This weapon isn't meant for honorable, combat governed by strict rules." Stephan waited for a few moments, and as expected, the Jaffa grumbled at his declaration. "This is a weapon of war. A weapon granted by our Lord Perun, to wield in the wars he foresaw coming. This is a weapon of victory and survival. You will all learn to wield it as expertly as every standard Jaffa weapon, or you will face Divine Wrath!"
After those words, Stephan turned around and nodded to his cadre. They whirled around as well, moving like a well-oiled door, shouldered their rifles, and opened fire at the range packed with targets. Rapid shots tore chunks of the wooden human-shaped carvings with a speed and precision, that the thousand Jaffa behind them could have hardly managed together firing in volleys.
In a frighteningly short time, the firing ceased, because, there were no targets left.
"First, you will learn how to use these weapons on a targeting range. When you're all proficient with them, we will teach you how to survive against such firepower arrayed by our enemies."
Many sullen, and a few outright scared looks met that particular proclamation. The few smarter Jaffa could imagine what would happen if they advanced as usual and faced an enemy wielding rifles like the one in Stephan's hands.
The only question is how many die-hards the First Prime was going to have to break from being a disgrace to their Lord Perun by refusing to learn and evolve.
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Slavna Zemq
Perun's homeworld
Milky Way Galaxy
One late evening a few months after becoming Perun, I found myself on a terrace in my palace overlooking my capital city. I could see the effects of my uplift program everywhere I looked. By all reasonable metrics, the uplift was wildly successful, beating many initial estimates. It helped that my people were more than eager to participate to receive divine blessings that made their lives easier and safer.
The only problem was that for all its success, the program was going too slow. At this rate, it would be a few generations at least until I could grow up my industrial power. Yet, for all I knew, I had mere months until Ra got himself dead, and at most a couple of years after that before the wars began in earnest. At this rate, the best I could hope for the future would be mere survival, and that simply wasn't acceptable. At the same time, I was in no position to rock the boat. While my domain was reasonably secure from ground invasion, the same wasn't true about space. if I overstepped my bounds enough for anyone to send three or more Ha'tak against me, there was nothing I could feasibly do but run.
There were various solutions to these issues, however, they were all going to be both expensive and increasingly dangerous.
First, increasing my population – I could do it either through raids, which could provoke reprisals or even war. Or I could dispatch agents to one of the known trade worlds, where they would buy slaves, and seek to hire any Goa'uld with a modicum of technical, or scientific skills. The issue with that approach was money, or more precisely, naquadah slips and blocks.
First, I both needed all the naquadah I could get my hand off for my various projects. Second, I needed it to pay part of the yearly tribute I owed Kali as well. The simple solution was to increase my mines yield or acquire new mines. The second option was problematic. The former, well, I lacked the engineering know-how how to do it.
It was a catch 22 – I needed specialists and warm bodies to increase output, yet I needed increased output to get specialists and more warm bodies.
With time running out, I was quickly running out of options as well. In the end, my choice was obvious – wait until my new Legions completed phase 2 of their training, then select personnel for a series of covert, deniable raids. The first targets would be small, out-of-the-way mining operations. Anything that we would take from those I would use for my industry. Doing so would allow me to keep production ongoing, while conserving the output of my mines for paying tribute and buying whatever I could from the nearby trade worlds.
With any luck, by then, what passed for my naval engineers would have fixed the damaged cloaking device.