Summit Part 2
It took a significant amount of time and effort for a gathering of the system lords to be organized. There was a great deal of pomp and circumstance, and also security arrangements. Secrecy only tangentially entered into it. The Tok'ra there for had a plethora of forward warning.
"Jacob you just said the damned meeting isn't even going to have all of them there," Jack bit down a further curse, and looked around the room... this was a stupid fucking conversation to be having right now with the Russians in for the usual meeting, "Hell," He grunted, "Its not even the snakes causing the most trouble."
"Its unlikely we will get a shot at Apophis, or Heru'ur, or Cronus while the war is still going. This is however the best shot to if not eliminate a number of system lords to gain valuable insight into the situation."
"The situation being how they're responding to that war you just mentioned." Tch, Jack snorted and then pointed out that this sounded an awful lot like causing the kind of chaos that hte Tokra were always chiding the SGC for making of the galaxy.
Selmak grunted slightly and nodded in acknowledgement, "It was a contentious argument among the council I admit. A gamble, truthfully we have little confidence that the Jaffa rebellion will make headway... there are concerns that given our dwindling numbers that if we fail to act at this juncture we will be failing in the mission given to us by Egeria at our birth. The prospect of his... weighs heavily, more so on some Tok'ra than others." That prospect actually seemed to bother the snake wrapped around jacob's spine... but Selmak was alright as far snakes went.
"Yeah." He muttered.
Selmak shifted, and Jacob resumed speaking, "He means it Jack... Teal'c and Bratac's status as first prime of Apophis wins them a lot of standing among jaffa but Apophis has also lost a lot of standing... and the Egyptian pantheon as a whole is declining fast and hard in standing to the others."
"You just told me Heru'ur didn't get invited to this dance,"
"He's not, but the thinking is we won't get another shot."
"So its a peace conference?"
"It might be, thats one thinking. The goa'uld might be hoping to force the three to stop, if they've been weakened enough."
"And what then?" He had, had a real hard time fathoming Apophis just stopping... or Cronus or Heru'ur for that matter. "You think Apophis will just back down?" The Tok'ra were playing stupid games, "Its not going to work Jacob, don't get me wrong I'd take the risk, but Danny? The SGC will never approve it. He's still a civilian, and" And Danny ... Daniel knew things. "Osiris had a ship on the planet."
"Which I'm sure the pentagon and the Russians are both salivating that if there is one, there might be two." Jacob commented dryly, "but we really might never get a shot like this again."
--
They filed into one of the many subfloor briefing rooms. It wasn't the same one as had held the visiting system lords during Earth's admission to the Protected Planet's treaty, but it was functionally identical. Same cookie cutter open plan fifties era shape that had dominated much of his career. Doctor Jackson had briefly returned from the dig site in Egypt for this meeting. Major Carter had returned from Groom. Teal'c and Colonel O'neill were both off world at the Alpha site, which Hammond had made the decision for as much off world political reasons as international ones.
One of the Russian officers huffed in exasperation, "I do not understand." Then looking around he slowed and enunciated his English. "This should be a simple matter." Maybe he was trying to convince himself of that.
At least they weren't back to arguing about the X 301 program again. That had been a mess. The Russians had salvaged the gate that had been beamed aboard Thor's ship the Belisknr, which had resulted in their own short lived stargate program. That had quickly resulted in a mess that had required the Russian Government to reach out for in order to correct, and the Russian Stargate Program officials were correct. Their problem had been precisely the sort of thing that SG1 or for that matter another SG team might have become entangled with, especially in the first year of the program.
The X 301 had been developed from cobbled together pieces from the Death Gliders that had been flown back from one of the Ha'tak Apophis had used to attack Earth in the program's first year. The components and airframe that had went into the X 301 had been a hybridization of Earth and Goa'uld technology, and that had turned out to be a mistake. Apophis had installed contingencies into at least some of the glider's sensitive components as a fail safe against rebel Jaffa after Teal'c had defected to SG 1. With only a limited understanding of Goa'uld programing, and computer technology as a whole at the time it had laid undetected until it had activated.
Strictly speaking though the X 301 had not been acquired directly from the gate. SG 1 had stolen the death gliders from the hangar bay of a Ha'tak after all. IT had also of course had been a Ha'tak in orbit, and that X 301 program had had no real measure of countering even those Ha'tak.
The simple matter in debate was still the underlying argument over what constituted gate sourced (or derived) technological gains. Russian involvement in the Stargate Program involved now the presence of liaison officers that were on paper a part of NATO cooperation with former Warsaw Pact countries, various arms reduction and nuclear control treaties and others to provide a means of plausible deniability to their presence. That arrangement of course allowed the Russian Liaisons, as well as other scientific personnel to be present at the SGC for day to day running, but also facilitated these regular conferences. The plan was to do them quarterly to handle general overview of events at the SGC and discuss the technological potential, particularly for both market impact and security concerns.
"You have already said that even the Goa'uld have made issue of the remains of artifacts, and for that matter actually symbiotes which may have still been on earth." Chekov picked up, "We are currently in a situation that is quite different than we were months ago." Before the presidential election, before the attacks in New York, "We must contend with the fact that the stargate program has unilaterally become involved, has involved the earth in treaties with extraterrestrial powers." Russia had agreed to keep the gate a secret. "My government has extreme reservations about this, especially with regards to how it will be received by the international community whenever disclosure does come about. This is not simply sending signals into space." Like SETI, "and we are not at detection. We have moved into active and at least semi regular contact."
Colonel Kennedy nodded, "Our government feels the same way. The Protected Planets Treaty was not something that was planned, and involvement in it could not have been foreseen." It wasn't as if they couldn't have claimed not to know about it, as they had stumbled upon other Asgard protected worlds. "Both of our governments have begun discussion of involving the other members of the permanent security council, if that's what you are getting at." The pentagon man remarked, emphasizing that the Russian Foreign Ministry had started to prod the others in cooperation with the US State Department.
"I have Doctor Jackson's revised chronology," The Russian colonel retorted, "He estimates that the Giza stargate may have been buried as late as two thousand years ago."
Daniel frowned, "Excuse me Colonel, that isn't necessarily what I meant." He glanced around, but none of the officers, from either side looked like they were going to chastise him for interrupting. "We don't know for certain when the gate was buried based on a variety of evidence. In point of act its possible the Giza gate was unburied and lost several times in a cycle."
"Duly noted doctor," Chekov replied. "I will amend my position. What I was getting at is that based off of the revised Chronology is that the goa'uld remained active on Earth for much longer than we had originally been lead to believe. The recent Osiris incident, among others suggests that there are goa'uld artifacts, as well as those of other aliens. The Crystal Skull Aliens, perhaps given the chronology potentially even Asgard technology was left on Earth as well."
"That is highly speculative, Colonel Chekov." Kennedy replied, but without any heat. "I've also read Doctor Jackon's most recent revision of the Chronology. The gate network itself is millions of years old. Dinosaur old."
Chekov bobbed his head and shook his finger through the air in an agreeing gesture, "Indeed. That means that while it likely is buried much deeper than anyone has thought to look. Earth maybe has original Gate builder structures elsewhere on the planet. Doctor Jackson?"
"Yes, yeah I'm working off of, a hypothesis that assumes that the Antarctic gate is one of the older gates in the system and what that might entail. I've asked the Asgard, Freyr if there was any information he could supply for the historical record, but he hasn't gotten back to me on that yet."
"While Doctor Jackson's work in the distant is fascinating," The first Russian speaker said brusquely, "Perhaps we should address more recent developments." He stated, "IN 1906," During the hey day of early archaeological exploration, "The Dial Home Device was recovered at a site on the Giza plateau. Now for whatever reason this discovery was not followed effectively up upon, and the stargate at the Giza site was not recovered until the 1928 Langford expedition. The Nazis reunited it with the stargate in 1933 after they came to power, and used them as evidence of ancient aryan civilization full of occult nonsense." The Russian sneered, "Allied spies within the German military intelligence split up the gate and DHD convoy allowing the gate to be acquired by the OSS where it was transported at Roosevelt's insistence and shortly in 1945 the gate was activated and Ernest Littlefield was marooned off world. Also in 1945 the Red Army seized the gate and brought it to Russia."
There were some nods at this. "Yes." Doctor Jackson replied nodding. "Which is of course what creates the problem of having a number of medieval cultures off world that makes it difficult to ascertain when Earth's gates were buried. I'm regretful to say that while research into pre Columbian cultures are increasing in interest, they and many sub saharan african cultures don't receive the academic interest they warrant. That makes it very difficult to ascertain the earliest point that some populations could have been moved off of earth."
"Yes, you have mentioned the Goa'uld System Lord Olokun could have been active on Earth as late as the fourteenth century. You are however confident that the Egyptian Stargate was buried by this point?"
"Yes. I suspect that the Asgard, or perhaps the Crystal Skull Aliens, or perhaps another race possibly the fourth race of the Ancient Alliance, the Furlings, or someone else had begun exercise pressure on the goa'uld in this region of space by that point in time."
"Da," One of the others agreed, "There are many outliers, and in particular there are the, Android planet, which pose many questions. However on a slightly less academic level we must confront the issue that in the here and now we have little way to counter a goa'uld mothership." The combined US Russian Nuclear arsenal was enormous. The third largest national nuclear arsenal were the French and as their arsenal was only about three percent the size of the US arsenal it wouldn't have done much good. Nuclear weapons designed for use in doctrine of the cold war simply were not designed to combat shielded capital ships. "We agree in principal to the US mission statement and while our participation as observers is not to dictate policy we do feel that countering the threat of Goa'uld capital ships should be regarded with utmost priority. While we do accept that the X 301 project was a step in that direction obviously you do stumble a bit before you learn to walk. We are not casting blame. I want the record to reflect we are not ascribing blame. The X 301 I am sure produced valuable insight into the Goa'uld technology, but we need more."
General Bauer cleared his throat, pulling attention towards him, "We know that the goa'uld use strategic level nuclear weapons that involve naquadah," He stated, "The problem as we discovered when Earth was attacked by Apophis," In the attack that had yielded the gliders that would eventually go into X 301, "Was not only yield of weapons but also in this case make sure they detonated properly rather than simply crumpling into Goa'uld shields. I have spoken with Teal'c as well as with his mentor Bra'tac, while the goa'uld do use nuclear weapons most of them are for saturation purposes."
"You are suggesting that against warships that this may not yield results?" The confusion was palpable.
"Not at all, I think we could build a big enough yield missile and if we could build enough of them they could defeat a Goa'uld mothership. However the goa'uld Alkesh doesn't attack using these high yield weapons. Its plasma bombs are designed to overload the matrix of the energy shield, Major Carter suggests," Bauer unnecessarily gestured to Carter seated further down the table, "this is not dissimilar to the ion cannons of the Tollans. Though, not as effective, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the ion disruption bombs weren't something that the goa'uld developed after encountering the Tollan weapons, or something similar to that."
"So you believe that defeating a goa'uld capital ship may not necessarily be the biggest bomb we can build, but one which is designed to overload their shields. You have an idea as to how to do this?"
"Yes, during the SDI there was an idea for using a bomb to pump out a directed energy weapon, a laser. It was called the Kasaba Howitzer."
"I am familiar with the concept. However, actual execution, well the space lift and material science presented major hurdles to implementation to my understanding." Various technologies from offworld had changed that, certainly space lift capacity was now much less of an issue, and material science had improved.
"Well we use naquadah now, and the resulting energy burst from that to maximize the strength of the bomb pumped laser. If my calculations are correct we are talking about not simply a massively powerful bomb by itself, but also one that should not crash into the ship's shields, and should either collapse them or significantly weaken them."
"and of course the logistical bottleneck would be that we would need to design and produce this new munition and we would need Naquadah from offworld."
Bauer shrugged.
That was the reality. The X 301 was modelled on the Goa'uld Death Glider's profile and technology. As a result while it was a better interceptor, particularly in the armament department with its beyond visual range capacity missiles, it was not equipped to fight capital ships. That also created a problem because the new Administration was going to have to find a way to fund nuclear weapons research. That was something that going to be unpopular in congress.
After a half hour about more or less lack of better options, to Bauer's smugness, they moved the topic for conversation back to the exchange of information in the galaxy at large. "It has been over a year now since the Osiris incident." Chekov remarked, "The goa'uld have not made any further comment on that?"
"No, colonel." Hammond replied. "That has not changed since the contact was concluded. We have no viable leads on Osiris since her disappearance, and quite frankly she hasn't been a priority." Daniel winced.
"You do not fear that like Hathor she may not be even now recruiting Jaffa into her ranks in order to secure herself a place of power?" Chekov sounded skeptical. It was possible. Certainly it was one of the list of things that the SGC had considered. "Alright, what about the other goa'uld. The situation continues to deteriorate across the galaxy."
"Yes, Cronus's position among the system lords has begun to degrade. According to the reports his fleet simply hasn't been able to compete against Apophis, and Heru'ur for numbers of modern hulls."
Carter cleared her throat, "Actually, we have some details, again through the Tok'ra regarding those differences. Cronus is falling behind, and resorting to the Chel'tak, but the Ha'tak Apophis took from Sokar are beginning to dwindle."
"Explain your meaning, Major." Colonel Chekov queried.
"The Tok'ra haven't been able to see any of these fights, but they suspect that the Ha'tak Apophis took after the destruction of Netu were stop gaps. They were effectively upgraded ha'tak built on standard hulls, and some of them carried cloaking devices. We've confirmed that. I think that 'Improved Ha'tak' are being used to ambush them and pick them off. Without those ships Apophis is roughly equal in strength to Cronus, or Heru'ur in technology."
"One more reason I dislike having to rely on this, paternalist dismissal from the Goa'uld."
In principle Hammond couldn't disagree. About half of the system lords were content to leave SG teams alone, whether that was legitimately because they believed their own hype, or if Thor or another Asgard had suggested they should wasn't clear. It wasn't enough clearance to act to do anything more risky than look around, and Master Bra'tac, and Teal'c had both warned against taking it for granted, but Ishkur, and Yu were far enough away that they didn't care what happened in Earth's neck of the galaxy. Others seemed content to allow SG teams to travel out of... what Doctor Jackson had described as a sort of silk road mentality on travel. Some just were happy to leave them alone because Apophis was so unpopular with the goa'uld it seemed. "What about your debrief of Colonel Zhukov and his team."
The VKS officer glanced to Chekov, who glanced to another of the officers, who met the colonel's expression. "Truthfully given things we think that it would be good to have a Russian Stargate team. I know that there are persons who would like to have Russian membership aboard the flagship team. Some even feel that four members is too few for what an Stargate team is supposed to do, that a full squad would be more appropriate."
Hammond frowned. He wasn't being blindsided with the idea. The Marine SG teams all were proper 'squad' sized elements which was why there were currently only two Marine SG teams on base going through the gate at anyone time. They were each thirteen man 'Rifle Squads'. "There has been discussion on that colonel."
"Yes, I am sure." Chekov agreed. "Obviously a compromise for such an arrangement would be to have a team partner with an Air Force team. Our use of the Zastava for our teams engaged in joint cooperation with NATO is now common enough."
"We don't just do military things Colonel Chekov." Daniel interjected this time getting a little more in the way of raised eyebrows. Hammond thought he was about to stop entirely, but merely changed tracks. "Take Major Kirensky's team for example now I know that Doctor Britsky was not a regular member of the team, but his expertise was invaluable according to log book." That seemed to mollify the Russians at least.
--
Commentary This is the first oblique reference in universe to 9-11 I did not mention the invasion of Afghanistan, but we're at that point in the timeline where that's a thing.
