New chapter up gents! The conversation between Skara and O'Neill redux and then the history of the Tauri!
Chapter 7: Histories and Discourses
The storm that had so violently swept the surface of this world, whatever it was called seemed to have parted as swiftly as it first descended. Lasting only sixteen hours, gassing out and seemingly breaking over the mountains that lay beyond the city they now knew was called Nagada. O’Neill didn’t mind it; he didn’t mind staying here and the simple trinket Kasuf had gifted him would likely yield a treasure drove of information as soon as the boys back home finished analyzing it to say nothing of the samples of the quartz like mineral they had taken from some of the ore depositories. Assuming Jack let them have his knife, Skara and his father gave it to him. It was odd to be sentimental towards someone he’d just met but it seemed to be a recurring theme among his men. Watkins, who apparently had a great singing voice had taken to learning some of the songs the city priests chanting as the eye of the storm passed over Nagada and in exchange he sang some of the old Latin litanies, devout a catholic as he was it seemed he didn’t mind an exchange of faith-based hymns. Lahm had fallen asleep some hours ago after she had spent most of the night before helping their healers attend minor wounds and learning all she could about their herbs and medicine and showing them a few tricks, she picked up when she worked for a chiropractor while in med school. She’d fallen asleep with the girl with the odd mix of neanderthal and human features on her lap and Jack spent the evening smoking and drinking with Skara and Kasuf, none of them could speak the same language and yet much passed between them all the same. He’d nearly ruined that when Skara made a grab for his M27 but the look of terror and grief in Jack’s eyes caused Skara to nearly bolt from the room long before Jack had moved to slap it away.
Kasuf had admonished his son, Jack felt bad about seeing the boy get chewed out, but they had remained together for another hour or so before Kasuf finally excused himself. No one knew where Jackson had gone, he vanished with Shau’re and to who knew where after the ritual washing. “Figures” he muttered, noticing Kowalski had fallen asleep next to Lil’Bit and O’Neill couldn’t tell which was snoring louder and when he kicked Kowalski awake the weird space giraffe Muppet groaned in protest in unison with his major. “Found a girlfriend huh Kowalski.”
The man smirked “She minds me” the more Jack stayed the more he came out of his shell and the tall, muscular stoic was replaced by someone who sounded more like an eighties action hero, reluctant or otherwise. Sarcastic, funny, all too happy to admit he had no fucking clue what they were talking about half the time. “Have you seen Jackson?” Kowalski asked as he yawned and cracked his back, forcing O’Neill to suppress the urge to make a crack about him being married to that beast. “No, I was going to ask you the same thing” O’Neill remarked.
He’d found Daniel’s Jacket but little in the way of the man and when Kowalski offered to go looking for him Jack shook his head. “This city’s big enough it would take hours, better we talk to one of the kids to see if they’ve heard anything.”
“Heh talk.” Kowalski remarked. They communicated well enough and some of them seemed to even be able to understand Jackson albeit every four or so words, but they seemed to get most done because Skara, Shau’re and kadra were incredibly intuitive and smart as whips. So it was off to the teens, followed by a sleepy Lil’Bit who bounded along easily to his paddock with the other beasts they found out were called Mastages. The enclosure where the strange alien beasts were kept reminding O’Neill of a scene out of Jurassic Park, as they transitioned underground to a large garden area with cool water and fish and a bunch of mastages lazing in the surprisingly humid climate given how arid and plainlike the above was.
Skara was with a group of boys, showing off the lighter O’Neill had given him after the incident with the gun, the one that looked more caveman than man (Nebeh or Nebehua or something O’Neill couldn’t pronounce so he just called him lumpy on account of the shape of his head).
“Hey kids!” O’Neill called out, standing straight with his arms folded behind his back, looking every bit the muscular jock, he’d been in high school and the epitome of Marine training he was. O’Neill felt a sense of pride in Skara when he knew instinctively to get the little shits to form rank and then stood at attention in front of them yet in a position inferior to him. -What a damn fine soldier he’d make- Jack thought and then felt a twinge of regret, Sandra wanted to go into the air force whereas Sasha was probably going to be a turbo nerd like Jackson or that maniac Carter. How could he encourage her or think such thoughts about the desert prince when the memory of Charlie’s bloody body was so fresh in his mind? Shaking himself from his darker thoughts he prowled back and forth as his old DI used to do. “Alright fuckers, I’m looking for Jackson, have you seen him? The long haired dude?” he said gesturing to his head which they misinterpreted as a salute “No..No..wait..hrmm hey Kowalski do you think the word Dweeb means anything to these kids?”
“No, but I’d say Jackson’s more a dork than a dweeb.”
O’Neill rolled his eyes “Thanks for the help Kowalski” he muttered turning to gaze at the kids “the guy sneezes…Man I’m on planet ex looking for a dweb…who sneezes and”
Skara caught it “ehghhgh..egh..ahhh AHH! BWAH..BWAH BWAH BWAH”
“Yess!! Exactly!” O’Neill called “Chicken man!”
“Shiken’mayn!” Skara nodded and rounded on the chorus of clucks coming from the other kids who all stopped except for lumpy who needed a kick to the pants. -Maybe if we establish a permanent presence on this shithole, I’ll ask for a command assignment- O’Neill thought and he couldn’t believe that he was even thinking it. A permanent presence on another god damn planet close to the galactic core. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have good relations with these people given the fact that the mineral they were mining was the same quartz like weird substance the Stargate was partially built from. Skara approached tentatively, taking the jacket and shoving it into Lil’Bits face as the creature sucked greedily from some water gathering vines.
Lil’Bit let out a roar of protest then bolted rushing not up the stairs but further into the labyrinth below the city.
They had run behind the fast-moving Mastage for what felt like hours though O’Neill guessed it had only been something like five or six minutes. It had amazed him how swift it was and how lithe it could be. There was a moment where they passed from garden soil to sand and then from sand towards an arched doorway flanked by two statues of golden men with the heads of cobras that stood beneath an arch whose top was decorated with the eye of Ra. Several of the children hesitated, with Skara shaking his head and gesturing to the doorway which to their horror had been open.
“You don’t like this place?” The Colonel asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Think its forbidden to them sir” Kowalski added “I get the impression this is what remains of the original settlement the walls were here to protect” It was Lahm’s voice, she looked half asleep, but she was remembering something Jackson had said, that he believed this place had been built atop something. She nodded reassuringly to Skara, her dark hair falling over eyes that Kowalski found remarkably beautiful. “We can go and you can remain” she said gesturing to herself and the Colonel and pointing ahead, then tapping his chest and pointing to the ground.
To everyone’s surprise it was Lumpy who puffed his chest and began to saunter forward towards the door and not to be outdone by the groups beloved spaz, Skara proudly marched forward.
And so, Colonel O’Neill, Major Kowalski and ensign Lahm and O’Neill’s band of junior Marines made their way through the great doorway and through a corridor with walls that looked to be solid gold and filled with hieroglyphs! Writing! No wonder this place was declared off limits if writing in a scriptural or mythical sense was banned (O’Neill agreed with Jackson, other topics had to be acceptable to write down or else none of what they saw above would be possible). From there, it was into a great hall of some kind where they heard the voices of Jackson and presumably Shau’re echoing from another hallway. “Good acoustics” O’Neill remarked.
“I hope they aren’t having sex, we’ve no idea the bugs these people have” Lahm muttered dejectedly. She had figured whatever local bacteria or viruses that did exist weren’t all that different from their own and while the danger of so many millennia of isolation was always present, the fact that neither her team nor anyone here had erupted in sores or pox or anything else seemed to suggest whatever was here their immune systems could handle it (And theirs could handle what the Stargate team brought, or so she hoped). “visa versa as well, we could kill these people without meaning too. If we’re going to make a habit of this Colonel, we need to establish some kind of protocol.”
“Save it.” O’Neill remarked as they grew close enough to see the light of those artificial torches and he saw both Jackson and Shau’re looking disheveled, a thing that made him shake his head. -First base only dumbass- he thought. As they got closer he realized they sitting in front of an enormous mural that would have made a renaissance artist proud. He didn’t quite have time to stop and take it in however as he realized they were both speaking the same language.
“Thought you couldn’t speak their dialect.”
“Well, like any language theirs evolved over time and while I speak ancient Egyptian that language was a knock off of their original tongue and”
“Jackson, I asked why you’re speaking moon babble not a cure for insomnia” O’Neill remarked with a semi amused glint in his eyes. Much as he’d been annoyed with Jackson hours ago, the sheer speed at which he learned space Egyptian was well, mind boggling.
“I just had to learn how to pronounce it and then figure out their slang, which I’m still doing but yes! I do now”
“You did that between” he looked down at Shau’re who smiled sheepishly at him. “exertion”
Jackson turned red “I, it wasn’t..We just kissed and stuff” he murmured looking younger than Shau’re suddenly rather than a few years older than her. Kowalski whistling at the mural distracted O’Neill from any further teasing, and he gestured towards the wall “Doctor Jackson, if you’d be so kind?”
Grateful for the reprieve he turned and eyeballed the mural, recalling what he’d just translated hours earlier. “It says a terrible war raged in across the heavens, apparently Ra is or was some sort of High King or Emperor. His people won but the cost of that victory was terrible. Maimed, exhausted and depleted Ra roamed the stars searching for a way to cheat death both for his people and himself. Apparently, the body he was in was failing.”
“Body he was in?” Lahm asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, its not clear on that. There is a word here Goa’uld “Children of light” or Child of light, it’s almost interchangeable with the concept of a living Kami or with Ka and Pharaoh maybe, I’m not sure. Any way it delineates between Ra and this” he gestured towards a figure that looked pained, mad and desperate but also like the typical image of a Roswell gray.
“It seems like, Ra’s whole race was pushed to the brink of annihilation even though they won and Ra himself was grievously injured. Anyway, his ship the Mesektet reached a world filled with life and populated by many peoples, our world. It says, as the night turned into day the people of the valley and caves ran, all but one who looked up into the sky with curious eyes. He called to Ra who possessed him, a parasite taking a new host” Jackson walked along the wall touching different hieroglyphs and depictions. “He discovered that with all his powers and his technology he could use these people to breathe new life into his civilization. More so, he could extend their lifespans indefinately! They were taken here I suppose and made to work the mines. The mineral is clearly the building block of his entire civilization.”
“
Oh clearly” Jack muttered, his eyes narrowing at the implications here. His mind wandered back to the night of the storm and the weird lightshow they caught in the distance. “So, we walked into the king of space’s personal mining world” he muttered, just great. -Looks like I won’t be going home or getting that assignment- he thought bitterly, then again, he supposed he could just ride Lil’Bit back to the village and seek exile there. The thought of never seeing his daughters again made him enraged.
How the hell could I have agreed to this damn mission?!
Major Makepeace had supposedly volunteered but was turned down, stupid, stupid! If he had just refused.
“Jackson! Come quick!” Kowalski’s voice echoed and the Colonel realized both her and Lahm had vanished from the room down into another. This one, was a room that was filled with empty walls save for an immense cartouche with. “Is that your legend Jackson?”
“Yes it is!” Jackson confirmed enthusiastically “I can do it! We can go home and touch base and report what we’ve seen here. Sir, this is worth a permanent presence here.”
-Fuck that- O’Neill wanted to say “Jackson, that wall implies this place belongs to some Darth Vader type.”
“Palpatine”
“Nerd”
“Anyway! Maybe, maybe not. Colonel it’s been forty thousand years at a minimum since this was inscribed here. There’s a chance his abduction of so many ancient humans and other hominids didn’t really do anything to help his kind recover. This could truly be the last outpost and these guys are mining for a dead civilization!”
“And ya don’t think they would have realized something was up when no one came by to pick up their space rocks?!”
“Well, Shau’re says they just send it through the Stargate” Jackson remarked rubbing the back of his head, evidently, he’d planned this conversation the clever little shit. “I asked her if anyone had ever come through the gate or well, landed a space ship” he laughed there and then grinned “Well I used the term sky boat, I’m not sure if..but anyway she says there hasn’t been a visitation in at least a century if not longer. Colonel, I think we’re in the clear, we’re left with more questions than answers maybe but we’re in the clear.”
“You sure about that Jackson?” The Colonel asked.
For a moment Doctor Daniel Jackson hesitated, searching the chiseled face of Colonel O’Neill, one that was inscrutable even when he was being sarcastic and informal. There seemed to be something akin to pleading in his eyes, what the hell was going on in that head of his? “I can’t say one hundred percent for certain, but everything we’ve seen so far suggests a people blossoming in the ruins of a civilization, long gone just going through the motions.”
For an interminable second The Colonel seemed to weigh his options before nodding. “Then we’re leaving.”