Chapter Twelve

Ra was extremely frustrated. No, frustrated was not even close to describing how angry he was at the moment. Ra was seething with pure rage, he had already executed dozens of Jaffa for incompetence, but it did little but to momentarily soothe him. A Tel'Tak had been stolen right under his nose. Sure it was only a lowly Tel'Tak, he had countless numbers of them but it had been stolen right under his nose, it was a sign of weakness.

He had been personally aboard a Ha'Tak of that fleet and had not noticed anything amiss, among the fleet what was but one ship, his sensors had not even detected anything. The ship had been there one moment then gone the next, even his best scientists could not find anything. Did one of his rivals on the System Lord council have better shielding technology then himself.

If they did then that meant war, he lived for war, he loved it but not when the enemy had better technology them himself, that was why he did not attack the Asgard, it would be foolish and he was no idiot. The Asgard,... what if they were the ones responsible, they had superior cloaking technology than any advanced race they had encountered so far.

Perhaps the Asgard had broken the non-aggression pact and covertly stolen his ship but it made no sense, it was only a Tel'Tak of no value, no secret information on it, no Goa'uld onboard and only Jaffa of lowly birth. No, he dismissed the Asgard idea, they were too cunning for that, unless they stole it for no reason other than to make him look weak to his rivals and possibly destabilise the Goa'uld Empire. Now that would make more sense or maybe even one of his rivals found an old Ancient outpost.

The Tok'ra could also be responsible, this smelled like a plan the cowards would do. If only he could engage them in an open fight instead of this espionage they so loved. He had crushed Tok'ra bases in the past under the heel of his Jaffa but each time it was to no avail as they kept on with their operations.

Ra did not like this, no idea of what had happened and whom to blame, in front of his Jaffa and his subordinate Goa'uld he showed no weakness but in his own personal chambers he was anything but calm. He had already destroyed the room, tables, chairs and anything within reach was smashed and shattered. It did not matter whom had taken the damn blasted ship. To all his enemies it showed weakness, the unknown enemy had chummed the waters with blood and the System Lords would come to feast like the sharks that they were, he had no doubts about it.

War would be coming soon and the political landscape would never be the same, he had little doubt with his superior forces he would prevail but at what cost. If Ra had known how much the oncoming war would cost him then he might have actually thought of negotiating, an nearly unknown thing to a Goa'uld but they were spineless and anything to save their own snake lives was worth it to them.

The following day Ra's forces were on full alert, being assembled on all his planets, marshalling for the war and the most likely pre emptive strikes. He did not notify his vassals though, they were riddled with spies and who knows how many Tok'ra were among them. He was sure that whomever the enemy was they could not match his forces, even without the help of his vassals, such weaklings that they were. Yes, his vassals, that is whom he would attack first, take their domains for himself, why only receive half the goods when he could take everything from them. Now he had a valid Casus Belli to amass his troops and ships, attack his vassals, take what is rightfully his and then move onto this unknown enemy.

As this was going on Lazarus was busy governing his planets, setting up improvements for his populace, unknown to the hornets nest he had kicked open. Lazarus had not even started on improving the captured ships yet, he was more focused on setting up a government and bureaucratic system which takes a lot of groundwork to achieve. Setting up the schools for example was troublesome, the boys learnt trades from their fathers and the girls took up home making from their mothers, not a good system. They just did not understand the problem, why change the tradition that has worked as far back as they remember but they would for their God, it was just making it more difficult.

He did have some basic security precautions made up though, an energy iris on the gates for one, he forbade any gate travel until he could train them on how to operate the iris safely and build military facilities around the stargates. For now he was having the ships transport any goods the planets needed, for such backwater planets though they were mostly self sustainable, that's the good thing about medieval era agrarian societies.

He wanted to keep these core planets of his secret for as long as he could, build them up, train his people in the ways of ways of the Ustrians, he had more than enough information of them and their teachings from Xerxes. He had the replicators in Jaffa form currently building more modern housings, apartments, capable of housing hundreds with indoor plumbing and heating were being set up in specially marked areas. Areas with room to expand. They had already build the military facilities he had asked for, very fast efficient workers they were. As soon as the new military buildings had been done the awestruck Jaffa he had conscripted were already heading inside to unpack and start their new training, they were fresh and eager to learn the new methods of war from their God King Lazarus.

The replicators that looked like Jaffa but were incredibly fast builders. They had entire apartments complexes going up in hours, swarming the building sites like ants, luckily the locals were kept away from good eyesight range or it would have looked unnatural to them. The housings were just the first plans he had in the works. By the time he comes back from exploring Earth his planets should be nearly reaching an contemporary 21st century city with plumbing, housing, schools, public transport etc. It was one thing to build all of that but his replicators still had to teach all the humans and Jaffa how to run themselves, he could not be on hand to make every decision. That would take years to come up with an effective system of government that was free of his replicators and himself. Sure he would have executive command to overrule any decision but he wanted to only have to command planetary governors, a council of governors, elected from the people, not a round table council though, more like a viking long table with himself in the seat of authority.

As the days went on he got closer and closer to his leaving date, his day to fly off and explore Earth, the Earth of legend, home of the legendary Tauri. He was getting excited just thinking about it. Each day he awoke to new reports, first the apartments on the horizon, next the hospitals and schools, each equipped with the best technology available from the ship. Already his people were healthier, the hospital was curing and healing the sick at all hours.

Ra'nan was also doing amazing in the new military regime, head of his class in every subject,it was early days but if he kept it up he would sure be the military leader of this planet. He was like a sponge soaking up the new methods and new weapons. Due to the rate of expansion he had already commissioned another two hundred replicators to start the slower advancements of his other planets. Luckily the scans of this planet had shown a small amount of Neutronium so he had enough to produce at least another thousand Ustrian human form replicators. It was surprising but he was not going to think too hard about it, he was not looking this gift horse in the mouth.

His people did not know what to make of all the changes, one of the worst things for them to swallow was making humans equal to Jaffa, no more slaves. Lazarus was very serious about that issue, no slaves. For the moment he had the humans living away from the Jaffa in their own apartments, as long as they were not killing each other he was happy. When he leaves on the trip he had orders for the desegregation so that when he came back human and Jaffa would be living, working and learning together and maybe even marrying, it was a far fetched idea but he still wanted to start trying to smooth over the hundreds and hundreds of years of slavery.

He had rough plans of having the Xerxes fly over the planets and raining down nanites. They would fall down on his populace and find their way into the brains and merge with them. His people would not notice anything was amiss, they would just day by day get smarter,more knowledgeable, more accepting of the changes and even more useful to his little domain. It would not replace the need to learn but it would greatly help, it would cut years and years off schooling and training.

He was not sure Jaffa and humans could interbreed though, the issue had never come up in his studies at the Empire's schools and the Ustrians databases were coming up empty on that as they had never encountered the Goa'uld. Surprisingly the Goa'uld history he had access to from the temple and the ships had no knowledge on the subject either, it appeared to be a taboo issue, lying with a human would be like lying with a pet. A disgusting thing was what the Jaffa were taught by the hypocritical Goa'uld who lay with humans whenever the mood struck them.