GateWar Interludes
Hel'tec snorted, sending the arrogant brash Nen'tec a look that just screamed ‘you're being stupid'. How the big lump had managed to get on the ruling council of the Free Jaffa nation she didn't know…
Then again, she didn't know how she ended up on it either; she was a pilot not a leader and this political bullshit was getting on her nerves. She had little doubt it was showing, but frankly she didn't care.
She didn't think Teal'c and Bra'tac were enjoying it either but they at least were senior members and could every once in a while, tell some self-righteous prick who no doubt stayed with the system lords right to the end before proclaiming their loyalty to the Free Jaffa to shut the frak up.
“The Tau'ri have not yet started giving us the technologies we need to improve our ships and we need upgrades now! Our ships are no match for those of Maltenos, let alone Anubis and Maktenos has a far larger navy, if he decides to press us we are lost! We must take the technologies we need from the Tau'ri!”
Okay, Hel'tec grimaced, upgrade that brash and arrogant to utterly moronic…
“You wish to make an enemy of our only ally?” Bra'tac asked, calmly, “and an enemy that has proven themselves as determined and inventive fighters?”
“If they will not give us the technologies we bargained with them for, yes”
“They will provide the technologies” Teal'c replied, “but their shipyards are full. They merely await a clear slip of sufficient size”
“You lie!” Nen'tec replied, “They had such a slip, at Edonia and they used it to start another warship instead of honouring their commitment to us”
“Edonia is new” she felt obliged to point out, “and not the best defended of positions either. Would you really trust an untried and untested shipyard to rebuild our ships? We have too few to risk them”
“It is irrelevant, they should have honoured that commitment and they did not”
“I know, but I felt their reasons sound” Bra'tac replied, “the next slips they expect to come free are at Ravenbright, three of them. We will have all three and they are designed to take Ha'tacs ”
“How long do we have to wait then?” Nen'tec shouted, banging his hands on the rickety wooden table, “a month, a year?”
“Two months” Bra'tec replied.
“Two months, we could easily all be dead by then!”
“We could” she sighed, wishing she had had enough time to make a cigar run to Freedom, damn she hated being without a stash, that twin of hers had gotten her hooked, “but we wont be. Anubis is unlikely to want to attack us; he has his hands full with Maktenos and the Allies. Maktenos is too busy with Anubis and attacking us would threaten his alliance of convenience with the Tau'ri. The Loyalist cylons are practically non-existent, the Secessionists have no beef with us, neither do the Unforgiven and they are both too busy beating up on each other anyways. The other cylon groups are too small to be a threat and the Aschen couldn't get to us without us getting warning somehow and they don't seem to be interested”
She frowned at the brash old warrior, “whether you want to realise it or not, we are sitting pretty for the moment unlike the Tau'ri who just got hit by the Cylons. If I find who blocked the orders authorising reinforcements to be sent…”
She let the threat trail off, and the council all nodded agreement with the sentiment, except she noted, for Nen'tec, who paused quite perceptibly before agreeing.
Hel'tec shrugged it off, he might not do that much of it, but he was allowed to think before he replied.
“Next order of business then, Ba'al. As you know, he fled to the very borders of the galaxy with what little of his fleet that remained after the final defeat of the System Lords. His location has now been confirmed as has the disposition of his forces, ten Ha'taks, one Cheops and near five thousand Jaffa over those that crew his ships” Bra'tac glanced at each member of the council, and nodded slightly.
“The question is, do we send a punitive expedition to kill him?”
“Yes, before he can start to replace his lost ships and warriors. The forces he has now are enough to make him a threat let alone if we give him time to build up more”
It surprised Hel'tec that Nen'tec was the first to reply and she glanced at him, a little wary. He had replied reasonably, that was acting out of character, especially considering how angry he had been scant seconds before.
“I agree, but it will take a sizeable force to deal with the ships we know he has. If he has hidden his numbers or made more since this intelligence was gathered then the force will need to be larger” Teal'c pointed out.
“Well,” Nen'tec sneered, “ask your vaunted Tau'ri for assistance then, there ships are so ‘superior' after all”
“They are spread thin, engaged in a defensive war, assistance is unlikely” Teal'c replied.
“Worth asking anyways” Hel'tec said, “and start gathering a few ships together in the meantime”
“Agreed” Bra'tac replied, followed by Teal'c and the other council members and reluctantly by Nen'tec, “now, who should command this expedition?”
My first fleet command.
I had command of a fleet.
Kara I knew was jealous and shocked as hell right now; despite the distance I could feel her emotions in the back of my mind, albeit more then a little muted.
The Tau'ri had at least come through, sending the Persephone to assist us in the final destruction of the last System Lord and we would need it. I had heard of Ba'al, he was a dangerous foe, wily like a Tau'ri fox and he didn't let his arrogance overwhelm his common sense as often as the dead Lords did.
Of course, we had him outnumbered in theory but still, it was a two month trek to the location of Ba'als last refuge and a lot can change in that time. Then, we would have to wait for the much faster Persephone to catch up; the Tau'ri couldn't afford to have her doing nothing for all of our two month transit time after all.
That would make one cruiser, two Rel'tec motherships, twelve Ha'taks. Not much of an edge in warship numbers, though we did have twice as many motherships and the qualitative advantage of the Tau'ri warship, still it all rested on whether the numbers we had for Ba'als fleet were accurate and if he had made more ships or not.
I hoped not, I planned for him having done so.
Persephone joined us early by a full three days, but we were glad of it. The depredations of the Goa'uld were already beginning to show on the worlds we visited for supplies and food. It was pretty obvious somebody was busy in this area and we had little doubt as to whom.
It wasn't long before we ran into our first Goa'uld warships, a pair of Ha'taks that appeared to be sentries inside a dead system, no habitable worlds but we could scan plenty of resources as we dropped out of hyper making it a valuable resource for Ba'al should he wish to rebuild his forces.
The hostile Ha'taks saw us and the size of our force and naturally ran, no doubt to warn Ba'al of the encroaching forces but Persephone micro jumped ahead and intercepted them, assisted by her small group of F-302 fighters, delaying them just long enough for the rest of the fleet to catch up.
Seeing the strength of the force they were facing, both Ha'taks surrendered, though we did find evidence of a firefight on the bridge of one of the Ha'taks when we boarded, evidence that some of the bridge crew at least had not liked the idea of betraying their ‘God'
Some of the crew announced their allegiance to us, the rest we distributed amongst the cells aboard the rest of the fleet where they would be kept prisoner. A quick shuffling of personnel later to bring our two new warships up to near strength for crew and we entered hyperspace again, heading for the next system.
The next system had a human population and Jaffa overseers loyal to Ba'al as well as a number of mines. There were remnants of the cities of the humans scattered all across the planet, all burnt out ruins and streets covered with the bleached, stripped bones of the former inhabitants. If I was to judge, I would say that they were in the early phases of an industrial revolution when Ba'al came.
Knowing we could do nothing for the dead, I ordered the overseers killed and for aid and supplies, especially medicines to be shipped to the planet below. I hoped it would be enough, plague was ravaging the population, unsurprising considering the sheer volume of dead, but we could stay to do anymore. We would be back though.
The next system had been stripped, apparently in a great hurry and very recently. It seemed Ba'al knew we were here, good. He should worry, for the next system was where we expected him to be. We were coming for him, and we didn't intend to let him survive, let alone escape.
Naturally, Ba'al was waiting for us.
Naturally, his forces were stronger then had been reported, massing just one Cheops as had been reported, but also twenty Ha'taks, a full ten more then we had anticipated.
He had us outnumbered, twenty-one to seventeen, counting the two Ha'taks we had added to the fleet, a four ship advantage to him but we had one more mothership and the Persephone.
That being said, this would be a hard battle but as I could see it, the only real option was a direct assault, if we tried to split up and flank, Ba'al would just destroy each group individually, couldn't tell Persephone to operate independently because again, Ba'al would love the opportunity to catch the Tau'ri warship on her own and pick her off.
I ordered the fleet to form around my two motherships, making these two vessels the solid core of the formation and sent Persephone to the back with orders to dart around giving covering fire to any faltering warships, then I gave the order and the fleet charged.
What would become decisive about that battle quickly became clear, it was Ba'als numerical superiority, our larger numbers of heavies, it was quality of training.
It hadn't been liked at first, but even whilst we had still been a resistance movement and not a nation in our own right, Bra'tac had been sending Jaffa warship crews to Alpha Prime for training in Tau'ri tactics, Tau'ri ideas and best of whom, Tau'ri ideas on co-ordinated fire.
Ba'als ships each picked one of mine and opened fire, beginning the process of wearing the shields down, but mine, one ship would pick a target and all the nearest vessels would fire on the same vessel. That said, it should come as no surprise that the first ship to die was one of Ba'als, as was the second, the third and the fourth.
The fifth was one of mine and in the wake of the explosion of its reactor core another five of my Ha'taks retreated to the rear of the battleline, frantically trying to repair shattered shields. Six of Ba'als Ha'taks attempted to breakthrough and assault the wounded vessels but Persephone placed herself directly between the wounded ships and Ba'als forces, quickly joined by the Rel'tec whose name would translate as Liberty and Valour.
Persephone and the Liberty and Valour got three of the Ha'taks between them before the rest retreated back behind Ba'als battleline. Unfortunately, whilst two of my Ha'taks had rejoined the battle, the third had retreated into hyper, declaring a destroyed shield generator and three destroyed power nodes making her combat ineffective.
His Cheops moved forward then, its heavy if old weapons batteries tearing through one of my Ha'taks and forcing a second into retreat but it overexposed itself in the process and received concentrated fire from Persephone, both Rel'tecs and four Ha'taks.
Crippled and burning the mothership broke off and played no further part in the battle and now I held all the advantages, superior training and heavier warships in the form of the Rel'tecs and Persephone. Of course, that didn't make the rest of the battle academic, Ba'al still had 13 Ha'taks and they could and did cause us more damage, we lost four more Ha'taks to their eight before what appeared to be the last of Ba'als Navy surrendered.
We tried to move to assault what had to be Ba'als main world in this area of space but were forced to stop in shock well beyond the orbits of its three habitable moons.
Ba'al had built himself the solid core of a planetary defence network.
It wasn't completed, we could quite clearly see on the sensors the frantic activity that indicated construction in progress but the linchpins, the six primary satellites of the network were in place and active.
I had no doubt that Ba'al had survived and was on the surface of that world, but what could I do? My ships were damaged, several severely, and even at full strength I doubted I had ships enough to assault just one of those stations. From what my sensors could see, the nearest one alone had the firepower of five upgraded motherships and, no doubt in anticipation of an assault by the Tau'ri, appeared to have far more solid anti-fighter defences then was normal for the Goa'uld.
The bitter taste of defeat in my mouth, I ordered the retreat and we fled back through hyper to the second system we had visited, the one with the destroyed Industrial civilisation. There, I ordered repairs made and supplies taken aboard before beginning the long trek back to friendly space.
I had little doubt the reports sent ahead with Persephone would cause quite a stir.
I was quite right, the fact that Ba'al had shown such innovation was quite a shock to the council and they swiftly decided that Ba'al was thinking too much for a Goa'uld, he was making himself far more of a threat. Of course, planetary defence networks weren't unknown, but they, as a general rule of thumb, were not something the Goa'uld build and certainly not at such strength.
It made the mandate to destroy Ba'al that much more urgent, unfortunately it had taken us two months to make our way back to Free Jaffa Nation space and it would take us two months or so after we assembled the armada to make our way back to Ba'als space, that gave Ba'al at least four months to complete the network and build up some other surprises for us….
To Be Continued...