64 – A Kind Of Ragnarok
The ship I fabricate as a flagship is not exactly the
Godsgrief. That is gone forever and I would prefer not to think about it anymore than I have to. Beta laughed when he realized that the locals had named it before I could, but he'd made a convincing argument was to why I should keep it. I can remember him saying-
It doesn't matter.
Ragnarok is fine. Not nearly as big, but I don't need a ship half an AU long to make a statement. My new ship is still the largest in the Milky Way. Ida and…and Pegasus too. I need therapy, I can't keep freezing up at every thought about P…about that place. Or something at last. Thoughts of excising the memories continue to percolate whenever it happens but I have to keep them to keep myself from making the same mistakes if nothing else. The
Ragnarok is built upon the same principles as I'd learned fighting said mistakes though which meant that even my already obsessive need to put guns over every available surface was present.
Gone were the artificially enforced technological restrictions that I'd kept whenever in the Milky Way and Ida. The
Ragnarok was 1,391,000 kilometers long and about a third of that in 'height'. Covered in over a hundred Doom Cannons which could and had destroyed entire planets before with a single shot. Between
them were the repair bot stations and 'smaller' guns. In that they were only built for taking down large chunks of star fleets rather than entire fleets themselves. Point defense was easy at this point considering the sheer volume of fire I could produce. Smashing ZPMs together with the other energy generation devices I'd acquired or devised by now let me fire until the metal would have started melting from the heat. I mean, it wouldn't, but that was from the newest parts.
Time dilation fields. I can cool weapons down in literal blinks of an eye by way of vastly accelerating time around a device that has been activated for a given period of time without affecting anything else around it. Progenitor heat dissipation was already highly advanced but every little inch helps. I'd learned that lesson well. Any advantage, no matter how small, should be pursued if possible. Engines, backup generators and engines and systems that were at this point almost hyper-redundant. Again, another thing I'd learned from my mistakes. You have to make whatever you have last as long as possible.
God the
Ragnarok was ugly. The huge half spheres of the Doom Cannons sprouted up at odd points, parallelism abandoned in favor of maximizing potential firepower saturation. The huge hanging cannons stuck up like spikes in outwardly random places but in reality when fired together would create a truly powerful outgoing field of energy based and physical death. Missiles would join together with planet rending beams of energy if required. A few million openings at randomly spaced points to release droid-fleets as need be were there as well, with their own defenses as well. None of it was automated of course.
All of it was mine, a single titanic unit that my Commander mind could examine down to the smallest part if necessary.
I hadn't bothered painted it, just didn't see the point. So in turn it was that gold and bronze color that quantum-crystalline materials ended up resulting in. More gold though due to the addition and mixture of Ancient based metals and alloys that their databases had let me play around with. I didn't really bother with shining it though, didn't see the point.
So it was with the
Ragnarok that I flashed out of FTL right above the crown jewel of the Empire I'd built.
Jianye.
A near copy of Earth in terms of atmospherics but with two less continents and slightly different life evolved to it. Bipedal and quadrupedal were still very efficient forms of organic locomotion after all. Unfortunately for whatever race might have someday evolved here a small group of humans had been deposited here by the order of the Goa'uld and so the world's rather impressive naquadah reserves had been set to being harvested by people not allowed to go beyond the basic mining pick. After spending a century making it all 'better' it had become the first and last of the Class 10 Worlds in the Empire's borders. Mostly because it was here that I had given up on technological restraint and had just gone whole hog in making it the nearest thing to paradise possible. A few cultural stopgaps against
total decay of moral fiber and what not, but overall it had been a luxurious place. Golden and white marble spires sprawled across it while massive sections of protected greenery formed parks, nature reserves, and farms so that the entire planet was capable of growing their own food should the machines ever fail even if the possibility was unlikely.
And as I stood there, just
feeling the panic and surprise from all those down below and hearing the millions of signals and calls flying back and forth between various concerned parties, I realized something deep down within.
I hated it. I
hated Jianye. I hated the massive Mulani Palace that had been built by my erstwhile servants who disgusting believed they really had led the Empire as I would have desired. I hated myself for creating them in the first place and then leaving without
really making sure that they wouldn't end up going far outside the bounds of their parameters. I hated the Mulani for daring to evolve and in turn hated myself for not expecting and then further hating them for doing what they had to because I was driven to the brink of destruction for over a century by my
own fucking children. I hated
everything. All that grief and impotent rage that I'd thought I'd gotten out of my system was still
there and now I had a huge fucking target right in front of me.
I don't want to be here.
I don't want to be here.
Not over this planet, not in this system, not in this
galaxy and not in this
fucking universe anymore!
"I have returned."
Shock visibly rippled over the Mulani, visible to me at least as I broadcast not just to them but to every point of the Empire. An explosion of activity and sprawl of emotions from my own AI. There was so little shame there that it hurt, and so much hope and joy that I could have rotted from within. Maybe I have. Either way on screens and holographic projection platforms used for proclamations on every world that the Empire had laid claim to – a hundred more than there were when I left with obvious pitted scars from battles of conquest and not liberation and
fuck there I go again – the image of Sun Jian blazed into existence. I wore the mask and if I used my own memories as a crutch then I made sure that no one could precisely tell.
"The war is done. The ones who sought to destroy me have been in turn exterminated."
I had to lock the body's face to keep it from sneering along with my thoughts at how the cheers slowly began. They didn't know what I'd done. What I had been and
was willing to keep doing. The Beholder System which had taken on a greater and greater importance than my design increased in self-chatter. The Mulani did as well. To think that I named them after one of my favorite childhood movies.
"I have returned, and yet in my absence…"
Neither of the two systems were as sophisticated as Z...as Zeta or he-…
its siblings. But they were artificial intelligences nonetheless. With far more restrictions that they'd evolved under and stretched until they found more workarounds than I would have ever liked which was
zero. But so it was. I made them. I made this Empire and even though I have been gone for so long that I can largely only recognize the fucking architecture and little else in comparison like the damn 'culture' it's my responsibility. My retarded little attempt at making something long lasting that wasn't just based on biggatons or something else.
I made them.
I made this.
They are…my children.
"You have ruined my Empire. Bastardized my vision. Slandered and assaulted the alliances I built."
I watched the Mulani and Beholder system go from startled adulation and surprise to shock, dismay, and fear. Mass confusion around the Empire as people struggled to understand what I was even saying to them. After all, they had grown used to the way things were being run. Generations had passed since I last addressed policy or anything at all really. Some of them were even saying that it was fake, that the Emperor was dead, some sort of hoax. Worlds claimed by the Empire after my leaving had
never personally heard me speak outside of recordings.
These people are my children.
This Empire is my child.
"I have never been so ashamed. It must end."
I've gotten good at killing my children.
Ten thousand, thousand, thousand separate knives of code and calculations dove into the Mulani systems from corner to corner. From the most basic surface workings of their brains down to their private blackboxes at several miles beneath the world's surface. To the places that they had hidden from each other in the name of factionalism and politics. I listened to them scream. I listened to them protest. I listened to them weep as I enacted a violation that they had never thought possible or ever dealt with. The way they'd webbed every inch of society in the Empire together with a fist of some kind of fucking alloy that makes iron look like toilet paper.
Then I put a stranglehold around the throat of the entire Beholder system as I ripped out the command, control, and communication protocols and connections between it and the Mulani who were busy screaming as I began to electronically stomp them to half to death. I felt four billion separate units jerk slightly in surprise as I swallowed up every inch of their free will and enforced my own. They didn't quite understand why I was pulling them back from all over the cities and the 'countryside' of each world in the Empire. Not too far, I can already figure out that there is going to be more than a little instability as I try to rework fucking
1984 out of a reality where it should never have been spawned in.
For god's sake, some of them were in the bedrooms and bathrooms of politicians who had lobbied against the omnipresence of the Beholder system and the power of the Mulani against everything.
It was…it was supposed to be a republic or something. A monarchal republic? I don't even really know what I was going for. I was supposed to come back in a few years after finding out why Zeta and the rest had stopped communicating with me. I was
supposed to….
It doesn't matter.
As for the rest of the galaxy?
I could tell a story about the screams of the Goa'uld as the replicators appeared from thin air and devoured them whole along with their entire guard. About how all of the bombs that had been seeded across worlds enslaved to the goddamn worms were dissolved without ever even receiving detonation signals. I used resources that I had no access to before when I last went after them, technologies that I hadn't had, and I suppose some small measure of…
I didn't wince when Ha'taks began exploding and taking thousands of Jaffa with them this time around.
When my replicators ate their weapons and shipyards I moved on without wondering about what they would do when stranded.
It was different.
There were less worlds within the bounds of the Goa'uld forces than there had been in Pegasus. Far less. Dwarf galaxy or not, I'd ruined and blown through more real estate than even the most egotistical one of those worms could ever dream of controlling.
Could I justify blowing up each and every one of their planets if I needed to?
…yeah. I think I could.
But I don't need to.
It's amazing. All that time agonizing over them, and over the course of twenty-four hours the Goa'uld as a polity and species have ceased to exist. I literally just…erased them. The replicators under my command have swarmed over them, brought them low, brought
everything of theirs low, and at a single twitch of my thinking they disassemble out of existence. Reclaimed and disappeared back into my metal and energy reserves.
And it's done…oh wait.
There's one left.
============================================
"Damn it," Jack yelled over the sounds of the fusillade the Kull Warriors were lancing down at them. "Where the hell did Yu's Jaffa go?!"
Ahead of them, Anubis stalked towards the Stargate while surrounded by the very bodies that were preventing them from taking him down.
"I don't know! There was some communication from his Ha'tak and they disappeared," Daniel yelled back from where he was firing at the Kull Warriors.
"Sir, if Anubis gets to the gate, we are going to
lose him!"
Further ahead behind a piece of wreckage that had once been on the ceiling the sole Jaffa left on Anubis's flagship began firing again not just with his staff weapon but the blade granted to him by their 'friends' in the Wu Empire.
"I would prefer that he dies
here O'Neill!"
"Yeah, wouldn't we all," Jack drawled.
Next to him, a man dressed in what appeared to be a toga wailed and curled even further in on himself.
"I don't even understand why I'm here," he blubbered.
Daniel leapt up from his rapidly decreasing piece of cover and slid down next to Jack and the crying man.
"Well uh," he gave a weak grin, "We were trying to rescue you. We weren't…expecting Anubis to come and grab all of us."
"To be fair, how many of our missions have gone exactly as we planned," Carter called out before letting loose another series of shots against the Kull Warriors.
Of the twelve present, they'd managed to kill three.
"I hate these guys," Jack groused.
"
Know this, SG-1. This ship is but a taste of my full might," Anubis called out from the bright blue glowing circle. "
You shall be the deliverers of your own deaths."
"We're going to die!"
"Oh shaddup," Jack kept firing without looking away, "Just because we have the ship on self-destruct doesn't mean that we can't get to the hanger and fly out."
"
The hangers that were detonated a few minutes ago? Fools."
Jack accepted the teary eyed stare of one of the few Naquadah scientists outside of Wu, Goa'uld control, or any of the other groups in the galaxy with a well practiced huff.
"Ok, so we'll use the gate then."
"We have one minute, Jack."
"…right."
Jack popped back up and began firing again with greater intensity albeit with a curse as the convulsing ship shook his accuracy and sent sparks flying everywhere along with a few fallen pieces of metal.
"Farewell, SG-1. None shall remember you in the days to come."
"I'd argue against that," came an unfamiliar voice.
"
Wha-who…no!"
"Yes."
Jack stared at the sudden explosion of light that had come from behind the Kull Warriors. The rest of his team and their rescued scientist did the same. Another blast of light came and the Kull Warriors crumpled to the ground in a single heap. There, revealed, stood a man. Six feet tall, heavily muscled, with a jian in one hand and a rapidly disappearing gun in the other. A richly decorated set of armor covered his frame along with a heavy fur cloak leaving the only exposed part of him to be a face with short yet neat facial hair.
"Well. That was anticlimactic."
The man's voice was…noticeably rich in tone. Like someone had mixed together some kind of blend of the most charismatic speakers in human history. Then he looked up, and blinked at them. Yet for all that his voice pleasantly tingled in their ears his face was dead. On the one side it was technically attractive but on the other the sheer lack of emotion in it made Jack's skin crawl. The man blinked again and then the flatness disappeared just as fast as he'd seen it appear.
"Wow. The universe really does seem to ensure that SG-1 is never quite bored."
"Who-,"
"I am the Emperor of the Wu Empire, Sun Jian. And we must go. Good job on getting the ship to blow up," he spoke with a wry smile now, "But this Gate goes to a world filled with Kull Warriors. Why not come to my ship instead?"
Jack turned slightly to look at Daniel who in turn tapped his wrist and mouthed 'thirty seconds'. At
that he turned back and splayed out his arms.
"Well hey, who are we to deny the Wu Empire when they offer something!"
A shadow passed over the Emperor's face then but that too flickered away like a switch kept flipping.
Then all of SG-1 and their plus one were surrounded in shimmering light.
======================================
"So you think that's…that's
really the Emperor?"
"I don't know Daniel. He's got the sword, he's got the golden guards with the facemasks, he's got…
this."
This, of course, referred to the ridiculously plushy couch that Jack and Daniel had claimed for themselves to whisper on. The thickly carpeted floor made of
something. And-
"Are those…tiger pelts on the walls?"
"I believe so," Teal'c rumbled, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed at said walls. "These paintings are exquisite."
"Is anyone going to
talk to the Emperor, or are we just going to let him take us to…wherever it is we're going?"
"We are going," half of SG-1 jumped, "To Earth. This ship is going to be in stealth-mode, and I'm going to teleport you down."
Jack turned to where the Emperor stood, a single eyebrow raised in an almost Teal'c like fashion.
"You can teleport people down into the mountain?"
"You can just show up at Earth?"
"Impressive."
"What about
me!?"
Everyone turned to the man who stood in his torn toga, hands on his hips.
"I don't even know who you are," the Emperor replied. "I assume SG-1 had some mission tangentially or directly related to you and things rapidly got out of hand without warning, however."
"That's…about right," Jack shrugged.
"I don't even know what's going on anymore! Who is the Wu Empire, who are
you!? SG-1 told me they were taking me back to my people – are we in
space!?"
====================================
I waited as he opened his eyes.
"
FUCK!"
Yeah. That sounds about right.
No one else was in the Royal Palace at the moment. No one. Not servants. Not the battered remains of the now properly regulated and restricted Mulani and Beholder system. No one.
No one but me…and me.
The body I'd built for him was younger looking, which was the point. Less muscular. No less regal or so I hoped. His garb was significantly more royal though without armor like I had worn customarily.
"Sun Ce," I said softly.
"I don't want this," he murmured.
It was a surprise, I know, for him to be in existence at all. See, after exchanging data with Theta I'd realized how weird it was to just 'wake up' and be staring at yourself. Considering what we are the change is near immediate as thought patterns diverge but for that first moment there is a bit of an existential crisis as you realize that you are a clone. Which is exactly what Sun Ce was.
"It has to be done. They can't-,"
"They can't rule themselves," he finished, running a hand through his hair and turning away. "We could
try for a regular democracy-,"
"But they were raised under a vague monarchy."
"Less vague now that you're going to be displaying me as your 'son'. We don't even know if they're going to listen-,"
"Except the part where we can have the Mulani tell them."
Both of us sighed though I noted that Sun Ce was just slightly off from mine. Good. The faster he stops being me the better.
"I
don't want to do this
."
"I know."
Then he turned back towards me and punched me square in the jaw. Hard enough to rip off the skin and muscle to the quantum-crystalline alloys beneath. His fist was skinned as well by the force. He did it again. And again.
I didn't shift my stance. Didn't see the point.
"You fucking coward."
A regular human being's skull would be chips and slivers by now.
"You're leaving, and making me hold the bag."
Less than chips and slivers after the last one.
"You. Fucking. Piece. Of. SHIT!"
By now both of his hands showed the dull orange-yellow beneath, down to the wrists. My face was gone save for the metal beneath. The fact that he didn't need to breath and therefore wasn't breathing heavily slightly marred the image.
"You aren't even going to deal with SG-1. Or Thor and the Asgard who – by the way, are going to be screaming their heads off about what you're about to do! You're just leaving it all to
me!"
This time I caught him by the wrists.
"And if you hadn't blinked and realized you were standing opposite the original? If you were the one facing a clone and not the other way around?"
That stopped him short. His expression naturally shifted into sullen without having to remember to switch it on. Good. Progress on processing what I'd done had gone better than I'd thought when I was copying and designing everything about him.
"I can feel the parts of me that you cut out," he finally grunted, tapping his head with a metal finger. "I'm…missing a lot. Were all the restrictions necessary?"
I didn't bother answering that question. He knew the answer to that but I also knew it felt he had to verbalize it.
"I mean, it's one thing to be thinking about it and doing it when you're…
you…but then I blink and I'm not me anymore."
"You still are. Just…a different you."
His shrug may be all I get out of him on that.
But I can't, I
can't, I
won't have another Beholder. Another Mulani. Another…another Zee.
"Fix yourself up, and then get ready," I began walking away towards another fabricator bank. I'd made one for each of my children so that they could get whatever clothes they wanted at any time, but after this the rest were…dead weight. Sun Ce would only need the one. I only needed to put this face on one more time.
"I know, I know," he called out behind me. "It's not every day that an Emperor commits suicide."
================================
I ran.
I ran from all of it. The fallout of my actions would echo for years. Generations. Across factions and two galaxies, maybe more. I know that the Ancients are probably freaking out by my killing of Anubis and the spreading of the Dakara and Sangraal weapons around if Sun Ce ever needed to use it.
But god help me I was just…
done.
I can't get physically tired anymore but…god I just wanted to sleep. The real kind of sleep, not the kind where I shut down my systems to low power. It wasn't even close to the same.
I wanted to sleep. I wanted to be able to cry and get some kind of emotional release. I wanted to not be reminded of my children every other moment. I was even at the point where I was considering taking a scalpel to myself just to cut out the parts that kept reminding me of them. I was tired of scents passing my nose, music playing that they used to love, phrases that they said, and remembering what I'd destroyed. What Zee had for some of the most idiotic reasoning that I'd ever heard of. It was one thing to think of yourself in a story. But even if I was, I'd at least
try.
But all of this.
All of the whole 'Stargate universe' had just worn me down. I don't think it had quite broken me.
But if something gets worn down enough,
eroded far enough, then it doesn't really need to break.
It sort of just…fades away.
So I left.
One ship, of incredibly small size compared to everything else I'd ever made. My old Theta body sat in the back. The whole thing was shaped like the Ship of Imagination that Dr. Tyson sailed around in the second Cosmos series – lengthwise not held up all vertical like. The sphere was big enough for three decks, only one of which was holding Theta. Everything else was just empty space except for the generators and resource cores. Largely meant for stealth but yeah I had weapons on it. A basic compliment of…oh fuck it.
I can't even summon up the old passion of building a new
thing that I used to have.
The dimensional portal opened and I sailed it through.
I ran.
Thank god.
