(Ba'al Ha'tak)

Ba'al, or more accurately one of the many clones of Ba'al, clung desperately to the edge of his throne on his custom Ha'tak. Built with some Neutronium elements its 60 plasma cannons were five times the strength of a regular Ha'tak and it possessed 6 shield generators as opposed to the regular 2 most Ha'tak had. Despite all that the strange method of FTL the giant metal construct was using was bucking his Ha'tak around like a pebble in a can.

With the Ori defeated by the Tau'ri the galaxy was in state of a massive power vacuum. Between the Replicators, Anubis and finally the Ori the once prosperous Goa'uld race was on the verge of extinction. Though the system lords had been the face of their galaxy spanning empire their people had once numbered in the hundreds of millions if not billions. But now he would have been surprised if there were more than a few thousand left in the whole Galaxy, especially since more than 90% of the Jaffa race had thrown away their precious infant Goa'uld symbiotes for Tretonin.

For many a lesser Goa'uld the state of affairs spelled certain doom, but not for Ba'al. Cloning himself made sure that even if one of new brothers was captured and killed others would be there to take his place. He had the Asgard to thank for that, and the opportunity presented was something Ba'al couldn't resist. Since the moment the Ori fell, and even a little before that, the various Ba'al had been visiting various worlds and conscripting their populations in his effort to rebuild the Goa'uld empire in a distant corner of the galaxy.

It was slow but steady progress, especially while avoiding the notice of the Tau'ri, but a few weeks ago the various Ba'al's began to report something strange. The worlds they visited would sometimes be abandoned even though they had solid evidence that they had possessed population days or even hours before they arrived. After making sure one of their own wasn't responsible, they were all Ba'al after all, they came to the conclusion that another Goa'uld must have come up with the same idea they had and they instantly began to look for clues of the mysterious Goa'uld who would dare interfere with their plans.

Which had led their particular clone of Ba'al into his current situation, he had descended into the atmosphere of the world whose population was intended to enslave for the glory of his, ahem their, glorious empire with two additional Ha'tak's. Just before his two support ships could land and begin harvesting the few thousand humans scattered under them a massive black whole had opened up in midair and giant metal construct had come spinning out. Before they could react the two Ha'tak had come under fire and were destroyed with ease before the winged construct focused on the humans below and began BEAMING them up.

He knew then that this thing was responsible for all the empty planets his brothers had come across, it seemed content to ignore him hanging in the air above it so long as he made no moves to land or attack and within a matter of minutes had gathered up all the humans and Jaffa on the surface and opened another black hole to leave. He made what was probably not a very wise decision and ordered his loyal Jaffa to follow the metal construct into the black hole, he needed to find out where it was going and hopefully report his findings back to his brother Ba'al's. The original Ba'al would have never risked his own life in such a way but the clones had been modified to be loyal to the original and to reduce their egotism so the Clone made the choice to follow.

Now he was just wishing that they would arrive at wherever this thing was going before he lost his lunch all over the bridge, it wouldn't do for the few loyal Jaffa he had left to see their God in such an unenviable position after all. "My God I think I see the exist form this space," one of his Jaffa called pointing out the sunlight that was peeking around the construct they were following through the Hyperspace like tunnel.

"Excellent," he said smirking. "Prepare for battle the moment we enter real space, have the Astrograph calculate our position as quickly as possible and once we have it transmit that location back to my brother Ba'al's," he commanded.

"Yes my God," came from the Jaffa on the bridge just as the Ha'tak shot out of the dark tunnel and back into the sunlight. Only to rock and shake throwing Ba'al from his throne onto the floor, shrieking alarms heralded the shields failing as sparks flew from multiple consuls just as the ship itself jolted to the side as though struck with some great force.

"Report," he cried out demanding answers.

"Shields are down and not regenerating, the Hyperdrive is unresponsive and more than half of our plasma cannons are not receiving power," one Jaffa shouted. Then the Ha'tak shuddered again as a explosion rocked it from within and the light began to flicker, "main reactor just went off line and secondary power is operating at 30%," he shouted.

"Who dares," Ba'al began to say just before the floor in the center of the bridge began to glow orange, then red then white from extreme heat before bursting upwards and large human shaped form shooting out of the explosion. Ba'al had no chance to respond as the being held up one hand and a beam of yellow energy exploded from his palm and swept over the Jaffa on the bridge one by one leaving naught but ash behind. Then the being landed right in front of him and looked down on him from on high.

White silver armor with blue energy lines covered his body except for his face which was handsome with blond hair and blue eyes. He was also tall, well over six feet and muscular if the cut of his armor was anything to go by, a long cape fell to just above the floor from his shoulders and writing he recognized as Ancient covered the armor in places. He had a sinking feeling that he had just bitten off more than he could chew.

"Hello Ba'al," I said smiling a not so pleasant smile. "Or should I say hello clone of Ba'al. It's very unlikely that you are the original after all."

Any other Goa'uld would have blustered or threatened, but he was a Ba'al. Without warning he gave a cry of defiance and thrust his left hand at the attacker, the Kara Kesh sent out a blast of kinetic energy at point blank range. He expected the stranger to be blasted across the bridge but was shocked when the wave of energy broke over a personal shield that flared into existence when the wave hit causing to break to either side of his body like water against a rock.

"That was rude," I said in a deadpan voice shaking my head at Ba'al's predictable reaction. Faster than he could follow I shot another Ki blast taking his whole left arm off and blasting the parasite across the floor where he started screaming and holding his shoulder where his arm was burned off. Walking over I picked him up and off the ground by the gaudy leather clothes he wore really I think he was contaminated by the culture he learned about on Earth, "but don't worry. Unlike you I am a forgiving God and for the moment I need you alive."

"W-What are you," he asked through clenched teeth, eyes wide with terror.

"Everything you wish you were," I replied with a spiteful grin before beginning to yell loudly. My aura exploded around me and around Ba'al protecting him as it lashed out at everything else around us. Outside and throughout the city the people watched as the Ha'tak that had dared to invade their newfound home exploded in a bright flash of light. Very few large pieces of the ship remained and those that did were beamed away midair by the orbiting Guardians before they could fall and harm the people below and the citizens cheered as they saw their new God and ruler fly away from the explosion carrying their attacker in one hand. For the rest of the day they took a break from their new jobs as their God supplied them with food drink and entertainment to celebrate the victory and capture of one of Ba'al's clones.

(Later)

"I must thank you my God for allowing me to study the Ba'al clone," Dr. Gero said bowing his head slightly to me as he worked over his consul. Located in Gero's personal laboratory the clone of Ba'al was suspended in a tank of liquid unconscious as his biology was dissected one DNA stand at a time and his memories were downloaded to a secure computer to be analyzed later by Replicators and other Scientists.

"Think nothing of it," I replied waving the man off. "This is a good chance to study a System Lord and see if there are any differences between them and the run of the mill Goa'uld. Not to mention his memories will be a gold mine, make sure they are analyzed fully Dr. Gero."

"Of course my God," Gero said bowing before turning back to his consul.

That taken care of I made my way out of Gero's lab, I had other things to deal with. Having a Ba'al clone just fall into my lap like that was pure luck, but according to some of my scientists a transmission had been sent into subspace almost as soon as the Ha'tak had exited Slipspace. Luckily it seemed like Ba'al had only been able to transmit a general location in the Galaxy before my Guardians had hit him and knocked his transmissions offline. Even then the Guardians had managed to corrode most of the message but stopping subspace signals was hard even when one was prepared for them.

If another Ba'al managed to pick up the message they would have to jigsaw it back together and even then the location would contain several hundred square lightyears, if Ba'al was smart he would simply check all the Stargate planets in that space first and work his way out from them. Still I made a mental note to work on a more effective Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) and Electronic Counter Counter Measure (ECCM) for subspace transmissions. While the Alteran had a very in depth understanding of subspace they didn't have any blueprints for technology designed to block or encode subspace transmissions. Mostly because sending a message in subspace was like dropping a pebble in a pool, the ripples went everywhere and with the right equipment and frequency you could pick them up. Security mostly revolved around preventing the other side from knowing your frequencies and not much else.

Still I made sure to alter the Guardians orders to destroy any other ships that followed them into Slipspace unless they were Tau'ri, then their orders were to capture and contain. Thinking hard and going over the mental timeline of SG-1 and Atlantis in my head I calculated that Samantha Carter would soon leave and take over the Atlantis Expedition. From then I would have about 4 months before the attack on the Replicator Asuran homeworld.

6 Corvette slips, 4 Destroyer slips and 4 Frigate slips were already completed and creating their first ships. 12 more Corvette slips and 8 more Frigate and Destroyer slips would be finished within two days for a total of 18 Corvette, 12 Destroyer and 12 Frigate slips total. On top of that 6 Cruiser class, 4 Battleship class and 2 Carrier and Dreadnaught class slips each would be completed within 3 weeks. If they kept their production schedule up they would have a total of 120 Corvette class ships, 80 Destroyer and Frigate class ships, 30 Cruiser class ships, 20 Battleship class ships and 5 Carrier and Dreadnaught class ships each by the time the Asuran battle rolled around.

At least that was the max number of ships I had time to build, crew, and get to the Pegasus Galaxy in time for the battle. Training was already being done for the future crews in a VR simulator but they would switch to live training as soon as their ships left the dry docks. One thing I had learned while developing the construction slips for my ships was the fact that neither Asgard nor Alteran beaming technology could simply beam a ship into existence. What it could do was beam up raw materials and then refine them to be used by Nanites to construct ships, so in the end I combined advanced construction based Nanites with the Forerunner hardlight technology. The hardlight tech quickly and efficiently built the superstructure of the ship while the Nanites built the more complicated and sensitive pieces of hardware which were then beamed into place.

The combination of Hardlight, Beaming and Nanites created a construction system that built ships faster than either the Alteran or Forerunners had been capable of in their primes. The next thing I thought about were the weapon systems I planned on putting in my ships, I have plenty of variety as far as Plasma, Kinetic or Particle based weapons go but one thing I am severely lacking in is missiles.

Tau'ri missiles suck, there were no two ways to put it and the Alteran versions were just as bad. Drones looked cool in the TV series but they had glaring faults when you knew what to look for. Looking up their schematics in the Janus Key drew out the history of the Drones for me, originally they were deep planet sensor devices designed to get deep core readings of said planets. They had a multiphasic array similar to the phasing technology of the Tollan but much more advanced that allowed the Drones to penetrate deep into a planet, wireless energy siphons allowed the Drones to draw power from a nearby ship for an unlimited supply.

When the war with the Wraith happened the Alteran at the time had no military infrastructure in place but they did have facilities to build Drones and when a science ship fleeing a Wraith ship used its drones as a weapon of desperation the concept of weaponized drones was born. Hell the drones on Earth had just been stored there and left behind not meant to be a weapon, Jack O'Neill had gotten lucky when he used them against the attacking fleet because technically the Antarctic base was unarmed by Alteran standards when Atlantis left. But back to the flaws, to begin with the Drones had no actual warhead, all the damage it did by flying through a ship which was why it needed swarms to take down a ship quickly. An AoE type defense could reasonably take down hundreds if not thousands of attacking drones at a time if you knew to watch out for them.

Furthermore, I went out of my way and developed a phase modulator with Alteran tech based on the data from the Drones, this modulator would be standard issue for all my ships shield generators meaning that Drones would be unable to simply pass through my shields like they were not even there. This would make them a much less severe threat but that was not the end of my idea, the Drone in and of itself was a good missile concept just not very imaginative in its execution.

Taking the original design, I stripped out the wireless energy relay and phase generator, both of which were high resource components, and replaced them with an enhanced liquid naquadah power cell for power generation and particle energy field generators that would cover the drone in energy to help it penetrate shields. The sublight drive was actually a cut down version of what was used on starships and was left as is, the original drone was about a meter long or 3 feet and Alteran ships needed thousands if not hundreds of thousands to be effective.

My new design would not need nearly as many, first was PD (Point Defense) Drone which like the original Drone had no warhead. Instead the Drone was only about half the size of the original and had more powerful Energy field generators due to the lack of warhead, the PD Drone was a suicide weapon in the most literal sense. It would target enemy fighters and incoming missiles at close range, ramming into them and destroying both in the process, they were cheap and easy to make meaning that ships could carry a large amount for personal protection. The next was a Missile Drone, these are about 1.5 meters in length due to them having larger energy cells, more powerful sublight thrusters, an onboard subspace communication array to link it back to the ship that fired it and naturally an actual warhead.

At the moment the Missile Drone only had 3 standard warheads, Fission which created a AoE type explosion making them good against groups of fighters, missiles or smaller ships that had lost their shields but not very good against shielded ships. Fusion, which upon detonation created a Fusion beam that lanced out in the direction the Missile was facing and was good for weakening or penetrating enemy shields but only good against a single ship at a time. Finally, there was the Anti-Matter Missile, a bar of Lithium was placed between two emitters with its own dedicated liquid Naquadah power cell. The emitters, upon detonation, would bombard the Lithium bar with enough energy to instantly convert it into Anti-Lithium which as a side effect would vaporize the Drone Missile around the Anti-Lithium as it formed.

Since Anti-matter must react with matter to explode the Anti-matter missile must actually strike a ship to be truly effective, it cannot detonate at range like a Fission or Fusion warhead can and cause worthwhile damage. On top of that energy shields will diffuse most of the reaction so unless they are about to fail an Anti-matter missile is generally wasted against an active shield. For this reason, most of my ships will carry Fusion based warheads as Fission and Anti-Matter types are more situational.

The next type of Drone I created is the Drone Torpedo, they are about 3 meters long but their warheads are no more powerful than the Missile variant. Instead their sublight drives are greatly enhanced giving them a 20 light minute powered combat range along with more advanced maneuvering capabilities, additionally the Torpedo is outfitted with stealth technology including a cloaking system to hide it visually and a subspace dampening system to hide it from subspace sensors. While subspace sensors can detect pretty much everything inside of a solar system in real time at a range of 5 light minutes or more a ship with the right tech or simply running dark can hid their presence from another ships sensors and with my Torpedos my ships could target others at extreme range with minimal risk.

Finally, I drew up one last design, that being the Anti-Ship Drone. At a whopping 10 meters in length it had no stealth tech but its sublight engines, particle energy field and warheads were over a dozen times as powerful as their Missile counterparts. These drones would only be used against Capital class ships like Battleships, Carriers, Dreadnaughts or even planetary fortresses, naturally their large size meant that a ship could only carry so many so they would mostly be mounted on Capital class ships of my own.

Shaking my head, I mentally used my Nanites to send all the relevant information to my R&D division, I mostly let them design the ships themselves after pointing them in the right direction but I was being ticky about the Drones. I couldn't wait to see the Tau'ri's reaction to drone designs, not to mention my shields if they ever tried to use Drones against me, though I'm mostly concerned about the Asuran rather than the Tau'ri when it comes to Drones. With that happy thought in mind I made my way back to my gravity chamber, maybe this time I could activate my version Super Saiyan.

(Earth)

"Sir I really don't think I should be leaving," Colonel Samantha Carter said as she stood in her personal laboratory in Cheyenne Mountain. On the walls of her space were hastily taken pictures from a disposable camera Vala just happened to have on her after the Guardian had fried all of their electronic gear. It was a piss poor substitute for the normal MALP recordings but it was the best they had and she along with Daniel had poured over all of them for any details they could find, which hadn't been many. "We still have no idea what that Guardian thing is or who is controlling it, I really think my skills would be put to better use here trying to figure that out," she argued.

"Look Sam," General Jack O'Neil said in a placating manner, "I understand where you are coming from but we have zero leads right now. Right now this thing is our number one priority here in the Milky Way, the idea of Ba'al or one of his Clones controlling this thing has everyone scared, but there is not much we can do about it right now. But we do need someone that can handle Atlantis after what happened to Dr. Weir not to mention another Replicator situation, we are planning on sending two ships now that they have the Asgard tech to protect Atlantis but it will take a while for them to be ready and it will take 20 days for them to get there one way."

"There are plenty of people that could take the position," she argued.

"True, but many that I could trust," he counted bringing her up short. "The IOA is fighting tooth and nail right now to stay alive and they are bleeding out, thankfully, but not dead yet. While the Stargate nations being forced to come together and really work together for the first time things are changing here rapidly, soon the ships in our fleet will be controlled by a council instead of individual nations and there are already talks of folding the existing armies of the Stargate Nations into one. With the galactic threats pretty much out there in the open the public is all but demanding reform and while things aren't perfect the major nations have to put their differences aside otherwise we won't have to worry about Ba'al or the Asuran because the Mob will rip us apart first."

"That's why I need you on Atlantis," he continued. "The IOA is one breath away from being disbanded and forgotten and they DON'T like that idea one bit. Their power was based on the Stargate being secret and mostly in US control, now it's not and any plans they had just went right out the window. But they are lobbying hard to get one of their own, or at least someone sympathetic to them in control of Atlantis and if the IOA can control the flow and study of Atlantis," he led off shooting her a knowing look.

"Then their power base is all but secure which can't mean anything good for us," Sam finished for him. "Those power hungry politicos would use the City to create a power base as the what Federation, Republic, whatever we become forms to make themselves money which is what they always wanted in the first place."

"Exactly," O'Neill said. "But that's not the only reason, as you know from the reports Atlantis has hundreds of separate computer systems with stupid amounts of data and for some reason no Ancient version of Google. But if anyone can track down a reference to this Guardian thing it's you Sam, sure they have people working on it there already. Rodney included, but despite what he or anyone else says, YOU are the foremost expert we have on Ancient technology. So I want you there going over those data banks with a fine tooth comb and I want you to find me that data."

"Alright," she said grudgingly. "But you have to keep me updated on whatever you find, that Guardian was unlike any piece of Ancient technology I have ever seen. It's almost as if…no that can't be right," she trailed off.

"As if what," O'Neil prompted knowing form good experience how accurate Sam's theories usually turned out to be.

"As if…the Guardian wasn't Alteran tech at all," she said looking confused. "I know we saw Ancient writing on the little ones but we never got close to the Guardian, and while it had that super advanced look to it the style was all wrong. I can't think of any other race with Technology that comes eve close to that so Ancient is a safe bet but still, I can't shake the feeling that it might not be Ancient tech at all," she finished.

"But if it's not Ancient, then what is it," O'Neil asked. He was only met with silence in response.

(Ba'al's Time Travel Machine)

With a sigh Ba'al deactivated the communication device that allowed him to contact his clones, a device that prevented them from tracking his location thankfully, naturally he knew his clones would try to supplant him if they could. They were Ba'al after all even if they were only clones. His clones had an idea of what his failsafe plan was, that is going back in time and changing the past, but they didn't know how he planned on accomplishing that.

It was only after discovering the effects of solar flares on stargate travel from the SGC database that he learned he could use the effect to his advantage. The regular DHD devices prevented any travel if the path taken would intersect with a solar flare or a black hole, the Earth's jury rigged DHD originally hadn't possessed those safety features. They did now but only after discovering the dangers of unsafe wormhole travel.

It had taken him months to place subspace satellites around thousands of stars throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, stars that were in systems without a stargate planet. It always surprised him when he thought about it, how little the galaxy explored outside of the gate network. It didn't matter if they were Goa'uld, Jaffa or Tau'ri 99% of the time they stuck to planets with stargates on them, which made it easier to hide his satellites.

Unfortunately, that had been the easy part, now he was stuck here in his complex while his computers based of stolen Asgard technology, worked through the computations to calculate what kind of solar flare was necessary to send him back in time to the correct timeline. But even when the computer finished the calculations he would have to wait for a solar flare that matched his required parameters before he could go back in time and it might be months or even years before he would be able to make the jump.

In the meantime, he had his clones attempting to rebuild the Goa'uld empire, in his image naturally, what with the Ori defeated and on the way back out of the Galaxy soon. The Asgard were gone as well which was a plus but the Tau'ri, FJN, Tok'ra and any sufficiently advanced enough free human world were all working franticly to build up their power bases. The Ori hurt everyone badly and at the moment there was no superpower in the Milky Way, the Tau'ri had a leg up with the Asgard legacy but only a hand full of ships to their name and they couldn't be everywhere.

The FJN was trying to copy the Tau'ri government as best they could but they were fractured at best and their ships had none of the upgrades for their Ha'tak's that he or Anubis had introduced so at best they were target practice. The Tok'ra were even worse off with their low numbers and even lower number of ships and none of the advanced human worlds had ships to speak of at the moment making ti a race between Ba'al and the rest of the Galaxy to see who would rule.

At least that was how it had been until some of his clones reported empty world where they should have found easy slaves for their fledging empire. At first it was only 1 world in 10 but soon it became 4 or 5 worlds in 10 that they explored across every territory his Clones had claimed as their individual dominions. And now one of his clones had vanished, all he had as a clue was a garbled subspace message with a location that covered hundreds of lightyears, he was tempted to order some of his clones to scour the area to find where their missing brother went but thought better of it.

His clones couldn't afford to waste ships at the moment, their power base wasn't as secure as he would have liked. So he decided to hold back for the time being, once his clones had more ships under their control they might be able to send a few to scout the area but until then it wasn't worth the risk. What he was more interested in at the moment were the events happening on Earth.

His contacts there reported the existence of the Janus Key, oh how he drooled over the possibility of that ship and what it contained. His only consolation was that it was out of the Tau'ri hands, they already had Atlantis, and he didn't want to think about what they would do with the Janus Key. He quickly understood the difference between parallel realties and alternate dimensions and the advantages they might hold and there was the slight possibility that the Janus Key might find its way back to this dimension. He would have to keep an eye out for it.

"In the end…all will bow to Ba'al," he whispered to himself as he looked over a holograph of the Galaxy and then a little smirk came over his lips as a plan to disrupt the Tau'ri and their allies began to unfold within his mind.

PAN: Sorry for the long wait for this chapter but I've got a lot of different fic sim working on all at one. I'm also kind lazy. Will try to get another chapter out for this fast but expect the other fics on my profile to be updated first. But enough of that, next time on Valteran Empire a look at Carter in Pegasus, SG-1 goes hunting for the Guardian and answer, Ba'al is on the move and Cayleb gets some of his fleet launched. Also expect technical specs on the Corvette Frigate and Destroyer classes at least. Until next time!

Ja Ne!