It had taken me nearly an hour of mindless walking around the lower levels of Ares' Flagship before I finally calmed down.
What was going on with the Celestial Forge? Nothing and then suddenly it activates? It happened right as I was going to steal the device; it must be intent related. I am going to have to do significant testing when I return to Camp.
I had been aboard this ship for almost nine hours now, and I had managed to map out all of the major passageways
Compared to the seafaring vessels of 21st century Earth, the hallways on this ship were massive, each could easily accept five people walking shoulder to shoulder. It made not hitting others rather easy.
There was only one thing left to do before I could leave the ship. I needed to find where the Jaffa kept their records; gaining access to them would allow me to quickly get a complete understanding of the composition of Ares' forces.
It was entirely possible – likely even – that such records would be in Ares' throne room, but I didn't plan on going back there. There were only a few spots aboard this ship that I hadn't mapped.
I spent the next hour mapping out what was left of the ship. Unfortunately I failed to locate anything of interest. There were still blank spots on my map, but they were all away from the primary passageways; I found it unlikely that record keeping would be in some place so out of the way… or maybe that might actually make more sense?
Either way, I simply didn't have the time. I could come back and search the rest of the ship when my secondary mission had been completed.
I found a particularly loud group of Jaffa marching towards the exit and followed them out of the ship. It was time to go find the Elders.
— — —
POV: Michael Dresden
It had been one hell of a week. The Jaffa of Ares had been a storm. We barely got 15 minutes of heads up that they were coming, just barely enough time to secure the few pieces of Star League technology we had in the village. Then we had been rounded up and rushed through the Stargate to Ares' primary world.
We all lost our breath at the site of Ares' city. I had heard of the ships of the Goa'uld from those who lived in Veyna's Rest before we had joined the village, but seeing the pyramids really put it into perspective. The ships looked to be about half the length of a McKenna Class Battleship.
As I examined the area surrounding the seven pyramid ships, I counted at least a hundred smaller craft as well as the numerous buildings and the massive manually mined quarry at the edge of the landing site.
As the Jaffa herded us to the quarry and immediately handed everyone pickaxes, it became clear what we were needed for; manual labor. So, we were back to mining Naquadah, just for a completely different warlord.
We were split into two groups. Most of us were taken to the quarry while a small group of the younger women – those in their early twenties – were taken elsewhere. We were provided with more than adequate food, water, and shelter, but on the first day alone we were required to work from the instant we had tools in our hands. The moment I had my bearings, I immediately began trying to make contact with the others who had been taken. It was during this time that I came into contact with Lior.
I had been attempting to make contact with the others for two days, and I hadn't had much luck. The only people I had any real contact with were the miners, and most of them were too busy trying not to gather the attention of the Jaffa to have made any real connections outside their immediate group.
The third day at the camp, a man had sat down with me and some of the other villagers during breakfast.
"I've been informed that you need to send a message."
I had barely even registered his arrival. I wasn't exactly a young man anymore and the constant mining took a toll. Nonetheless, I looked him in the eyes and replied.
"I need to make sure that the people of my village are taken care of."
He nodded, ever so slightly.
"I can confirm that your people are alright. They're being trained to be servants for the Jaffa; those in such a position are well taken care of."
I took in the man's appearance. He was muscular and well proportioned; green eyes with shoulder length brown hair. He was a completely unremarkable young man.
I returned to eating my breakfast.
"While I am glad to hear they are well taken care of, I was hoping to get a message to them."
"I expected as much. Someone will contact you this evening."
I nodded. We ate in silence and went our separate ways as we were directed to the quarry by our overseers.
That evening I waited in bed. I had been expecting to sleep on the ground, instead we were provided with actual tents and sleeping mats. They were too homogenous to be hand woven, and the material looked to be some sort of synthetic fabric. There was also the fact that there were more than 5000 of each and they were all so uniform as to be identical. The only plausible explanation was that Ares was being supplied by some sort of advanced industrial economy.
The more I thought about it the more obvious it became that Ares was being supplied by an industrial society of some sort, something I knew the Jaffa of Athena didn't have.
Now that I thought about it, there were other things that shouldn't have been available for us. The pickaxes that we used regularly during the day were perfectly cast; there were no signs of metalworking and the handles were all perfectly identical, something that could only be explained by a significant industrial base. There was also the lack of nearby farms; the food was being shipped in from elsewhere.
My musings were interrupted by the rustling of my tent's flap. I lay there silently while I listened to the muted footsteps of a man entering.
"Are you ready to send your message?"
The voice belonged to the same man who had approached me earlier that day. He turned on a small light, just enough for me to see his face and the piece of paper he carried in his hand. My contemplations immediately returned. Here was more technology that should only be readily available to an industrialized society.
The man pulled out a pen and looked at me blankly. The pen too; it was obviously not something that was handcrafted; it must have been created through large scale manufacturing of some sort.
In a whisper, I spoke to the man.
"Give me the paper. I'll write it down for you."
I wrote a quick message to those that I hadn't been able to see, along with a note for the message to be passed along to Annelise, one of the Elders. As long as she was doing well, she would undoubtedly be trying to get in contact with me as well.
I returned the letter to the man who raised an eyebrow.
While English was commonly spoken amongst the Goa'uld (for almost no determinable reason) and there were several Gaelic System Lords, those were the only European languages that we had encountered. Languages like German, French, and Spanish were not spoken amongst the System Lords. As such, we had agreed that were we ever in a position where we had been captured we would use German as our primary language for communication.
"Please get that to Annalise. She's the tallest in her group, blonde, green eyes. If you can't get it to her, then any of the people in my group. Just show them the message and they'll know it's from me."
Just like that, the man prepared to leave. As he was getting off his knees I interrupted him.
"I didn't catch your name."
The man froze hesitantly for a moment.
"My name is Lior."
I nodded gently to him.
"Thank you, Lior, for helping. I hope you know that I appreciate it."
It was two days later that Lior managed to get me a response. I threw it in my pocket so as to avoid attracting attention from our overseers.. I only got the chance to read it that evening as we were eating dinner.
All things considered, the news was pretty good. Everyone had been well treated. With my heart at ease and my largest worries settled I could begin to turn my attention to other things.
I spent the next three days gathering information on the other groups of miners. There were five large groups, with those from Veyna's Rest being the most recent and also the largest at almost 1500 villagers.
The second largest group of almost 1200 were slaves who had been taken from Amaterasu. Very few of them spoke a language other than Japanese, which had led to them isolating themselves from the other groups. The few that I had spoken to had all been greatly surprised by my fluency. Just speaking the language created inroads with them.
Then there were the two groups that had formerly been under Athena's rule. One of them had come from her homeworld and had been taken while Athena's Jaffa had been overwhelmed. The other group had come from another village that was very similar to ours; Athena had left them alone as long as they provided their quota of naquadah. Each of these groups was about a thousand people.
Then there were those who had been born and raised under Ares. They were slightly more combative than the other groups I had interacted with. There were about 800 of them in total
Finally there was everyone else. They didn't have a leader, but those who didn't have their own community tended to group together. It was interesting to learn that Ares had, up until recently, regularly purchased slaves from other System Lords; there were former servants of every major system lord and many of the minor ones all working in this settlement.
I was awoken on the eighth night to the soft sound of footsteps. I turned in time to see the tent flap being pushed open, but there was nothing there. Suddenly, I felt a hand over my mouth and Arthur seemed to materialize before me.
"Hello Elder. I'm going to slowly remove my hand and then deactivate the cloak. Nod if you understand."
I look into his eyes and nod calmly. Slowly, Arthur took his hand away from my mouth. As he did, he once again disappeared from my line of sight before again reappearing. I could hardly believe what I had just seen. That was definitely NOT Star League technology.
In a hushed, but hurried tone, I spoke.
"What in the blazes was that?"
He smiled at me, almost smugly.
"That can wait. I'm here performing Recon. My next assignment is to relay any messages you might have to the Elders. Is there anything important that you need me to relay?"
I stared at Arthur for a short moment.
"The work is hard, but we have food, water, and shelter. Some may complain, but everyone will survive."
"That's good to hear. My secondary mission is to find evidence of secondary factions. There are a couple that we believe might be active. This is a bit of a stretch, but do you know anyone who might be working for such an organization?"
I immediately told Arthur about the person who had managed to get a message to Annelise. Arthur raised an eyebrow before chuckling lightly.
"I wasn't actually expecting anything from that. I guess our good luck hasn't run out quite yet. So how have you been, Elder?"
I scowled at Arthur.
"Don't 'how have you been' me! Why the hell did they send you kid? You've barely completed basic training!"
Arthur winced at that.
"They didn't have a choice. Let's just leave it at that."
I ran a hand over my face. If they didn't have a really good reason, I'd be the one to smash James' face in myself for this stunt. I let out a deep sigh before continuing.
"Fine. Now what was that cloaking device? We sure as hell don't have access to that kind of technology."
Arthur perked up.
"We stole it from some Goa'uld. It creates an energy field around the wearer that bends light. Pretty cool."
I let my previous annoyance flow away; that sort of technology was absolutely game changing.
"You don't happen to have an extra one of those I could use, do you?"
"Not on me, sadly. We got four of them, the other three are still with the Elders. I can try and get one of them for you when I check in back home."
I thought about it for a moment. I had seen people being searched by the Jaffa. I let out a deep sigh.
"No, it's not worth the risk. Leave it for someone who can actually use it properly."
"Alright. I'm glad you're doing well, Elder. I still have three more people to check in with before the night is over. If you need anything from me, then leave a piece of fabric hanging from the front of your tent. I'll make contact if I can."
Before he could leave, I grabbed his arm.
"You make sure to stay safe, alright Arthur. It's bad enough that you have to be here at all. Do not let yourself be captured."
He nodded once at me and then he was gone. With that, I lay back down. If I hadn't been physically exhausted from the hard labor I doubt I would have been able to fall asleep.