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High Orbit – Delmak – April 2003
Quantity has a quality all its own, and this was becoming increasingly evident to Anubis as he discovered just how much he had underestimated the size of the fleet belonging to Apophis. With his gigantic flagship leading the rest of his advanced Hat’ak motherships into battle Anubis had dropped out of hyperspace several thousand kilometres from Delmak only to find that they were outnumbered considerably more than he had expected them to be and he had expected them to be outnumbered better than five to one.
Apophis had clearly been replacing his losses more quickly than even the estimates of the Tok’ra spies passing information to Baal had suggested, and Anubis had thought those were wildly inflated given that no Goa’uld ever had more than a fraction of the necessary industrial base required to do that. Even Ra at the height of his power as Supreme System Lord would not have been able to field a fleet a quarter of the size of the one that now defended Delmak and more were still arriving from the outskirts of the territories conquered by Apophis.
The Tok’ra had reported that the Tau’ri and Free Jaffa raids on his supply lines and offworld mines and factories had meant that Apophis had been forced to keep a sizeable proportion of his forces back from the front lines but Anubis had also dismissed those stories as fiction until now. However the sheer number of unexpected additional ships who hadn’t been fighting against the coalition of System Lords, many being older model Ha’tak and mere Al’kesh admittedly but still fighting vessels nonetheless, indicated that the traitors had been correct there too. With nothing else to lose Apophis had stripped all his garrisons of any ship that could make it home and now Anubis faced more than he had counted on... even with his Ancient super-weapon he was going to be bloodied badly.
The fighting began when waves of thousands of Deathgliders followed by hundreds of Al’kesh broke over the fleet of Anubis. It was a clever ploy by Apophis to wear down the stronger shields of the Ha’tak ships of his enemy albeit one that threw away the lives of many of his Jaffa as the smaller vessels were swatted by the dozens of heavy plasma cannon that acted as the point-defence batteries of a Goa’uld mothership.
Onboard his own flagship Apophis watched the battle started to unfold placidly. He had witnessed the combined power of the Eyes first-hand over Abydos and was loathe to throw his precious motherships at the enemy until he really had to, better to inflict a few pinpricks first. ‘Order half our remaining Deathgliders to join the attack and have Zipacna send in all of his remaining Al’kesh’ he commanded his Jaffa.
‘It will be done Lord’ the Jaffa responded and began relaying on the orders as Apophis went back to watching the display being projected in front of his throne.
‘More ships are arriving’ another Jaffa announced. ‘Six Ha’tak belonging to Ares and four more of the fleet of Moloc’ he reported. ‘They announce they are here to fight against the orac Anubis.’
‘Only ten ships between them?’ Apophis queried.
‘They report more are on the way’ the Jaffa replied. ‘Their Ha’tak are not as swift as our own, only those which were based in the territories of Ares and Moloc bordering our own were able to get here on time.’
Apophis looked angry for a second but reluctantly realised it was likely true, only he had vessels that could exceed thirty-two thousand times the speed of light which was the standard for Goa’uld motherships. Without the new hyperdrive and powercore designs he had found Sokar had been working on when he took control of Delmak many of his own far-flung ships would not have arrived yet either. ‘What of Lord Yu?’ he asked.
‘We are told that Lord Yu is bringing his whole fleet to our aid but they too are travelling a great distance to reach us My Lord’ the Jaffa replied apologetically. ‘A number of his ships under the command of his First Prime Oshu will be here soon, we are promised’ he said.
‘We are fortunate that Yu-huang Shang Ti hates Anubis so much’ Apophis observed, he would not normally have such faith in the word of an ally but Yu truly despised their joint foe. It would be difficult to get Yu not to fight Anubis even if it was only a matter of months since Yu and Apophis were themselves at war.
Being mobbed by swarms of insects was very annoying Anubis decided. Whilst the Al’kesh and tiny Deathgliders could do little but peck at his ships given enough time and cumulative staff-cannon hits they would gradually wear down his shields and then Apophis would start throwing his capital ships at him en-masse.
The half-ascended Goa’uld had already launched his own Deathgliders into the fray but they had been so ridiculously outnumbered that they were almost all gone already. Their wreckage now mingled with that left behind by the enemy craft his point-defence batteries had take out but unlike the latter they were not being replaced by what appeared to be an endless stream of new craft.
‘Can we not use the Eye weapon My Lord?’ Her’ak the First Prime of Anubis queried.
‘The Ancients had another weapon which they would use to deal with large numbers of small craft’ Anubis replied. ‘They had no need to give the one I recreated the ability to do so as well, it was intended to be used to deal with a possible invasion by the one foe they feared above all others and they would be coming in great ships with shields likely the equal of the Ancients own.’
‘It is deeply frustrating’ Her’ak growled.
Anubis tended to agree. Perhaps he should have devoted more of his resources into creating a larger marginally less advanced fleet, the thirty Ha’tak he had with him represented nearly the full force at his disposal with only a handful left behind to guard his own capital world. He could have likely built more in the same timescale if he had not insisted upon them mounting the most powerful weapons and shields that he could devise using his new understanding of Ancient technology, sometimes “best” was the mortal enemy of “good enough”.
‘Enough of this’ Anubis thundered. ‘Ignore the petty swarm that stings us, press onwards towards the enemy fleet we will demonstrate the might at my disposal’ he declared. ‘Charge the Eye Weapon, bring us straight into the heart of the fleet of Anubis while the rest of my ships engage their flanks’ he ordered.
‘It will be done My Lord’ Her’ak responded, they were ignoring the mosquitoes and plunging into the hornet’s nest now, he thought.
Apophis sent his remaining older model Ha’tak against the flagship of Anubis first, they were less valuable and it wasn’t as if even his upgraded motherships had shields that would last too much longer against the overwhelming power of the Eyes anyway. Every ship in range firing its main guns as fast as they could at maximum power the Ha’tak defending Delmak charged headlong towards the gigantic flagship of the unspeakable invader.
Equipped with shields that were far closer to their original Ancient design specifications than the poor copies usually employed by the Goa’uld the ship Anubis commanded absorbed the incoming fire as it prepared to unleash the ferocity of the Eyes. Huge bolts of plasma that could vaporise great cities from orbit with ease splashed, ineffectually it seemed, against the bubble of energy that protected the flagship as it went.
‘Fire the weapon’ Anubis ordered. ‘See my power and tremble’ he said with satisfaction as the lightning-like energy was fired out at the nearest enemy ships, stripping them of their shields before they exploded one after another. Waves of destruction seemed to ripple out, rending six-hundred metre wide motherships apart like they were tinfoil until the weapon had to stop to recharge. That was one problem Anubis had not been able to solve, lacking what the Ancients called Potentia, the zero-point-energy batteries they utilised for their more powerful devices, the Eye weapon could not be fired continually even if his vessel did carry the largest naquada reactor powerplant of any ship ever built.
Apophis tried not to wince when he watched better than twenty of his ships, most admittedly not his best, getting blown apart in less than a minute. It was not befitting of a god to adopt that expression in front of their underlings. ‘Keep attacking’ he ordered, ‘Press Anubis harder’ he said as more Ha’tak moved to replace the losses firing as they went. ‘Have Zipacna and the ships of Ares and Moloc hold off the other enemy motherships, they are merely a distraction not the threat’ he stated.
The more powerful main guns of the best ships of the fleet of Apophis now poured fire upon the flagship of Anubis, the System Lord that even the worst of the other goa’uld spoke of as being evil beyond measure. Even those Jaffa aboard who doubted the goa’uld were truly gods were convinced that this was a battle that needed to be won, better Apophis than Anubis any day they knew as they fought the good fight.
The sheer quantity of debris was now becoming an issue, particularly for the unshielded Deathgliders and Al’kesh who had to retreat from the battle because they were losing more of their number due to collisions with clouds of wreckage than they were to enemy fire. Pieces of Ha’tak, some massing thousands of tons, tumbled through space slamming into the still intact shields of their brethren and either shattering or else spiralling away with the impact, perhaps to slam into yet another ship.
‘Our shield generators are unable to replenish the shield as fast as it is being drained My Lord’ Her’ak warned his master, ‘it is holding but is slowly being depleted’ he said.
‘Is the weapon once again charged?’ Anubis asked, ignoring him.
‘Nearly My Lord’ Her’ak responded.
‘Fire again as soon as it is’ Anubis ordered.
The second firing of the Eye weapon destroyed even more ships than the first but Apophis cared little for dead Jaffa or ships he could readily replace thanks to the Delmak shipyards. Only destroying Anubis mattered, if he and his Ancient weapon were gone then the other System Lords would fold one by one, if the weapon were not destroyed however then a new Dark Age would surely fall across the galaxy... and more importantly to the ruler of Delmak Apophis himself would be very dead indeed.
‘I am not sure that we can destroy this many ships before we are either destroyed or are forced to retreat’ Her’ak told Anubis as the Eye weapon recharged again.
‘You doubt me?’ Anubis responded.
‘Never My Lord, if you disagree then I am surely wrong’ Her’ak replied with sincerity.
‘The insects are no longer attacking us, transfer power from the staff-cannon batteries to the Eye weapon to speed up recharging time’ Anubis ordered. ‘Shut down artificial gravity, lighting and life support from all decks apart from this one, the engines and powercore’ he continued. ‘The Jaffa crew in other sections of the ship should be able to survive without them for a while and if they do not then you should personally select their replacements.’
‘To serve aboard your flagship is an honour for any of your warriors’ Her’ak told him.
‘Of course’ Anubis agreed.
Zipacna was winning his own part of the battle, though admittedly his tactic of sending two or three of his ships up against each one belonging to Anubis was hardly a tactical masterstroke. With support from the Ha’tak of Ares and Moloc he was grinding down the individually superior capital ships of his foe by brute force. He might end up losing an equal number of his own vessels in the process, the Ha’tak of Anubis had been able to stand up to an Asgard ship after all proving beyond doubt how hard-hitting and well-protected they were, but he was going to win and then he would lead the rest of his ships against the enemy flagship.
They were likely going to lose more ships that day than they had in the last two years fighting the combined fleets of the System Lords but it would be worth it to get rid of Anubis once and for all. Hopefully the bastard would stay dead this time Zipacna earnestly hoped.
Apophis kept a mental note of his losses as the Eye weapon fired again killing another dozen Hat’ak. He would be forced to give up great chunks of territory he would not be able to defend with such a diminished fleet after this battle, it would be at least a year before he could resume his conquest of the galaxy, a year of licking his wounds on Delmak. Damn Anubis and his mastery of the knowledge of the Ancients.
‘Our scans of the shields of the flagship of Anubis show they are definitely dropping in power’ a Jaffa reported.
‘Anubis is going to run out of shields before we run out of ships, a victory but a costly one’ Apophis replied. ‘I only wish my brother were here to witness this day’ he continued, almost wistfully, Ra had hated Anubis with a passion too. A few of my brother’s ships wouldn’t have been missed either, he thought to himself regretfully.
‘Twelve Ha’tak have just emerged from hyperspace’ the Jaffa told him. ‘They are of Lord Yu under the command of his First Prime and are joining the battle by our side’ he said. ‘They say many others will arrive soon also with Yu in personal command.’
Apophis breathed a sigh of relief knowing that Anubis was likely receiving the same news with a rather different emotional response. ‘When the shields of Anubis have dropped to the level where he cannot stand against the main guns of this ship bring us into firing range and we will pound his ugly flagship into wreckage’ he declared smugly.
‘More ships have arrived’ the Jaffa reported.
‘Lord Yu comes to once again join me in battle against Anubis as he did when together with Ra we drove him off before’ Apophis said with satisfaction.
The Jaffa looked at his god nervously, bearers of bad tidings were often subjected to severe punishment, even torture or death. ‘No’ he said, voice trembling. ‘It is Baal’ he said.
‘Baal could not have gotten here so swiftly with any force large enough to matter’ Apophis responded dismissively.
‘Most of his Ha’tak...’ the Jaffa began then paused, ‘most of his Ha’tak appear to be of a new type that has our superior hyperdrive but the shields and sensors appear to be those of Anubis, the weapons likely too’ he told his god.
Apophis jumped from his chair, his face a mask of rage. ‘That fat bastard Nerus that works for Baal’ he seethed, ‘he must have back-engineered one of our ships lost in battle’ he said in fury. ‘Baal must have been keeping them back for when he needed them’ he reasoned.
‘Baal has engaged the ships under the command of Lord Zipacna’ the Jaffa told him. ‘Zipacna is requesting more ships.’
‘We’re running out of reserves already’ Apophis snarled, ‘tell him I will dispatch all I can but tell Zipacna he must hold back Baal and the other ships belonging to Anubis if we are going to have a chance to emerge victorious.’
According to the Tok’ra agents monitoring the battle this wasn’t yet quite the point when the battle had become epic to the point of being ridiculous, that was when Lord Yu arrived with the rest of his motherships and Baal told Anubis that a joint fleet made up of his slower ships plus those of his allies Amaterasu, Bastet and Kali were on the way too.
Baal’s Ha’tak – Delmak System – April 2003
Baal gave the flagship of Apophis an envious look and then turned his attention onto the even larger and more impressive, if less aesthetically pleasing, vessel Anubis was aboard. The latter had to be over five kilometres across measuring pylon to pylon, it must have cost a fortune Baal decided and for that matter if it wasn’t for the fact the Eye superweapon supposedly required a ship that size and configuration he would have assumed Anubis was compensating for something.
‘Have you established which ship Zipacna is on yet?’ Baal asked his First Prime.
‘Yes Lord Baal’ the Jaffa confirmed.
‘I want to destroy it personally, prioritise it as a target for our main guns’ Baal told him, ‘I always did want to slap that smug expression off his face’ he said.
‘It will be done My Lord’ his First Prime responded.
‘And launch our deathgliders, send them against the ship Apophis is on, that’ll keep him distracted’ Baal ordered, ‘he gets irrational and incompetent when he starts becoming enraged’ he noted. It was a common racial failing that only a minority of goa’uld seemed to be immune to fortunately including himself. Many of the System Lords had played god so long they had almost started to believe it themselves, they spoke of bringing down wrath on their enemies and deluded themselves that it wasn’t mere technology that made them masters of the galaxy but rather it was the natural order of things.
For his part Baal was considerably more grounded in reality, he planned ahead and was willing to work with lesser enemies in order to deal with more dangerous foes. The only other System Lord he had ever suspected was only play-acting whilst making the smart moves behind the scenes was Sokar who was fortunately out of the picture. Apophis was willing to learn from his enemies, which meant he wasn’t completely deluded as to his own infallibility, but he still skirted too close to the belief he was a genuine deity.
As for Anubis he was simply insane Baal knew. Doing “evil” things just for the sake of it rather than as a means to a more rational end was the mark of a madman. It was good policy to frighten the peasants into submission, Baal wasn’t averse to the occasional massacre if it was necessary, but some of the things Anubis had done in the past indicated that he didn’t use terror as a tool of social control he simply enjoyed being despicable. In some ways, Baal thought, the role of the devil that Sokar had played for the sake of his image was who Anubis really was and that was disturbing on many levels.
‘Our new ships are performing ably in battle’ Baal’s First Prime observed.
‘They should, they’re the most advanced in the galaxy’ Baal replied with satisfaction. You had to admit that, although he was a disgusting slob, Nerus really was a genius at this sort of thing Baal thought to himself. The new ships had the hyperdrives, powercores and cloaking devices of the best ships of Apophis plus the upgraded sensors, shields and weapons that Anubis had supplied to his closest allies. It was a pity he only had a few of them as yet, the large majority of Baal’s fleet was still made up of less capable ships, but the blame for that could be placed squarely on the shoulders of Lord Yu who had accidentally attacked Baal’s main secret research complex nearly a year ago at a point when they were still allies against Apophis. The resulting damage had greatly delayed the project and to say that Baal was bitter about it, and planned to punish the senile old fool harshly for it as a result, was a gross underestimate.
‘Sire, our ships and those of Anubis are winning this battle against Zipacna but Anubis is demanding that we aid him against the bulk of the enemy fleet’ Baals First Prime announced after a transmission was received from his opposite number, Her’ak the First Prime of Anubis.
Baal rolled his eyes. ‘Given that we would have to defeat Zipacna first before we can move to assist offer my apologies but say that they might have been willing to get themselves surrounded on all sides by charging headlong into the enemy but I’m not going to do that’ he said. If they moved to support the flagship with the Eye weapon they would then have Zipacna and his ships behind them and that wasn’t going to happen.
‘Sire the other Ha’tak of Anubis are disengaging from the fight against Zipacna and are accelerating towards the main enemy force’ Baal’s First Prime told him.
‘Marvellous’ Baal replied sardonically. ‘Together we could have defeated Zipacna more quickly and then crashed into the flank of the main enemy fleet hard enough to put Apophis on the defensive, this disjointed piece-meal battle benefits the side with the most ships and that’s not us’ he growled.
‘Many enemy Ha’tak are being destroyed by the Eye weapon My Lord’ the First Prime told Baal.
‘Unfortunately Apophis doesn’t exactly suffer from a shortage of them’ Baal replied wryly. Anubis put far too much faith in superweapons, Baal decided, he clearly underestimated the power of raw numbers. Supposedly that had been a failing of the Ancients too Baal recalled thoughtfully, maybe all that playing around with their leftover devices and technology had rubbed off on him?
Anubis was in fact a little too fond of superweapons, though he would never admit it even to himself. As he sat in the throne of his flagship, waiting for his latest miraculous Ancient device to recharge and be unleashed upon the next unfortunate group of motherships attacking him, he was however becoming aware that he maybe should have waited until more of his allies could have joined him in this battle. His shields were starting to drop to a level where the unusually powerful main guns of the flagship of Apophis might be able to go right through them and that would be a serious problem because although it was huge the vessel he was on was actually quite flimsy. Compared to the heavily armoured hulls of regular Ha’tak the flagship of Anubis was not very strong in terms of construction, relying heavily on its shields to absorb all incoming fire, and it would not withstand direct hits well at all, a couple of salvo’s at most and it would come apart like a deathglider hit by a Heavy Staff Cannon.
It was time to call in a favour, one that he had hoped not to have to request because who knew what price it would cost him to be in the debt of a traitor to his own kind, one with obvious ambition and personal drive as well as access to technology that neither the Goa’uld nor Asgard, nor even the Ancients perhaps had developed. ‘Her’ak, activate the hyperwave communication device we were given, tell our renegade Asgard friend that he was right and that I require his support in this battle after all’ Anubis told his First Prime reluctantly. ‘He said he would have a task-force waiting nearby for when we needed them... this will probably cost me more than just another Ha’tak in payment’ he said in annoyance.
Apophis smiled, his losses were immense but he was starting to believe victory was inevitable, the hubris of Anubis in believing his wonder-weapon made him unbeatable had been his undoing. ‘Lord Yu is here’ a Jaffa told him, ‘he has twenty Ha’tak and more than twice that number of Al’kesh’ he announced.
‘Request that he joins in the attack on the enemy flagship, let him lose a few ships to that weapon when it fires next instead of us’ Apophis replied.
‘Many types of unknown ships of strange designs are appearing from hyperspace’ another Jaffa announced. ‘They are attacking our fleet’ he said. ‘The largest type is perhaps the size of the troop transports used by Anubis, the majority are the size of deathgliders’ the Jaffa continued, ‘all are shielded including the smaller craft... the larger vessels are using a beam weapon of surprising power against our Ha’tak motherships’ he told his god, ‘the plasma they are firing seems to be similar to that of the weapons used by the creatures who invaded your palace My Lord’ he added with a frown.
‘Destroy them’ Apophis ordered.
‘We are already engaging but they are freakishly manoeuvrable and their weapons are disproportionately powerful to the size of the ships carrying them’ the Jaffa replied apologetically. ‘Our deathgliders are trying to intercept the smaller craft but are having great difficulty’ he continued. ‘The Al’kesh of Lord Yu are moving to fight them and he is launching his own deathgliders to support our own.’
‘Sweep the skies free of those gnats, we cannot be distracted from our primary goal of destroying Anubis’ Apophis thundered as Loki’s forces entered the fray against him.
The System Lords were about to discover what the meaning of “Punch above your weight” truly was as they witnessed what even mere fighter-sized craft armed with elerium based weaponry could do.
High Orbit – Delmak – April 2003
When Bastet, Amaterasu and Kali arrived with their fleets and Baal’s slower vessels they had to wait before joining the fight until Baal could explain roughly what was going on, who was fighting who and which ships they should be attacking or assisting. It was all very confusing, a situation not helped by the fact that many of the ships on both sides were outwardly identical and there were literally hundreds of capital ships now all mixed in together in a great mess.
The majority of warships in the galaxy were now engaged with each other at often point-blank range around Delmak and to the great annoyance of Anubis he found he now had to be considerably more careful as to when he could fire the Eye superweapon because he had accidentally destroyed two of his own Ha’tak and several of Loki’s ships when he fired it the last time. Precision targeting was not apparently the weapons strong point, it simply blew everything nearby to pieces, so you had to make sure that only the things you wanted blown to pieces were around.
A trio of Sectoid-piloted Type 2 Fighters, the Tau’ri called them “Spectres”, hurtled past the flagship firing their pulsed plasma cannon into several squadron’s worth of deathgliders belonging to Lord Yu destroying nearly half of them in a single attack run. Staff-Cannon bolts from the remaining deathgliders impacted on their electroplasmic shields but lacked the firepower to drain them before the Spectre’s could break out from the line of fire, using their far superior manoeuvrability and acceleration to effortlessly out fly the relatively sluggish deathgliders.
Loki had originally started building his fleet years before powered with a basic gravity drive that was much like the one used by the goa’uld, indeed that was the sub-light propulsion method his larger craft still utilised, but he had improved upon it greatly since. The Spectre fighter utilised a superior Gravity/Induction drive system based partially on the latest Asgard designs giving it twice the effective thrust of the older engine type and therefore far higher performance. With the addition of Vector Control Thrusters for increased manoeuvrability the Spectre was a formidable dogfighter and one that the Goa’uld were far from equipped to handle.
The Tau’ri had already met the Spectre in battle and they had lost many good pilots to them, despite having in the F-302X a superior fighter to what the goa’uld possessed, but in this battle Loki had decided it was time to unleash his latest machine of war. The Tau’ri would later call it the Type 3 Fighter, or the “Phantasm” and unlike the Spectre it was intended not for air-superiority but rather it was a strike fighter, designed to attack larger vessels through a combination of stealth, improved shields and greatly improved firepower.
Also a saucer-shaped craft like its predecessors the larger Phantasm fighter was equipped with a cloaking device and to the chagrin of the goa’uld gunners trying to target them they would randomly disappear only to pop up again a short while later to attack another ship. Armed with racks of swift and hard-hitting Elerium Torpedoes the Phantasms had little trouble at all dealing with Al’kesh and they carried a new kind of plasma weapon that was inordinately effective at depleting shields.
Both the Asgard and Tollan had previously developed weaponry that utilised an element of phase-shifting to try and penetrate shields. This had worked very well until Anubis modified his shields so that neither Asgard plasma bolts not Tollan Ion Cannon could “cheat” their way through and since then everyone had moved towards a more brute force approach, everyone except for Loki that is.
Loki’s new Directed-Energy-Weapon was tied directly into the advanced sensors on the Phantasm, it automatically adjusted the frequency and phase of the energy being fired, not to try and slip through the shields as before but rather to target them directly. The new Phase Cannon simply ate shields, for the same amount of power input they drained over twice as much from the shields they were fired at as the earlier Pulse Cannons still equipping the Spectre managed, making a large enough group of Type 3’s a threat even to a Ha’tak especially when they worked in conjunction with their big brothers.
Measuring a mere seventy-five metres across Loki’s “Battleships” were dwarfed by the six-hundred metre wide Ha’tak vessels they were fighting but when six of seven of them ganged up and fired their Plasma Beam weapons into a Goa’uld mothership that was already being subjected to the death of a thousand cuts by Phantasm fighters they were extremely effective. With shields already drained by hundreds of shots from fighter Phase Cannon the Battleship’s less advanced but much more powerful Plasma Beams had a decent chance of lancing through them, overloading the weakened shield bubble at a single point and cutting deep into the hull of the target behind. As Anubis watched giants were falling to dwarves and he wondered what the Ha’tak he had previously given Loki would be able to do once the renegade had the chance to work his magic upon it.
Loki was soon losing craft however. Although being outside an atmosphere his battleships could use their shields for once, unlike when they were on one of their missions to Earth or Langara for example, they simply weren’t large enough to long withstand the fury of the main guns on a Ha’tak. Once Apophis realised that he couldn’t simply ignore the “gnats” as he had called them he ordered several of his motherships to engage the larger plasma beam wielding enemy ships and soon Loki’s battleships were being pounded to cydonium scrap, unable to withstand more than two or three hits at best before they exploded.
Unfortunately this was of course what Loki had intended to happen, he was freely sacrificing his ships to take some of the pressure of Anubis and even a modicum of relief was enough to buy more time for the Eye super-weapon to continue wreaking havoc and untold destruction on the fleet of Apophis, it was already a bloody, costly day for all sides and it showed no sign of relenting yet.
Fortunately for Baal his own close allies might have scheming harpies but at least Amaterasu, Bastet and Kali were relatively sane and tended to have some regard for his judgement. He issued orders to them to form up alongside his own ships in a proper battle formation and together they destroyed what was left of the forces under the command of Zipacna and then moved on to engage the main body of the enemy fleet.
Zipacna died on the pel’tak of his own ship, it might have been a glorious death in battle if he hadn’t been trying to surrender at the time, his offer to Baal to swap sides being rejected immediately, Baal giving him a little wave goodbye before he added the ship Zipacna was on to the vast expanding belt of debris now littering the area.
‘The remaining Ha’tak of Moloc are leaving the fight and escaping to hyperspace Sire’ a Jaffa reported to Baal. ‘Those of Ares have pulled back to fight alongside those of Lord Yu but many are damaged, they are not an effective fighting force’ he continued. ‘The flagship of Apophis is closing on that of Anubis... it is opening fire.’
‘Well that’s got to hurt’ Baal observed before smiling. ‘Inform the ladies the plan still stands’ he said. ‘As soon as either flagship is destroyed... we’ll attack the other one immediately.’
‘Yes Sire’ the Jaffa replied with a deferential bow.
‘If we’re really lucky they’ll kill each other and save us the trouble’ Baal said brightly.
The appearance of Loki’s forces had given Anubis sufficient respite both to destroy another two dozen ships, many of them belonging to Lord Yu, and partially recharge his shields as well. They were soon being fast depleted once again however as the flagship of Apophis fired volley after volley of titanic bolts of plasma against him.
A plasma bolt penetrated the shields and shattered one of the pylons that spiked out from the main body of the ship. ‘Our shields are failing My Lord’ Her’ak reported.
‘Is the weapon ready to fire?’ Anubis asked.
‘It is’ Her’ak reported.
‘Set the weapon to fire as a concentrated beam as we did to destroy Abydos, orientate the ship so that we can fire it directly at the flagship of Apophis’ Anubis ordered.
Apophis watched the ugly ship of his enemy roll in space. ‘What is he up to?’ the System Lord wondered to himself. ‘Continue firing, he may be trying to flee’ he ordered.
‘We are ready’ Her’ak told his god.
‘Destroy him’ Anubis commanded.
A beam of crackling energy seared out from one flagship and struck the other, the shield bubble resisted for but a moment before the beam penetrated and scorched through the vessel, vaporising millions of tons of metal in an instant. The beam continued on, emerging from the other side of the ship as it exploded and spearing another ship behind it destroying that one as well.
‘Well so much for Apophis’ Baal remarked. ‘Signal Lord Yu and Ares, tell them that we’re switching sides and that we had better all send everything we can at that Ancient abomination before Anubis can either fire it again or get away’ he declared.
His moment of triumph was short-lived as Anubis realised that everyone else had suddenly stopped shooting at each other and that only his dwindling band of remaining Ha’tak and Loki’s ships were still fighting. ‘I have a very bad feeling about this’ he said as the image of Baal appeared projected before him.
‘Thanks for getting rid of Apophis, couldn’t have done it without you’ Baal said, ‘but you’re the number one menace to all of us now he’s gone so... what is it the Tau’ri say? Oh yes, kiss your ass goodbye’ he added with a smile.
‘Sire...’ Her’ak said nervously.
‘I know’ Anubis responded.
‘Every remaining ship is now heading straight towards us’ Her’ak continued.
‘I know’ Anubis repeated.
‘Our shields are in no condition to...’ Her’ak persisted.
‘I know’ Anubis growled.
‘Loki’s forces are redeploying, I think they mean to cover our escape’ Her’ak told him. ‘They are engaging... everyone’ he said.
‘I will not allow Baal to prosper from his betrayal, prepare the escape craft and then overload the Eye weapon’ Anubis ordered. ‘Send the flagship directly into Delmak at full speed, the explosion of the ship and weapon will destroy the planet’ he said. ‘If we took the Eyes they would pursue me to the ends of the galaxy to prevent me using them again, but if I cannot have Delmak or the Ancient weapon no one can’ he declared.
Her’ak thought of the hundreds of millions of Jaffa and human slaves living in the cities below, at least it would be a quick painless end he rationalised. ‘The scale of your wrath will be legendary My Lord’ he said. ‘It will be talked of in awe by generations yet unborn’ he told Anubis earnestly.
Anubis would have agreed but his long-term plan involved there not being any more generations so that piece of sycophancy was utterly wasted he thought to himself.