Chapter 7

The next month went smoothly enough, thankfully. My Fleet was repaired, thanks to the arrival of the Ensi-class Deployable Shipyard Sirrush. I now had three Ha'taks, the Xiaotian Quan, Opele, and the Chuāncì Jiàn, along with three Al'kesh, the Yuanyang, Danding He, and Lu Ci. The Chuāncì Jiàn also underwent the same modifications that the Opele and Xiaotian Quan did, making my small flotilla of Ha'taks much more potent than anything anyone else had. I also designed a similar series of modifications for the Al'kesh, which were quickly applied to my small trio of those.

At the same time, my factories began producing Tianyan Staff Rifles and Diàn Jiàn Model Zat'nic'tels, which allowed my Jaffa to begin drilling on the new equipment, passing off their Old Model Zat'nic'tels and Ma'tok Staff weapons to the previously under-equipped Jaffa who had been forced to use Quarterstaves and Intars in both training and their normal duties thanks to a lack of equipment.

Our fighter plants also managed to make up more of the lost batches of Ptah-class Fighters, allowing several squadrons, including the ones for the Chuāncì Jiàn to finally be re-equipped, though many of my ground-based squadrons still had to rely on old-model Udajeet Atmospheric Fighters for now. At least we no longer had squadrons just sitting around not able to fly anymore, and that could only be a good thing.

A conversation with my Five Tiger General at the end of the month effectively let me know that it would likely take four months for the equipment deficit to be fully reversed. At least that was their best guess at the rate that production was going. I did receive some grumbles about the mandatory flash training session and education classes amongst the workforce slowing production some, but not many. Chen's son and daughter were both benefiting from the classes, as were General Yan, Kuo, Tsao, and Di's Grandchildren.

Even the ever-acerbic General Yan had to admit that giving everyone a basic education was a good idea and that production was likely to surge once people reached a threshold of competency with it. It would turn out that we would see the beginnings of such a production surge sometime in the next month. For now, though, production of fighters and equipment held steady.

Speaking of improvements for the workers, Chíguó Tiān and Luoshen managed to get the Worker's Quarter of the Planetary Capital of Yungong here on Taiji mostly electrified by the end of the month, though their efforts to expand running water and indoor plumbing had to go slower by nature. After all, to run pipes into the Worker Housing, you had to displace the workers while the work went on, which naturally caused problems if you didn't do it correctly. Questions on just how exactly to do that wound up with the answer that it couldn't be done without disruptions to production. Production that we drastically needed to re-arm at the moment.

Fortunately, my subordinates were at least moderately competent and eager to show their new Overlord that they could fulfill his vision. By the end of the month, they had hit upon the solution of using public bathhouses as a stopgap solution for the larger cities, a modification of the plan I signed off on. It was practical and promoted a minimum level of hygiene for the people to avoid sickness and so on. Yungong would have sixty-four public bathhouses each able to service three thousand people at a time, dotted around the Workers' Quarters and Jaffa District. Work began immediately on those as soon as the electrification efforts finished, which happened in the last week of the month.

At the same time, work began on the new Shipyard which was using the Habitable Moon of Taiji, Tuzi, as its base. Tuzi had, surprisingly, only been extremely sparsely settled by my mother, owing to the rugged terrain. It was largely forested mountains that would require effort to clear, something my Mother wouldn't have expended when she didn't need to. Here, though, there were the beginnings of a settlement and the start of a shipyard on the Gao Plateau, though it'd be sometime yet before anything would truly come of it. Still, the small settlement of Gaoning that had been built represented the first step toward colonizing Tuzi and that was something to be proud of.

All told we would likely be halfway through the year before Taiji would be electrified and full of bathhouses, the Gaoning Shipyard would be built, and my Jaffa would have their equipment deficit reversed. Six months before I could even think of expanding further. I would fill the time by designing and tinkering.

Firstly, I kept up work on the Rotary Staff Cannon I had been designing. By the end of the month, I had tweaked the design as much as was practicable with my genetic memory and enhanced intellect and had a prototype being produced for testing by my Jaffa. While I waited on a report from that effort to see if I might need to fix any bugs, I began working on a new type of ship armor that would hopefully, revolutionize naval warfare.

Most ship armor the Goa'uld used was a Trinium Alloy. That was great for larger ships, where you could pile massive slabs of Trinium plate onto the superstructure, but it also made those ships slower and more ungainly. The Asgard had sliced formations of those ships apart at the joints with their faster, more maneuverable, ships during both wars the Goa'uld had fought against them. However, there was a principle that existed that wasn't being used thanks to Trinium alloys providing a shortcut. Ablative materials.

By sandwiching a layer of ablative material between two, lighter, Trinium Armor Plates, I could, in theory, strengthen the armor of my warships while cutting the weight down to something more manageable. If I then took that one step further and began to use similar properties as carbon nanotubes to form the ablative layer, arranging it in a zig-zag nano-lattice that reinforced the whole structure, the armor would be boosted further. This would be my next project, the Tianjia, or Heavenly Armor.

By the time I managed that, the Rotary Staff Cannon would also be tested and sent back to my workshop for revisions. It would take both the Tianjia and the Rotary Staff Cannon a series of revisions over the next two months to finally complete, but by the third month of the year, the Tianjia was deemed fully functional after three versions and the Rotary Staff Cannon, which I was naming the Guadao Rotary Staff Cannon, had been finalized after four revisions.

As we reached the halfway point of the six-month mark before expansion could begin in earnest, I began to design a new type of ship that utilized all the various naval upgrades I had so far designed. This ship would be unlike the Al'kesh and Ha'tak, the embellishments and inefficiencies would be far less than any Al'kesh or Ha'tak currently in service. I would keep the gold and jade decoration to a minimum, though some would unfortunately still need to be present owing to the need to keep up appearances in front of my fellow Goa'uld. Instead, this ship would be designed for one purpose, conquest.

The Long-Class Cruiser would be half-again the size of an Al'kesh, sport Tianjia armor, ten Guandao Rotary Staff Cannons, and my improved systems modifications. In effect, they would be roughly half as powerful as a modified Ha'tak for a thirteenth of the size, weight, and most importantly, expense to produce. Two Long-Class Cruisers would be capable of destroying one Modified Ha'tak in an even fight, which would help the rest of the Goa'uld underestimate the design.

I had plans for six such vessels to start off with. The Tianlong, Shanlong, Helong, Hailong, Senlinlong, and Xuelong. Once the Guo Shipyard was finished, I'd be capable of building a Long-class Cruiser every one month, two weeks, and one day. That means that by the end of the year, if everything goes according to plan, I should have four built with another one almost finished. With that in mind, I planned my initial expansion to take place against Ba Chua Xu and her Four Immortals in the eighth month of the year.

Unfortunately, such smooth sailing was not to last. We had almost made it to the halfway mark of the year with everything going smoothly, with the Gao Shipyard almost ready to come online, my Goa'uld Forces almost entirely kitted out in their new equipment, and Taiji almost completely electrified and bathhouse up, when I would receive my first visit from Lord Yu to see how my progress was going and to drop off Ha'taks for modification.

During his visit, he would notice the improvements I was making and question me on them. . .

XXXX

Salem watched impassively as the Yùzuò and Musicum Ferrum approached Taiji. She and Zelida had effectively conned their way into Lord Yu's Service as an Underlord. They had done this via the roundabout method of pretending to be the Goa'uld Canens, one of the minor local Underlords that had ruled Tiber, Almo, Anio, Volturno, and Po for Olokun. Those worlds having been ceded to Lord Yu in the recent treaty. Canens had been a false identity, the Underlord of Po that didn't actually exist. Instead, Salem would let Zelida out to play whenever another Goa'uld needed to be conversed with.

Of course, Salem and Zelida were not Goa'uld, they were Tok'ra. Infiltrators posing as a minor Underlord to better gain intelligence from within the Goa'uld Empire. It was a favored strategy of the Tok'ra, to embed an agent in an out-of-the-way world that nobody would care about and have them pass along information about goings-on in their section of the Goa'uld Empire. More than once had such an agent been able to feed a Tok'ra base information that a System Lord was gathering forces to stamp them out, allowing the evacuation of the base, or dig up the fact that a System Lord had uncovered some of the agents in their midst and allowed said agents to slip the ensuing manhunt.

Of course, Lord Yu was notoriously difficult to infiltrate. The Tok'ra had only sporadically been able to place agents in his Dominion, and even then never for very long. Somehow, the wily Jade Emperor was always able to sniff out infiltrators sooner or later. Salem and Zelida had been preparing to fake Canens' death in an assassination which would point to Cronus, hopefully starting a conflict between Lord Yu and Cronus for good measure when she had been summoned by Lord Yu. Apparently, he was taking her and her Ha'tak with him to meet with his new Grand Chancellor, Erlang Shen, and have her Ha'tak modified.

Apparently, he'd suffered a number of losses making good on his promise to Olokun, losing a few of his newly modified Ha'taks in the Battle of Mlima Mrefu, and wanted to upgrade some of the ones that he had in reserve to cover. Canens' Musicum Ferrum would be one of the first, but also as a minor Underlord, she would have to use Erlang Shen's Shipyards. She wasn't important enough for Lord Yu's Shipyards.

The opportunity here was too great. Erlang Shen was, by all accounts, a second Ptah, inventing multiple pieces of kit for his Overlord. The Tok'ra High Council's orders on the matter were clear. Salem and Zelida were to put the plan to fake Canens' death on hold and gather whatever information they could on Erlang Shen. It could be critical for the future of their movement, especially if the new equipment began to spread beyond Lord Yu's Domain.

"We are being hailed, My Lady. It is Erlang Shen from the planet below." Informed Gnaeus, Canens' First Prime.

Salem hated deceiving the Jaffa like this, but Zelida was quick to remind her that most of the Jaffa weren't ready to hear the truth about the Goa'uld being false gods any time she thought to bring that up in their bouts of internal conversation.

'It's just the way the Galaxy is, Salem. Don't think about it and keep to the course. We need to know what kind of megalomaniac we're dealing with here.' Pointed out Zelida, internally.

'Right, you're up Zelida. Let's see if we can't fool this guy too.' Responded Salem, internally.

As Zelida took temporary control of Salem's body, eyes flashing with internal power, Salem watched from inside their head as Zelida turned to Gnaeus with an imperious look and commanded him to open a channel in a pompous tone of voice.

"On screen." Ordered Zelida, bombastically.

As the Voc'ume Projector whirred to life with a humming noise, Salem couldn't help but smirk at the tone of voice. They always did draw from the sort of bad cartoon villains that Tech Con Entertainment liked to put out for Kids Programming for their Goa'uld personas. It was odd how often the Goa'uld managed to ape what every Hebridan kid would know as the bad guy from their Saturday morning cartoons.

Now, it was time to see if this Erlang Shen lived up to the hype. . .

XXXX

After conversing briefly with Lord Yu, I was informed of two things via the Voc'ume call. The first was that he wished my new ship designs to be transferred over to him as soon as possible. He'd spotted the Gao Shipyards on sensors as they closed with Taiji and he had worked out that since no Goa'uld ship would require a shipyard in that configuration of that size that I must have designed a new class of ship that did require it. Lord Yu was always smart, at least before the incurable Space Dementia kicked in. That was easily done, though. After all, if I had to trust any Goa'uld with new ship designs, it'd be Lord Yu.

Of course, the second thing I was informed of was far less easily dealt with. I would be playing host to a minor Goa'uld. Canens, a daughter of Janus who stayed Loyal even after his brethren chose to follow Egeria into treason against the Empire. Her Ha'tak, the Musicum Ferrum was going to be upgraded using the Sirrush. She would also be staying for a little while to check on my progress for Lord Yu.

Of course, I also got a brief rundown of events that had happened with Olokun, Lord Yu, and the Sons of Nyambe. In short, they'd won, but both Lord Yu and Olokun had taken a few losses, with Lord Yu losing three upgraded Ha'taks and Olokun losing multiple battalions of Jaffa and a few Al'kesh, with one of his remaining Ha'taks badly damaged but salvageable. They had, however, conquered those planets for Olokun, who promptly turned over the planets of Tiber, Almo, Anio, Volturno, and Po, the former realm of Volturnus, to Lord Yu.

Sighing, I supposed I ought to hail the Musicum Ferrum and see exactly who I was working with here. I ordered my Voc'ume operator to do so and the image that was projected was of a slender woman whose brunette hair was done up in a loose braid. She looked Indian almost, if I had to put a famous face to her, I'd say she sort of looked like Disha Patani, a Bollywood Actress from my Old Earth. I suppose that could be confused with Latin looks by those who didn't know better or didn't care, but I did. Something was fishy here and I wasn't sure what.

"Greetings, Grand Chancellor. I am Canens, Daughter of Janus, Ruler of the World of Po, I am eager to hear of the ways you have improved your worlds' technologies for our shared Lord." Intoned Canens.

"I would be glad to give you a tour and an update. If you would care to transport down to my palace, I can have an honor guard meet you." I offered.

"What of my Jaffa? They cannot stay on board the Musicum Ferrum while it is being upgraded, can they?" Questioned Canens.

"They can. The upgrades do not require the whole ship to be evacuated. Merely the Pel'tac and the Reactor Section. Were I you, I would allow my Jaffa to watch the procedures and learn how the upgrades are installed. This way, they might understand how to better repair any damage." I offered.

That was both a sincere offer and a test. If she jumped on the opportunity without any hesitation, comment, or whatnot, even showing in her expression and body language, then I would know that she was not an agent of a foreign Goa'uld, though she could still be working for Lord Yu and simply hiding the extent of her own benevolence. My money if she took the bait was on Tok'ra infiltration, though.

"Oh? You think it wise to allow the Jaffa to learn the secrets to such things?" Queried Canens.

There was a flash of something behind her expression, not quite worry, more unease, and not at what I had offered, but at me in particular. I wasn't the best at reading body language and microexpressions, though. I'd only had flash training and a few opportunities since then for practice. There was a margin of error there. I had better continue pressing on.

"I do. The Jaffa are our right arm, how can we expect them to carry out their duties to the best of their abilities if we do not look after them and give them the tools they require to do so?" I asked.

"There are those who would call such sentiments foolish. Possibly Dangerous." Pointed out Canens. More flashes of that same emotion crossed her face briefly before being smothered by a mask of practiced indifference.

"We have a responsibility to rule well, Canens. That is why we are born with such power. And ruling well will only benefit the Empire in the long-term." I insisted.

"Perhaps. I will transport down shortly." Begrudged Canens. Then she cut the feed.

That was when I was able to place the emotion that her body language and facial expressions were showing. It was surprise that I wasn't what she had been expecting, and not surprise in a bad way. That left two options here, either Canens was secretly like me in that she was a Goa'uld who was more sympathetic than the usual megalomaniacal type and hadn't yet fled to join the Tok'ra, or she was a Tok'ra agent who somehow had managed to trick both Olokun and Lord Yu.

Either one could be good for me, but the strategies I would have to use to reach that good outcome would vary to differing extents depending on whether Canens was another abnormal Goa'uld or whether she was a Tok'ra Infiltrator, as would the desired outcomes. If she was an abnormal Goa'uld, then I would try and talk her into allying with me. If she was a Tok'ra, then I would need to prove to their High Council that I was an abnormal Goa'uld who had somehow managed to achieve a level of power and thus could be an ally.

That second one wasn't completely unheard of. Most of Egeria's group had been like that, after all, as were a few of the minor, independent Goa'uld I'd heard of. Bai-Ulgan out in the unclaimed territories between Svarog and Moloc was reportedly like that, as was Hanuman, who ruled territory in the unclaimed areas between Kali, Bastet, Sokar, and Ba'al. It was, however, exceedingly rare in this day and age. Most Abnormal Goa'uld get eaten in a cannibalistic ritual as soon as they trip the brain scans. It was part ancient ritual part eugenics practice that ensured the overwhelming majority of Goa'uld in power were megalomaniacs.

At any rate, I would soon find out which tactic I needed to take as Chen rounded up an honor guard to meet with Canens at the Ring Transport Room of the Palace. Twenty Jaffa with Tianyan Staff Rifles and Diàn Jiàn Model Zat'nic'tels, along with Jaffa Armor that had been made using a smaller, infantry-scale version of the Tianjia, which could tank multiple blasts from even a Tianyan, though it didn't have the shield generators, strength enhancements, or any of the other bells and whistles that my custom suit did. In the meantime, I prepared myself for some good old-fashioned interrogation by skullduggery.

Hopefully, I would come out of this with an ally or a line to the Tok'ra High Council instead of a looming disaster. . .

XXXX

AN: All right, here you go. I told you this chapter was going to be a little time-skippy, so I hope you don't mind. Here we get a bit of time advancement and progress, as well as setting up a few things for the future, namely, the upcoming invasion of some independent territory, along with the Tok'ra taking notice of Erlang Shen and sending an agent to infiltrate and dig up intel on him.

Salem is a Tok'ra from the tabletop RPG. I didn't want to use a more well-known one like Anise or Selmak for this, since I don't feel like I should be running into characters associated that heavily with the SGC just yet.

The thing about Abnormal Goa'uld is a headcanon of mine, seeing as how there's no real major biological difference between Goa'uld and Tok'ra, and instead, the differences seem to be of mindset and philosophy. Since Tok'ra need to come from somewhere, I have it that every so often an Abnormal Go'auld gets born, one who is, ironically, closer to what the Goa'uld used to be before they started using the Sarcophagus willy-nilly and changing their brain chemistry to be even more sociopathic with each generation.

Normally, these Goa'uld pop up on brain scans when they are children and the other Goa'uld eat them in a cannibalistic ritual that we see on screen a time or two in episodes like Last Stand. That ritual also functions as a sort of eugenics process that ensures that Abnormal Goa'uld who don't manage to fool the brainscans get removed from the gene pool. Those abnormal Goa'uld that do often get fed up with their siblings' proclivities and run away to join the Tok'ra. Very few ever get any level of power and those that do almost always tend to be independent rulers of a few backwater worlds.

At any rate, the next chapter will be a face-to-face meeting with 'Canens'.

Stay tuned. . .