In the next cell, Agent Lyudmila Tcherina was having an interesting day with Hathor. The goddess had just explained the history of the Goa'uld Empire, from the waters of their ancestral planet and the Unas era, to the point where Ra left Earth.
Lyudmila asked. "So, this "Tau'ri rebellion" alone was able to force out the Goa'uld ? How did the rebels communicate and coordinate between, let's say, Athens and Lagos, without any radio ? Also, why didn't your Jaffa simply put them down with their ma'tok staffs ? ".
Hathor smiled. "You see, the Tau'ri Rebellion was not really Tau'ri to begin with." Hathor started her story.
"It's a long story. But basically, a few years before the Rebellion, a Goa'uld underlord, Belus, had tried to conquer Oannes, a planet inhabited by an amphibian humanoid race. The Ohnes didn't have hyperdrive -yet. But they had weapons powerful enough to fight off the assault. As usual in such cases, the System Lords sent a common fleet to crush those upstarts, but the Ohnes' orbital defence grid and their in-system fleet stopped our fleet, again. In retaliation, the Ohnes started to send freedom fighters through the Empire, where they assassinated small lords and administrators, sabotaged mines, refineries, hangars and shipyards, and spread the idea of rebellion through our subjects, of all species."
"I believed the Goa'uld only ruled on human slaves, and Jaffa of course ? ".
"No, there are also the Unas. Sure, there are not much of them now, and but in my era at least, some Goa'uld still used them. There are also the Sekhmet, who are humanoid but slightly cat-like. They are mostly used by Bastet, she was the one to discover their planet in the first place. And there are the Ilempri, a race which looks human but isn't. Strangely enough, they were discovered on a planet near Earth. That said, we mostly used the Ilempri as... special forces, as you would say, and the Sekhmet as shock troopers. We mostly preferred the humans, who we could use as, well... everything."
Tcherina had her suspiscions about who were the Sekhmet and the Ilempri now. She used her pad, to show the image of a Dilgar to Hathor.
"And they are the Sekhmet, right ? ".
Hathor nodded. It was logical. The gate had been found near Omelos, and the Dilgar had a mythology (known to Earth scholars through the war prisoners) that showed Goa'uld-like gods roaming Omelos in the long past. They even named their ace ships Sekhmet.
So, there were still Dilgar in the galaxy. No, Tcherina corrected herself, there were Sekhmet. They had nothing to do with their twisted cousins.
"So, the Ohnes started to spread rebellion, and ? ". A few years later, they also started to send bombers, similar to our Al'keshes, but with hyperdrive. Those Al'keshes, however, used a particle cannon instead of plasma charges, which allowed them to bomb Goa'uld infrastructure from orbit. So, every week, we lost Jaffa armies, training camps, dockyards and even palaces to either orbital bombings or Ohnes commando attacks, everywhere on the planets. More and more humans, with Ohnes-supplied weapons or with ma'tok staffs (stolen from dead Jaffa), started a rebellion. The Ohnes helped them to coordinate worldwide. A small Goa'uld, Ishkur, managed to get Omoroca thanks to his elite force, the Sodan. But of course, he wanted to gloat to the System Lords and to his subjects. He showed Omoroca off as a trophy, and so, she had time to convince the talk with Ishkur's prima and his subordinates, who already doubted our divinity. So, the day Omoroca was to be excuted, in public, his Sodan warriors suddently turned on Ishkur and executed him instead.
"And they sent Omoroca, their best agent, to Earth. At that time, the Ohnes had just developed hyperdrive, and they sent submarine ships to Earth. Some of their ships were conceived to both go in space and remain in the oceans for centuries if needed, even unshielded, and if deep enough, to hide themselves to our sensors. So, there could be Ohnes arriving at any moment, especially on coasts. For decades, Ohnes submarine ships were constantly sent to Earth. We destroyed most of them in orbit or atmosphere, but there were still a lot that passed through.
Bad luck continued, for just at that time, the Alterans -or Ancients- decided to come back from Atlantis.
"But Atlantis is... ".
"A myth ? Yes, just like me and Seth, right ? ". This time, Hathor had a know-it all smile. "And no, I don't know where is Atlantis. In fact, all we knew, at the time, was that the Ancients were the mysterious race that had created the stargate network, and left ruins everywhere in the galaxy. We developed our technology by copying what we found of theirs. But we thought they were dead or had totally left. In fact, they had moved to another galaxy, we never knew why.
And then, 5,000 years ago, they decided to go back to Earth. Of course, Ra panicked, even if he tried to not show it."
Hathor laughed. It was always good to mock this old prick. She was remembering that day when all the System Lords reunited, and Ra told them that the Ancients had sent delegates to Earth.
"Ra decided to meet himself the Ancient delegates, and to tell them that he was, basically, the King of Earth. He passed himself as human, or he tried at least. We were all scared that they would discover the truth. That were were not the legitimate sovereigns of mankind but alien occupiers. ".
"Why would be the Ancients so upset about this ? They were fervently anti-slavery ? ". At this question, Hathor realized she forgot a detail.
"No, my dear. The Ancients were human. Or rather, they were the "first" humanity, and they created you in their image. You are their children."
Lyudmila was shocked. She thought for a few seconds of how Darwin and the Bible would probably be proven both wrong, but focused herself. I went back to my palace in Mayan lands, to prepare to evacuate my Jaffa and slaves to my secret planet, if necessary. And then, all of our Cheops (there were 300) guarding Earth were destroyed at once. We never knew what happened exactly, but we immediately suspected the Ancients were attacking us. The next day, squid-shaped plasma... "missiles" appeared out of thin air and destroyed all our ground infrastructures. In a few hours, most of the Goa'uld underlords had been killed with their personal guard, while hangars, shipyards, training camps, factories, ground-to-space defences and orbital satellites were destroyed. We then understood that the Ancients had invisible ships, small enough to fit in a gate. Taking advantage of the situation, the Ohnes sumbarines all emerged at once, and their soldiers attacked our Jaffa armies on ground. Without a central command, the Jaffa started to lose battles everywhere, and many deserted or joined the Sodan rebels. Human rebel groups, who almost all had Ohnes commandos among them, also joined the general attack. One day after that, the Ancients had probably made contact with the Ohnes and the Sodan. Ancient soldiers appeared among all Ohnes and human armies, and they were telepaths and telekinetics. They also had a personal shield (much better than our own version) and air support from the invisible ships. Even if there were not many Ancients, even a small handful of them was enough to turn a battle. Many Goa'uld were killed, trying to resist. The others tried to survive. Those with personal ships fled in space, the others tried to hide, or to go to the gate in Egypt, but either they were intercepted or they found the gate guarded by human rebels. I know this because I was listening on subspace radio. Myself, I was hidden in the countryside, in a small temple among my priestesses, in Mayan lands. My territory was mostly spared by human rebellions, and the Ohnes freedom fighters had stopped attacking me, because my subjects were faitful. I hoped the Ancients and Ohnes would think me dead and overlook my domain, and they mostly did (after destroying all my infrastructure)".
"Tell me more."
"Even we, the Goa'uld, ignored this, until this day when their delegates arrived. Ra tried to stall them and milk them for intelligence, and they pretended to believe our story. Their diplomats could have been poker champions, they really seemed to believe us. However, Ra still prepared for the worst, just in case, and so did I.
But we had no time. Only one day after the Ancient delegation met Ra, our gate in Giza was shut off remotely, and we detected a gate activation in Antarctica (we hadn't known there was a gate there). Ra sent a squadron of Tel'tak to scout this new gate, which remained open. But strangely, we saw nothing passing through. Which was even more disturbing.
Hathor was clearly proud of that. She had (mostly) managed to keep the loyalty of her subjects through decades of simmering rebellion, and the final Tau'ri Rebellion. She was simply that much better than the other Goa'uld. She continued her story.
"Our last hope was the reinforcement fleet, which arrived two months later. I thought we stood a real chance, since the Ancients didn't have capital ships with them, and didn't seem very numerous. Personnally, I watched the battle with my telescope while listening to the radio. Luckily, the battle occurred right above my location. I saw that the System Lords had brought 750 Cheops warships, and half of them were quickly slaughtered, I still don't know how for sure."
"But, you have an idea. " But, as I said, they destroyed half of the Goa'uld fleet this day. At the same time, dozens of vortexes opened in space. Yes, they were jump points. And a fleet of flower-shaped ships, that I recognized as Vorlon ships, appeared and slaughered the remaining Cheops. At that moment, I decided to hide in a cave, near an active volcano. I took my sarcophagus and every other useful object with me. Yes, it was risky, almost suicidal, even with my personal shield to protect me. I barely escaped lava. But it paid off, the Vorlons didn't have the idea of searching there. When I came out, I found only silence on the subspace radio. There was, apparently, no remaining Goa'uld on Earth. The Vorlons had overlooked my transportation rings, because I had shut them off, but that also meant I had to reactivate them on both ends. So, the first time, I had to take a boat (specifically constructed by my followers) from America to Europe, and Bithynia especially. I found out that the Vorlons had cleaned up all traces of our presence. There were no Jaffa, no Jaffa bodies, no Goa'uld bodies, no weapons even. Even our satellites, dead in space after the Ancient attack, were cleaned up according to my telescopes. That's why you never found anything. The only good news was that the Ancient, Ohnes and Sodan fighters had left, too. Worse, there were no gates. The one in Egypt had been unearthed and taken away by a flower ship, and the one in Antarctica had probably been taken too, since I was not able to find its scent. It was only fifteen years ago that I found the scent of a gate.
"Yes. I had millenia to think about what happened after all. I know the Ancients had developed the original transport rings, so I think they managed to hijack our own rings, and send explosive charges through. That, or they used their gate jumpers. Their jumpers had hyperdrives, so, they could emerge right next to the Cheops, just where the plasma batteries couldn't reach tem, and drop their plasma squids. They could even emerge inside the Cheops and drop a bomb. I'm not sure what they did but surely it was one of these three solutions.
Hathor, then, finished her story quickly. She continued to be a goddess in Mayan lands, Greece, Anatolia and Near-East, becoming known as Aphrodite and Ishtar there. She, notably, meddled in the Trojan War. Actually, she took on her usual persona of Aphrodite, but she also took on the persona of fellow Goa'uld like Athena, Ares, Poseidon and Hera, and she helped both sides.
When she had been a System Lord, she had always organized a lot of games. Not only that made her loved (panem et circenses, as the Romans would say later), but that was her personal fun. Many Goa'uld lords liked to come and watch Jaffa armies fighting each other (to death) for fun. Stuck on Earth and bored, Hathor hadn't resisted transforming a small and local war into an epic struggle.
Since she was really bored, she then played for ten further years with Odysseus and his crew.
Hathor also learnt that the Queen of Bithynia had pretended she could beat Aphrodite with her soldiers. Hathor proven her wrong, and got the daughter of that Queen, Andromeda, as a new host.
That said, Hathor mostly ruled through her priestesses, and sometimes through the kings and queens (when they were devout enough), and remained elusive. She preferred to be a legend and the power behind the power, because she was slightly paranoid about Ancients and Vorlons catching her. Especially as there were Ancients active througout the world, kick-starting civilizations(for example, in Italy, where their language inspired Latin). Hathor also constated that stories about Atlantis were, slowly, spreading.
Hathor created a network of followers with telescopes in the whole world. If one of them spotted Ancient, Vorlon or Goa'uld ships, they had to warn her through light signals. They were positioned on mountain cliffs or on boats in the ocean. Each outpost would carry the signal to the next, giving almost instant warning. When the Vorlons did visit in 1637 BC, Hathor was in Greece, on the island of Santorin. She again shut off her transportation rings, decided to sacrifice her (useless anyway) subspace communicator, which were made in naqadah, and created a makeshift bomb, using the naqadah/potassium explosive effect. Then, she threw this bomb in the volcano, programming it to explode at a chosen time. Finally, she fled on a boat, hoping she would be far enough to survive.
Amazingly, the Vorlon ship, which was alone, had started by scanning Far East and China, giving her time. So, when the ship got close, she started the explosion of the volcano (and again hid herself close to it), which then became legendary. She was almost killed in the tsunami, even with her personal shield, and she then managed to swim to the ground.
Once again, the Vorlons did not seek anything in the era around Santorin, presuming everyone there was dead. Once again, they left, happy that the Goa'uld weren't trespassing. Hathor, then, managed once again to get a boat freely, thanks to Nish'ta, and then, she managed to join up with one of her ocean-going boats and got back to Central America.
Centuries after that, Hathor, who was still mostly ruling through her priestesses, made a fatal error. She underestimated the greed and the cunning of humans. So, when Ixtab, her priestess, came to her, saying that there had been a Vorlon ship spotted, she followed Ixtab and the other priestesses to their secret deep cave. This cave was 15 kilometers deep, and they hoped the Vorlons would not find her there.
Except that it was a trap. And once Hathor was in her cave, the priestesses closed the doors behind her, and waited for her to pass out, lacking food and water. Then, they put her in her Sarcophagus, and sealed her.
Hearing that, Lyudmila Tcherina laughed so hard that she almost fell off her chair. "You mean that you, a "goddess", were trapped by your own priestesses, and that they continued to rule in your name, but without you ? ".
Hathor just wanted to use her hara kesh on that impudent woman, except that she was the prisoner there. So, she only growled, and her face reddened with fury. Which made the Agent Tcherina laugh even harder.