Chapter Text
A Ha’tak vessel careened towards the planet's surface in a barely controlled descent. George Hammond, Jacob Carter, and Hank Landry could only look up in despair. Their exploratory mission to Abydos had gone spectacularly sideways five years past, and the ill-fated officers had been trapped on Abydos ever since. The local leader, Kasuf, and the few remaining Abydonians who had survived wave after wave of the Goa’ulds’ brutal attacks fled into the ruins of Ra's pyramid to hide as soon as they’d seen the large ship crossing into the atmosphere. Hammond, Carter, and Landry took up defensive positions near the pyramid’s entrance.
It had been a long five years. Three weeks after making peaceful first contact with the Abydonians, the Goa’uld had come. Outgunned, they’d watched as the Goa’uld Ra ruthlessly killed their team leader, Colonel West. The team had rallied, gotten lucky, and killed Ra by detonating a nuclear bomb aboard his ship, but not before Ra had sent messages out to his cronies that there was a rebellion on Abydos and that the Tau’ri had unburied their Stargate. Vengeance to the people of Abydos had been swift by land and aerial assault, burying Abydos’ Stargate under rubble and breaking off all hope of contact with Earth. In less than a month, everything that they had ever known had been turned upside down.
The Ha’tak halted its descent and hung in the air directly in front of the pyramid which was now too battered to be used as a landing pad. Someone who didn’t understand the significance of the ship might be struck by the beauty of it hanging majestically above the golden sand of the desert planet, but the three officers were too preoccupied prepping for their imminent last stand to notice.
“Gentlmen,” Jacob said, adjusting his sunglasses and raising a Goa’uld staff weapon, “Looks like today may be a good day to die.”
“Ah, come on, Carter,” Hank responded. “You never know. Today may just be a good day to be captured and tortured.” He was also armed with Goa’uld weaponry, his guns having run out of ammunition in the first year of the Goa’uld siege.
Hammond observed the situation grimly as a small party from the ship ringed down to the desert sand and approached their location on foot. “Jake, Hank, it’s been an honor.”
The approaching party consisted of two men and two women, the two men were dressed and armed like Jaffa. They stopped just out of range of the Goa’uld staff weapons. At that point, the younger of the two women broke away from the group, walking slowly and deliberately towards them. She appeared unarmed, and she held her hands out and up in front of her.
She was a middle-aged woman with dark hair and courageous eyes. She stopped about ten feet in front of the men, “My name is Yosuuf. I am Tok’ra, host of Garshaw of Belote.” She watched their expressions carefully. “I see that this means nothing to you?”
Jacob responded, “No ma’am. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that none of us has a clue what you’re talking about.”
Yosuuf nodded her head, clearly thinking. She then continued, “We mean you no harm.” She indicated the group behind her who she was traveling with. “We represent a coalition of Tok’ra and Free Jaffa, and we have come to seek an alliance with the soldiers of the Tau’ri.”
—
Hank, George, and Jacob listened in disbelief as the two Tok’ra women, Yosuuf and Saroosh, told the story of an intergalactic war that had been raging across the galaxy while they were trapped on Abydos, and they received the devastating news that Earth had not be spared, but rather was a target of destruction for the Goa’uld in retaliation for the death of Ra.
The group was seated together in one of the few remaining antichambers of the pyramid. The men had invited Kasuf to join them, though he was very wary of the wizened Jaffa warrior who had been introduced to them as Bratac. The other Jaffa was very young, maybe in his mid-teens – he had been introduced as Teal’c.
“And so you see,” Yosuuf concluded, “Our peoples’ situations are currently unsustainable. There are perhaps four to five thousand humans of the Tau’ri who fled offworld when the assault on Earth occurred.”
At this, all three men started in surprise. George interjected, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat when he’d heard that the Goa’uld had attacked his planet. “People from Earth escaped through the Stargate?”
Saroosh smiled gently, fully aware of the weight of her news. “Yes. We have traced a small colony of Tau’ri survivors to a planet previously unknown to the Goa’uld. Up until this point, we have had no contact with them. But, based on our observations, the evacuation seems to have been made in haste and the planet’s resources will not be able to sustain the survivors for much longer.” Saroosh and Yosuuf exchanged a nod. “We would like to make contact with your people and offer aid.”
Yosuuf continued the narrative, “We, the Tok’ra, have maybe 30 operatives left alive and scattered in strategic positions across the galaxy, though the nature of our infiltration strategies has made it difficult to establish a clear number. And Master Bratac and Teal’c are the only two remaining members of the original Jaffa rebellion that was sparked when you foolishly killed Ra. Separately, the Tok’ra, the Free Jaffa, and the Tau’ri will soon fail.”
“And you think that if we form an alliance, we’d stand a chance?” Jacob asked bluntly, his tone cynical.
Saroosh observed him critically, before opening her mouth and allowing her symbiote Selmak to speak, “Jacob Carter, without this alliance, none of us will have any chance.”