Track of the Apocalypse Ch10 Ficbit – Echoes of War

~ crossovercreativechaos

Jack took a deep breath. “Okay. Who was at war with whom?”

“I haven’t narrowed that down yet,” Daniel admitted, checking through his notes. “I’ve talked to Hanako, and some of the other elders on board, but… whatever happened, it was already over at least ten, maybe fifteen years before the Kabane showed up.”

Meaning they were dealing with a mess at least three decades in the past. Before Ayame and most of this Kabane-killing bunch had even been born. “And mobs of infectious zombies get kind of distracting,” Jack agreed mildly.

Sam pinched a thumb and forefinger together to measure a quarter-inch of air. “Just a little. Sir.”

“An outside threat should have drawn the survivors closer together, no matter their former differences,” Teal’c frowned. “As the survivors of Aragane and the Hunters have made common cause, to fight their enemies.”

“Except,” Daniel said, very carefully, “everything we know about the Kabane says they first spread from Keishi. Which was the seat of the emperor.”

Uh-oh. Very not of the good. Jack reached out just enough to nudge a confusing archaeologist. “I thought the guy in charge Biba and the Hunters took out was called the shogun.”

“He was,” Daniel agreed. “From what I’ve heard, the shogun of Kongokaku won out over the emperor of Keishi, and unified the country, about a decade or so before the Kabane appeared. Keishi was still a temple city, still important to the gods, but… the bushi were the ones with power.”

Oh. Oh, great. Jack closed his eyes, and groaned.

“Jack?”

“Sir?”

“O’Neill?”

“So I’m a former high muckety-muck in Keishi who lost a civil war a few years back. And it stings something awful, because those jerks over in Kongokaku are just brainless soldier jocks, while we’re supposed to be the revered priestly types who talk to the Guys Upstairs. Then this stranger shows up through the Gate of the Gods making all kinds of interesting promises about new weapons. Stuff that can let you take a world back.” Jack looked up again, resigned. “Poke holes, people. Please.”

25 thoughts on “Track of the Apocalypse Ch10 Ficbit – Echoes of War”

    1. Erk.

      And Ma‘chello has already been established as… unconcerned… with the consequences of his actions.
      That makes Jack‘s scenario terrifyingly plausible.

      … I still wonder how the guy ended up as a probable cause of fusion-powered zombies that use the side-product deposits to armor up.

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      2. Ma‘chello ought to have his very own Trope page. With the entries „For Science!“, „Mad Scientist“, „Nice Job breaking it, Hero“, and of course, „Did you just poke Ctulhu?“.

        I‘d love to add „Too dumb to live“, but that would only be applicable if he‘d gotten his ass kabane-ified…

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      3. Worse. He took over Daniel’s body when his own was dying ’cause he thought he deserved it for fighting the Go’auld. SG-1 got everyone back into the right bodies before Ma’chello died, but it was a near thing.

        …Also he ruined Daniel’s credit rating.

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      1. Oh crap, something the idiot savants thought was iffy? The devoid of common sense Ancient with a God-complex the size of Jupiter thought was risky… Machello takes playing with fire to new depths, if he’s still alive…

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      2. Exactly.

        …Actually, Ma’chello dies in the first ep he’s introduced. This does not stop SG-1 from running into the also-lethal-to-ordinary-people anti-Goa’uld tech he scattered around the galaxy – it happened at least one more time in canon, and it was horrible.

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  2. Jack is begging the universe, please, please let there be reality shaped holes in this logic. Also, horrifyingly, that means the Kabane in and around Keishi are likely to be some of the oldest around, if probably more inclined towards dormancy.

    And, ouch. That is disturbingly plausible.

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      1. Um, didn’t you mention a while back that the … Nue? I think it was was a way for a lot of kabane to move to better hunting grounds quickly after all the local food sources die out? And didn’t they just pass through Keshi, leaving a bunch of freshly woken up and hungry Kabane behind?

        Oh my.

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  3. Nnnooo, Jack, you unfortunately quite likely have the right idea. Also, Evil Author teasing us with hints of worldbuilding/backstory for why the Hinomoto military situation has ended up being so screwed up.

    Technology/technological development would very likely have been strictly controlled or actively discouraged/forbidden during the Reign of the Goa’uld, and their Proxies during the absences of the former, so there is bound to be some pretty anachronistic developments. Like, oh, fusion powered, armored giant steam locomotives…

    Then, at some point, the rival Snakes manage to off each other, but Tenka probably had no knowledge of that state of affairs. Just the inertia of the Goa’uld installed power structure puttering along, until the inevitable power games (without any “Corrective Measures” by the “Gods”) among the rich and powerful caused a major fracture of the status quo- and without the “Gods” reinforcing those that had been set to Rule/Govern In Their Name, a new paradigm is formed…

    The Shogun is(was) the new Master Before God, and I imagine he was quite careful about how, and to whom, he apportioned dispensations for using/producing certain products/technologies, and governmental functions. He certainly wasn’t going to encourage the regional lords to create defendable power bases of their own.

    And, as is pretty obvious, good old Ma’chello gave the Old Guard in Keishi the hope of Putting Things Back in Proper Order, until things went pear-shaped (or whatever fruit or vegetable you prefer).

    There is still the possibility that the “English” faction might be still around, though one assumes they certainly suffered ftom the Kabane as well…

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    1. The folk of Albion are still around. 🙂 (How bad they’ve been hit by the Kabane, no one knows yet.) Bit of backstory that probably won’t get into the main story: when Izanami took over the world from Tiw, she moved the Stargate to a different continent to the spot that became Keishi, to bring in her own people to a land that hadn’t been more than thinly colonized already.

      Which is, BTW,one reason you find a bunch of blonds, redheads, and people with blue eyes in Hi-no-Moto – people from Albion had gotten there, just not in huge numbers.

      Tiw was Not Amused, thing escalated over the centuries from there….

      At this point Tenka has been ignored by the universe for about, oh, five centuries. Way long enough for savvy military types to figure out the priests can’t do as much smiting as they used to. Oops.

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  5. So…holes.
    The person i expect to be doing the poking here is possibly not the one Jack would expect to poke holes in this theory.

    Astrophysics as a field of study is all about figuring things out from /very little data/. Physics and pictures of things we can see now that happened years to millions of years ago. Figuring out quantum mechanical effects from what kinds of particles we see in the snapshots our accelerators can take after a experimental collision.

    Lots and lots and /lots/ of math.
    So it’s very important in Astrophysics to keep track of when, to put it in laymans terms, you are making /well informed wild ass guess/.

    The Sam Carter lobby in my head points out that Jacks theory is A; Plausible, B: Possible, C: Very suspicious given the times and places involved, but D: unsupported by direct evidence. It could have been a local messing around with tech they don’t understand. it could have been an /off world contamination/ – a nightmare scenario if ever there was one, supposing that somewhere there is a Kabane world /which knows how to dial gates/, it could have been brought in by ship or short range transport rings or something completely else…

    of course, they haven’t taken an inventory of that car they picked up yet, which appears to possibly contain documents.

    Direct evidence may not be long in coming.

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  6. always glad to help! And well, as far as documents, I may be stretching the term, but I though there was /paper/ of some sort. which…would pretty much require a fairly good explanation, bulk paper shipments on trains strikes me as atypical. My curiosity abounds 🙂

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    1. Oh, there’s definitely paper on board. Likely art pieces, religious tracts, booklets on various areas of knowledge.

      Any papers on Ma’chello’s work, though, would be hard to justify being on one car out in the middle of the railyard.

      …Normally. I do have an idea. *G*

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      1. That car was already called out as being armored… Pre-Kabane. Why those papers would be in a car leaving Keishi… Politics? Espionage? Both?

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  7. Jack looked up again, resigned. “Poke holes, people. Please.”

    Certain they would love to because that is a disturbingly plausible scenario . . .

    I also have the suspicion that Jack isn’t very far off.

    …Also he ruined Daniel’s credit rating.

    Man, Daniel can just not catch a break sometimes.

    Sometimes it seems like he has some kind of sign on him telling Gao’uld (and certain others) to screw up him and his life in particular. I mean, all of SG-1 gets right up the Gao’ulds’ noses (and certain others) one way or another but sometimes it seems like Danny gets more than his fair share of the negative attention.

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