Chapter One Hundred And Ninety-Nine

The Emperor's realm must be cleansed of the taint of the xenos and the heretic. We destroy the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through faith and the sword.

-Gerlach, Dreadnought of the Black Templars

The Enduring Triumph. Free Jaffa Space.

Once I was finished helping the Free Jaffa secure the worlds that were once under Moloc's control the Imperial ships involved in that attack had taken time to regroup, but there had been no rush to do so since matters were progressing well for the expedition and for me. At least for the most part.

There were no Ori preachers bothering anyone, the Free Jaffa Nation blamed Ba'al for Garak's death as such they hunting him down as best they could, and while the SGC wasn't what it used to be, what with to Earth's leaders having a different agenda these days, they were also hunting Ba'al and his clones, which meant he was too busy to strike at me.

To make things even worse for Ba'al and his clones, I'd dispatched Black Widow, the temple trained assassin to infiltrate whatever organisation the last System Lord had set up and if possible she would locate the original Ba'al and kill him before he could carry out whatever evil schemes he had going. I knew for sure that he had many plans.

I wasn't worried about his time travel plan because I never would have stuck around during that timeline so even if he did change the past I'd likely have just ended up going on to Pegasus rather than sticking around here. Since we Imperials were here it seemed likely that the plan had failed somehow. More than likely due to SG1.

As for me I was even considering trying to reach that alternate timeline when I did go to the Pegasus galaxy so that I could grab all the Ancient tech without the Tau'ri getting in the way. Something to think some more about later on.

For now I was meeting with a couple of tech-priests, Lukas Chrom, who'd overseen the transformation of the Enduring Triumph from a Lunar-Class Cruiser to a Armageddon-class Battlecruiser that should have easily been able to deal with a single Ha'tak class vessel.

I was meeting with them while undergoing a treatment that would result in a trace amount of Naquadah entering my bloodstream. Thankfully this was no more trouble than visiting the dentist's office, as I just had to sit in a chair while a tiny IV bag of some kind very slowly introduced some specially prepared solution into my body. Over the next few days the trace amounts of naquadah being introduced would settle and provide me with a boost to my biotic abilities.

It had taken some time for the cogboys to figure out exactly how much Naquadah was safe to introduce as while having a way of boosting biotic powers was good, if the energies involved were increased too much a biotic might harm allies, themselves or in extreme cases damage a space going vessel they were travelling in.

"Even with the damage done to the alien vessel we managed to land the Ha'tak on the surface near the city" it was reported.

No need to ask which city since the planet only had one.

"Now that we have removed anything of value we could find or anything that can be handed over to the Ordo Xenos for study, we are at a loss with what remains" said one of the cyborgs.

I had an idea about that.

"Assuming that's it safe to be in we can let the Free Jaffa use it as housing or for storage" I said.

Now that all the gold, naquadah, tech and anything else worth taking, had been stripped the vessel was little more than the hull, some doors and rooms. I assumed that it still had plumping and plenty of room so why not let people live in it.

I didn't know what would happen to the tech once the Ordo Xenos had it and it wasn't unknown for the Ordo to make use of alien tech that they studied with the aid of the Ad-Mech, such as the Shadow Light that appears in a few of the Cain novels. Having read those stories I figured it best not to enquire about anything the Ordo Xenos was getting up to with the technology

"Our study of Ha'tak proves that their technology is both powered and enhanced by the Naquadah" Magos Lukas Chrom informed me "While we can be sure at this stage it does seem likely that the Goa'uld have subverted the technology of the Gatebuilders, or the Ancients as they are also known, and this explains how their Ha'tak vessel was able to withstand the firepower of this battlecruiser. The parasites have despoiled technology that rightfully belongs to humanity".

All of this I'd already known.

"Can we use the Naquadah to enhance this ship?" I asked.

The two cogboys exchanged looks and I didn't doubt that they were talking to each other using some sort of wireless electronic devices.

"We are making progress with use the Naquadah to enhance our holy technology, to put it simply the animating spirits of the machines are made mighty by the presence of the Naquadah" said Chrom "However there are limits to do what we can do without access to a space dock".

It was one thing to use the mineral to boost the destructive power of our hand-held gauss and energy weapons, or even the cannons we used for planetary defence, but doing that to our weapons that were mounted on a starship was another matter, what with them being in space.

"We can enhance the payloads deployed by the Starhawk bombers" offered the other servant of the machine god "A combined lance strike and assault from the bombers should be enough to bring down the shields of a Ha'tak vessel before their weapons can do the same to our void shields".

My First Officer had suggested such a tactic and if not for the sabotage that I'd arranged beforehand I would have gone with that plan.

"My lord" said Lukas Chrom "The truth of the matter is that we are spread thin. Aside from our investigations into the bounty provided to us by the Omnissiah in this galaxy, we are attempting to uplift several worlds, and providing goods for many others, as well as running recovery operations on many other planets that had civilizations the Goa'uld reduced to ruins".

He had a good point. All those deals I'd made to supply others with the means to mine naquadah for us weren't just limited to mining gear, we were providing farming equipment, weapons and other products of different kinds to many different worlds. This took time, resources and the attention of many tech-priests.

"Do you have a solution to this issue, Magos?" I wondered.

As a matter of fact he did.

"My lord, we could return to the Imperium" suggested Chrom "The space dock of a forge-world would provide us with all we need to use Naquadah to enhance the weapons of this battlecruiser. My projections show that the enhancements to both the power grid and the lances would, combined with improved warheads for the torpedoes, allow your battlecruiser to defeat two or even three Ha'tak in battle assuming that the weapons of the Thrax variant Furies and Starhawks can also be enhanced".

My first reaction to this was to almost reject the idea out of hand since it would require me leaving their operations here for at least a few months. However I had to admit to myself at least that I really would like to upgrade my battlecruiser's weapons.

"If you were to unload all but the most required members of the crew you could acquire less experienced crew upon returning to the Imperium, who upon their arrival in this galaxy would be able to serve as a workforce along with a number of tech-priests that the Fabricator General should be willing to provide in exchange for a supply of the Naquadah, along with some of the technology we have gathered so far" advised Lukas Chrom "This would in the long term increase productivity even if in the short term we would see some losses".

While there were industrialised worlds in this galaxy they mostly looked to themselves. An example of this was Earth, a world that could have become a major supplier of goods to many worlds if not for the fact that they kept the use of the Stargate so limited.

If my followers could increase the industrial output of Thrax III then we would become the supplier that many worlds turned to for goods. Few worlds in this galaxy were densely populated and most of what we'd be supplying was based on STC blueprints so the stuff we supplied tended to last a very long time and wasn't hard to use.

Which meant once we'd uplifted a society by replacing their bronze or iron with steel ones and provided them with prefab buildings that were superior to wooden huts in many ways, it didn't take much effort to sustain their now more advanced civilization. The bit that slowed the cogboys down was needing to induct new members to maintain that technology on the worlds we allied with that might take years to finish as even low level tech-priests needed time to train.

It was a gamble to leave for what could be months in this galaxy as I could return to find all I'd built so far was destroyed and there was also the risk that without me around the people I left in charge could make a mess of things, but everything a Rogue Trader did involved some risk.

Should this all work out then Thrax III would become a world vital to the future of this galaxy. Naqudah and other forms of wealth would flow into Thrax III via our off-world outposts while manufactured goods were sent out. I would have the cargo holds of the fleet filled and have vaults constructed to contain that wealth.

While that was going on I would reach out to make new allies, acquire more technology, and maybe find time to have some fun. The time spent at the forge-world would be dull, and perhaps better spent elsewhere, but it should pay off if all went well.

There was the matter of unexpected warp storms, but if the Eldar Farseerer had been telling the truth then it shouldn't happen again without an Eldar seedship around drawing the attention of the dark powers. I'd learned better to hide my presence within The Warp as well, not that I'd ever had any trouble remaining undetected by human psykers. I hoped this remained the case.