Chapter Two Hundred and Five

"While the enemies of the Emperor still draw breath, there can be no peace" - Captain Gabriel Angelos, Blood Ravens.

Chairman's Office. Tagrea.

Tagrea, designated P3X-744 by the Tau'ri, a planet that was about 294 lightyears from Earth, which in galactic terms was barely any distance at all. However, since Miranda and I had arrived here via Stargate, along with a few of my bodyguards and a couple of squads of my household guard, the distances in space meant little.

I knew that this world was once under Heru'ur's rule. The System Lord Heru'ur abandoned the planet when its resources were depleted, leaving the Tagreans in a dark age. The Tagreans removed all historical evidence when they eventually came out of that dark age and developed an industrial society, so that they could have a fresh start and amazingly it worked.

They became a reasonably advanced society while other worlds abandoned by the Goa'uld never got past the medieval stage. Heck some were still using bronze tools despite not having seen a single Jaffa for a thousand years.

By the time that they were reunited with the Tau'ri, having been separated from the homeworld of humanity a very long time ago, when the Prometheus became stranded nearby, their recorded history was only 300 years old and all evidence of the long-buried Stargate was lost.

They'd progressed very rapidly in what was really a short amount of time. Something that made me wonder if like Jonas Quinn's people, the humans here were more intelligent than was normal.

Despite some disagreement within the Tagrean leadership about the wisdom of locating the Stargate, they eventually agreed to assist SG-1 in finding it so that they could get help from Earth. That had nearly resulted in a military takeover of the planet, but since then it looked as if the political situation had calmed down quite a bit.

The man that Miranda and I were meeting with now, Ashwan, was the Chairman, the elected leader of the Tagrean people, and he was eager to trade because Ashwan's public approval was sketchy at best. I got the sense that he was barely holding on to power.

In the past Chairman Ashwan had seen the potential for exploration by unearthing the Stargate, as well as benefit in maintaining a dialogue with Earth.

Not that it seemed to have worked out for the chairman as he was not a celebrated leader and I'd already been approached by several men who claimed that they would soon be running things. I could only assume that those trying to obtain the chairman's position were too busy undermining each other to actually overthrow Ashwan.

"Let me guess the people from Earth made lots of promises and none of it ever went anywhere" I said "Other than you getting some mostly useless Stargate addresses".

I knew this because the address I'd gotten from the SGC hadn't led to much of value. I'd gotten access to more profitable planets by trading for gate addresses with others who used the Stargate, such as the Lucian Alliance, the progressive Jaffa and human societies scattered across the galaxy that had begun using the gate network now the Goa'uld were no longer the dominant force in this galaxy.

"More or less" agreed the Chairmen "Things went well at first. Now they seem to have lost interest in our world".

Well that was because Tagrean didn't have any easily accessible Naquadah, as Heru'ur wouldn't have abandoned the planet if he could strip it of resources that he needed to fuel his conquests. Nor did Tagrean have access to any advanced tech since they were behind the Tau'ri in most areas by decades even if their military technology was more impressive.

"Their loss" I said "I see possibilities in your future".

Ashwan sat back at his desk. It was just him and I talking in a private meeting, as Miranda took notes and was no doubt already planning out how I'd want to trade with this world rather than try to conquer it.

They had the ability to fire missiles at ships in orbit and a fair sized army so direct conquest seemed unwise, not when there were much easier targets out there that had more of value to House Thrax.

"We have much to offer you" I was now saying "Gate address to worlds just as advanced as your own who might have surpassed you in some areas, but are behind in others. With them you can set up profitable trading partnerships and if you have any naquadah the Imperial Protectorate will purchase the mineral, we can trade information and technology for it".

When trying to decide what sort of empire to build out here I'd decided to call it the Imperial Protectorate because it sounded less aggressive than any other names I'd come up with when thinking this over.

I knew that a protectorate is a state which is controlled and protected by another sovereign state. However those states tend to have a great deal of authority over their internal affairs. Many of the human worlds in this galaxy needed protection and I could supply that, as well as a better standard of living, in exchange for them handing over some of their resources, but beyond that I could leave those cultures to run their own affairs.

This might be considered to be a fancy protection racket, only I actually intended to improve the lives of the people under my protection. I planned to use the fact that so many humans lived in squalor as justification to take over their worlds. This should make the more advanced human worlds and the progressive Jaffa less willing to interfere in my operations, or so I hoped.

"Heru'ur stripped our world of naquadah before he left" pointed out the chairman.

That might not be the case.

"The Goa'uld use slave labour and since they don't want their slaves to rise up against them they never equipped those workers with anything more the most simple of tools" I explained to Chairmen Ashwan "So there might still be deposits of the mineral deep underground that we can get at without too much trouble that your ancestors could not dig up for Heru'ur".

"If you allow us to bring people to survey the area around where you found the Stargate we might evidence of old mines in that area that can still be of use to us" I told the leader of this world "We can even survey other parts of this world to seek out the naquadah and any other metals we need".

There was still more for me to say on this subject.

"If we find that is worth opening up some mines here we can either rent the land from you or give you the means to do the mining and collect a percentage of the metals in exchange for the technology required to do the mining" I offered "Either way you'll have something we value enough to make it worth trading with you. We can advance your technology by decades in many areas".

Not by using Imperial tech, rather I'd offer them Fallout technology, such as simple computers, televisions stuff like that, technology that the tech-priests didn't control to the point they would be able to demand too much of a share of the mineral wealth that could be dug up here in exchange for sharing them with this world. They also tended to go easier with the religious stuff when it wasn't Imperial tech.

"And what if we don't have any of the metals that you want?" Ashwan asked.

That was highly unlikely given that they had an industrial society.

"We aren't just interested in naquadah" I mentioned "The Imperium makes use of a wide range of materials and I would like a treaty between you and the Imperial Protectorate, as well the Imperium as a whole, and as I mentioned before we are aware of other advanced worlds out there who were also have treaties with. Adding your world to the growing network of alliances would benefit the Imperial Protectorate and myself since it will increase trade".

I could sell the gate address of this world to human civilizations who were eager to meet other human societies that were above a certain level in development.

"Give me some time to talk to my advisors and the ministers" asked Ashwan "Once we've come to an agreement we'll contact you".

After that I could let some minion of mine handle sorting the fine details while I focused on more important matters such as the crusade that was soon to start.