Stargate - Rise of the Sun God

by Arvaus

3 - Waking Up

"We're on Equestria?"

Jack was cantering back and forth across the chamber, nervously peering behind the columns as if he expected a monster to jump out at them from the shadows.

"Don't you think you're overreacting?" Daniel said.

"No I do not!" Jack barked, emerging from behind a column and marching over to him. "You do realise what we've just done, don't you?"

"He's right, Daniel," Sam said. "Technically, we're committing a court-martialable offence just by being here."

"By accident!" Daniel protested. "Don't you guys realise what this planet represents?"

"I know enough," Jack said. "I know this is the planet that got the Goa'uld so scared they wiped its location from every record we've ever found, including the cartouche on Abydos! I know the Jaffa believe it's a threat to all life in the galaxy! I know that we've been ordered to never under any circumstances try and find out why!"

Daniel cringed. He knew all that, of course; he was the one who had told Jack most of it, after all.

"But Jack," he said, "it's so much more than that! This is the planet where the entire pony race originated! This is the world Ra took Earth's ancestors from thousands of years ago! This is where Ra was killed—"

"Ra and his entire army," Teal'c clarified.

"Yes, I know the stories," Daniel said.

"In a single instant," Teal'c added.

"Now see," Jack said, waving a hoof at Teal'c, "this is what I'm talking about! That sounds like something we should be afraid of!"

"Still," Daniel replied. "It could just be a protected planet, like Cimmeria."

"And I'm sure we all remember how well our first time there went."

The two of them stood, eyes locked on each other for a long moment. Then Jack sighed.

"Well I guess it doesn't really matter," he said. "We're stuck here either way." He looked back up at the inscriptions covering the walls. "I guess it's your lucky day, Danny boy. We need to get off this planet, and the key to working out how may well be somewhere up on those walls. So… translate away.

"But," he added, looking Daniel in the eye and pointing a hoof at him, "remember that we are currently trapped on a blacklisted planet with a supposed superweapon. If you find anything which looks even potentially dangerous, do not turn it on under any circumstances. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly," Daniel said, still glaring at him.

"Good," Jack said, turning away. "Teal'c, walk with me."

He headed back along the chamber toward the door, Teal'c joining him by his side. The two of them went outside and looked out into the sprawling maze of grassy ruins which spread out away from the temple. There was a slight breeze blowing, the air warm and dry but unsettlingly devoid of the sounds of life.

"What's your read on this?" Jack asked Teal'c.

"This is the Tau'ri," he replied. "The First World, from which all pony life in the galaxy descends. It was here that the Goa'uld domination began, and it was here that the first Jaffa were created. It is to be revered."

"Try to contain your excitement," Jack said; Teal'c raised a single eyebrow, but continued staring toward the distant hills on the horizon. "But what about the other stuff?"

Teal'c frowned. "Since I was a kal'ma, I have been told stories of Equestria," he said. "They served to ensure that no Jaffa would ever wish to find this world, lest they suffer the same fate which destroyed Ra, or worse, release the evil trapped here and set it loose on the galaxy."

"Evil?"

"A demon," Teal'c explained. "Some call it the Ra'shek – the spirit of Ra surviving beyond death in order to seek vengeance. Some say it is the same entity which killed Ra, wishing to finish what it started. But it has been trapped here for eight thousand years, and if it is still alive today it is said to be an unrelenting killer. It will not rest until all life has been destroyed."

Jack stood silently for a moment, thinking over the concept of such a creature being here with them, and was feeling more and more anxious to leave.

"You think that's what Zipacna's coming here for?" Jack asked. "That seems a bit stupid, even for a Goa'uld."

"Indeed," Teal'c said. "But many believe the stories to be legend. Some Jaffa do not even believe that Equestria is a real place. He may think that the Ra'shek is simply a weapon, which he could control."

"We can hope," Jack said, turning to go back inside. "But given our luck, I wouldn't count on it. You go and see if Daniel needs help with the translation." Teal'c nodded and walked over to join the archaeologist, who was sitting in a far corner poring over a notebook, and Jack turned and went over to Carter, who had removed her backpack and was sitting in a corner, sorting through her equipment.

"Do you really think we're in danger here, Colonel?" she asked as he approached.

"I don't know, Major," he said. "But I want to be absolutely certain before I rule it out."

Sam nodded. "What do you need me to do?"

"I'd like you to build us a Stargate," Jack said, "but as we don't have any toasters here, I'll settle for you running some tests to find out as much as you can about this planet." He looked over at the door, where bright orange sunlight was still streaming through. "I'm not sure if that's going up or down, but we may not have much light left. I want to know where we stand before nightfall."

"Yes sir," she said. "What are you going to be doing?"

A smile spread across Jack's face for the first time since they'd arrived. "I'm going to take a look around," he said. He then turned and galloped out through the door, spreading his wings and soaring up into the sky.

---

"Well that was a waste of time," he said as he glided back into the temple an hour later. He landed softly on the stone floor and shook his wings down while looking around at his team. Daniel was still scribbling away in his notebook, and Teal'c was meditating in a corner. Carter was carrying a small device around the room, apparently measuring something. Weighing his options up, he decided to bother Sam first.

"Found anything, Major?" he asked, walking over to her.

"Actually, yes," she said, looking up and putting the device back in her pocket, "a lot of things. There's something very strange about this planet."

"As long as it's not trying to kill us, I can handle strange," Jack said. "So what sort of things are we talking about?"

"Well..." she said. She stood for a moment, thinking, then gestured for Jack to follow her. She led him back over to the door and pointed out at the sky.

"There's that," she said.

"Yeah, I noticed that too," Jack replied, raising a hoof to shield his eyes and looking out toward the sun. They'd been there an hour already, and it was still sitting just above the horizon, exactly where it had been when they arrived.

"That's not normal, is it?"

"No, sir," Sam said. "The planet must be tidally locked."

Jack nodded. "So… no surfing?" Sam shook her head, smiling.

"It means the planet's stuck with one side facing the sun," she explained. "Half of the planet's always in daytime, and the other half's always in night-time."

"Ah," Jack said. "So like Tuplo's planet."

"Almost," Sam said, heading outside and leading Jack round to the side of the temple. "Although here they lack the Goa'uld atmospheric engineering necessary to maintain the sharp divide between…"

She stopped; Jack was giving her a look.

"Yes," she said instead. "We're in a sort of twilight band here around the equator," – she gestured in a long north-south arc over their heads. "That's why it's cool enough here to have grass while the rest of the day side is a desert."

There was a flight of stairs at the side of the temple, and Sam led Jack up them onto the temple roof. From there Jack could see the entirety of the ruins surrounding them; the temple was the only intact structure remaining, and the land beyond the city consisted mostly of grassland, so their view was unobstructed all the way to the ring of hills that formed the horizon. Sam had left some instruments set up on a tripod in the centre, but she ignored them and walked straight past, heading over to the far end of the roof.

"But the sun isn't the strange part," she said.

"It isn't?"

She shook her head. "Well, the idea that the pony race evolved on a tidally locked planet yet are adapted to a day-night cycle is pretty strange," she said, "but even stranger than the sun is the moon."

"What moon?"

"Exactly."

Jack looked disparagingly at Sam. He hated it when she did that.

"I spotted it on the sensors while we were on the ship," she said, "and at first I assumed it just hadn't risen yet, but then I came up here and happened to notice…" – she pointed away from the sun at a mountain range on the opposite horizon – "…that."

Jack looked where she was pointing, eyes scanning the skyline, but all he could see was mountains. Then, after a few moments, he spotted it; nestled in the gap between two peaks was the moon, the top of its arc barely visible as it hid just below the horizon.

"It's not moving either," Sam said.

"Huh. It's tidally locked as well?"

"No, sir," Sam replied, shaking her head. "That would just mean we were always seeing the same side of it, like Earth's moon. For it to not even be orbiting… Well, sir, to put it simply, that just can't happen naturally. It could if it was a lot further away, but even then it wouldn't be stable. Where it is at the moment, it should be falling down on top of us."

Jack nodded, at least relieved to hear that it wasn't.

"But still," he said, "no surfing?"

Sam laughed. "The point is," she went on, "that there is something very powerful holding the moon in place."

Jack nodded. Something very powerful. That didn't sound reassuring.

"So," he said hopefully, "I assume you've been taking some readings?"

"Yes sir," Sam said, nodding and pulling out the device she'd been carrying around earlier. Jack saw her using it quite a lot; it was able to pick up traces of magic, and was very useful for finding hidden technology.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen," she said. "The ambient magic here's off the scales. I'm not detecting any fluctuations or sources, though. It's just… everywhere.

"And I think it's affecting my own magic as well," she added. "It feels like it's getting easier to cast spells, like it's powering me somehow. I didn't notice it at first, and don't know how long it's been around. Maybe it was on the ship as well; I'm not sure. But now I know it's there, I can feel it."

"Bottom line it for me," Jack said, starting to get a headache. "Is this our superweapon?"

"I don't know."

"And does it help us get off this planet?"

"No sir."

"Okay," he said, rubbing his forehead and going back to the stairs. "While I'm sure this is all fascinating, it doesn't really help us at the moment. I'm going to see what Daniel's got."

"Yes sir," Sam said, following him down the stairs. "Did you find anything?"

"Rocks and grass," Jack replied. "We're in the ruins of a large city here – I'd estimate ten klicks each way at least – but almost none of it's intact."

"Makes sense," Sam said. "Equestria's been lost for millennia. It's amazing that anything's survived that long, really."

"I also saw a few bits of burnt ground," he continued. "The area must prone to the occasional brushfire, so we should watch out for that. I thought I saw movement at one point," he added as an afterthought.

"An advance scout for Zipacna?"

"Maybe. But if there was somepony there, they were long gone by the time I got there. It could've just been—"

They reached the door, and the words jammed in Jack's throat as he took in the scene in front of him.

"Daniel!" Sam screamed.

---

Two minutes earlier.

Daniel stared up at the wall, running his eyes across the lines of symbols over and over again, trying to understand their meaning. He had made a lot of progress so far – the formal scripts tended to stay fairly consistent over the centuries in comparison to everyday dialects – but still he'd occasionally find a symbol he just didn't recognise.

The passage he was working on seemed to be some sort of history, describing how Ra had saved Equestria from a catastrophe which he couldn't translate either, and now it was telling of his taming and vanquishing of the evil spirits which once controlled the land. He suspected that the mystery symbols must be some sort of name, of a god from a belief system predating the Goa'uld perhaps.

The idea of that was mind-blowing in itself. This text was impossibly old – it was from a few centuries after Ra's appearance at most – and it was possibly the only surviving description of pre-Ra pony civilisation. Anything else from that time was suppressed to the point of non-existence by the Goa'uld.

He felt privileged to have the chance to translate it. Nopony had seen these writings in millennia. This was an archaeologist's dream; it was the one surviving record of a lost planet, and of a culture which had been dead for thousands of years.

A culture which Ra destroyed.

The thought popped into his mind out of nowhere, and he shrugged it off, but a feeling of sadness remained, the sense loss hanging in the back of his mind. He gave up on the mystery word that was blocking his progress, just putting it down as 'chaos' – which it most closely resembled – in his notebook, and moved on. Jack and Sam had wandered off somewhere, and no doubt the colonel would come to talk to him once Carter had given her report, so he wanted to get as much translated as he could before that.

He knew that Jack wasn't going to be interested in most of it, though. None of the text had mentioned anything which would be of any use in getting off the planet, and there was no mention at all of any superweapon. Daniel was beginning to doubt that these walls would be of any use to Jack at all. He got why Jack wanted to focus on the mission, of course, but he could never understand how somepony couldn't be fascinated by the things he was learning.

Because it's gone. It doesn't matter anymore.

He was starting to get a headache. He sat down, resting against one of the pillars, and pulled out his flask to have a drink of water. All of a sudden he was having trouble concentrating; something about the planet was setting his teeth on edge. Trying to shake the feeling, he picked up his notebook and scanned over what he'd got already, to give his mind something to think about. But for some reason the words just made him angry.

It all talked about how Ra had saved ponykind, and described in poetic detail all the blessings he had bestowed upon them. He wondered if it could really have seemed that way at the time; he had seen enough worlds enslaved to know that the truth was probably very different. How many had died before Ra had gotten them to believe it? And how many had died since?

Ra lied. He tricked them.

The worst part was where it described the birth of new gods, and how some ponies had been ‘blessed' to become hosts. And then there was the creation of the Jaffa. Ra had brainwashed the population to the point that they were willing to give up their own bodies to serve as nothing but vessels for a parasitic race. And they were happy about it!

The Jaffa are abominations.

He looked up at Teal'c, who was sitting on the other side of the room, his eyes closed in a state of kel'no'reem. The Jaffa had been no use, recognising even less of the older scripts than he had.

Daniel felt a strange sensation at the sight him. The idea that they had been in a team together, fighting alongside each other for so long, felt… wrong. As he looked at the Jaffa, thinking about what he represented, and about the creature he carried within him, all thoughts began to wash away, the void being filled with disgust, even hatred.

Kill it.

Daniel stood again, crossing the floor as quietly as he could so as not to wake Teal'c. He stopped, looking down at the Jaffa with anger as he thought of how many innocent ponies he must have been responsible for the death of.

Kill it.

He unholstered his sidearm, sliding its strap over his hoof and levelling it on the Jaffa's gut. He took a deep breath, taking care to ensure his aim was good. Once the Goa'uld larva was dead the Jaffa would be easy enough to deal with.

Kill it now.

"Daniel!"

He jumped at the sound of Sam's voice, wheeling round just in time to see Jack, flying full-speed across the room, hit him in the side and tackle him to the ground. The impact set the gun off, but Jack had already pushed Daniel's hoof away from Teal'c and the round embedded itself in the wall with a shower of dust.

"What the hell are you doing?" Daniel shouted.

"What am I doing?" Jack yelled back as he tried to get a hold of all of Daniel's writhing limbs and hold him down. "You just tried to kill a member of your own team!"

"How stupid are you?" Daniel said. "You know we can't trust him! He's one of them!"

"Colonel O'Neill?" Teal'c said, waking up in the commotion.

"Help me hold him down, Teal'c!" Jack said, dodging a hoof as it nearly hit him in the jaw. Teal'c grabbed Daniel's front hooves and leant on them, pinning him to the floor.

"Get off me, Jaffa!" Daniel shouted, trying in vain to throw him off.

"Stop this right now, Daniel!" Jack shouted. "I don't know what's gotten into you, but—"

"Wait!" Sam shouted, cantering over to them. "I think I do! He's been brainwashed."

"What?" Jack and Daniel said in unison.

"Hold his head still, Teal'c," Sam said. "I want to try something."

Teal'c shifted his weight so that his shoulder was pinning Daniel's head to the ground. Sam leaned in, doing her best to ignore Daniels' protests, and placed her horn against his forehead.

Ever since she was young she had always had an aptitude for sensing magic. If there was a spell on Daniel she knew she'd be able to find it, and hoped she'd be able to displace it. But as she listened to the magic flowing around and through him she was surprised to find much more than just a spell. She could feel a presence, something else clinging on to him, like there was another mind in there feeding him its own thoughts.

Who are you? She thought. But instead of responding, the presence recoiled away from her. She pushed again with her magic, forcing the other mind away until she couldn't feel it anymore. She opened her eyes again to find Daniel staring at her in confusion.

"What just happened?" he said.

"You tell me," Jack said. "How're you feeling about Teal'c right now?"

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, confused. Then, suddenly, his eyes went wide in shock.

"Oh God, did I just—"

"That's good enough for me," Jack said, letting go of him. Teal'c did the same and pulled Daniel up into a standing position.

"I think it's safe to say that we're under attack," Jack went on, going back to where they had dropped their equipment and picking his P-90 up again. "That means our mission parameters have now changed. Get ready to leave, everypony. Until we know what this is and how it can attack us, I want us to keep moving just in case. We'll take turns resting, only one of us sleeping at any time."

"Wait," Daniel said. "What about the temple? I haven't finished translating—"

"You've been taking pictures, right?" Jack asked.

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Good. You can keep translating on the move then. But our top priority is survival."

Once he was ready he walked back to the door and looked out into the perpetual sunset, wondering what other surprises would be waiting for them out there.

"You think that'll be enough?" Sam asked, walking up next to him a few moments later.

"I've given up on knowing what to think at this point," Jack said. "Teal'c thinks this is the spirit of Ra, by the way," he added.

"It doesn't seem to like Jaffa much, though," Sam commented. Jack nodded.

"Well, whatever it is," he went on, "at least we now have a fair idea why this world was abandoned."

He raised his eyebrows, and let out a deep sigh.

"And on that cheery note," he said, "let's move out."

The other two joined them, Daniel trying hard to avoid eye contact with the others, and the four of them set off silently into the unknown.

---

High above the surface, the crippled ship continued in its perpetual course around the planet. The sun shone in through the window of the bridge, filling the empty room with warm light. Then, as had happened hundreds of thousands of times before, the sun slid down below the horizon and the light faded away to nothing, revealing a sky dotted with stars.

As the final rays of the sun disappeared from view, a soft glow illuminated the bridge, filling the air with azure light. It lasted only for a moment, before fading away itself and returning the bridge to darkness.

Comments

[ShadowShrike]

This is Actually a great story. (Surprisingly) Ponified SG-1 has had somewhat of a bad idea to me as it would actually sour the series. But this has done a great job of slightly rewriting SG-1 without ruining it. The ONLY problem is one in every MLP story and more so here, cause I can't see SG-1 saying it (or anyone for that matter). Its the "everypony" instead everyone, which sounds dumb cause its like us saying everyhuman. <- (sounds dumb, doesn't it.) plus, The MLP (unnamed) world has multiple sapient species so you would think "everyone" would work better.

I rant.

also, MORE!!

[Ocean Waves]

And the plot thickens...

[QuietNightBrony]

So far this has been an excellent story. So far it actually feels like I am reading something from the actual show Stargate SG-1, particularly the interactions of the pony SG-1 which feels very similar to the real ones.

[QuietNightBrony]

I am highly concerned that the presence on the planet is Celestia with something akin to PTSD. It would make sense given the history we know. I wager that in the past Celestia was possessed by the Goa'uld that she had restored to health, was forced to watch as Ra used her own hooves to destroy her people's civilization and replaced it with a dark mockery where he is worshiped, somehow she is free and in her fury causes enough destruction to scare away the rest of the Goa'uld.

Man I want to read more.

[Ocean Waves]

5356499
I agree. Hopefully like SG-1 this story will just keep going and going and going...
This site needs more (good) Stargate.

[Black--Soul]

Umbrum or Wendigos, I guess Rah unleashed them on Equestria.

I wonder if Tarterus is still intact, what is it contained these days I wonder ... Tirek?

Hm... Was the wall enchanted by any chance?

Again a great chapter.