Chapter 1
He lay on the ground staring up at a truly literal alien sky as he tried to comprehend what had just happened to him while staring at two moons, once which happened to be purple.
You see, five minutes ago... Was it five minutes? Fuck it, that didn't matter. What was PROBABLY a few minutes ago he'd been sitting in his tiny ass overpriced apartment trying to decide if he wanted to buy the game he was looking at on Steam. Buying it would mean living on ramen for the next month. Or, he could re-download one of his older games he'd beaten years ago and beat it again?
It shouldn't have been nearly as hard of a choice as it was.
That was when the single dumbest thing he'd ever experienced in his normal life happened.
…
Just thinking about it still annoyed him with how dumb it was.
He'd been isekai'd.
Not just isekai'd but properly isekai'd by truck-kun.
Not just properly isekai'd by truck-kun, but somehow truck-kun had drive through the wall of his apartment ON THE FIFTH FLOOR!
Then he was in a black space where a voice had called him 'fresh entertainment' followed by a vial of something being shoved down his throat. Then, before he could even properly gag on the thick metallic good that felt like it was slicing his throat to shreds, he'd been properly kicked out of said black void.
Literally kicked, he could still feel the throbbing pain of a boot print of his ass.
Now he was on a planet that clearly wasn't Earth. Very Earth-like though. Aside from the two moons visible in the daytime blue sky, everything else looked like he should be on earth. Said blue sky, for example, as well as white fluffy clouds, green grass, even trees that looked like they might be maple.. or maybe oak? He wasn't a fucking arborist, point was they looked like normal fucking trees.
He lifted his head a little, ignoring how his throat felt like it was on fire. He could feel warm liquid dripping from his lips as he did so. He was either heavily drooling or bleeding. Given how his throat felt like he'd just swallowed metal shards (oh wait!) he was leaning toward blood.
He did note how blasé he was being about the agony he should be freaking out about. He was pretty sure it was shock keeping him so weirdly calm in such a strange, no batshit insane, scenario. His look around only showed a mostly empty field. Only mostly because he could see some ruins, mostly collapsed walls. Though the giant ass temple with a massive fucking statue making up its front was decidedly odd.
It was also a bit interesting to note that while the statue was missing its head and very heavily damaged, it still looked human. Or humanoid? Well it's body looked human shaped and for all he knew it's head had been a writhing ball of hentai tentacles.He hadn't a goddamn clue.
Oh! There's the agony coming through properly!
He groaned as whatever shocked state he'd been in ended and his pain only truly began. He rolled over onto his hands and knees as the slicing sensation in his throat started to MOVE. He could feel it moving down his esophagus and into his stomach. His whole body jerked as he vomited up a torrent of blood filled with black bits of something.
His mind blanked as the pain overwhelmed him. His whole body stiffened as he collapsed onto his side and began to shake like he was having a seizure. The slicing sensation spread through his entire body until it felt like he was coming apart at the seams. Blood poured from everywhere. A part of his fractured mind pointed out that the human body only contained about one and a half gallons of blood.
There was at least five soaking his clothing and the ground.
He should have been very much dead from blood loss a long time ago.
He didn't know how long the pain lasted, though when it did the sun had set and night had fallen to reveal a third moon.
Definitely not Earth.
By the time the pain completely faded he was different and he knew exactly how. Whatever the jackass that did this to him poured down his throat had fundamentally changed him and the information on how had been imprinted directly into his brain.
He was now aware of every function of his body and his state of health. Which was oddly perfect by the by. He'd also gained independence from those functions. For example, he no longer needed his brain to think, which was just plain weird. It also meant he was super hard to kill now. Shot in the heart? Pfft, blood still pumps. Shot in the head? Bah! Who needed that antiquated organ? He basically needed his entire body destroyed to actually die.
Though living as a dismembered foot would really suck if someone didn't fully finish him off.
Speaking of his brain, he could now detect, broadcast, and receive any kind of signal on any frequency. Take that Lucille Ball! Though there was currently a total of zero frequencies available. This also happened to make him able to control any mechanical or electronic devices.
The mind tweaks didn't stop there! He could now partition his mind into multiple threads of thought while also accelerating said thoughts who knew how much. He could even take those partitions and shove them into other things to copy his mind into other things.
The next bit explained the massive blood loss. His body now, naturally, produced nanomachines that he had full conscious control over. Said machines could augment his body, repair damage, and so on and so forth. The same obviously applied to other things like technology that he could augment, repair, and upgrade. Which is what they'd done to his body. Not all the stuff he'd assumed was blood was actually blood. A lot of it was just liquefied meat.
Gross.
Due to said nanomachines he could actually transform any part, or all, of his body to machinery and back again. In the same vein, the nanomachines could be used to build anything he had the technical knowledge to create.
Now if only he had any actually useful technical knowledge! He was no engineer. He'd never designed a circuit board. At best he could replicate things he'd seen on the history channel that was 'high tech' in the early nineteen hundreds.
Like a hand pump for a well.
Yeah, cause that would totally let him find a way off the alien planet he was on! And he definitely wanted off of it! He'd been here only a few hours and spent most of that time in utter agony. Now he was some sort of living machine-man thing and he had NOTHING TO FUCKING DO!
He was already bored.
Though, he supposed he needed to build some form of shelter. Food? Water? Clothing? He didn't need any of that shit anymore. Hot? Cold? Neither bothered him anymore. Hell he didn't even need to breath! At most shelter would keep him dry because, yes, he could still get wet.
With a grunt of effort that was more habit than necessity, he climbed to his feet and looked himself over. He was still wearing what he'd had on when that stupid truck came through his wall, jeans, a tank top, and socks. Because he was in his fucking apartment in front of his computer! All of his clothing was also now filthy from liquefied him. Thankfully, a quick thought had his nanomachines fixing that issue and leaving him in perfectly clean clothing with just a silver ripple of activity from them.
Oh shit! He was totally a T-1000 now!
To prove it, he shifted his right hand from human looking into a sword blade. He cackled, probably sounding slightly insane, as he swung it around for a bit. He shifted his hand back to normal and continued to chuckle to himself.
Soooooo this kind of meant that he was essentially immortal as long as even a single cell of his body existed, right? That was pretty cool, honestly.
What was not so cool was being dumped on an alien planet with his own body being the only sign of advanced technology! Oh... wait... He looked up at the purple moon in the sky, his eyes enhancing themselves so he could see even better.
“Huh... I think that's a gas giant... Does that mean I'm on a moon orbiting it?”
Okay so he was on a technology-less MOON not planet because that totally made all the difference. He rolled his eyes and decided he needed to do something to distract himself and what better way to do that than explore potentially dangerous ruins?
He walked toward the ruins and only began to realize just how big they were as he got a better perspective. The place was huge, literally the biggest thing he'd seen that wasn't a modern building. As he walked into the darkness of the building, his eyes adjusted to let him see better than even night vision goggles would have.
He hadn't noticed it because of the two moons and one gas giant shining light down outside, but his night vision was insane. He spent an hour exploring but it just looked to be some kind of long abandoned ancient temple of some kind. Maybe the people who used to live here worshiped a Cthulhu headed god of some kind?
Obviously, he had no idea.
On the bright side, the temple provided a ton of stone he could repurpose for his own use. That was one of the limitations to his ability. While he had, essentially, infinite nanomachines, they were all made of the same material. He could make things with them, but anything more complex than a solid metal object would require outside materials. Things like silicone for circuitry or copper for wires. In this case, stone for shelter.
Thankfully, his nanomachines could disassemble the stone on a molecular level and then rebuild it in any shape he wanted. He could also just use his machines to sort the different elements that made up the soil around him. If he remembered right, things like iron, zinc, and copper could be found in soil in trace amounts. Not enough for even the most efficient mining in his old life to make user of, but his nanomachines might be able to make it worthwhile?
Ohhhhhh if he remembered right, didn't sea water contain trace elements like gold and silver? He could be rich!
…
Yes, because having piles of gold on a planet that he might be the only intelligent life on matter sooooo much.
He grumbled to himself and let out a flood of nanomachines into the temple. Waves of what looked like liquid metal, but was really microscopic machines, flowed out from his feet and spread throughout the complex. The little machines began to disassemble the stone into its constituent parts and organize it into piles.
Unfortunately for him, while he could sort the elements apart, he had no way of telling what pile was what element. He'd never paid a ton of attention to the periodic table so he hadn't a clue what was what. It was only because he could put anything he took apart back together that he wasn't worried about the integrity of whatever he would be building to live in.
He hoped to find a way off of the moon he was on. He hoped whatever being had sent him here hadn't given him a tech based power then stuck him permanently on a plant with zero technology on it. He had zero hopes in hell of achieving space flight of even the most basic variety, let alone anything FTL.
Well... he supposed that with the ability to make an infinite number of himself it was possible that he could, eventually, rebuild all the knowledge of Earth piece by piece over an unknown number of years. Probably a few millennia.
More likely, he would go insane long before then.
He paused as he noticed something off about one of the walls of the temple. So far, everything his machines had taken apart had been stone, maybe some form of marble? Eh, whatever. The point was it all seemed to be naturally made to him. His nanomachines had just found what could only be processed metal embedded in one of the walls.
He made his way over to the area and was surprised at what he found. It was something he recognized! He ran away from it and took a better look at the temple from the front.
“No fucking way.”
He ran back to the wall and looked at the alien metallic device sitting flush against it. The center of the device looked like a black void and was surrounded by waves of metal that almost looked organic. As he got closer to it the organic looking metal grew out of the wall in a telescopic manner.
“No fucking way!”
He knew exactly what he was looking at and it both terrified and thrilled him in equal measure. It was a Repository of Knowledge left behind the The Ancients, also known as the Lanteans. The progenitor race of humans from the Stargate television shows. He was at the temple where Jack O'Neill downloaded a repository for the second time to keep it out of the hands of Anubis. Considering the device was still active and hadn't been blown to bits by Samantha Carter and a block of C-4, he could confidently say he was before that point in the SG-1 series.
The device contained all the accumulated knowledge of the Ancients from before they ascended to a higher plane of existence. It had literally MILLIONS of years of history stored inside of it. Far more than a human mind could ever hope to contain. Hell, even the second most technologically advanced race in the series, the Asgard, had only ever managed to extract and use a small percentage of the knowledge contained in one.
Thus his excitement and terror.
The sheer scope of knowledge in the repository would help him in getting off of the moon he was on. The Ancients had developed multiple different forms of faster than light travel. With the information inside of the repository it would be easy for him to design a ship. Maybe even one with a wormhole drive...
He jerked back and slapped himself across the face for being stupid. He turned from the temple and ran away from it. It took him a couple of hours running in circles but he finally found what he was looking for. Standing in a clearing within a copse of trees was a giant metallic ring covered in esoteric symbols that represented constelations.
The Stargate.
The giant device was a means of travel vie one-way wormholes. All someone had to do was use the pedestal in front of it to input an address and then step through the water-like event horizon. Seconds later they would step out of the Stargate at their destination address.
It could easily get him off of the planet and onto another one with ease.
…
If he knew a goddamn address to a single other planet! Without an address the thing was useless. There was something like billions or trillions of combinations with only maybe a few tens of thousands that worked?
Even if he got super lucky and dialed a working address, there was no telling what would be waiting for him on the other side. The two most likely results were an empty planet, much like the one he was on now, or one controlled by the Goa'uld. Since Anubis was still likely to be around the odds were so were most of the Goa'uld before SG-1 started knocking them off one by one.
If he stepped onto one of their planets he would end up fighting them non-stop as they threw wave after wave of disposable slave soldiers at him in the form of Jaffa. He didn't want to have to deal with killing a bunch of semi-innocent slaves just to keep his own freedom.
After spending some time stroking the gate... Hey! It was a dream come true to actually touch one! He returned to the temple and the repository. In his absence it had shrunk back down only to expand once more on his approach. He considered his options. The gate was obviously a no-go. He had no idea what the odds were of someone else coming through. And, even if someone did, odds were it would be Jaffa for some system lord looking to expand their territory.
If he wanted off the planet... it was looking like the repository was his best bet. The question was... could he handle it? Seeing as he wasn't exactly human anymore...
He stepped up to the machine and stuck his head into it. Immediately the machine shifted to a shape that looked like two hands that clasped his skull and held him in place. His eyes widened as he stared into the swirling multicolored lights in the depths of the device. He could feel the information being streamed into his mind at the literal speed of light.
As the machine poured the data into him, he began to partition his mind and speed up those partitions to process the data as fast as he could. His single mind suddenly became thousands, then tens of thousands. All of them constantly speeding up tens, hundreds, thousands of time to process the data as fast as they could.
The lights faded and the repository released his head. Even so, he stood as still as a statue as his multitude of minds worked at speeds no human could hope to comprehend. Even then, he didn't move the slightest bit, not even to pretend to breathe, as he processed and sorted through everything that had been dumped into his mind. He was frozen as his mind worked.
-----Line Break-----
He slowly blinked. The world coming back into focus as his mind was finally completely freed from processing the truly unimaginable amount of data he'd absorbed. He slowly stretched as he processed what had just happened. He let out a groan as he twisted and turned his body in different directions to limber up.
“Well, that didn't take...” He froze as a part of his mind provided a bit of information, “Six months?! I've been standing here for six months?!”
He grunted in annoyance at losing so much time. On the other hand, he now had a full accounting of everything the Ancients knew all cross referenced and indexed properly in his mind to make finding the information he wanted easier. He was even educated enough now to understand all the underlying principles of the technology they used.
He now had all the knowledge he needed to be capable of building a space fairing vessel that could enter hyperspace. All he needed was the proper materials.
A flood of nanomachines erupted from his feet and swarmed out to begin processing everything around him into their individual elements. He even disassembled the repository for its materials. Unfortunately, the repository was powered by the same small and super efficient cold fusion reactor core that a Clavis, or Dial Home Device as humans named it.
While such devices provided a significant amount of power in order to open and maintain wormholes throughout the galaxy, they were nowhere near strong enough to power a hyperdrive. Even worse, they didn't even run off of Naquadah, the local super material that can do anything. Worse, the planet he was on only had trace amounts of the mineral meaning he would have to cannibalize the Stargate to get enough for his needs.
The planet also lacked Trinium, another amazing metal that could be used for multiple purposes. This meant his ship wasn't going to be as robust as he was hoping. Even so, he had chemical formulas and other such things that would let him build lower tech but still highly durable hull plates. Thankfully, the Stargate would provide more than enough Naquadah to create energy shields to protect the ship.
Best to get started right away as it would take even him a fair amount of time to build even a small ship.
The flood of nanomachines pouring out of him doubled. Bubbles slowly grew here and there until they formed into full copies of himself. It was only after the first one fully formed that he realized something.
He looked younger!
He'd been firmly in his forties when that stupid truck broke physics to hit him. Looking at his clones, they didn't look any older than twenty. He even swapped his mind into one of them to look at his 'original' body and saw the same thing. He considered what it meant and then realized it meant nothing. His current existence meant he could look however he wanted. He could make himself look like a total gigachad or the hottest woman in the galaxy. His looks could literally be anything he wanted.
Well, he liked his original looks so he kept them for now. Though he maaaaay have tweaked his body a bit so he had a six pack. He'd always wanted it so why not?! He looked mildly attractive with dirty blond hair, bright blue eyes, a somewhat aristocratic appearance, and a ready smile.
He stood in the middle of his flood of nanomachines as they began to strip mine the world around him. They didn't stop spreading and several spots he had them spike down into the ground to look for possible veins of material he could use. Iron, carbon, and silicone were things he needed in abundance. With a lack of raw Naquadah to mine, he would have to settle for a composite metal that was mostly steel with hints of other materials mixed in to make it more durable.
He was mildly disappointed that he couldn't recreate the Asgard's Naquadah/Trinium/Carbon alloy. If he recalled right the resulting metal was the strongest one they'd ever produced. Given their age and technological level, that was quite a statement.
Thankfully, carbon was heavily adundant so he could easily make things like carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes. Thanks to his nanomachines he could even build the crystals he would need for his technology to work one atom at a time into perfect lattices with zero defects.
His nanomachines continued to spread and mine out to a mile, then three, ten, thirty, and eventually a hundred miles after a week of spreading. The whole surface of the planet that they blanketed had been completely stripped. Trees had been consumed for their carbon, sand for silicone, soil for a mixture of many things in trace amounts. He'd even dug deep into the ground upon finding veins of minerals that he had use for.
It took that entire week of time for him to mine enough material to begin laying the foundations of his ship. Or, more appropriately, its frame was a composite of Naquadah harvested from the gate, which was completely disassembled to the atomic level now, and steel. It was primarily steel mixed with Naquadah and a few other trace elements to further enhance its durability. It was the primary support that would hold the ship together to it was necessary to use the majority of the available Naquadah on it. He'd used every bit of it that he didn't need to reserve for the powerplant.
With the frame created he could see the basic design of the ship. Sadly it was a pure Lantean design with substituted materials. He wasn't quite up to the challenge of building custom designed ships just yet. Maybe once he found a planet with the right minerals to build a Potentia, or Zero Point Module, factory. They were exceptionally difficult to produce and would take a month each to build. If even a single bit of the crystal making up the Potentia was even a micron out of place, the power source wouldn't function. Luckily it also wouldn't explode since that would take out not just the planet it was on but most of the accompanying solar system as well.
There was zero chance of him building one on a resource barren planet like the one he was on. He needed to find one truly rich in the more exotic materials of the universe. Even if it was just a barren rocky world that couldn't support life. Not like such a restriction mattered to him!
Back to the ship though. The one he was designing was a scouting vessel that had dropped out of use some several million years ago. It was designed to house a small crew of two that would jump from system to system to scan and scout possible worlds for either colonization or terraforming. He chose it for the simple, but robust, hyperdrive and exceptional scanners that didn't require super exotic materials.
As a scout vessel it had zero weapons but a powerful shield to protect it from things like unexpected debris and such when exploring. It suited his needs perfectly as it would let him jump through the universe to find a good place to set up base. And, thanks to the repository, he already knew several systems he wanted to check.
The Ancients, Lantians, or whatever you wanted to call them had been rather picky about where they were willing to set themselves up. If they scanned a system and didn't find either an already viable planet or one they could terraform, they ignored the system. It didn't mater if the system was overflowing with resources, if there wasn't a planet worth slapping a Stargate down on, it wasn't worth spending time in.
But, being the studious record keepers they were, they retained the information on all the systems they scanned, which covered one hundred percent of the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.. He now knew of hundreds of systems incapable of supporting life that were filled to the brim with the things he needed. The ship he was building would let him get to those solar systems and allow him to scan for the highest concentrations of the things necessary to advance.
Swarms of nanomachines, looking more like liquid metal, flowed in and around the skeleton of the ship building it up atom by atom. That was one huge benefit of using the little guys, with the exception of the entrance the whole ship would, essentially, be one solid piece. That would greatly enhance its strength and reduce stress in specific spots.
He paused in his study of the ship as information reached him that he hadn't expected. His little guys had found a small vein of Naquadah. The planets records had indicated it wasn't worth mining for the mineral, not that the planet completely lacked said mineral. It was rarer than gold, which he'd found a fair amount of, but not non-existent. He just hadn't expected to actually find a small vein of it.
He switched his mind with a clone near the site and examined it through his nanomachines. Once he did he realized calling it a 'vein' was a bit too much. More like 'lump'. Possibly an ancient meteorite or something that fell a long time ago. It was small and would give maybe five hundred pounds of purified Naquadah. That might sound like a lot but it was only a couple of ingots worth given how dense the mineral was.
Still, though small the unexpected extra would be put to good use making his ship even better. He'd only reserved the minimum amount required for his power plant from the Stargate, this would give him even more room to improve the power output thus increasing his speed and defensive capabilities.
Once the mineral was extracted he returned to where he was constructing his ship. It had made some progress while he'd been playing around. The construction speed was already phenomenal but he'd managed to improve that by cutting out unnecessary things, like life support! The ship essentially consisted of the helm at the front, a bedroom in the middle, and the power plant at the rear. He might be willing to forgo things like food, water, and air but there was no way in hell he was giving up sleep!
Oh no, he would have the most comfortable bed in the universe one way or another!
-----Line Break-----
He looked over his finished ship, walking around it to examine from every angle. It honestly didn't look very impressive. The front had a downward angled nose with a clear screen to look through. From there it angled back into a long rectangular body with rounded edges and two small wings that were more aesthetic than functional. Along the side of the shuttle where the wings met the body were the two engines for flight and sublight speeds in space. The whole thing had a metallic color to it that he hadn't bothered putting any kind of colored designs on.
He walked to the left side of the ship where the doorway to the interior opened with a hiss of equalizing air. The interior was as bland as the exterior and consisted of mostly empty space. The room he entered was, essentially, his bedroom. A door to the left led to the cockpit and one to the right led to the power plant which was softly humming.
He closed and sealed the door and made his way into the cockpit where a command chair awaited him. Why control it by hand when such a convenient device existed? As he stepped up to the chair the floor around it lit up a soft blue. He calmly sat down which fully activated the chair. It leaned back into a comfortable position while a holographic display came to life and listed all the systems of the ship and their status.
Everything was green.
With a combination of his thoughts and some movements of his fingers in the gel pads on the armrests of the chair, the engines roared to life. Thankfully the soundproofing of the ship was top notch or the sound would have been deafening instead of a gentle rumbling that was quite enjoyable.
Here is where he had a minor problem. Technically, he had never flown anything. Ever. Not even a remote control airplane. The closest he had ever come were space sim games like Elite Dangerous. He had all the knowledge of how to do so, just no practical experience. So, as a precaution against death, he'd left a pile of nanomachines shaped like himself on the planet that he could jump into if he fucked up bad enough to crash on the planet. He had no idea what his full transfer distance was but he doubted it was further than planetary.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it out as a calming measure. The ship shook slightly as he powered up the engines and began to lift off of the ground. Thanks to inertial dampeners he barely felt a thing. He could have chosen to feel nothing but that would be boring! As soon as the ships landing gear left the ground he commanded it to retract.
Once the landing gear was secured, he floored it! The shuttle shot off faster than anything on Earth could even imagine moving in atmosphere! Without inertial dampeners even he would be a puddle against the back wall from the sheer forces involved. The sonic boom was near instant and rapidly left behind while the ship shot up into and then out of the atmosphere in less than a minute.
He whooped with glee and even performed a barrel roll as he left the atmosphere and finally entered the blackness of space. It had only taken him three months, nineteen days, seventeen hours, forty-four minutes, and thirty two seconds to go from freshly transmigrated and fucked to flying into space.
Now that was progress!
He hit the afterburners, metaphorically as there were no actual afterburners, and floored it to really see what the shuttle could do. The basic model he'd based his off of could hit 0.01c or over six point seven MILLION miles per hour. Cutting down on other systems that used power let him funnel more to the drives and increase that by about ten percent. That might sound low but it translated to over six hundred and seventy thousand miles per hour.
Not being in any real rush to get anywhere let him have fun performing tricks and even a few loop-de-loops just for the hell of it. It was only a little while after he'd calmed down from the absolute high of flying in space that he got down to the next cool bit!
A low whine began to fill the cockpit as he spun up the hyperdrive and put in the coordinates for his destination. Thanks to the powerful computers built into the shuttle it was easy for him to calculate stellar drift from the last known coordinates to get the new location for his destination in space.
“Engage!”
At his word a purple colored widow in space opened. The automatic systems of his ship guided it into the window and into the swirling eddies of color that was hyperspace. He stared at the blues and whites for a long time...
“Bored now.”
He sat forward causing the whole command chair to shift up and let him easily stand. There was nothing to do while he was in hyperspace for the next few days on the way to his destination. Unfortunately, despite how incredibly advanced the Lantean society had been, it was sadly lacking in options for entertainment. But, then again, what could be expected from a society of stuck up scientists?
Worse, what entertainment they did have was completely stored in his memory so it wasn't something he could experience for the first time. On the bright side, he had enough knowledge to do something to entertain himself! His swarm came to life and used some excess materials he'd stored to begin building a small device. He would have done it sooner but he knew he would need something to entertain himself on the flight.
Step one was making a Lantean handheld gaming device that, frankly, put even the top of the super computers from his old life to shame. Naturally, stick-in-the-mud Lanteans only had educational games on file. Bleh. So, he just had to make his own! Which, given his perfect knowledge of the necessary programming language was pretty easy. Even better, he could accelerate his thoughts and have his nanomachines to all the programming at the speed of his accelerated thoughts.
In an hour, real time, he created an entire game engine, then programmed the game. In relative time it took him and a hundred copies of himself six months of work. What he ended up with was a fighter slash RPG hybrid. The character creator let him make a fighter, then he could participate in tournaments. Winning earned exp, leveling up earned skill points and attribute points. Attribute points leveled up stats like strength and speed while skill points allowed for the creation and upgrading of custom skills for the fighter.
If he wanted to make a Goku clone that fired off ki blasts, he could. If he wanted to make Ryu from Street Fighter he could. Any kind of fighter in any kind of style could be made.
As for the opponents, they were generated and controlled by a dumb AI designed to make the opponents tough, but beatable so the game was always a challenge no matter the players skill level. Which was good because it turned out he SUCKED at the game.
“I totally should have built in cheat codes, dammit.”
-----Line Break-----
The hyperspace lights flowing across the forward window faded as he dropped back into real space. As soon as he did he engaged his stealth systems. He didn't have the proper materials for optical stealth but radio-logical and other signs of his ship were easy enough to hide from most scanning technology. The only way to spot him was visually and given the vastness of space and the relatively tiny size of his ship and the odds of him being spotted were as close to zero as to make no difference.
Which was a good thing because he could see his home planet floating in space before him. Well, technically not his home as this was was currently sitting in the year 1996. If his memory was right, this was the year they first opened the Stargate to Abydos. Then, a year later, Apophis would come through to kidnap some Airforce people, which kicked off the whole thing for SG-1.
That... wasn't too bad. He would have liked to have more time before Earth started sticking its nose into universal business, but a good year to get started was fine. Hell, it would be closer to two years before Apophis launched an attack on Earth with two mother ships. That would be more than enough time for him to get some stuff done and ready. After all, there was no guarantee things would go exactly as he remembered them from the show.
It might not be his Earth, but it was the only Earth he would have for a long time and it needed to be protected.
He was tempted to try and land so he could explore and bit but he wasn't willing to do so without full optical camouflage.
“Next time.”
He turned his ship around and opened up a new hyperspace window to head to where he planned to set up his base of operations. Thankfully it was only a six hour flight from Earth. It would give him some more practice getting his ass kicked in his own game.
-----Line Break-----
He stared out the window at the solar system spread out before him, “Huh, didn't expect that.”
The system he'd chosen had, according to the archives in the repository, been a normal main sequence yellow star much like Sol in Earth's solar system. Though it looked like it was definitely much older as it had begun the transition into a red giant, a process that would take something like a billion years.
According to his scanners, the process had begun roughly seven million years ago. Considering his records were more than ten million years out of date, it wasn't a surprise that they weren't perfectly accurate. The initial scan of the system had happened long before the Ancients took off for the Pegasus galaxy to escape the plague. They'd never updated the records after their return roughly ten thousand years ago. They'd been too weakened from the war with the Wraith to spend time to update their records.
Of course, if he'd bothered to build the necessary equipment he could have used the data stored in the repository to calculate where the star would be in its lifespan. Their original scans and records were top notch, after all.
Well, the star transitioning into a red giant wasn't a big deal and didn't change his plans at all. The system was a dead system with no hope of ever generating life of any kind. This meant he had zero moral issues with what he was going to do.
“Time to begin strip mining!”
He'd chosen the system because it had massive quantities of Naquadah in its asteroid belt and two of its planets had minor quantities of Trinium. Two major minerals used in the highest levels of technology he had access to.
Using the command chair, he scanned the asteroid belt looking for the one with the largest concentration of Naquadah within it. Thanks to the power of the scanners on this particular model of ship, it only took him an hour to find an asteroid the size of Texas that was almost ninety percent Naquadah.
It took another hour to find a proper landing spot on the jagged exterior of the asteroid, but once he had he began his work. He vacuumed all the air out of the interior of his shuttle into storage tanks then opened the main hatch. As soon as he did a flood of nanomachines roared out onto the asteroid. Given its size and density, the asteroid had a small amount of gravity that helped, for now.
At first dozens, then hundreds of clones of himself appeared and continued to spread the nanomachines like an unlimited flood of liquid metal that tore into the asteroid and ripped it apart atom by atom. The speed only continued to increase as more and more copies of himself emerged periodically.
Within minutes the nanomachines began construction of an Ancient Outpost, one designed for space. It was one of the larger more comprehensive ones that could not only repair but also build space ships up to the Aurora-class battleships that were used during the war with the Wraith. They were the single most powerful ships of the Lantean fleet and only lost due to the sheer difference in numbers between them and the Wraith.
No, he didn't plan to build something that big, not yet anyway. He would start small and slowly ramp up as he gathered friends and allies. He had no desire to live alone for very long and would very much like to have at least a few friends.
And, he supposed, he could help with the whole evil snake-like aliens enslaving the majority of the universe thing along the way.
Before any of that though he did need a base of operations and at least a decent ship that could put up a fight. If it happened to be strong enough to take out a Goa'uld Ha'Tak, their largest and strongest vessels, then that was just coincidence.
-----Line Break-----
“Well, that's interesting.”
He sat in the main command center of his, still in progress, outpost. It was still only being powered by a Naquadah generator that was sufficient, but he really wanted to build some damn ZPM's soon. He needed that power to really kick things up a notch. But that wasn't relevant to what he was seeing. He'd realized that in order to fight any kind of war, information was required. He had knowledge of the series, but there was no proof that this universe was going to play out the same way.
Hell, the show itself showed at least a dozen alternatives of itself during its run! He could be in any one of those universes or the infinite number that were never even seen. So, general knowledge he could probably rely on, such as Goa'uld are evil, but specific knowledge, like it will one hundred percent be Daniel Jackson who figures out how to work the Stargate, may be wildly inaccurate.
To fix his issue he needed to spy on the galaxy. Thanks to his huge technological advantage, that wouldn't be much of a problem. The Lanteans had never specifically designed such a thing so he'd had to custom design one.
He basically took the most powerful and accurate sensors ever designed and slapped a hyperdrive and stealth system to it. They were relatively small, about the size of a puddle jumper, and could be sent to a system to scan it then send back information through encrypted subspace channels. Such information included scans of the planets, the activity on them, and any communications within the system.
His obvious first choice had been Abydos. As expected, it only showed a relatively small community of humans mining Naquadah using primitive tools. Par for the course for the system lords of the Goa'uld. He'd keep an eye on that and watch how things happened when people from Earth managed to go there.
The next obvious one was sent to the Sol system to watch Earth. If it happened to record and transmit television broadcasts for him to enjoy, well that was just a coincidence!
After that he'd just started to pick the nearest systems with Stargates and expand from there. The Goa'uld tended to stick heavily to planets on the Stargate network so that was his best bet at finding them.
Shockingly, given the size of the galaxy and how often the show showed SG-1 arriving at planets either abandoned or where Goa'uld hadn't been seen in a long time, he'd found a Goa'uld stronghold entirely on accident. More importantly, he'd learned it was the main stronghold of a rather important, if hardly recognized, Goa'uld System Lord, Pelops.
Frankly, even by the time SG-1 stopped airing and the last movie dealt with the Ori, Pelops might have still been around. Despite his importance to Goa'uld culture with his creation of the Jaffa, he'd never even been seen in person and only had a major impact on a single episode of the show. Pelops was the definition of small time.
So, it was kind of a surprise that the first System Lord he'd found had been Pelops. His scans showed the planet he was on had a population of less than a million with the majority of that population, about seventy percent, being slaves and the rest being Jaffa. Considering his scans showed no signs of a Queen Goa'uld to provide the Jaffa with symbiotes, he was confused on where so many came from.
While an interesting question, it also wasn't all that important. No, what was important was getting as much information as he could and he had just the stupid plan to get what he wanted.
-----Line Break-----
He stepped out of the event horizon of the Stargate and shuddered a little. Being broken down to the molecular level, shoved through a wormhole, and reconstituted on the other side was a strange experience for a man who could turn himself into nanomachines at will.
He patted himself down checking over his clothing as he did. For this little bit of fun he'd chosen to wear simple but well made clothing in the form of jeans, a graphic tee, and a nice leather jacket. Hanging from his hip was a holster containing a clearly high tech pistol that had glowing blue lines of power. It was just a Lantean stun weapon that he'd modified the appearance of to make it look different while working the same.
“Kree tal shal mak!”
He looked up to see five Jaffa in their typical heavy armor holding the Ma'Tok staff weapons aimed at him. The same voice called out, “Onak sha kree, shel Goa'uld!”
“Sorry, what?”
The Jaffa all scowled while the one clearly in the lead actually growled, “Kree tal shal mak! Onak sha kree, shel Goa'uld!”
“You know, repeating it isn't going to make it easier for me to understand.”
Even while the Jaffa continued to move closer, he didn't nothing to really antagonize them, like reaching for his weapon. Though his reply did seem to piss them off more. Or maybe that was a Jaffa's default state? He kept his hands out where they could be seen as the Jaffa closed in.
One of the four who hadn't spoken, reached out and pulled the pistol out of its holster. He looked it over before showing it to the lead Jaffa. Though neither spoke, they seemed to be having a conversation. The lead Jaffa flicked the switch on the Mo'Tok staff that caused the bulbous head to open with a snap and small discharge of electricity meant to intimidate.
At the same time, two of the other Jaffa got behind him and grabbed him by the shoulders to shove him forward. Getting the hint, he started walking. The last Jaffa who hadn't done anything so far lifted a horn on his hip to his lips and blew it in a pattern.
More Jaffa came out of the tree line a short distance from the Stargate. As they approached the lead Jaffa and the two grabbing his shoulders started walking toward a path into the woods. He hadn't seen it, but his pistol had been passed to one of the Jaffa holding his shoulders. Thankfully the Jaffa weren't too violent toward him as they jostled him down the path.
He looked around, blatantly curious, as they walked through the center of a town that surrounded a massive temple with a Ha'Tak sitting on top of it. The place was... well dirty and extremely low tech. The houses were hardly better than wattle and daub in construction. The slaves all wore what looked like simple linen clothing with the texture of a cheap sack over their emaciated bodies.
Clearly there was little to no wealth in the city at all and everyone but the Jaffa were suffering for it.
After a rather long walk, they arrived at the temple. Up close it was massive and filled to the brim with gold decorations. He whistled in surprise. He'd nearly forgotten the Goa'uld obsession with covering every wall in a layer of gold. It was super tacky.
A rough shove reminded him to keep walking while the Jaffa led him through the building. Before much longer they arrived in a large open room that was obviously the throne room, given the large throne within it.
He studied the man sitting on the throne knowing his looks didn't mean much. Either way, the man looked middle aged with salt and pepper hair and a thick goatee. He wore what would be considered typical Goa'uld clothing consisting of flowing fabrics in bright colors.
His throne room was surrounded by Jaffa all standing at attention between tall columns. The only non-Jaffa was a slave girl wearing diaphanous cloth that was pretending to be clothing despite leaving her fully on display. With blond hair, blue eyes, and a full figure that showed she was fed properly, he could see why she was kept on display.
He didn't like it.
“Benna! Ya wan ya duru!” As the lead Jaffa spoke the two behind him moved and slammed their staff weapons into his knees to force him to kneel.
The Goa'uld on the throne, Pelops, made his eyes glow with golden light as he leaned forward and spoke with a distinct reverb in his voice that made it sound inhuman, “Who are you? What god do you serve? Why have you come here?”
“Me? Oh, I'm Nick, nice to meet you!” He tilted his head acting curious, “As for a god? I'm atheist! So I don't even believe in god, or gods.”
He didn't get to continue as one of the Jaffa behind him lashed out with his staff and smacked him on the back of his head sending him face first into the ground. Pelops gestured lazily, “Pick him up.”
The Jaffa jumped to obey and lifted him to face the god while he pretended to be a little woozy from the head bashing. Pelops climbed to his feet and walked closer where one of the Jaffa handed over the stun pistol he'd brought along, specifically as bait to get here. Pelops looked the unfamiliar weapon over and then focused on him, “Where did you get a weapon such as this?”
Pretending to be a little light headed from minor brain damage, he answered with a slur, “That's just a basic civilian side arm.”
Pelops studied the pistol before turning to the side to aim it at a Jaffa and pulling the trigger. There was a minor almost musical sound when the pistol fired a white blast of light that hit the Jaffa and instantly rendered him unconscious. Pelops re-examined the weapon before tossing it to another Jaffa, “A trifle, but you say it is basic? I take it your peoples real weapons are better?”
He could hear the curiosity in Pelop's voice, as planned. He continued to pretend to be woozy while answering, “Not allowed to say.”
One of the Jaffa stuck him on the back with their staff, though Pelops quickly put a stop to it, “Kree Jaffa!” Pelops reached down and grabbed him by the chin to look his face over. Slowly a cruel smile curled his lips, “Perhaps it is time for a new, younger host.”
Pelops let go of him and swept away with a flourish to return to nearer his throne, “Jaffa, Kree!” he pointed to the ground at his feet.
The Jaffa dragged him to the throne where Pelops grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look up into his eyes, “You should be honored. It's been five thousand years since I took a new host. I will have all the knowledge of your people from you. Then, I shall conquer them and use your technology to my advantage!”
Pelop's eyes flashed with light once more as he opened his mouth. With a high pitched squeal the snake-like real form of the Goa'uld launched out of Pelop's mouth and landed on his shoulder. It quickly wiggled around to get at the back of his neck while the Jaffa firmly held him in place.
Still pretending to be clueless, he began stammering, “What is that?! What are you doing?!”
With a loud hiss, the Goa'uld used its sharp mandibles to easily pierce skin and muscle to burrow into his body and wrap around his spine. That is where things went horribly wrong for Pelops. First, he didn't need his brain to do anything which meant Pelops taking control of it meant dick all. Second, and most importantly, Even after living thousands of years combined with thousands more of genetic memory, Pelop's mind was nowhere near as powerful as his own which had stored literally millions of years of history alone, let alone the other subjects within the repository.
In short, when Pelops tried to suborn his mind it was instead completely crushed and suborned in turn. Nick now had all of Pelop's memories and knowledge at his fingertips. Even better, the Jaffa now believed him to be their god. He felt mildly bad about what his short term plans called for, but he would make it up to the Jaffa and slaves.
Now, it was time to get started. He lifted his head and put on a mildly annoyed look. His eyes flashed and he spoke with the same reverb as the Goa'uld used, “Release me.”
The Jaffa jumped to obey. Nick climbed to his feet and looked at the crumpled body of the previous host. It's mind had shattered and died long ago under the oppression of Pelops. While still, technically, alive, there was no one home anymore. Without Pelops to keep it going and continuous use of a sarcophagus, the body would break down slowly over the next few days until it died from rapid aging and degredation.
He moved to the body to strip it of the Kara Kesh on its right hand and placed it on his own, “Dispose of the body with honors. It served me well and is deserving of respect.”
The Jaffa didn't argue. Why would they? It was exceedingly rare for a Goa'uld to change hosts so they had no idea what the proper process for dealing with the remains was. Thus they followed his orders perfectly.
Nick sauntered up to the throne and sat on it, “All of you, leave me.”
In moments he was completely alone in the throne room. He closed his eyes and dove into his new symbiote mind. It was only a matter of minutes for him to essentially download and process all of the information in Pelops's mind.
He'd already known it from the show but man, Goa'uld were cartoonishly evil for no real gain. Pelops was one of the very few Goa'uld who was a scientist and even as a being of supposed science he did stupid shit constantly. He would need to go through all of the information and decide what to do with all of it.
His first step though would be to implement some changes to his new home base. He got comfortable in his throne before calling out in his 'god' voice, “M'reena.”
The beautiful blond who'd been in the room when he first arrived stepped back into the room. As expected, she hadn't gone far. M'reena was an odd mixture of priestess and concubine that wasn't quite a lo'taur but still more valued than the average slave or priest. Even after telling her to leave she wouldn't retreat out of earshot without explicit orders to do so.
“Ro'ak.”
Right behind M'reena came a large Jaffa with the symbol of Pelops made of gold on his forehead, his first prime. Ro'ak was tall, broad, and muscular, with tanned skin, short dark hair, and calculating brown eyes.
He looked between his two most trusted retainers. M'reena was in charge of his priesthood, which was admittedly much smaller than other goa'uld given his lack of territory. Ro'ak, on the other hand, was in charge of his troops. Unfortunately, due to standard Goa'uld stupidity, no one was really in charge of the slave population. Sure, the Jaffa kept them in line and spread his orders, but they had no dedicated leader. He expected quite a few Jaffa probably abused the lack of oversight, something he would definitely change.
His gaze focused first on M'reena, “Tell me, what do you think of my palace and it's splendors?”
M'reena looked confused at his clear sarcasm when he said 'splendors' but she answered honestly none-the-less, “It is quite glorious my Lord Pelops. Many in the city would give much to live within these walls.”
He nodded at the expected answer and turned to Ro'ak, “And you?”
Ro'ak stood firmly at attention as he answered, “Overly ostentatious with too many open avenues for enemy attack.”
He was mildly surprised that Ro'ak knew a word as complex as ostentatious. He didn't mean that as an insult but Jaffa were not well known for their intelligence. They weren't stupid or anything... right, anyway. Point was, he honestly hadn't expected that out of Ro'ak and was visibly impressed. Lucky for him, Pelops wasn't known for striking out in random fits of anger or at every little perceived insult, “I see.”
He leaned back in his throne and looked up at the ceiling while he spoke, “Do you two know what I see through my new eyes?” He didn't wait for a response, “Squalor.” He tilted his head to look down at them, “A Ha'tak has more comforts than this palace of mine.” He lifted his arms and gestured expansively, “A more glorious view for my eyes to feast on as well! How pathetic is it that stepping out of my temple would have me looking at homes made of sticks and mud?!”
He scowled, “I should live in a palace worthy of me. When I look out upon my people I should enjoy seeing their homes. Why must I stare at dirt and sticks?! How could I have ever thought such was good?” He snorted, “No. This will not stand any longer. Things will change so I may enjoy it!”
What was the best way to help uplift a society of warriors and slaves used to following the whims of their megalomaniac evil overlord without making them so suspicious they turn on him? Couch it all in personal greed!
His people weren't getting better homes to make them happy, they were getting them so he didn't have to dirty his eyes by looking at trash. No, he wasn't introducing more modern mining concepts to make life easier for the slaves, he was doing it because it let them make things prettier faster!
His lips curled into a smug grin, “There is much work to do to make this world worthy of rule by me.”
-----Line Break-----
AN
10k words
Sorry it took so long for me to post something. I was having a huge fit of ADD. I've written over 40k words since I dropped Uzumaki. I dunno what was going on, but I had several ideas and just kept writing. This was the first one to get finished.
Uzumaki chapter 2 got to 4k words before I got distracted by an idea. Then I wrote 8k words on an idea for someone in Cyberpunk 2077 with the Essence of the Thief (modified). Then I wrote another 8k words on a story where a gun-nut took over Usopp's life. The idea was sound, but as I was writing it, the new Usopp kind of came out as a jerk. Then another 4k words on an MHA story that just kind of rambled, so I didn't even save it and just deleted that one.
Finally, came this story. I've always loved Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis (Universe was shit, fight me). I've just never tried my hand at writing it because it's the kind of universe where a single person can help, but can't make much change without something major in their favor. Then I saw Essence of the Machine, and inspiration struck. This story is the result.
Anyway, I hope you guys liked it. I'll get to work on Fabricator now.
Edit:
I just realized the title of the story could be so much more fitting for the setting involved. Thus The Machine God instead of empire. I also think it makes more sense as the empire will be mostly real people instead of machines and they are led by a machine pretending to be a god. Logic!