You probably read the title and thought 'what the hell is this guy thinking?' and, yes, I did have those thoughts after writing this as well. The idea sprung from reading a fic where Nazis took over the Stargate and wondering just what the oddest modern Earth culture to go through the gate could be. This is farcical, possibly narrow-minded and only meant to be some fun. Please enjoy (or don't... it's up to you):
----
The cavern was bathed in an odd mixture of flickering torches and the soft glow of electric lamps that danced together and drowned the area with enough light to ward away all but the blackest of shadow. Mixed among the proud natural stalagmites were iron columns and walls of cement that seemed alien in a place that hadn't seen life for millenia before those assembled within had discovered it. It was a place far hidden from the gaze of the outside world, where prayers for peace and mercy could be conducted amongst crates of ammunition and boxes of explosives.
But not for much longer, the leader of the group thought to himself. Soon they wouldn't have to hide in the dank caves of Peshawar from the infidel spies and satellites. He gripped his signature Klashnikov - taken from a communist infidel during their failed invasion of Afghanistan - tighter as the thought of the true Islamic state that was inevitable with the coming activation of the large device before him. This device, this 'Gateway to the Heavens' as Mullah Zahir called it, was his path to Allah.
Confiscated from an infidel archeology dig in Egypt by an upstanding muslim debt-collector and subsequently passing into the hands of a Prince of the House of Saud, the huge ring and its accompanying podium had been somewhat of a mystery to the small circles that knew of its existance but he knew differently. It was a sign from Allah himself and with it his glorius faithful soldiers would bring His wrath on the infidel West and their Zionist puppet-masters. Finally the Ulema under his employ had cracked the code on the cartouche and it was ready to be activated.
"Osama," said a careful voice from behind him, breaking him from his revery.
"Yes, brother?" Osama bin Laden replied, turning his gaze onto the flinching visage of the bearded Mullah Zahir. That the man had studied the ancient writtings of the pagan pharaohs in a Western university and remained a respected religious figure within his homeland did nothing to prevent the unnatural fear that gripped him when in the presence of someone as intense and dedicated as the al-Qaeda leader.
"T-the device is ready," he stuttered out, "Y-you need only press the symbols on the podium a-and it should activate."
The imposing al-Qaeda leader grinned viciously and clapped the scholar on the shoulder. "No, Zahir. You were the one to unlock the secrets to the Gateway to the Heavens and you shall be the one to activate it. It shall be by your keen mind that the Islamic state Allah has promised us will be established. You shall be written in history as the one who made it happen."
Despite himself, the Mullah felt a modicum of pride grip him. Osama was a keen speaker of great charisma, especially when he spoke of things close to the heart and of subjects he believed in reverently. It was true, after all, that he was the lead scholar that translated and enterpreted the code and it would be him that saw it come to fruit. "Thank you, Osama."
But the al-Qaeda leader wasn't listening anymore. With an intense heat he simply stared at the huge ring before him as if his pure will could force the device to activate at any moment. Behind him he heard the shuffling of feet as his holy warriors crowded to look; the creaking of anticipating hands gripping gun stocks and the whispered prayers for success.
The Mullah must have done something right for, of its own conviction, the inner ring of symbols began spinning with the creaking rumble of stone rubbing against stone. The assembled soldiers gasped and began whispering together in pure amazement as the device worked its strange magic. More men rushed into the cavern to witness the miracle at hand. Taliban fighters from villages only kilometres away brushed shoulders with al-Qaeda warriors drawn from muslim countries across the world. With each thumping click of the ring selecting the correct symbol bin Laden's manic grin seemed to grow larger.
When the last of the symbols had finally been selected, a great plume of light crashed out from the empty centre of the ring, engulfing the al-Qaeda leader like the hand of Allah had reached out to pluck him from this world and drag him to the next. It retracted back and in its place at the centre of the ring was a shimmering pool of water, impossibly vertically standing, while Osama himself seemed to have disappeared altogether.
A silence gripped the cavern; the peaceful rippling from the ring the only sound throughout.
"It's a Jew trick!" screamed one of the fighters suddenly.
"No!" cried out another, "He's been taken through the Gateway to Heaven!"
"We should follow him!"
"Allahu akbar!"
"Bring the weapons, so that we might better serve Allah as his faithful warriors!"
There was a mighty roar of agreement that Mullah Zihar found himself swept up in and a flurry of movement followed by a surge towards the glowing vertical wave. The front man seemed to hesitate a meter from the edge, attempting to touch the surface with the barrel of his AK-47, but the flood of men behind him shoved him forwards and into the puddle. Soon everyone had bundled through, warrior and scholar alike, and eventually the blue glow of the Stargate faded leaving forgotten torches to flicker uncertainly in the empty cavern. The shadows grew larger as the flames drank up their limited fuel.
----
Abdullah al-Hassid thought heaven was far too sandy for his liking.
After passing though the veil of water the large group of nearly one-hundred faithful muslim warriors and diligent Ulema had bundled through in a mass of limbs, crushing each other beneath the weight of boxes of ammunition and their own torsos. They spread out, those practiced in the healing arts aiding the worst off of their brothers and the rest moving to create room. Securing the sandstone room with practiced simplicity.
Osama was nowhere in sight but the Mullah suggested it was a test for them as, being the most faithful, Osama would have been plucked into Allah's presence immediately. The captains roused the rest of the soldiers into patrols, searching for the answer to the puzzle of their location, a giant pyramid worthy of those in Egypt, and for their wayward leader.
And trudging up a greater dune than any he had seen before, Abdullah al-Hassid decided he severly disliked deserts. Upon finally reaching the peak, he slung his trusty AK-47 onto his shoulder and lifted the binoculers from around his neck to better observe the surrounding area. As he scanned the encompassing dunes, Rashid let out a groan of exasperation when coming from behind him. Al-Hassid couldn't blame him; the bearded fellow was forced into lugging an RPG-7 and as many warheads as he could attach to his threadbare fatigues, but Abdullah ignored his companion's plight in order to properly detirmine the surrounding locale.
"I think I see something," he murmured.
Rashid suddenly perked up, attempting to snatch the binoculors from al-Hassid's hands but failing with the awkwardness of his weapon impeding him. "Is it virgins?" he eventually asked.
"You're disgusting," al-Hassid grunted back, "And no. I think it's an elephant. I saw one in a book once."
"Give me those." With a sigh, al-Hassid passed over the viewing glasses after Rashid had carefully placed his cumbersome weapon onto the sand. "You lie! There's a woman there with the elephant!"
"Let me see!" The pair wrestled for the binoculors but Rashid's tiredness from lugging about the tools of his trade allowed al-Hassid to snatch them back off him. "It's a boy, stupid!"
Rashid let out a bark of laughter. "I knew it was virgins!"
The other Taliban fighter merely rolled his eyes in amusement, stroking his beard in an automatic way before saying, "Get on the radio and call the others in. We'll ask the boy if we're in heaven."
"The Mullah lied to us, the bastard," Rashid predicted, "And I don't have the radio, you do."
"I told you to bring it."
"I wasn't going to carry all these warheads and a stupid radio!" cried Rashid loudly.
Abdullah al-Hassid sighed tiredly and stroked his beard again. Personally, he didn't understand how Rashid had ever been accepted into the Taliban in the first place. "Right," he said eventually, "You go back and get the Mullah and one of the captains and I'll grab the boy."
"Why do I have to go back?" moaned his companion.
"Because I'm only carrying a rifle, stupid," al-Hassid explained in annoyance, "I'll be able to run and catch him!"
Eventually he got Rashid to go, grumbling to himself the entire way, and al-Hassid let gravity aid him in springing lightly down the opposited face of the dune towards the elephant and the boy with it. It was tougher work than he would like to have admitted but he eventually he reached the top of the dune, panting for breath, and the boy looked at him wearily, struggling to move his beast. The elephant wasn't an elephant, he soon realised. It was an odd animal covered in fur but no matter what the boy did it didn't seem to want to move away. The boy eventually spun around, pulled out a knife from his belt and nervously held it out to the Taliban fighter.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said al-Hassid between gasping for breath. The boy muttered something that he couldn't understand in reply. "I don't understand," al-Hassid admitted, "Who are you?" Again the boy said something completely incomprehensible. "Brilliant. You're either completely stupid or you're speaking a different language." Somehow the boy seemed to understand at least the tone of what al-Hassid had said because he soon replied in kind. "Shut up, boy. I hope the Mullah knows what you're saying."
The Mullah didn't know what he was saying. No-one did. Even when the boy brought them to an old balding man in a village who seemed to speak a multitude of languages himself, none of them was a common language they could communicate in. They tried Arabic, Urdu, English, Kurdish, Persian and some Algerians that had been with al-Qaeda for a few years even tried French but whatever language they used it didn't seem to work. It didn't help that the bald man consistently brushed out whatever writing the Mullah attempted to show him and in the end the al-Qaeda group gave up, retreating back to the rest of the group temporarily in order to get a better grip on what happened.
Of course the gigantic pyramid-shaped spaceship slowly decending towards their camp certainly didn't fill the group with positive emotions. "This has been a rubbish day," Rashid was compelled to say and none of the group felt the need to contradict him.
-----
The warning from the patrols came late but even if Muhammad al-Mufid received a radio transmission telling him a spaceship was decending upon his position he probably wouldn't have believed it. Rashid had a weird sense of humour like that and it was usually best to ignore him. The entire pyramid shaking as if struck by an earthquake was more warning he needed to tell him something strange was going on.
He had a belt-fed PK machine gun but nowhere to aim it. The entire area was shaking with unprecedented violence and he just didn't know what to do. It was as if Allah had decided they were not worthy and was bringing the entire world down around them. He whispered a prayer for forgiveness, taking the safety off the weapon and propping it behind a fallen stone column that overlooked both the giant ring and the entrance. Rafiq leaped dramatically over the stone to join him, hefting an AK-47 and priming a belt of explosives he had strapped to his chest. Muhammad silently hoped he wouldn't use the last fallback suicide technique anywhere near him.
Throughout the room Muhajideen fighters armed themselves, looking to the heavens as dust was shaken loose in the cacophany of tremors. And from the heavens fell a beam of solid light. The oddest sight of all in Muhammad's mind was the strange image of Mullah Khalid standing in shock, one hand tightly gripped about a ritual execution sword, as the column of light coagulated into a strange stack of rings. The light faded and the stack of rings went with it, leaving the sword-armed Mullah standing in the centre of the room with five humanoid figures with fiendish metallic dog heads.
"Are you... are you Djinn in the service of Allah?" Khalid whispered just loud enough for the Muhajideen in the room to hear.
The central being cried out some nonsense in a deep, foreboding voice. He must not have recieved an adequate reply because his immediate response was to lower his metal spear and send a fireball into the Mullah's chest. Someone opened fire, AK-47 chattering loudly in the echoing room and bullets thudding against the armoured figures uselessly but it was a signal for the rest of the Taliban fighters to fire and the noise was like thunderous roaring. For a moment Muhammad wondered what was worse, the terrible shaking before these devils appeared or the hail of gunfire that followed.
He squeezed the trigger of his machine gun only to recieve an unwelcome click that signified the gun hadn't engaged properly. The armoured figures systematically sent fireballs at all of the muslim soldiers and weathered the storm of bullets in return. One of them dropped to his knee, indicated that these devils could be harmed by their mortal weapons. If only Muhammad could bring his own weapon to bear, he might be the one to bring them down.
He pulled back on his gun, attempting to chamber a round from the belt of bullets. Again the weapon wouldn't fire but a third attempt at fixing it and a hefty thump for good measure saw the heavy machine gun punch its deadly ammunition towards the hapless devils in the centre of the room. It was enough, Muhammad was pleased to see, to pound a figure to the ground and finish off the one that had previously collapsed.
Rafiq beside him cried out in cheer and for the barest of moments Muhammad al-Mufid thought they were going to make it. These five devils had attacked them and their great faith had borne them to victory. It wasn't to be, however, and again his machine gun clicked with the unsatisfactory signal of defeat as if it somehow knew the futility of their resistance. One of the dog-headed devils turned his spear towards him and the last thing the Taliban fighter saw was a rush of uncoming fire.
----
"Aircraft!" Rashid cried, pointing with his free hand towards the screeching black shapes that left the pyramid spaceship to begin circling like a bird of prey on a hunt.
"What do we do?" cried Mullah Zahir, his nervousness betraying his lack of experience concerning warfare.
They had all heard the gunfire, echoing and concentrated from within the bowels of the pyramid, and from al-Hassid's binoculers they had seen a group of Muhajideen fighters scramble from the entrance and a wave of fireballs that pursued them. One clever fighter crouched by the entrance and placed something down before following his compatriots only to be struck by a fireball in the back. The group had briefly seen a trio of armoured figures rush from the large building before being engulfed by flames. The single armoured figure left standing wisely retreated back into the bowels of their previous camp.
"Get down and stay down," Bihar roughly informed him, "Omar; look after the Mullah. Rashid, Abdullah; take out those planes."
"With what?" Rashid was stupid enough to ask.
The al-Qaeda captain cuffed the insubordinate Muhajideen fighter around the head roughly. "With your rockets and faith in Allah!"
Al-Hassid grabbed his compatriot's arm and pulled him away. "Come on, Rashid. We can do this."
As Omar and the Mullah fled to whatever cover they could find in an open and unforgiving desert, Bihar organised small groups of fighters to move about and provide sporadic anti-air fire and draw the planes' attention away from the rocket weilding Rashid. The Taliban warrior slid a rocket into place and crouched, aiming up towards the circling aircraft that had begun to deal out huge fireballs towards those assembled below.
"Hurry up!"
"Don't rush me!" Rashid shouted in reply, "I've just got to pray for success."
"Well pray faster!" al-Hassid had the tenacity to say.
"Alright, alright."
With a sigh, followed by a deep sucking breath, Rashid hefted his weapon up and directed it towards a screeching aircraft. Al-Hassid could barely bring himself to watch as the RPG-7 sent out its payload. Technically not an anti-aircraft weapon, anything could have happened but Allah was with them. The grenade clipped the craft's wing, detonating soon after and sending it flailing to the desert floor.
"It worked!" he said in disbelief, "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!"
"Reload, stupid! The other one's coming around for a pass!"
Knowing it was futile to run, Rashid and al-Hassid fumbled with another warhead and eventually attached it to the RPG-7 launcher. The second shot was a miss, the pilot of the craft having enough skill to move himself from the missile's trajectory but it also meant his line of fire was altered and the two Muhajideen survived once more. The craft seemed to hover above, as if considering the benefit of staying out during a potentially dangerous situation, and perhaps smartly it headed back towards the pyramid. Rashid sent another rocket towards to as it fled only for it to explode upon striking a strange shield of orange that protected the spacecraft from the attack.
They reloaded quickly; they both knew this wasn't over by a long shot.
----
The Goa'uld, Ra, was used to having his way. He was the Supreme System Lord in charge of the entire Goa'uld empire across countless worlds, revered as a god by billions of subjects from a hundred different cultures. Sure, occasionally a rather stupid and overambitious Goa'uld would attempt to challenge him but they always inevitably failed in the face of his superior weapons and technology confiscated from the cast-out Anubis.
These people fighting his Jaffa weren't Abydonians and they certainly weren't the forces of a minor Goa'uld with fantasies above his station; they weren't any type of people he recognised and yet their oddly simple weapons that had somehow managed to destroy one of the patrolling Death Gliders with a lucky shot. Any other time he would have sent his armies down to wipe them from existance; thousands of Jaffa burning them from history with the rightious fire of their god.
Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the insects that dared stand against him, Ra had not prepared himself for such a threat, insignificant though it may have been. He was a merciless god, many peoples could attest that much about him, but he was also smart enough to know that between conquering mindless slaves and wiping out rebellious minor Goa'ulds his soldiers needed rest. The majority of his forces were enjoying some downtime on Chulak while their god swept through the stars to collect the naquadah on the insignificant planet of Abydos.
His First Prime dragged the only surviving enemy of those guarding the Stargate to the foot of his throne. There were more of them out there, scurrying about the desert foolishly but inevitably failing to break the shields of his ship with their explosive toys. This one had been knocked unconcious by a lucky hit and eventually captured by the Jaffa under his command. His First Prime garnered a malicious grin as his raised the torturing shock-stick and jabbed it against the crumpled heep's skin. Ra allowed a smirk; pain was often the easiest way to wake the foolish.
The man screamed, clearly awake and began whispering something, possibly a prayer, in a language Ra didn't recognise. The god couldn't stop the frown that came after hearing it. He knew hundreds of tongues. Every culture he allowed his fellow Goa'uld to take from the Tau'ri homeworld he had inspected himself in order to learn what pitiful knowledge they might possess.
In the Pharoh's tongue he said in the distorted voice common in the Goa'uld, "Tell me who you are." The man babbled something uncomprehensible, something fierce and full of defiance. Ra tried again in Greek, Mandarin, Mayan and Babylonian but still the man refused to understand. Human minds were so full of stupidity, it was no wonder the Goa'uld were blessed with godhood in order to subjegate them into their rightful place. He tried again in the tongue of the Ancients, the long forgotten speech of the tribe his human host had been taken from, then Nordic like the humans under the protection of the Asgard, and still nothing.
Ra wasn't used to not having his way. He scowled down at the man trying to see if his appearance could offer some clue as to what language he should attempt next. A long, dark-haired beard covered sun-darkened skin. His clothing was suited to blend in with the desert; tans, browns and white robes were common although the strange black holder strapped to his chest seemed oddly out of place. Ra knew there were more deserts than the one surrounding the Nile where he had found his host but personal preference made him attempt to speak in a familiar tongue from there.
"I am getting tired of this," he said eventually in the language of the slaves, "Tell me who you are immediately."
If he had any understanding of the Afghan's native Urdu then he might have been worried about the look of comprehension crossing the prisoner's face and the cries of 'Jewish dogs', but he didn't. The Taliban fighter detonated the block of explosives strapped to his chest with a final cry of 'Allahu ackbar!' and the Goa'uld known as Ra knew no more.
----
"So," Rashid began awkwardly, "What do we do now?"
The question was a good one but none in the group had any particular idea on how to answer. Bihar was off attempting to get a better understanding of one of the pagans' spear-weapons; the dull thumping of fireballs stricking sand dunes could be heard even from here, while Rashid and al-Hassid had been drafted in to look after the Mullah. Zahir seemed to be the only one with a rough idea on what to do and that had been to round up the remaining jaffa and keep them under guard.
"I think," Mullah Zahir began tentatively, "That Allah has given us our test."
"Test?"
"We have been shown a new adversary to strike down in His name," explained the scholar, "These 'jaffa' were slaves under one who claimed to be a god. A pagan god, no less."
"How did you find that out?" asked al-Hassid, truly curious.
"That one," Omar, who had remained with the Mullah all this time, pointed to an armoured figure marred by fresh burn scars who seemed at once both nervous and defiant at the sudden attention on him, "Speaks Hebrew. Foul Jew language that it is; it is the common tongue that we were hoping for. He claims to have been the infidel leader's second in command and witnessed first hand the faith of our holy warriors as one of them martyred himself for Islam."
"Wow," said al-Hassid, "And he's still standing. Well, kneeling; but you get my drift."
"Indeed," said the Mullah, "I should be back home teaching young muslims about ancient cultures and instead I've been forced into this."
"Be proud, Mullah," Omar said, "Allah's faithful soldiers have been given a chance to strike down infidels with the tenacity to claim holiness. Fiends who enslave under the guise of false gods."
"Of course," replied the Mullah.
"Plus we've got a honking great big spaceship to mess about with," Rashid said with a grin, "What could possibly stand against us?"
-----
The cavern was bathed in an odd mixture of flickering torches and the soft glow of electric lamps that danced together and drowned the area with enough light to ward away all but the blackest of shadow. Mixed among the proud natural stalagmites were iron columns and walls of cement that seemed alien in a place that hadn't seen life for millenia before those assembled within had discovered it. It was a place far hidden from the gaze of the outside world, where prayers for peace and mercy could be conducted amongst crates of ammunition and boxes of explosives.
But not for much longer, the leader of the group thought to himself. Soon they wouldn't have to hide in the dank caves of Peshawar from the infidel spies and satellites. He gripped his signature Klashnikov - taken from a communist infidel during their failed invasion of Afghanistan - tighter as the thought of the true Islamic state that was inevitable with the coming activation of the large device before him. This device, this 'Gateway to the Heavens' as Mullah Zahir called it, was his path to Allah.
Confiscated from an infidel archeology dig in Egypt by an upstanding muslim debt-collector and subsequently passing into the hands of a Prince of the House of Saud, the huge ring and its accompanying podium had been somewhat of a mystery to the small circles that knew of its existance but he knew differently. It was a sign from Allah himself and with it his glorius faithful soldiers would bring His wrath on the infidel West and their Zionist puppet-masters. Finally the Ulema under his employ had cracked the code on the cartouche and it was ready to be activated.
"Osama," said a careful voice from behind him, breaking him from his revery.
"Yes, brother?" Osama bin Laden replied, turning his gaze onto the flinching visage of the bearded Mullah Zahir. That the man had studied the ancient writtings of the pagan pharaohs in a Western university and remained a respected religious figure within his homeland did nothing to prevent the unnatural fear that gripped him when in the presence of someone as intense and dedicated as the al-Qaeda leader.
"T-the device is ready," he stuttered out, "Y-you need only press the symbols on the podium a-and it should activate."
The imposing al-Qaeda leader grinned viciously and clapped the scholar on the shoulder. "No, Zahir. You were the one to unlock the secrets to the Gateway to the Heavens and you shall be the one to activate it. It shall be by your keen mind that the Islamic state Allah has promised us will be established. You shall be written in history as the one who made it happen."
Despite himself, the Mullah felt a modicum of pride grip him. Osama was a keen speaker of great charisma, especially when he spoke of things close to the heart and of subjects he believed in reverently. It was true, after all, that he was the lead scholar that translated and enterpreted the code and it would be him that saw it come to fruit. "Thank you, Osama."
But the al-Qaeda leader wasn't listening anymore. With an intense heat he simply stared at the huge ring before him as if his pure will could force the device to activate at any moment. Behind him he heard the shuffling of feet as his holy warriors crowded to look; the creaking of anticipating hands gripping gun stocks and the whispered prayers for success.
The Mullah must have done something right for, of its own conviction, the inner ring of symbols began spinning with the creaking rumble of stone rubbing against stone. The assembled soldiers gasped and began whispering together in pure amazement as the device worked its strange magic. More men rushed into the cavern to witness the miracle at hand. Taliban fighters from villages only kilometres away brushed shoulders with al-Qaeda warriors drawn from muslim countries across the world. With each thumping click of the ring selecting the correct symbol bin Laden's manic grin seemed to grow larger.
When the last of the symbols had finally been selected, a great plume of light crashed out from the empty centre of the ring, engulfing the al-Qaeda leader like the hand of Allah had reached out to pluck him from this world and drag him to the next. It retracted back and in its place at the centre of the ring was a shimmering pool of water, impossibly vertically standing, while Osama himself seemed to have disappeared altogether.
A silence gripped the cavern; the peaceful rippling from the ring the only sound throughout.
"It's a Jew trick!" screamed one of the fighters suddenly.
"No!" cried out another, "He's been taken through the Gateway to Heaven!"
"We should follow him!"
"Allahu akbar!"
"Bring the weapons, so that we might better serve Allah as his faithful warriors!"
There was a mighty roar of agreement that Mullah Zihar found himself swept up in and a flurry of movement followed by a surge towards the glowing vertical wave. The front man seemed to hesitate a meter from the edge, attempting to touch the surface with the barrel of his AK-47, but the flood of men behind him shoved him forwards and into the puddle. Soon everyone had bundled through, warrior and scholar alike, and eventually the blue glow of the Stargate faded leaving forgotten torches to flicker uncertainly in the empty cavern. The shadows grew larger as the flames drank up their limited fuel.
----
Abdullah al-Hassid thought heaven was far too sandy for his liking.
After passing though the veil of water the large group of nearly one-hundred faithful muslim warriors and diligent Ulema had bundled through in a mass of limbs, crushing each other beneath the weight of boxes of ammunition and their own torsos. They spread out, those practiced in the healing arts aiding the worst off of their brothers and the rest moving to create room. Securing the sandstone room with practiced simplicity.
Osama was nowhere in sight but the Mullah suggested it was a test for them as, being the most faithful, Osama would have been plucked into Allah's presence immediately. The captains roused the rest of the soldiers into patrols, searching for the answer to the puzzle of their location, a giant pyramid worthy of those in Egypt, and for their wayward leader.
And trudging up a greater dune than any he had seen before, Abdullah al-Hassid decided he severly disliked deserts. Upon finally reaching the peak, he slung his trusty AK-47 onto his shoulder and lifted the binoculers from around his neck to better observe the surrounding area. As he scanned the encompassing dunes, Rashid let out a groan of exasperation when coming from behind him. Al-Hassid couldn't blame him; the bearded fellow was forced into lugging an RPG-7 and as many warheads as he could attach to his threadbare fatigues, but Abdullah ignored his companion's plight in order to properly detirmine the surrounding locale.
"I think I see something," he murmured.
Rashid suddenly perked up, attempting to snatch the binoculors from al-Hassid's hands but failing with the awkwardness of his weapon impeding him. "Is it virgins?" he eventually asked.
"You're disgusting," al-Hassid grunted back, "And no. I think it's an elephant. I saw one in a book once."
"Give me those." With a sigh, al-Hassid passed over the viewing glasses after Rashid had carefully placed his cumbersome weapon onto the sand. "You lie! There's a woman there with the elephant!"
"Let me see!" The pair wrestled for the binoculors but Rashid's tiredness from lugging about the tools of his trade allowed al-Hassid to snatch them back off him. "It's a boy, stupid!"
Rashid let out a bark of laughter. "I knew it was virgins!"
The other Taliban fighter merely rolled his eyes in amusement, stroking his beard in an automatic way before saying, "Get on the radio and call the others in. We'll ask the boy if we're in heaven."
"The Mullah lied to us, the bastard," Rashid predicted, "And I don't have the radio, you do."
"I told you to bring it."
"I wasn't going to carry all these warheads and a stupid radio!" cried Rashid loudly.
Abdullah al-Hassid sighed tiredly and stroked his beard again. Personally, he didn't understand how Rashid had ever been accepted into the Taliban in the first place. "Right," he said eventually, "You go back and get the Mullah and one of the captains and I'll grab the boy."
"Why do I have to go back?" moaned his companion.
"Because I'm only carrying a rifle, stupid," al-Hassid explained in annoyance, "I'll be able to run and catch him!"
Eventually he got Rashid to go, grumbling to himself the entire way, and al-Hassid let gravity aid him in springing lightly down the opposited face of the dune towards the elephant and the boy with it. It was tougher work than he would like to have admitted but he eventually he reached the top of the dune, panting for breath, and the boy looked at him wearily, struggling to move his beast. The elephant wasn't an elephant, he soon realised. It was an odd animal covered in fur but no matter what the boy did it didn't seem to want to move away. The boy eventually spun around, pulled out a knife from his belt and nervously held it out to the Taliban fighter.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said al-Hassid between gasping for breath. The boy muttered something that he couldn't understand in reply. "I don't understand," al-Hassid admitted, "Who are you?" Again the boy said something completely incomprehensible. "Brilliant. You're either completely stupid or you're speaking a different language." Somehow the boy seemed to understand at least the tone of what al-Hassid had said because he soon replied in kind. "Shut up, boy. I hope the Mullah knows what you're saying."
The Mullah didn't know what he was saying. No-one did. Even when the boy brought them to an old balding man in a village who seemed to speak a multitude of languages himself, none of them was a common language they could communicate in. They tried Arabic, Urdu, English, Kurdish, Persian and some Algerians that had been with al-Qaeda for a few years even tried French but whatever language they used it didn't seem to work. It didn't help that the bald man consistently brushed out whatever writing the Mullah attempted to show him and in the end the al-Qaeda group gave up, retreating back to the rest of the group temporarily in order to get a better grip on what happened.
Of course the gigantic pyramid-shaped spaceship slowly decending towards their camp certainly didn't fill the group with positive emotions. "This has been a rubbish day," Rashid was compelled to say and none of the group felt the need to contradict him.
-----
The warning from the patrols came late but even if Muhammad al-Mufid received a radio transmission telling him a spaceship was decending upon his position he probably wouldn't have believed it. Rashid had a weird sense of humour like that and it was usually best to ignore him. The entire pyramid shaking as if struck by an earthquake was more warning he needed to tell him something strange was going on.
He had a belt-fed PK machine gun but nowhere to aim it. The entire area was shaking with unprecedented violence and he just didn't know what to do. It was as if Allah had decided they were not worthy and was bringing the entire world down around them. He whispered a prayer for forgiveness, taking the safety off the weapon and propping it behind a fallen stone column that overlooked both the giant ring and the entrance. Rafiq leaped dramatically over the stone to join him, hefting an AK-47 and priming a belt of explosives he had strapped to his chest. Muhammad silently hoped he wouldn't use the last fallback suicide technique anywhere near him.
Throughout the room Muhajideen fighters armed themselves, looking to the heavens as dust was shaken loose in the cacophany of tremors. And from the heavens fell a beam of solid light. The oddest sight of all in Muhammad's mind was the strange image of Mullah Khalid standing in shock, one hand tightly gripped about a ritual execution sword, as the column of light coagulated into a strange stack of rings. The light faded and the stack of rings went with it, leaving the sword-armed Mullah standing in the centre of the room with five humanoid figures with fiendish metallic dog heads.
"Are you... are you Djinn in the service of Allah?" Khalid whispered just loud enough for the Muhajideen in the room to hear.
The central being cried out some nonsense in a deep, foreboding voice. He must not have recieved an adequate reply because his immediate response was to lower his metal spear and send a fireball into the Mullah's chest. Someone opened fire, AK-47 chattering loudly in the echoing room and bullets thudding against the armoured figures uselessly but it was a signal for the rest of the Taliban fighters to fire and the noise was like thunderous roaring. For a moment Muhammad wondered what was worse, the terrible shaking before these devils appeared or the hail of gunfire that followed.
He squeezed the trigger of his machine gun only to recieve an unwelcome click that signified the gun hadn't engaged properly. The armoured figures systematically sent fireballs at all of the muslim soldiers and weathered the storm of bullets in return. One of them dropped to his knee, indicated that these devils could be harmed by their mortal weapons. If only Muhammad could bring his own weapon to bear, he might be the one to bring them down.
He pulled back on his gun, attempting to chamber a round from the belt of bullets. Again the weapon wouldn't fire but a third attempt at fixing it and a hefty thump for good measure saw the heavy machine gun punch its deadly ammunition towards the hapless devils in the centre of the room. It was enough, Muhammad was pleased to see, to pound a figure to the ground and finish off the one that had previously collapsed.
Rafiq beside him cried out in cheer and for the barest of moments Muhammad al-Mufid thought they were going to make it. These five devils had attacked them and their great faith had borne them to victory. It wasn't to be, however, and again his machine gun clicked with the unsatisfactory signal of defeat as if it somehow knew the futility of their resistance. One of the dog-headed devils turned his spear towards him and the last thing the Taliban fighter saw was a rush of uncoming fire.
----
"Aircraft!" Rashid cried, pointing with his free hand towards the screeching black shapes that left the pyramid spaceship to begin circling like a bird of prey on a hunt.
"What do we do?" cried Mullah Zahir, his nervousness betraying his lack of experience concerning warfare.
They had all heard the gunfire, echoing and concentrated from within the bowels of the pyramid, and from al-Hassid's binoculers they had seen a group of Muhajideen fighters scramble from the entrance and a wave of fireballs that pursued them. One clever fighter crouched by the entrance and placed something down before following his compatriots only to be struck by a fireball in the back. The group had briefly seen a trio of armoured figures rush from the large building before being engulfed by flames. The single armoured figure left standing wisely retreated back into the bowels of their previous camp.
"Get down and stay down," Bihar roughly informed him, "Omar; look after the Mullah. Rashid, Abdullah; take out those planes."
"With what?" Rashid was stupid enough to ask.
The al-Qaeda captain cuffed the insubordinate Muhajideen fighter around the head roughly. "With your rockets and faith in Allah!"
Al-Hassid grabbed his compatriot's arm and pulled him away. "Come on, Rashid. We can do this."
As Omar and the Mullah fled to whatever cover they could find in an open and unforgiving desert, Bihar organised small groups of fighters to move about and provide sporadic anti-air fire and draw the planes' attention away from the rocket weilding Rashid. The Taliban warrior slid a rocket into place and crouched, aiming up towards the circling aircraft that had begun to deal out huge fireballs towards those assembled below.
"Hurry up!"
"Don't rush me!" Rashid shouted in reply, "I've just got to pray for success."
"Well pray faster!" al-Hassid had the tenacity to say.
"Alright, alright."
With a sigh, followed by a deep sucking breath, Rashid hefted his weapon up and directed it towards a screeching aircraft. Al-Hassid could barely bring himself to watch as the RPG-7 sent out its payload. Technically not an anti-aircraft weapon, anything could have happened but Allah was with them. The grenade clipped the craft's wing, detonating soon after and sending it flailing to the desert floor.
"It worked!" he said in disbelief, "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!"
"Reload, stupid! The other one's coming around for a pass!"
Knowing it was futile to run, Rashid and al-Hassid fumbled with another warhead and eventually attached it to the RPG-7 launcher. The second shot was a miss, the pilot of the craft having enough skill to move himself from the missile's trajectory but it also meant his line of fire was altered and the two Muhajideen survived once more. The craft seemed to hover above, as if considering the benefit of staying out during a potentially dangerous situation, and perhaps smartly it headed back towards the pyramid. Rashid sent another rocket towards to as it fled only for it to explode upon striking a strange shield of orange that protected the spacecraft from the attack.
They reloaded quickly; they both knew this wasn't over by a long shot.
----
The Goa'uld, Ra, was used to having his way. He was the Supreme System Lord in charge of the entire Goa'uld empire across countless worlds, revered as a god by billions of subjects from a hundred different cultures. Sure, occasionally a rather stupid and overambitious Goa'uld would attempt to challenge him but they always inevitably failed in the face of his superior weapons and technology confiscated from the cast-out Anubis.
These people fighting his Jaffa weren't Abydonians and they certainly weren't the forces of a minor Goa'uld with fantasies above his station; they weren't any type of people he recognised and yet their oddly simple weapons that had somehow managed to destroy one of the patrolling Death Gliders with a lucky shot. Any other time he would have sent his armies down to wipe them from existance; thousands of Jaffa burning them from history with the rightious fire of their god.
Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the insects that dared stand against him, Ra had not prepared himself for such a threat, insignificant though it may have been. He was a merciless god, many peoples could attest that much about him, but he was also smart enough to know that between conquering mindless slaves and wiping out rebellious minor Goa'ulds his soldiers needed rest. The majority of his forces were enjoying some downtime on Chulak while their god swept through the stars to collect the naquadah on the insignificant planet of Abydos.
His First Prime dragged the only surviving enemy of those guarding the Stargate to the foot of his throne. There were more of them out there, scurrying about the desert foolishly but inevitably failing to break the shields of his ship with their explosive toys. This one had been knocked unconcious by a lucky hit and eventually captured by the Jaffa under his command. His First Prime garnered a malicious grin as his raised the torturing shock-stick and jabbed it against the crumpled heep's skin. Ra allowed a smirk; pain was often the easiest way to wake the foolish.
The man screamed, clearly awake and began whispering something, possibly a prayer, in a language Ra didn't recognise. The god couldn't stop the frown that came after hearing it. He knew hundreds of tongues. Every culture he allowed his fellow Goa'uld to take from the Tau'ri homeworld he had inspected himself in order to learn what pitiful knowledge they might possess.
In the Pharoh's tongue he said in the distorted voice common in the Goa'uld, "Tell me who you are." The man babbled something uncomprehensible, something fierce and full of defiance. Ra tried again in Greek, Mandarin, Mayan and Babylonian but still the man refused to understand. Human minds were so full of stupidity, it was no wonder the Goa'uld were blessed with godhood in order to subjegate them into their rightful place. He tried again in the tongue of the Ancients, the long forgotten speech of the tribe his human host had been taken from, then Nordic like the humans under the protection of the Asgard, and still nothing.
Ra wasn't used to not having his way. He scowled down at the man trying to see if his appearance could offer some clue as to what language he should attempt next. A long, dark-haired beard covered sun-darkened skin. His clothing was suited to blend in with the desert; tans, browns and white robes were common although the strange black holder strapped to his chest seemed oddly out of place. Ra knew there were more deserts than the one surrounding the Nile where he had found his host but personal preference made him attempt to speak in a familiar tongue from there.
"I am getting tired of this," he said eventually in the language of the slaves, "Tell me who you are immediately."
If he had any understanding of the Afghan's native Urdu then he might have been worried about the look of comprehension crossing the prisoner's face and the cries of 'Jewish dogs', but he didn't. The Taliban fighter detonated the block of explosives strapped to his chest with a final cry of 'Allahu ackbar!' and the Goa'uld known as Ra knew no more.
----
"So," Rashid began awkwardly, "What do we do now?"
The question was a good one but none in the group had any particular idea on how to answer. Bihar was off attempting to get a better understanding of one of the pagans' spear-weapons; the dull thumping of fireballs stricking sand dunes could be heard even from here, while Rashid and al-Hassid had been drafted in to look after the Mullah. Zahir seemed to be the only one with a rough idea on what to do and that had been to round up the remaining jaffa and keep them under guard.
"I think," Mullah Zahir began tentatively, "That Allah has given us our test."
"Test?"
"We have been shown a new adversary to strike down in His name," explained the scholar, "These 'jaffa' were slaves under one who claimed to be a god. A pagan god, no less."
"How did you find that out?" asked al-Hassid, truly curious.
"That one," Omar, who had remained with the Mullah all this time, pointed to an armoured figure marred by fresh burn scars who seemed at once both nervous and defiant at the sudden attention on him, "Speaks Hebrew. Foul Jew language that it is; it is the common tongue that we were hoping for. He claims to have been the infidel leader's second in command and witnessed first hand the faith of our holy warriors as one of them martyred himself for Islam."
"Wow," said al-Hassid, "And he's still standing. Well, kneeling; but you get my drift."
"Indeed," said the Mullah, "I should be back home teaching young muslims about ancient cultures and instead I've been forced into this."
"Be proud, Mullah," Omar said, "Allah's faithful soldiers have been given a chance to strike down infidels with the tenacity to claim holiness. Fiends who enslave under the guise of false gods."
"Of course," replied the Mullah.
"Plus we've got a honking great big spaceship to mess about with," Rashid said with a grin, "What could possibly stand against us?"
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